Lets say his ambitions aren’t aimed at destabilizing the government, or the currency, but merely a attempt to destabilize his chronic poverty, found he was good at it, and became ambitious.
Nobody knows it’s him, they aren’t even aware of a master counterfeit operation out there.
Will they know? Will the money markets notice? Or does it go largely unnoticed, despite billions being pumped in all over?
My basic assumption is the reason the federal reserve operates as it does, in conjunction with Ft. Knox’s Hold Reserve, never really having a audit, is because a audit is pointless, kryptonite more or less to its success.
They operate off ambiguity… every trader, corporation, person with a bank account, has expectations for what is real, what is not. We highly regulate the middle players… banks, to force them to be very careful about who they lend loans out to… they want the smartest and best… everyone expect crash and burn cycles in the econony from this form of speculation (Marxism is pure speculation). As long as nobody really knows what is happening everywhere at once, the system remains solvent. Apple knows its market share compated to Microsoft, but Microsoft doesnt quite know it to Oscar Meyers, beyond holdings and ability to join in joint ventures… we allow absurdities like this to hapoen, but its usually like to like business mergers and ventures. Nobidy is quite sure what overall is happening… so these siesmic shocks we have to get occasionally have to be treated as just that… end of the world, or else everyone loses faith in the system. They want it based on something real… federal reserve gets it, but they are less concerned with real and more motivated by the need to make it feel consistently real.
This means, you gotta match the expextations of your smartest people playing in the economy, volitility is less a accudent and more design… my suspicion is guys like Smears who play volitility in tge markets will be progressively squeezed out of the market by new regulations over the next few decades, as they as essentially bullish parasites… they dont start businesses, dont produce, but technology lowers the threshold for increasing numbers of them. They’ll get flushed out, as the goal is to make material product, increase the physical wealth producing capacity. Its not uncontrollable yet, but will be a issue once new apps and systems increasingly try to figure out what the overall monetary wealth of the world is in real time. Thats doomsday for a federal reserve. It means thsy can’t fudge the numbers and say things arent that bad, or things arent going good. Money gets a independent sense of value, and loopy shit will occur. Industries left and right will crash and burn. No assets can back that.
its as close to Marxism we can get… you cant just print money for solving everything, they get pain and panic is a very will part of finance, you take it away and just say “we will print more” leads to industrial sloth abd decline. Why try that hard to put out new products, sell your products far away, compete, if all you had to do was “print more”. We wouldnt have industry, no farmers… we would starve as paupers without that incentive, and we know from controlled economies, like old China and the USSR, its a even worst system. Austrian Economics did a fantastic job diagnosing it… but at the same time Austrian Economics is one of many systems the Federal Reserve is simulating. It plays to its expectations the hardest. You expect a crash here… there will be evidence of one… but the reserve will weigh in, soften it. Wasnt one to begin with, we are simulating expectations from the finaces from the 1920s.
So its a game of expectations. I think uf physical money dried up… say from burning all the currency, we would notice money not showing up in the economy anymore… rations woukd be placed until more money could be printed.
I think short of everyone getting a massive suitcase with a million dollars, a few guys printing money would never get noticed… maybe the reserve woukd notice the same serial number on bills keep popping up, knowing something us going on, but wouldnt upset them too much… they can adjust, but needs to discourage it, as it risks threatening the realness of the system in everyone’s eyes.
There isnt a higher, more mature outlook. No “money is what we believe it to be”, print more attitude. Doesnt work, states that try fail. It isn’t whatever we want it to be… we would never accept it being that, system would collapse, it is it being what we expect it to be, both pleasurable and painful… it has to be painful on occasion. No one gets a infinite out.
I think the biggest test for my presumption would be sovereign wealth funds. In general, the Federal Reserve is only going to prop these up when it has to to keep countries necessary for the world economy in. Its a very bad idea long term for countries without physical assets… like Norway or Saudi Arabia will be post oil, to play the markets to keep undeserved socialism going.
A country that suddenly becomes a crucial war ally, in say, when a new international conflict pops up, will find it’s Sovereign Wealth Funds improving ever more… enough for them to venture paying for more soldiers, tanks, whatever is needed. Only some can come from market manipulation, rest will have to be nudged through Congress and Allies with new closer relations, and blah blah blah. Suddenly everyone will discover Norwegian Exports, like smelly fish, as a irresistible luxury. New branches of their banks will pop up all over, they’ll be able in “loan and invest”, nobody will really get what is going on. Lots of saavy people will be pictured in business suits shaking hands, and endless, mindless articles on psuedo-investment pop up.
I likewise think most large economies start steering far, far away from socialism and embrace capitalism once it finally occurs to their regulatory chiefs just what the US has been doing all along, how toxic Marxism is in terms of actually getting a economy running, yet how hopeless capitalism is for large states… works swell on small trader states, falls apart once it hits large scale, and periodic market crashes can ruin a republic permanently, like the Weimar Republic. Most successful way forward is to mirror the illusion, while encouraging the integration of your markets into theirs, while reducing the need to war on one another.
China gets it. US gets it. India is starting to. Some of Europe grasp this. Brazil, South America in general doesn’t have the slightest fucking clue to this day what is going on. Africa is a bit stumped, but some saavy local players are starting to get it.
We are more or less stuck with this till we figure out how to make Star Trek Replicators. If we make it too comfortable too fast, leads to system collapse. Too hard, system collapse. Just right leads to everyone striving, hitching, and scared. The people profiting the most aren’t necessarily the people pulling the strings on the puppet, but a necessary side effect. Its why I think someone like Joker could get away with mass counterfeiting… but only if he keeps his head down. You can’t be too notorious or obvious, and by default they gotta try to hunt your ass down if you are to restore faith in the system.