It’s Time For Libertarian Economics

We have had 30 years of Democrat economics and Republican economics. Both have been different faces of the same scam, and it’s time for a change.

There has in fact been no real economic expansion since 1980. Not one three month period has elapsed where the economy expanded faster than did total debt from 1981 to 2009. From 2002-2008 the amount of true inflation, measured against the increase in earnings of the population, averaged nearly 10% a year. Compounded over six years this is enough to destroy 75% of your purchasing power.

That’s the truth from a monetary perspective. It’s why we “needed” an Internet and housing bubble -- so you didn’t immediately starve, riot and put a stop to the scams. You, the common person, were played as a rube for the benefit of a tiny fraction of the population in Washington DC and on Wall Street.

2007 and 2008 laid the facts bare; the economy and markets collapsed as the ability of individuals to borrow more and more money came to an end. The economy has not recovered -- over the last year on a population-adjusted basis we have in fact lost 1.3 million jobs; 6 million jobs have vanished since the alleged “recovery” began in the summer of 2009.

Government cannot provide what you are not willing to pay for in the form of taxes here and now. Anything else is economically unstable just as it is if you lose your job and then run up your VISA card to pretend you still have an income.

Libertarians believe that the initiation of force -- including fraud -- is always wrong. Whether that force comes via fraudulent claims made by companies selling stock, crooked appraisals and mortgage deals, robosigned documents in foreclosures, offshoring your job while repressing people in slave labor and destroying their environment or laws allowing certain firms to charge 1,000% more for a drug here than in Canada, it’s unacceptable. When government promises benefits it knows it cannot pay for, including Medicare and public-sector pensions, that’s theft from you and your children. Today, government fraud -- borrowing with no ability or intent to pay, ever -- is a full 10% of the economy and has been for the last four years.

Economic prosperity requires a stable currency and honesty between government and the people, in which the services people want are paid for with current taxes. This is the essence of a balanced budget. It begins with recognition that government inflation of the economy by 10% every year and effective counterfeiting of the dollar by banks and The Fed issuing un-backed credit are mathematically unsound.

Only Libertarians are willing to bring this discussion to the public. We’re the third-largest political party and the only one with answers that will prevent economic Armageddon. That resolution will not come without pain, just as ceasing drinking requires that you deal with the hangover, but if the alternative is liver cancer and death isn’t the hangover a better option?

Karl Denninger is a former CEO in the Internet space, a popular economic blogger who operates The Market Ticker (http://market-ticker.org) an at-large Executive Committee member of the Libertarian Party of Florida and Secretary of the Libertarian Party of Okaloosa County. The opinions expressed are his own.


Karl Denninger
The Market Ticker ®
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