Those of you who have been reading my Black Coffee columns for awhile are aware of my repeated lamentations that, thanks to the manipulation of interest rates by the Fed and interventions and bail-outs by our federal government — which inhibit capitalism’s ability to eliminate dangerous market inefficiencies — price discovery is officially dead.
Instead of a free market, we’re stuck with a quasi-command economy led by a politburo at the Fed consisting of a handful of “economists” and academics who, after poring over reams of dubious government data, continually manipulate interest rates and the money supply which, in turn, distorts the true price of everything from food to houses and stocks to bonds.
Of course, when it comes to determining prices, the decisions of a few central bankers holed-up in their ivory towers can never be smarter than the collective wisdom of all the people participating in a truly free market across the globe — but that’s the situation we’re stuck with today. As a result, we’re now suffering with a zombie economy on the verge of collapse.
So … how did we get to this point?Hey! You need to be an Insider to view the rest of this article! If you’d like to join, please click “Insider Membership” at the top of my blog page.
Photo Credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University
