Starting to wonder whether every business is fake. Like the only reason restaurants are full is that DC and Wall Street types are using printed money to prop them up. Like 90 percent of them couldn’t survive in a real economy. And if they didn’t survive, all the money that flows through them into other areas of the economy would dry up too.

Same with fashion. I remember walking up Madison Avenue one night from like 30th street to 90th where I was staying, seeing all the brightly lit shops, closed for the night, selling insanely expensive things.

It was surreal, like who is buying all that stuff, buying enough of it all the time to keep these myriad places in business?

What would exist in a real economy where everyone had to offer value in exchange for hard money? How much would disappear almost overnight, and what would take its place?

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The real price of money is probably ~15% … using debt we have pulled forward demand for 50+ years worth using a (loosely, on average) 10% delta to real price of money financing … not to mention the leverage that gets applied to those assets is getting more and more aggressive with derivatives.

Probably have pulled forward at least $100T of “assets” that shouldn’t exist under a sound money standard. Maybe $200T is a better estimate and $400T is a high side.

Also, because debt is a priority claim and equity is a residual claim, if today’s $900T of assets shot repriced to $700T, the impact to markets wouldn’t be a linear $200T decline. Equities would get wiped and creditors would become the new equity holders. It’s get messy quickly.

I have similar idea about how things seems fake when I look at shops in an average city.

For example restaurants, or anything that is cooked food. By estimate 10-20% of the price is due to the ingredients, and the rest goes to the vages, rent, and mostly taxes. At that point I am paying for the service, for the vagie that hoppes around me, and not for the food itself. Which makes sense.

I would do this as tourist to get something quick or to try something new. Even then, I will look at the plate and think: "Well, I just got scammed again." It's not even enough to fill me up, and I can do much better, in every aspect, if I cook myself.

But I see it as a failure on the part of the other participant is the market and not neccesarily a fault of the system; other buyers who have different preferences (due to culture or their own stupidity). They like to buy this, and dislike to buy something else. So I will adjust my behavior acordingly.