ninecomma ლ(❛◡❛ლ)

PRINT TRILLIONS WHILE HIKING RATES The Fed now has “high rates” like SF has “low crime rates”. It says it does, but it doesn’t. Because you have to be pretty naive to think today’s rate hike means the Fed is still “fighting inflation”. You can see it in the graphs — the printing is already vertical[1,2], and trillions in new money is available for both domestic[3,4] and foreign[5] banks. Yet the Fed continues hiking rates to fool low information voters into thinking the last two weeks were just an isolated series of multi-hundred-billion dollar bank failures, and that their policy is unchanged. Nothing to worry about, the Western banking system is resilient, and it’s normal to have banks die at the rate of five in ten days![10] Because that’s actually all this state does: it fakes the rates. Remember when SF claimed officially low crime rates[6] even as criminals robbed stores in broad daylight[7]? Remember when FDA prevented labs from testing so we all underestimated the COVID infection rate[8], till old people in New York started dropping dead? And remember when the Fed claimed the inflation rate wouldn't be a problem[9] before anyone buying groceries found out it was an emergency? The American state fakes the rates. And that’s what’s happening with today’s “hike”. After killing five of their own banks[10], catalyzing a series of bank runs[11], and realizing the public now knew they’d made hundreds more banks insolvent[12,13], the Fed rolled out programs over the last two weeks that broke the normal relationship between “hiking rates” and “tightening monetary policy”. All the losses the Fed rate hikes cause for domestic banks? They’re printing money to cover it.[14] All the losses they cause for foreign banks? Printing money to cover that too.[15] And the losses they cause for depositors? Naturally, more printed money![16] So now the banks don’t publicly die from bank runs. Instead, even as this rate hike keeps pushing bank stocks further into the ground[17], and banks further into insolvency[18], the banks know they can just get more printed money (eg at the discount window[19] for BTFP) to cover their losses. That’s what BTFP, the swap lines, and the effective “FedDIC” policy mean: infinite money. And this infinite money is no longer abstract. It’s printed dollars that individuals touch directly when they wire their money out of banks they fear may collapse, which is happening everywhere from community banks[20] to Credit Suisse[21]. The money printer is now connected directly to your checking account. And in the digital era, the bank runs are of a historical scale.[22] Remember also: the BTFP, swap lines, and FedDIC measures are *so enormous* that the Fed is doing them over weekends[23] with all the other central banks[24], and publishing multiple joint statements[25,26] assuring people that the “system is resilient”, even as Moody’s has downgraded the US banking system as a whole[27]. One of the things I hate about this system is that it’s evolved to be opaque, like a snake that’s evolved camouflage. If the Fed came outright and *said* they were digitally devaluing the dollar by printing trillions, that they were monetizing the debt as Dalio predicted[31] and even getting bondholders to abet the devaluation, everyone would flee for the Bitcoin exit. So instead they lie, to themselves and to others, just as Jean-Claude Juncker recommended[32]. As with CDOs[33] in 2008, the point is to fool themselves and to fool you. But you have to see through the camouflage. They’re printing trillions[34,35] even as they’re hiking rates. Indeed, they’re printing trillions to compensate for the *consequences* of hiking rates. There will of course be other consequences to printing trillions. You can wait to find out, or you can get into Bitcoin now. 5 figures and 35 citations follow. 👇