4 ms·

Yeah it wasn’t until I heard that the banks weren’t allowed to hedge HTM bonds that I truly appreciated the “make it up as we go along” nature of our monetary s

• JaimeThompson 4y ago
  >The only thing keeping everything together is folks not panicking. That applies to a great many things in modern society.
  • Forgeties79 4y ago
    My engineer buddy always says “you’d be amazed how many things are dependent on someone having their morning cup of coffee.”
• somenameforme 4y ago
  I'd distinguish between monetary system and economic system. An amazing page is wtf happened in 1971. [1] The event it's alluding to is the end of the Bretton Woods System [2]. 1971 is effectively the day that the USD became completely unbacked by anything whatsoever, enabling unrestrained "printing" of money. It's quite difficult for a free market of any sort to function when you have a government that becomes capable of arbitrarily distributing effectively unlimited funds at their discretion. This is even more true when that "discretion" is often whimsical and self destructive. So you look at the various graphs seeing things like skyrocketing wealth inequality, inflation, government debt, and more - and all one can think is, "Gee, who'd of thunk?" In any case, it's important to appreciate that our current monetary system only began about 50 years ago. [1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system