Life Without Ceilings
It takes hard work to be better, but the payoff is worth the pain.
Everyone around me is losing weight. Multiple family members, several friends, people in my own household! It’s actually amazing to see. What’s interesting is that even though 5 or 6 people in my local periphery have clearly lost weight this year, they’re doing it in different ways. For some it’s been totally diet.
For others it’s been committing to 5 AM gym trips. And I know of at least one who has gone with the combo approach of both better diet and more activity. I’m happy for all of these people! Truly. I’ve actually lost a little bit of weight this year as well. I just don’t feel the need to tell everybody how much I weigh every time I see them.
Just kidding, Dad. Looove you.
In seriousness, for me it’s been mostly exercise. We have patched together a home gym in our basement that largely does the trick. That “gym” has pretty much always had a stationary bike that my wife uses. The next biggest piece is a standing bag that I’ve had since I was in high school that I occasionally staple pictures of Gary Gensler to before I go to work.
A recent addition to our home gym has been a dumbbell set that goes from 5 to 35 pounds. That’s been really helpful for both of us. We’re more toned up and stronger than we were this time last year. If I have any complaint about our setup it’s that we don’t have a treadmill. Which is frustrating because we came to the house with one. I love to run. Beyond just helping me maintain my carefully crafted dad bod, I do some of my best thinking when I’m out on the street.
The problem with the treadmill was that it didn’t fit in the basement. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I didn’t fit on it in the basement. I’m too tall and my head would touch the ceiling when I tried to jog. Since my much shorter wife doesn’t run, we got rid of it. Running outside is fine. The fresh air is wonderful. But it can be a bit extreme when the temperature gets close to zero. Fortunately, we had a mild winter.
What if I could just raise the ceiling?
Wouldn’t that just solve everything? Perhaps. Or maybe it’s not that simple. Could I legitimately find a way to raise the ceiling in my basement? Yes. But there would be an enormous monetary cost. Beyond that, doing so could jeopardize the structure long term.
There are no solutions, only trade offs. - Sowell
Is debt all that different? We’re told by monetary alchemists that the rules of household economics are different for governments because the state has a money printer. To them, this affords the state the privilege of defying the laws of algebra - and probably physics as well. These same alchemists claim the United States has never defaulted on its obligations. This is straight from the Treasury’s website:
Since the United States has never defaulted on its obligations, the scope of the negative repercussions related to a default are unknown but would likely have catastrophic repercussions in the United States and in markets across the globe.
Bold my emphasis. Let’s pause for a moment and recognize that the government’s claim of no historical record of US default is false. The US government defaulted in 1971 when it couldn’t honor Gold redemptions to foreign lenders under the old Bretton Woods monetary system.
It took a little over a decade to end the charade from the point when liabilities first exceeded Gold stock, but it happened nevertheless. This looks like a default to me. But, whatever, we can play make believe for the benefit of this exercise. Let’s pretend the Bretton Woods default wasn’t actually a default. The US has never defaulted. Okay. So what? Just because a country hasn’t defaulted before doesn’t mean it can’t happen in the future.
Should the debt ceiling be raised?
It doesn’t matter if it should or shouldn’t be. Because it will be. Because it always is. And it always can be raised because the global reserve currency isn’t actually money. The currency is the debt. It says so right on the paper:
What used to be a silver certificate is now a note. One is fundamentally similar to a laundromat ticket. The other isn’t much different from this:
I’ll give you one guess at which is more like the monopoly money. What is considered legal tender isn’t what most people think it is. It’s not real. It’s confidence game magic.
It’s not a lie if you believe it. - George Costanza
I’m not going to get into the politics of this because it isn’t a political issue. It’s a systemic issue masquerading as a political issue. If Republicans were serious about ending all the nonsense spending, they’d have done something about it when they had control of both branches. But they didn’t because they’re just as unserious about actually solving problems as the Democrats.
Do yourself a favor this weekend and devote 30 minutes to Mike Maloney’s 4th episode of Hidden Secrets of Money:
It’s 9 years old but it could have been produced yesterday.
Gold Accounts For The Debasement
The beauty of something like Gold is it wins either way. When the debt ceiling is raised, Gold accounts for it. If the debt ceiling surprisingly goes unraised and the system blows up, physical Gold remains a safe haven asset because it isn’t a liability. It may not increase in nominal terms during a deflationary spiral but it is highly likely to protect your purchasing power. And it front runs the debasement when the market sniffs out what is about to happen.
Here’s a 120 year history of the price of Gold against the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. In 1900, it cost 298 ounces of Gold to buy a typical home. It cost 282 ounces of Gold to buy a typical home in 1939. 285 ounces in 1984. 272 Gold ounces yesterday. To be sure, there are ebbs and flows. Sometimes a home costs much less than 300 Gold ounces and sometimes it costs much more. But over time, it costs somewhere between 250-300 ounces of Gold to buy a typical home.
Gold accounts for all of this currency debasement.
Closing thoughts
It takes pain and hard work to improve one’s health profile. The same is true for a budget. Our overlords don’t have the stomach to do what is right even if they wanted to. Those who did want to change the system (Ron Paul) run on a platform that has proven unelectable to this point. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a high likelihood that voters start demanding a balanced budget or the end of the Ponzi-nomic debt-based fiat system. Most are unaware or apathetic to the scam and will remain so.
The best we can do is protect ourselves at the household level from the consequences of monetary alchemy. We could raise the ceiling and accept the tradeoffs that come with it. Or we could just run outside.
Disclaimer: I’m not an investment advisor.
No Republican is serious about reducing the national debt. If they were, the debt ceiling bill would have rolled back spending levels to 2019, not 2022.
Great writing, I can relate to the weight loss all around me (especially my darling wife). And the gold to home price index is an eye opener!