Intro

It's time for a reality check ...

Maybe we’ve reached the point of diminishing astonishment.

But I suspect that much of what we’re hammered with every day really doesn’t make much of an impact on most of us anymore. We’ve heard the same stories too often. We’ve been exposed to the same issues for so long without any meaningful resolution. We recognize that reality is rapidly becoming malleable, primarily in the hands of whoever has the biggest microphone. How else can we explain a society where myth asserts itself as reality, based entirely how many hits it gets online?

We know that many of the “issues” as defined are pure crapola, hyped by politicians on both sides pandering to “the will of the people,” which is still more crapola. Inevitably, it’s not the will of all the people they reflect, but the will of relatively small groups of people with disproportionate political influence.

Nobody wants to face up to the realities of the issues. Nobody wants to say what’s right or wrong – even when it’s obvious and there are numbers to back it up. Most of us are afraid to bring up the realities for fear of being accused of being insensitive or downright mean.

So we say nothing. Until now.

It’s time for a reality check on the fundamentals – much of which is common knowledge to many of us, already. But it might be comforting to know you are not alone …

Tuesday, March 27, 2012


      There’s only so much money in the world; the more you print, the less it’s worth
A currency is only worth what it’s worth by comparing what it buys to other currencies.

A stronger dollar means it takes more of someone else’s currency to buy things priced in dollars and fewer dollars to buy things priced in another currency.  So a stronger dollar also means fewer dollars buy more foreign goods, making those cheaper to U.S. customers, but also making U.S. products more expensive around the world.  

A weaker dollar is the reverse; U.S. goods are cheaper around the world, and foreign goods are more expensive here. 

That’s about it. 

However, if you simply print more dollars – as we are doing now – each dollar is worth less, so it takes more dollars to buy practically everything here and abroad because of our integration into the global economy.  

This Econ 101 primer appears to be lost on our politicians and those who report on what those politicians are doing.  While our government prints more dollars, making each one worth less and eventually driving prices up, it’s also selling promises of dollars in the future through bond sales.  

The only way the Feds can obtain more dollars – without printing them – is primarily through taxes, tariffs, and sales or leases of government-controlled assets.  Oh, and by “borrowing” them from other funds like Social Security.   That’s what the big debate over the debt ceiling was really all about, once you get past the posturing on both sides:  raising the ceiling gave the government the ability to borrow more money, mainly from abroad, when it can barely cover the interest payments on the debt it already has. 

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