Wheat prices shot up 6% yesterday after India decided to keep its bread at home.
Ever since Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, it’s been common knowledge that trade makes us all better off. Otherwise, we don’t get the benefits of specialisation and comparative advantage.
But our hypothesis here at the Letter is that the ruling classes have become incompetent. It’s a special kind of incompetence; it punishes the public but serves the elite well.
Little noticed in the financial press was the recent passing of one of the few economists who understood his métier. Axel Leijonhufvud died at 88. Mr Leijonhufvud was never asked to join the Fed…nor was the professor emeritus at UCLA ever invited to advise the administration on fiscal policy.
The professor scotched his chances for a Nobel prize and alienated himself from his whole ‘tribe’ by noting the group was largely fraudulent:
‘The status of the adult male [economist, anthropologically speaking] is determined by his skill as making the “modl” of his “field.” The fact…that most of these “modls” seem to be of little or no practical use, probably accounts for the backwardness and abject cultural poverty of the tribe.’
Dot to dot
And here the dots come together. The ‘tribe’ goes far beyond Powell, Yellen, Christine Lagarde, and the bogus economists advising them. It includes millions of busy bodies and bossy pants…Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal…all sharing the same goal — to keep the jig up.
Their economic modls have caused widespread poverty and inflation…
…their modls of COVID-19 appear to cause far more deaths than they prevented…
…their race-based modls tell us that ‘people of colour’ are the victims of mean white people…
…their climate modls tell us that we have to make a ‘Green Transition’. At what cost…in money, in lives? The ‘modls’ don’t tell us…and no one asks…
What these modls all have in common is that they are the stock in trade of a technocratic elite, who claim to have expertise that the rest of us don’t have.
‘Don’t question “The Science”.’ Trust the experts. Do as you’re told.
Sydney syndrome
The attitude is here summarised for us by The New York Times in its praise for Australia’s low COVID death count:
‘Dozens of interviews, along with survey data and scientific studies from around the world, point to a lifesaving trait that Australians displayed from the top of government to the hospital floor, and that Americans have shown they lack: trust, in science and institutions, but especially in one another.’
Really? Scientific studies tell us that Australians are more trusting? And that trust saves lives?
What happened to those young men who trusted their leaders and went to war with one another in the US war between the states? Or those millions who went ‘over the top’ in the First World War? And what about the Germans who trusted the Fuhrer and invaded Russia?
And now the geopolitical modlers tell us we must conduct a ‘sanctions war’ against Russia. Why? The modls don’t tell us. Nor do they tell us what will happen when the world turns away from the weaponised dollar. They’re not part of the modl!
Dogs are trusting creatures. Especially when you raise them from puppies, and if there is any place on Earth where people are more trusting than cocker spaniels, it must be north of the Korean peninsula’s DMZ.
There, people trust or else! Alas, COVID-19 doesn’t seem to respect the North Korean elite any more than we do. Gentside:
‘While in many parts of the world the pandemic is abating and even the mask requirement is being lifted, North Korea is currently struggling with over 1.2 million patients with fever symptoms and 50 dead within a few days, as RP Online reports.
‘The military has been tasked with distributing the drugs. Moreover, a lockdown has been imposed and the government is keeping track of infected patients. No matter the profession, if a person is found infected with the virus they will immediately be sent into quarantine. There are more than 560,000 people in quarantine at the moment.’
Modl soldiers
Another news story yesterday showed Janet Yellen visiting a food kitchen in Warsaw and sympathising with the refugees, the displaced persons, the widows, and orphans.
‘Please stop the war…’ said one.
But Ms Yellen wasn’t there to stop the war but to keep it going as long as possible. She was drumming up support — if any were needed — for the US$40 billion in aid — so the Ukrainians can keep fighting.
Trust the experts? The ones in suits? The ones who aren’t deplorable? Who earns more than we do…and knows better than we do?
But what if the experts are paid to give the wrong answers? What if the ‘Western’ elite has turned into a parasitic aristocracy…a nomenklatura…looking out for itself at the expense of the general public?
What if their silly modls caused the worst inflation in 40 years…got a million people killed in pointless wars since 1999…and now threaten civilisation as we know it?
Hmmm…
Regards,
 |
Bill Bonner,
For The Daily Reckoning Australia
