It has been a long time I have update this blog. My personal life was pretty busy as I just became father this week. I did have lots of stuff on mind I wanted to post here. A lot has happend since my last post. Systematic evil is still pondering ahead full speed.
First of all a big shout out to Paul Marshall. His comment in the Financial Times “Central banks have made the rich richer” – Quantitative easing has bailed out bonus-happy banks and made the rich richer.
According to him “Banks have been the biggest beneficiaries, with their 20- or 30-times leveraged balance sheets. Asset managers and hedge funds have benefited, too. Owners of property have made out like bandits. In fact, anyone with assets has grown much richer. All of us who work in financial markets owe a debt to QE.”
Quantitative easing can be called the biggest heist of our century.
When thinking about Central banks and QE – it is great to stand still that while the central banks are printing money, actually a lot of this paper is out there and it is called “debt”. The concept of debt is strange as we eventually all owe money to the central banks. This great infographic from visual capitalist shows exactly who is in debt.
The numbers that stand out the most, especially when comparing to the previous world economy graphic:
- The United States constitutes 23.3% of the world economy but 29.1% of world debt. It’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 103.4% using IMF figures.
- Japan makes up only 6.18% of total economic production, but has amounted 19.99% of global debt.
- China, the world’s second largest economy (and largest by other measures), accounts for 13.9% of production. They only have 6.25% of world debt and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 39.4%.
- 7 of the 15 countries with the most total debt are European. Together, excluding Russia, the European continent holds over 26% of total world debt.
Combining the debt of the United States, Japan, and Europe together accounts for 75% of total global debt.
That is only the country debt. Do not forget private debt – credit cards, mortgages and all the other stuff we like to buy but can not afford.
Now you know that the central banks have made the guys on Wall Street much richer via QE, did you know that you make them much richer every day and you are paying the highest price possible for it? Wall Street greed is the cause of the biggest epedemic in the world: obesitas. 14% of all women and 10% of all men are obese. It is predicted that this will rise to a staggering 36% by 2030.
According to Marion Nestle (no kidding) “Wall Street forced companies to try and sell food in an extremely competitive environment and the food manufacturers had to look for ways to get people to buy more food. And they were really good at it. I blame Wall Street for insisting that corporations have to grow their profits every 90 days.”
In her book, she makes the connection what others (Eisenhower) called the industrial-military complex – only for the food industry. It goes like this: Wall Street wants more profits, the food industry needs to sell more stuff that tastes better. The food industry designs a system via marketing and sales that makes people perceive healthy food like fruits and vegetables as expensive and the government subsides cheap and unhealthy calories like corn (for sugar production). And off we go with the waste lines of the world. You should read her book – it is great!
I want to end this post with a quote from our dear friend president Obama: “Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” Statement by the President on the Shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.
If you look at the data from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime ,the US has a much higher rate of homicides than all but three of the 34 OECD nations.
Conclusion: if you are from the United States of America – you are have higher chances of getting killed, being fat and being in debt up to your ears.