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What the system is trying to tell us is that paper assets are inherently untrustworthy.
The people who create, hold and trade the paper assets got scared shitless that there would be a run on the $4.5 TRILLION money-market funds after one of the oldest and most respected funds experienced an actual loss of principal ("broke the buck") because of losses on LEH debt.
But the system actually NEEDS for there to be a run on paper assets, because the paper economy has gotten outrageously large in comparison to the actual economy (perhaps 30-40 times as large?). The trading of paper assets back and forth is simply either a poker game (some players have positive edge, others negative but the net is zero sum) or a ponzi scheme (pay off early entrants with money sucked in from later entrants, until there are no more later entrants and the whole system collapses).
Long term economic security can only flow from converting labor into physical assets that are productive in ways that even a third-grader can understand. For example, we invest in agricultural land and methods that can be used to grow food that will feed us or we invest in energy production that is sustainable without the need for "fuel" inputs; e.g., wind, solar, tide, geothermal.
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