Gradually, Then Suddenly

It is all a bit poetic when you think about it. The fall of 2008 can be interpreted in two ways: as a seasonal marker of the time of year when everything blew up, or a marker of greater significance that represents the complete and permanent departure from any semblance of sane monetary policy. The response to the Great Financial Crisis marked a point of no return. The powers that be could have made the hard decision to let the markets clear and wipe out all of the bad debts in the system, but instead, they chose to double down on the madness—creating a system of ever more perverse incentives that have only exacerbated the original problems un- derlying the crisis. The normalization of bailouts and money printing that began in 2008 sent the United States down a path of monetary ruin that cannot be walked back or undone. The fiat system is too far gone to be fixed. As our good friend Parker likes to say, “There is simply too much debt and not enough dollars.”