You almost certainly hear the term “Ponzi scheme” tossed around ceaselessly on the market, but chances are you’ll not know what it’s and why it matters. So here’s somewhat background from Wikipedia:
A Ponzi scheme (/ˈpɒnzi/, Italian: [ˈpontsi]) is a type of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more moderen investors.[1] Named after Italian businessman Charles Ponzi, the scheme leads victims to imagine that profits are coming from legitimate business activity (e.g., product sales or successful investments), they usually remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds. A Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of a sustainable business so long as recent investors contribute recent funds, and so long as many of the investors don’t demand full repayment and still imagine within the non-existent assets they’re presupposed to own.
Within the Twenties, Charles Ponzi carried out this scheme and have become well-known throughout america due to the huge sum of money that he took in.[4] His original scheme was based on the legitimate arbitrage of international reply coupons for postage stamps, but he soon began diverting recent investors’ money to make payments to earlier investors and to himself.[5] Unlike earlier similar schemes, Ponzi’s gained considerable press coverage each inside america and internationally each while it was being perpetrated and after it collapsed – this notoriety eventually led to the variety of scheme being named after him.[6]
The important thing takeaway is that a Ponzi scheme dies when the inflow of recent money is insufficient to repay existing investors victims. To know why this matters today, let’s do a thought experiment. Say that in the approaching 12 months, the US has to pay out 5% more for Medicare and Social Security, and seven% more for its global military empire. Meanwhile, businesses with debts coming due must roll them over at higher rates of interest, while homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages see their monthly payments rise.
In the mixture, that’s lots of recent dollars — let’s say half a trillion — that didn’t exist a 12 months ago but are needed now. They usually have to come back from somewhere. In a standard fiat currency system, the central bank simply creates the needed currency out of thin air, everyone gets paid, and the resulting decline in the worth of the currency is sufficiently small that few are bothered.
But that’s not what’s happening today. Because the above obligations come due, the quantity of accessible money is … shrinking. The next chart of the M2 money supply growth rate shows an enormous spike from all of the covid lockdown stimmy checks (which partially accounts for last 12 months’s surge in consumer prices) and a correspondingly dramatic plunge this 12 months. Note that in all the fiat currency era, M2 has never before gone down.
This implies some debts won’t be paid. Creditors thus stiffed will fail to pay their debts and so forth until sectors start blowing up. Think back to last month’s local and regional bank near-death experience for a comparatively benign example of what this unraveling will seem like.
To sum up, the present global economic system is a Ponzi scheme and the brand new money spigot has been turned off. Excitement is about to ensue.
When today’s Ponzi scheme starts to unravel, those self same governments shall be faced with a alternative between letting virtually every part grind to a halt as trouble on the collapsing periphery starts heading for the core (that’s, as small players die in ways in which threaten JP Morgan Chase), or restarting the stimmy check machine, but on a much greater scale and with a serious twist:
As an alternative of sending out paper or electronic checks to individual bank accounts, the Fed will roll out its much-discussed central bank digital currency and fund “free” account balances for everybody who it deems worthy of such a present. The overwhelming majority, traumatized by the disappearance of their jobs and stock portfolios, will willingly accept the free money. And identical to that, the subsequent economic system is born.
Which, as all the time, takes us back to gold and silver. History says the primary phase of this process will feature an equities bear market that takes precious metals down for the ride. But within the second phase (i.e., the CBDC introduction), individuals who prefer to not own “programable” currency that’s monitored 24/7 by the NSA will convert their Fed bucks to real assets. Shortages of gold and silver will ensue and costs will respond accordingly.