HBD #Bitcoin.

Oh and happy anniversary to my wife.

#blessed

ET TU, CHRYSTIA?

"Judge me, you gods! Wrong I mine enemies? And if not so, how should I wrong a brother?" -- Brutus, Julius Caesar

Chrystia the Impaler finally did something to affect change.

Minutes before I dispatched last week's dismal diatribe, CTI quit as Finance Minister.

Impaling Mr. Socks' minority government in the process. Setting the stage for Tik-Tok Jag to bring down the Lib government.

Her experience as a journalist meant she knew how to insert the blade to inflict the most damage. Resigning mere hours before she was set to deliver the fall economic update.

That left poor JT and his minority government twisting in the wind. As a former cabinet minister said this week "there's a reason we still read Shakespeare".

And how did T2 respond to this crisis? In the same languid way that we've come to expect from his rudderless leadership.

He hid. First in his SUV. And then behind closed doors.

For hours the country was without a Finance Minister. Who would deliver the speech? Would there even be a fall economic update?

The Libs were making the Keystone Cops look like Nobel laureates.

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So with no one willing to jump on the grenade, the bad news sat on the table like an unopened brown envelope from CRA.

Because theres no way to sugar coat the biggest budget miss since Kevin Costner's Waterworld. A cool $20 Billion and 50% over budget.

I predicted it. In fact, my exact words were "would it surprise me if it was, I dunno, $60 Billion? Not in the least."

A bold call that turned out to be as prescient as it was precise. And now T2's chances lay impaled by one of his most loyal merry men.

To be fair folks, the political landscape is changing around the world. The fall of incumbent governments has been accelerating. And points to a greater sea change.

In every democratic nation to hold an election this year, the incumbent got crucified.

To wit, the French government couldn't get their budget through parliament and fell. South Korea's President got impeached. The German government fell. And now our laughable Libs are on life support.

Why the wave of anti incumbency?

Because in a debt bubble, governments drown in a tax and spend system. No matter how grandiloquent their rhetoric. They can promise the world, but they will fail to deliver.

Those unfulfilled promises pile on more debt. Like the $61 billion bill the Libs handed us. That debt and its concomitant carrying costs hamstring future growth.

Slower growth makes it tougher to balance the budget. And that forces governments to make one of three choices. Raise taxes, cut spending or inflate away the debt.

John Rapley, author of "Why Empires Fall" concurs.

"This is how empires fall. Any one of these solutions hurts one political constituency or another. Politicians promise they'll magic away the problem by making the economy grow faster."

Even new government can't cure what ails us.

Because the disease has already infected the lifeblood of our economies. And that disease is easy money.

When central banksters can print $60.9 billion out of thin air, who cares what we spend?

Because too much morphine kills even the healthiest patient. And now a dollar of spending no longer equals a dollar of growth. Because a full quarter of each new dollar has to go to pay the interest expense on the old debt.

That disease has our government on their knees. And someone’s always waiting in the wings, shiv in hand.

Mr. Socks just didn’t think it would be his deputy.

Et tu, Chrystia?

#BTC

GM.

Merry Christmas Nostr!

A great day to buy BTC and never sell.

Another reason I love BTC is that I continuously learn new things.

Like the US has 261 million ounces of shiny rocks. Think of all the sats that could buy...

GM Nostr

Bring value & stack sats

GM Nostr.

One sat is one penny at one hundred thousand.

But 1 BTC is still 1 BTC.

nostr:npub1cj8znuztfqkvq89pl8hceph0svvvqk0qay6nydgk9uyq7fhpfsgsqwrz4u

GM Nostr. Satoshi's last post was on the Bitcoin forum was 14 years ago today. Also my bday. Also 12x12=144 blocks per day. So basically I was born for this...

Pristine digital property.

The difficulty adjustment might just be my favourite part of #Bitcoin.

GM NOSTR. Bitcoin is peaceful.

GM Nostr. Bitcoin is freedom tech.

I dialed in to BBS’s on a C64 using a 1200 baud modem.

THE GOLDILOCKS ENIGMA

"The Goldilocks Enigma is the idea that everything in the universe is just right for life, like the porridge in the fairy tale." -- Paul Davies

Imagine that you're speeding down a winding highway.

On one side is a cliff that descends into a rocky river bed. But buffeting the other side is an icy lake.

As your car hits the black ice and begins to fishtail out of control, the steering wheel spins in your hands.

Your instinct is to hit the brakes. But what if it was better to hit the gas?

That's the dilemma our central bankers are in right now.

Because the U.S. Federal Debt is speeding towards $36 trillion. With annual interest expense set to exceed $1.2 trillion this year. More than is spent on national defense.

What's more, there are now $219 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Those come in the form of social security and medicare. Promises made, but with no money set aside to pay for them.

Folks, raising rates is like applying brakes on the economy. Because it increases the cost of servicing the existing and growing debt.

But hitting the brakes too hard could send the bond market into a deflationary fishtail. And result in a debt driven collapse. Over the cliff.

But leaving your foot on the gas too long causes the cost of money to go down. Things get more expensive as more money chases the same, or fewer goods and services. Which runs the risk of inflation, or even hyperinflation. The icy lake.

So what will they do?

We already know the answer. Central bankers will choose the gas pedal every time. Damn the torpedos. Sacrifice the savers and the poor. Let the next guy deal with it.

And it's the same dilemma for central banks all over the world. To wit, CIBC's chief economist thinks that the BOC is on the verge of a "Jumbo Rate Cut".

“It is time to declare victory in the battle against inflation and get the economy moving again.” Avery Shenfeld, said. “There’s no reason not to speed up the process of getting interest rates down.”

That was Batman. Then Robin chimed in with this dovish ditty:

"Markets are underestimating how much the BoC is going to cut rates" said Benjamin Tal. Benny is CIBC's deputy chief practitioner of the dismal science. He thinks that our Money Printer in Chief could drop the policy rate by as much as 50 beeps at the next meeting on Oct 23rd. (That's banker speak for half a point).

He thinks the policy rate could hit 2.25% by the end of 2025. That's a lot of gas.

You see, there's something called the neutral rate. Not too hot, not too cold. Above the neutral rate, interest rates are restrictive. Below it, rates are accommodative. And according to Benny, we're still well above that Goldilocks rate.

What do our central banksters think? Tiff & Co. estimate the neutral rate to be between 2.25% and 3.25%.

Think of it this way. You're approaching a curve in the road where the speed limit goes from 100 down to 60. As you enter the curve with your foot on the brakes, you decelerate. But before you know it, you're doing 45.

The propellerheads think it's time to remove the brakes and hit the gas. Because it's in everybody's interest to cut rates. Right?

Not so fast. Dropping interest rates alleviates the immediate problem of debt service. It inflates asset prices. But it adds to the long term debt problem. It doesn't solve anything. It just kicks the can down the road.

Plus, unintended consequences exist in the real world. Too much gas and you get higher food, energy and housing costs. And you rob savers of their purchasing power.

It's the next generation that pays the brunt of the costs. In the form of higher house prices, reduced benefits and delayed retirement.

In real life, it's like the three bears eat the three little pigs and then join up with the big bad wolf. Then come back and eat Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood.

Pick your parable. And your poison.

Either way, there’s no such thing as a fairy tail ending.

#BTC

Congratulations Peter.

Sartre

🐐

BTC is property. Everything else is credit. SC Gallatoshi

“It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." — Voltaire

It took the United States 205 years to get to $1 trillion dollars in debt. Now they add that every three months. How so you say?

The US Federal Government spends at a pace of $1 trillion every 100 days. And as bad as that sounds, it's about to get worse.

You see, the compounding effect works with debt too. Interest rates are up eightfold in under four years. Because of the compounding effect, 20% of the entire debt has piled up since the beer virus. With total debt set to reach $35 trillion in the next 8 weeks.

That's $106,000 for every American man woman and child. Whether you're a MAGA Trumpster, a Sanders socialist or a Neiman Marxist. You owe.

And the problem isn't going away. Because we're addicted to debt. And debt is like the opioid crisis.

One reason that debt is so addictive is the same for opioids. Because it works so well. The high is immediate. Spend today and pay tomorrow. A dollar today is worth more than one in the future.

But what happens if we keep going like this? Banks used to keep the debt structure buoyant. They'd buy US Treasury bonds to fund government spending. And keep the bonds on their balance sheet as reserves, so they can lend out at higher rates.

That worked until 10-year Treasuries collapsed 46% from March 2020 until October 2023. Those losses were comparable to the stock market crashes of the Dot-com era and the '08-'09 GFC. But this time it happened in so called "safe-haven" assets that are the linchpin of the financial world.

That prompted the government to take on even more debt. They had to inject trillions into the system through swap lines and bank bailouts like the BTFP. We passed the hot potato to the Central Banks. The problem? There's nowhere left for the CBs to pass it.

And the only steam valve left is the currency.

There's a famous experiment called Rat Park. By a psychologist named Dr. Bruce Alexander. In it, researchers offer rats two water bottles. One filled with water, and the other with heroin or cocaine. If caged alone, the rats would drink from the drug-laced bottles until they overdosed and died.

But if they were among others, free to roam, play and have sex, they preferred the plain water. "Even when they did drink from the drug-filled bottle, they did so intermittently, not obsessively. And never overdosed. A social community beat the power of drugs" said Dr. Alexander.

Folks, we need to get back to drinking plain water. Not the drug laced debt water we've become addicted to. In other words, we need to return to a focus on families, social communities, human contact and support. Like the rats that survived.

We need to force fiscal responsibility onto government. And let the parasitic politicians die out. How? By getting rid of the contaminated water. Stop letting them borrow to buy votes.

Let the pendulum swing away from where we are, and return to founding principles. That'll attract global talent. Which allows technological improvements that unlock abundant energy, clean water, and medical advances.

Then we can export that abundance to the rest of the world. Conflict over resources ends. Prices fall, purchasing power rises, humanity thrives.

With fresh water and a new pristine reserve asset of the economy.

The alternative? We persist in pressing a pleasure lever until our bodies and brains are overcome.

Living in Rat Park.

My sister in law literally thinks TMZ and The View are news.....it made me think of "Infotainment".

Corporate Infotainment.

Texas