Labels

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Financial Fraud: Lord Keynes, the New Deal and 'Stimulus' Mania, by Steve Penfield - The Unz Review

A collection of quacks and shrewd self-promoters sold millions of Americans on exotic theories of financial ease. Instead of a promised land of sustained prosperity, we’re left with an enormous mess to clean up (at best) and probably a full economic meltdown on the horizon. For starters, we might want to try looking for better advice.

If the stars align just right, each generation may witness one or two radiant figures who achieve such dazzling advances for totalitarian authority that our ruling elites can speak no ill of their personal and public failings, no matter how dramatic. Abe Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Michael “Martin Luther” King serve as worthy members of that ignoble pantheon, if we can look past so much Hollywood, state media and public school adulation. (Some may question the inclusion of MLK on this short list of super-villains. But providing rhetorical ammunition for three generations of arbitrary racial revenge, hounding millions of European Americans from their U.S. urban homelands, chasing manufacturing jobs out of city environments with nationalized union fascism, spawning the scourge of black welfare dependency, neutralizing non-governmental black progress of the 1940s and 50s, and riling up his followers so greatly they would riot in over 110 cities the week after his death—while helping to seed a staggering 750 race riots from 1964 to 1971—settles it for me.)

The Right Honorable Lord John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) is another such example.

The distinguished British salesman of international “free lunch” economics was a master of pandering to politicians’ short-term desires for instant gratification at someone else’s expense. His eloquence in advocating fallacious but soothing positions empowered ruling establishments and their corporate facilitators for decades. For that, he is celebrated by many, despised by a few, yet emulated by nearly everyone in the halls of high finance.

The section headings for this essay are as follows:

·   The Economic Crisis at Hand: Who Taught Us to be this Dumb?

·   ‘Free Lunch’ Fantasies: 1930s – the Decade of Economic Insanity

·   Keynesian Influence on the New Deal

·   Maynard ‘Feasting with Panthers’: The Making of a Megalomaniac

·   Keynesian Alchemy Finds a Home at Subsidized Colleges

·   The ‘Stimulus’ Ruse: Putting a Positive Spin on Wealth Destruction

·   Academic Effrontery Becomes the New Normal

·   Recap on Banking Basics

·   The Original Fraud of Modern Banking

·   The Fickle, Futile and Fanatical Opposition

·   I Hate the Same People You Hate: Please Buy My Newsletter!

·   Left-wing Economic Crack Up

·   Conclusion…………..

(Long article - Link to website below for full text.)

Conclusion

The trillions of counterfeit loans cooked up by the banking industry, their incredible inflationary gouging, the predictable credit cycle of boom/bust/feast-on-the-carnage that they’ve always enjoyed and the perpetual welfare-warfare-corporate kleptocracy they’ve nurtured for the last century did not happen solely from the actions of one man.

John Maynard Keynes was certainly an important matinee idol for totalitarian cultivators to rally around for the last 3 or 4 generations—and for his simpering critics to gnash their teeth over while retreating in irrelevancy. But Mr. Keynes had many helpers along the way. And he rode the coattails of some important predecessors like fiat credit swindler John Law (of the 1718–1720 Mississippi Bubble) and free-money crusader Henry George (1839–1897) who are now largely forgotten.

In more civilized times, con-men like John Law were quickly recognized as frauds and publicly renounced. One would hope a similar fate will eventually befall the huckster from Cambridge along with his cheering section at college economics departments. And this is where the general public comes back into the picture.

Behind all the Keynesian/New Deal slogans, speeches and broken promises lies a more embarrassing question. Who is the bigger fool: the man who peddles snake oil, or the person who repeatedly buys it?

In nature, maggots don’t infest a body until it becomes helpless or dies. Vibrant communities can resist the lure of “free lunch” economic policy no matter how neatly it’s packaged. Only societies that have become incapacitated to a lifeless zombie condition fall prey to such transparently harmful advice.

No one should expect the rotting manure of subsidized academia or the pandering rage peddlers of full-time journalism to breathe life into America’s dying culture or come to anyone’s rescue with creative solutions. They simply can’t and they won’t.

If there is ever going to be sustained prosperity again in any city, town or village in America, it will come from average people making some extra efforts and taking a few calculated risks following sound principles to their logical conclusions. Real progress has probably always been that way, and it most likely always will.

Email: spenfieldNY@gmail.com

https://www.unz.com/article/financial-fraud-lord-keynes-the-new-deal-and-stimulus-mania/