And here's the thing: in this case, there isn't any hidden evidence -- you can't argue that the CIA knows something the rest of us don't. And the voices calling for stronger stimulus are, may I say, sorta kinda respectable -- several Nobelists in the bunch, plus a large fraction of the prominent economists who predicted the housing crash before it happened.

But somehow, the pro-stimulus people are unpersons. Who makes these decisions?

A potential solution might lay in a reconsideration of money, that institution of collective trust on which our mass society is based.

Money functions as both a store of value and a medium of exchange. These work at cross purposes, because as a store of value it is a form of private property, while as a medium of exchange it is a form of public utility, similar to a road system. Most people focus on their own wealth in comparison to others and thus think of it as private property. The reality is that the system belongs to whomever guarantees its value. We do possess the money we hold, in the same way we possess the section of road we are driving on. You own your car, house, business, etc, but not the roads connecting them. Money is a similar medium. It was one thing when money signified some commodity you had stored or traded and its value was entirely based on that underlaying commodity, but now the money supply far exceeds the underlaying value of the real economy and so its value is maintained by the ability of the government to support it through taxation. This means it has become an illusionary bubble of value into which ever more resources are needed to support and so is only functional as a medium of exchange. While this is potentially catastrophic, it presents an opportunity to change the basic economic equation.

Believing money is private property encourages people to hoard it. The problem is that capital is subject to the laws of supply and demand, with the lender as supply and the borrower as demand. Since the supply of capital must be balanced by demand for it, there must be sufficient borrowers for this notational wealth, or its value will collapse. The problem is that political power is on the side of those with money, rather than those borrowing it and this lack of balance regularly creates situations which swell the supply of money, while depleting the abilities of those borrowing it. This results in periodic credit
collapse, as masses of borrowers default. We are at an extreme state of this particular situation, since the government has borrowed massive amounts of its own money back, loan standards were left in the dust and enormous bubbles of excess circulation were blown up by the financial services industry to hold this surplus notational wealth. Now that the bubble is collapsing and its value evaporating, the powers that be are engaged in more destructive behavior by issuing ever more debt and currency to keep the bubble from imploding. Since the only way to prevent this additional money from being seriously inflationary is to monetize ever more value out of society and the environment in order to support and pay interest on it, to the increasing detriment of world health. The situation is analogous to high blood pressure. As bad debt clogs the arteries, increasing pressure doesn't clear the clots, but damages healthy tissue and causes it to harden and burst in weak points. When that happens, a person dies, but an economy flooded with loose credit is distorted. In a Ponzi scheme, the money from later investors is used to pay off earlier investors. When an asset bubble builds up, due to easy credit, rather than improved earnings, the same thing happens, as later investors pay earlier investors, then loose their investment when the well of credulous investors dries up.

great essay, beautiful writing, very salient.

~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~