MULES AT JACKSON HOLE?

Grand Tetons from Jackson Hole
Grand Tetons from Jackson Hole

THERE IS A MEETING HERE TONIGHT (no, not in the John Moulton barn)

To my mind the reserve bank and economic experts gathering together tonight at Jackson Hole in Wyoming are, to quote Henry George, “mules packing a library”.  Nothing can issue from sterility.

Jackson Hole will remain a void, and we’d do well to avoid its misdiagnoses.

Where are the heterodox economists who forecast this downturn?  Did US Wall Street analyst and balance of payments expert Michael Hudson get an invite?  Did Australia’s debt expert Steve Keen get a guernsey?  Chances are, having forecast the GFC, these men may have had real answers, instead of the usual hot air we get from reserve bank governors.

At the risk of being repetitive, might I suggest that as tax systems of the world generated this bubble in land prices, a revenue system based on land value capture and the abolition of taxes is the only effective way to deal with these impossible levels of debt?

Wallowing in their multi-billion profits, Australia’s banks are about to find out how quickly this situation can reverse.  We paid them obscene interest (rent?) on bubble-inflated mortgages with no risk management, and next we’ll be bailing them out of the mess they’ve left for us.

In so doing, I trust they’ll become government enterprises, because they’ve not been doing us any favours in private ownership.  (No margin adjustments on +100% bubble prices, guys?!)  I guess those who enjoy living through an economic depression won’t agree with me.

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Don’t read the times, read the eternities. 

– Henry David Thoreau

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