Recycling History

Feels like the first time
Like we've opened up the door
Feels like the first time
Like it never will again, never again
--Foreigner

Nice recount of New Deal like policies in Old Rome. The cyclical nature of history makes one wonder how far we've advanced over the past 2000 yrs.

We're making the same mistakes they did with predictably similar consequences--although current policymakers somehow hope, also quite predictably, that this time the outcomes will be different.

An important lesson drawn from Rome is how inflation destroys individual freedom. In Rome's ultimate downfall, it appears that this loss of freedom caused citizenry to side with invaders who, through the eyes of oppressed domestics, appeared more as liberators than as threats.

One difference between now and then is our preference for inflating via debt in this phase of the cycle. My sense is that this will postpone the ultimate hyperinflationary endgame as we need to first pass thru a deflationary phase where no new debt can be created and existing debt is destroyed/retired. Once debt markets become dysfunctional for policymaker purposes, then the printing press effect kicks in big time.

The other lesson here: the importance of gold as an insurance policy against bureaucratic incompentence/greed--which history suggests may be inevitable.

position in gold