Economic Highway to Hell

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” - proverb
(Generally attributed as a derivative originating from Saint Bernard of Clairvaux; 1090-1153).

There is an underlying philosophy in law which holds that it is better (but obviously not ideal) to let the guilty go free rather than to imprison or execute one innocent person. Perhaps this is a derivative of a religious principle which proclaims; “Do no harm”.

It is very easy to spin Government and Central Bank interventions as “doing good” and in the national or even international interest. How important these modern day political saints must feel. Unfortunately there is an inevitably dark side to their doing good. They often cause as much harm and more often than not, more harm than good because they are always goal orientated, justifying any harm by the good that they are supposedly doing. The very best way politically to present these “do good” interventions is to present them as absolutely vital and without any alternative.

It is long overdue to judge these interventionist actions by a standard of “Do no harm” as the “do good” requirement is just too easy an objective to achieve by itself and open to scandalous abuse.

The economic highway to hell is paved with good intentions in the “national interest”. Everybody has tendered their 2009 lists. Here is my 2009 list of byways feeding into the economic highway to hell, in no particular order of priority.


1. Monetary stimulations

Monetary stimulations must originate from the realm of economic psychopaths. It pretends to be a stimulation but in fact is a redistribution of monetary value away from existing holders of money towards recipients of the monetary stimulation. Thus it is at best neutral and at worst an inefficient and often corrupt bureaucratic reallocation of scarce resources. The transfer of monetary value in the process of monetary intervention is entirely without conscience. The redistribution is most telling in taking away from those unable to raise credit and gifting to those most able to raise credit. Is it really necessary to underscore the hypocrisy of redistributing away from the unsophisticated, the poor and the pensioner, for who are the members of society to whom access to credit is restricted? What hardship hides behind the contorted and convoluted explanations to justify the monetary redistributions as in the national interest?

Monetary “stimulation” fails the test of “do no harm”.


2. Interest rate targeting

The price of almost every economic good or service is influenced by interest rates in a global economy immersed in debt. Control over interest rates is economy wide price control by stealth. The distortion in the price for the use of savings is an evil of the first order and the malinvestment from the structural distortions of interest rate manipulation, an evil of the second order. Every price distortion extracts for one and subsidises another. Can Politicians and Central Bankers tell us that this monetary intervention will impact that price or are these interventions but arrows fired into the darkness of ignorance? Have they got a tally of the harm that may be done and do they care?

Interest rate targeting fails the test of “do no harm”.


3. Fiscal Stimulations

Where are the savings of a government? Have they got some secret “treasury” with treasures of savings? No? How then can government stimulate the economy?

There are two ways in which they claim they can stimulate, reduce taxes or increase spending. Both these suggestions are false with reference to stimulation as the net result in both cases is neutral. More taxes or fewer taxes does not make the economy bigger or smaller, it simply makes the share of the Government extraction from the economy bigger or smaller. Less or more Government spending similarly only says who is doing the spending but the economy is not more as a result of Governments doing the spending.

Current fashion is to do both, less taxation and more spending. It can only be achieved by increasing debt in the absence of government savings. Increasing debt is an action of discounting the future for living it up today. Governments living la Vida loca. More today, less tomorrow and all yesterdays have arrived with the advent of the global economic crisis. Government debt has become the ultimate multi generational debt where our children will pay for our excess.

Fiscal “stimulation” fails the test of “do no harm”.


4. Concentration of power

It is from the legislative frameworks of Governments that power to concentrate is facilitated. The “too large to fail” institution can without exception be traced to a co-operative structure with government. Finance and debt institutions have been welded to the interests of governments with the binding force of a fiat money system. The presence of institutions such as lenders in last resort and deposit insurance has built a gigantic financial economy dwarfing everything else. Oligopoly formation in banking is a natural consequence of the activities of a Central Bank. It’s so much easier to control and focus the actions of a few big players than thousands of small operations. Concentrated debt formation with unlimited liquidity will yeast its way into every strand of the economy and facilitate power concentration until the “too large to fail institution” is born.

Yet again has history proved that power corrupts and concentrated power corrupts absolutely.

Concentration of power fails the test of “do no harm”.


5. Bailouts

Interventionism creates untenable distortions in the market economy. These distortions are built layer upon layer over long periods of time. An intervention spiral is built upon the structural instability of previous interventions until extreme interventions such as “bailouts” and indiscriminate nationalisation of “too large to fail” industries can be presented as “doing good”.

Bailouts do absolutely nothing to solve the problems of structural distortions; in fact bailouts are a last gasp end game strategy at trying to maintain the structural distortions. Today’s bailouts will become tomorrow’s nationalisations. Bailouts have no economic healing power and are imposters to “doing good”. Petrifying structural defects is a plague to the economy.

Bailouts fail the test of “do no harm”.


6. Government debt as reserve assets

Discover the national reserves at the Central Bank in a search for a treasury. Is it a room full of treasure? The nation’s reserves are the debts of other nations. Will they pay on demand, how and in what currency? Go from reserve to reserve; it’s an endless cycle of another nation’s debt. A huge pyramid structure of Government debt upon Government debt; funding each other’s debt in an ever growing pile of promises.

Are these benign promises? No, it’s the promise of my government and your government to extract our savings, our capital, the fruits of our labour and even the fruits of the labour of our children to pay the debt if ever they are called upon to make good on those promises. Government debt as reserve assets has given a whole new meaning to Central Banks being the banker of government (s).

Government debt as reserve assets fails the test of “do no harm”.


7. Defender of Depositors

The ultimate defence of central banking is always the role of Defender of the Depositor. The usual argument is that the individual depositor is too ignorant, too unsophisticated, unable to afford the research, too uninformed and generally unable to distinguish between a solvent or insolvent bank.

In steps the Central bank as the Defender of the Depositor to regulate the banking sector; to manage liquidity to the banking sector; to build depositor protections such as deposit insurance, reserve requirements, capital requirements for risk taking; oversight to gather the elusive information; and often it sells itself as the protector of the weak, the widow and the pensioner. How bizarre the marriage of Protector of the Depositor and Redistributor of Monetary Wealth through the creation of money from nothing.

Who advised depositors not to withdraw their money when banks were failing? Who denied that banks had solvency problems? The very same entity which has assumed the mantle of the Protector of the Depositor. Did they not know the insolvent state of the bank and proved themselves incompetent as informed advisor to the depositor or did the Defender of the Depositor deliberately lie to the very depositors they proclaim to be protecting?

The Central Bank as Defender of Depositors fails the test of “do no harm”.


8. Abdication of responsibility

Transfer the burden of debt decision making to me, the Government says and we will protect you. It is a huge promise in which Government often fails. The Siamese twins of Treasury and Central Banks have become inseparable, sharing the same brain. It has become a daily refrain of politicians to encourage debt formation. The banks must lend. Credit must flow freely. Credit markets must come unstuck. Interest rates are at zero (by implication, you must go out and borrow and spend). The interest of the individual economic decision maker and the interests of the Central Government are seldom in harmony. Who will repay my debt and who will repay the debt of Central Government? It is but me.

Abdication of responsibility fails the test of “do no harm”.


9. Permanent Government debt

Much has been said about Government debt in this essay. Yet it is still not enough. Government debt has grown out of proportion to economic activity. More important, Government debt has assumed a permanency as never before. Is there any detectable intent from Central Government to reduce its debt? Will a budget surplus be generated and debt repaid? The very mention of a fiscal budget surplus would elicit a steam of abuse in these trying times. Government debt has assumed a permanent character, never to be repaid. How then will the creditors of Central Government ever get their money back? What if those creditors are another nation?

Your government’s debt is the inheritance that you leave behind for your children, whether you encouraged the debt, incurred the debt or benefited from the debt is irrelevant. All debts are settled eventually. The present “permanence” of Government debt is an economic abhorrence and an intolerable structural distortion. Do you leave debt enslavement as a gift to your children or your nation?

Add unfunded pension deficits to permanent Government debt and everybody will become wards of the state.

Permanent Government debt fails the test of “do no harm”.


10. Weak currency policy

It is the “exporting subsidised labour” policy. It gives work to the subsidised group of people and, as expected, at the expense of another group. Nations often get into diplomatic spats about these policies but the weak currency is just another form of protectionist trade policy. Let the nation who has not a single protectionist trade policy item in place please stand up. The weak currency policy is particularly damaging as it contributes to debt formation in many ways. The obvious first step is international trade credit and the very next step is an accumulation of government debt of the largest trade partners. Thus the practitioner of a weak currency policy would make debt slaves of the importer nations’ citizens with the consent of their governments.

Weak currency policy fails the test of “do no harm”.


Here ends my 2009 list of economic byways. I do not wish them upon any of my fellow men on women. I am unable to deceive myself into believing that mysterious sources of wealth will fund bailouts, handouts, increased Government expenditure and tax reductions. All these policies are panic, debt driven reactions to an economic avalanche of excessive debt. These policies are guaranteed to perpetuate and worsen today’s global economic crisis.

“There then arose against Bernard unjust reproaches and he was denounced even in Rome, as a monk who meddled with matters that did not concern him. Cardinal Harmeric, on behalf of the pope, wrote Bernard a sharp letter of remonstrance. "It is not fitting" he said "that noisy and troublesome frogs should come out of their marshes to trouble the Holy See and the cardinals". Bernard answered the letter by saying that, if he had assisted at the council, it was because he had been dragged to it, as it were, by force. "Now illustrious Harmeric", he added, "if you so wished, who would have been more capable of freeing me from the necessity of assisting at the council than yourself? Forbid those noisy troublesome frogs to come out of their holes, to leave their marshes . . . Then your friend will no longer be exposed to the accusations of pride and presumption". “ [my bold] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)

It is fitting that noisy and troublesome frogs should emerge from their marshes and proclaim the harm of these policies pretending to “do good”. Are Central Government bureaucrats and Central Bank officials not the modern day Holy See and Cardinals?

This is an era in which Government’s lust for your savings is excessive. Government has no treasury, no secret stash from which it can stimulate or bailout. Government needs the savings that you have and even what you may produce in the future. Never before has a global economy been so hungry for savings and so unprepared to pay for it. Make sure you pick the stores of value for your savings with great care lest you lose the liberty.

Sarel Oberholster
BCom (Cum Laude), CAIB (SA)
29 January 2009


© Sarel Oberholster


Please email me at ccpt@iafrica.com with any comments. More links and essays can be found on my blog at http://sareloberholster.blogspot.com/ .