April 22 was Earth Day.. Brain-dead “President” Biden issued a proclamation about it. This said:

President Biden’s campaign will continue using the popular social media site TikTok even though the president supported a provision in the military aid bill he recently signed forcing TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok within 270 days. If ByteDance does not sell TikTok within the required time, TikTok will be banned in the USA. Biden’s continued use of TikTok to reach the approximately 150 million American TikTok users, is not the only example of hypocrisy from politicians who support the TikTok ban.

Hold up your hand if you think that the aggregate losses of an organization are an asset of that organization. No hands at all? Absolutely right. Losses are not an asset. That’s accounting 101. Yet the greatest central bank in the world, the Federal Reserve, insists on claiming that its continuing losses, which have accumulated to the staggering sum of $164 billion, are an accounting asset.

In our modern political culture, many people claim that profits are the outcome of some individuals exploiting other individuals. Hence, anyone who is seen trying to make profits is regarded as an enemy of society and must be stopped before inflicting damage.

On some level, all of us realize that traffic tickets are seen by local governments as a form of revenue. Supposedly, the intent behind issuance of fines for traffic offenses is to disincentivize behaviors which are deemed to be unsafe, such as driving over the speed limit or not wearing a seatbelt (despite the fact that the latter poses no risk to anyone but the driver). The punishment for this type of offense being almost always a fine, as opposed to any type of nonmonetary punishment, is suspect in itself.

In nature everything has a cycle. Birth, growth, maturation, death. Everything, including the planets and stars. Nothing stays the same. 

So why does our government believe they can master economic cycles and not experience ups and downs the way nature does? Throughout history, economies haven’t worked that way.

For years, to enhance trade, countries tied their currencies to commodities that were scarce, valuable and had steady prices. Often, gold, silver, sometimes copper.