Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
(Please note this is a satire)
A brief summary of everything that's been fixed.
Much to the amazement of doom-and-gloomers, everything's been fixed and as a result, everything's great. The
list is impressive: China: fixed. Japan: fixed. Europe: fixed. U.S.
healthcare: fixed. Africa: fixed. Mideast: well, not fixed, but no worse
than a month ago, and that qualifies as fixed.
Let's scroll through a brief summary of everything that's been fixed.
1. China's economy. It
was slowing down, which would have been bad for the global economy. But
the recent PMI (preliminary made-up indicator) readings have been the
strongest since the Great Leap Forward.
The basic story here
is China needs a million more of everything: a million more concrete
highrises, a million more airports, a million more miles of highway, and
so on. And because there are 200 million rural peasants anxious to open
nail shops in all those empty ghost cities, there is no end to growth
in China.
And thanks to central
banking and a wide-open spigot of credit, there's also a million times
more leverage and debt in China. It's a perpetual growth machine.
There are growth
stories on top of growth stories in China. There are 300 million
diabetics and pre-diabetics in China right now--the equivalent of the
U.S. population. Think of all the growth possibilities for diabetes
clinics in those ghost cities. All the owners of those nail shops and
diabetes clinics will be getting so rich, Goldman Sachs will be needed
to sell them safe investments like Detroit Muni Bonds.
2. Japan'a Abenomics has worked, and Japan is back.
Need proof? Just look at the Japanese stock market: it's up. What more
do you need? Hello Kitty is expanding its market share of the global
Cute market--yee-hah!--and the 2020 Olympics will be a growth story for
seven years--a Biblical cornucopia of growth, growth, growth.
3. Europe is on the mend.
European stocks are at 5-year highs--proof everything's fixed. Greece's
budget is near surplus (if you exclude interest payments on their
debt), and there's light at the end of the tunnel on Europe's debt
crisis. The fix is LTRO (long-term ripoff operation)--basically another
perpetual growth machine funded by free money issued by the European
Central Bank. Can't pay your debts? No problem, just borrow more!
It won't take more than a couple trillion euros to set things right and get things moving.
Sure, unemployment in
some countries is 25% (or is it 40%? hard to be sure), but that's
stabilized, and there are sure to be more jobs for waiters/waitresses as
tourism works its growth magic.
4. The U.S. healthcare system is fixed, thanks to ObamaCare.
I can't understand the details, of course, but then neither can anybody
else, and that's the beauty of it: there's a practically unlimited
demand for people who know how all this works. Job growth will be
through the roof.
Here's a summary of
how ObamaCare works. There's three levels, kind of like a credit card:
silver, gold and platinum. Silver is like your current lousy plan, only
the government will give you $167 if your plan costs more than $10,000
(or maybe it's $1,670--nobody knows).
The Gold level is
much better, similar to gold-plated healthcare plans enjoyed by
government workers, but it costs a lot more. Platinum is equivalent to
what everyone in other advanced democracies gets from national
healthcare, only it costs twice as much here in the U.S.
But hey, you get what
you pay for, and that's why the U.S. healthcare system is the best in
the world--we spend twice as much per person as anyone else.
If you refuse to get
insurance, the government penalizes you $167--or maybe it's $1,670.
Nobody really knows yet because there are thousands of pages of fine
print to sort out.
5. America has its own perpetual money machine to fuel growth.
The Federal Reserve creates money and then buys Treasury bonds. The
Federal government sells the bonds and uses the cash (just created by
the Fed) to pay for everything: $300 million a piece F-35 fighters, 47
million Food Stamp SNAP vouchers, bridges to nowhere, tax breaks for
billionaires, you name it.
And here's the beauty
of it: there's no limit to this money machine. The Fed can print a
gazillion dollars and buy a gazillion dollars of Treasury bonds so the
government can spend a gazillion dollars. There is no consequence of
this, it can go on forever. That means we can borrow as much money as we
want to buy everything we want, forever.
So you see, everything's fixed, because everybody that can create their own money can do so without limit or consequence. It's
a perpetual money machine, and that fuels a perpetual growth machine.
No limits on credit and debt means no limit on spending. Free money for
everyone and everything--it's unbelievably easy.
Doom and gloomers
have been wrong, just like Paul Krugman said. The solution to every
problem is at hand: create more money and credit, in ever larger sums,
until a tsunami of cash washes away all difficulties.
Please note this is a satire.
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