It usually isn’t on display in the economic/business news. For instance, does anyone of any measurable intelligence really believe making every person on the planet a billionaire would change anything?
The world’s first trillionaire won’t come from cryptocurrency or some clever new app – he or she will become rich from asteroid mining.
That’s what bankers Goldman Sachs reckon, anyway – and several companies are now vying to be the first into space.
NASA estimates that the total value of asteroids out there could be up to $700 quintillion – equivalent to £75 billion each for us here on Earth.
That is the equivalent of saying a wolf told you that a fox was hungry and thus every chicken would be happier.
The asteroid mining idea is real and will happen – but not with every single body orbiting the Sun. Someone will likely become extremely wealthy as a result. If The Goldman Sachs has its way, then that someone will be in some way directly related to Goldman Sachs. (And why switch dollars to pounds in the same sentence?)
If the real obtainable value of the celestial rocks really is $700 quintillion, then expect Goldman, the Fed, and Mordor to arrange future loans in the septillion range, with derivatives betting on the order of decillions. Gresham’s Law dictates they would still find a way to kill positive growth with funny money.
The zeros behind the $ or the £ mean nothing. That’s why, even if one distributed the actual cash value of the space debris to each and every person on Earth, turning everyone into billionaires, nothing would change. Zimbabwe is replete with billionaires – who can’t afford lunch.
In his defense, Rob Waugh is an excellent jack-of-all-trades journalist; maybe economics just isn’t one of them. However, that should be (should be) a specialty over at Bloomberg, where they supposedly push business news.
Yet, they seem surprised we have inflation in America and that that cuts into wages.
U.S. inflation accelerated in May to the fastest pace in more than six years, reinforcing the Federal Reserve’s outlook for gradual interest-rate hikes while eroding wage gains that remain relatively tepid despite an 18-year low in unemployment.
The consumer price index rose 0.2 percent from the previous month and 2.8 percent from a year earlier, matching estimates, a Labor Department report showed Tuesday. The annual gain was the biggest since February 2012 and follows a 2.5 percent increase in April. Excluding food and energy, the core gauge was up 0.2 percent from the prior month and 2.2 percent from May 2017, also matching the median estimates of economists.
Fed. Fed. Fed. Fed. Rates. Rates. Rates. In Bloomberg’s defense, they are actually in the business of promoting certain interests, like those of Goldman.
The narrative works something like this: The economy is great, never stronger. Unemployment is low, officially. Wages are rising. Inflation is low. Oops, for completely unforeseen reasons, likely related to gas prices, it reared its ugly head. Time to raise rates on the flood of fiat. Sally School teacher in Iowa sees her recent raise evaporate. But that doesn’t matter; Goldman is mining the Moon or something.
They leave out: That all the money, almost all of it, is fake, based on debts that cannot be repaid. Everything in the economy depends on said fake money (it’s like mixing in helium for a dive – a little boosts depth range, too much kills). Wages are always one of the last things to “catch up” after a correction – only just in time for the next correction. Real wage buying power (how much the pay is really worth) only this year returned to levels last seen in 1973. 45 years of loss, and the new, temporary gains are now squashed by inflation.
It’s almost like we’ve entered into a terminal phase wherein the wages will not, cannot recover. Workers and earners see their purchasing power decline to ancient levels, their standards of living plunge toward serf-like proximity.
When this all hits the fan the next time around, it may hail the curtain call for the banksters. That would be the good news.
Maybe there’s a way to relocate the banksters and their political pets to the heavens? Metro/UK.
