Written by Bryan Lutz, Editor at Dollarcollapse.com:
“So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up! Get out of this place, for the LORD is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.”
― Genesis 19:14, ESV Bible
—
The Pious and the idealists seem to consistently be considered the jesters of their generation…
They’re tossed aside as impractical.
In 1722, a long-forgotten pilgrim and Puritan preacher, Jonathan Edwards, began his work as an assistant in a church at the settlement of Northampton, Massachusetts.
That was where he developed his thoughts and conviction for a pious life of virtue – a topic of interest for many intellectuals at the time. From Edinburgh to Essex to Boston, many like John Locke, published works on morality and ethics.
That being said, the Puritans took the moral purity to an extreme.
For example, Edwards is probably best known for the famous hell-fire-and-brimstone sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
Day after day, Edwards would spend up to 12 hours in his study researching, writing, and ministering to his congregation with steadfast conviction.
Much like the fight for sound money, he also fought for certain ideals. Ideals which would eventually be compromised for the sake of prosperity, entertainment, and ecumenical movements.
Blogger Jeremy M. Kimble writes:
10 Things You Should Know about Jonathan Edwards
“On June 22, 1750, Edwards was voted out of his pastorate in Northampton. Several reasons are cited for his dismissal:
his requests for an increase in salary (he and Sarah had eleven children);
his response to “bundling” among the youth;
his sermons on the “bad books” and public identification of the innocent (some young men had gained access to a midwives manual that contained images of the female anatomy and used it to taunt young women in the town);
and, perhaps most important, his opposition to the “Halfway Covenant,” and Stoddard’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper as a “converting ordinance.”
Of the 230 men who voted, only 23 stood in his favor.”
Whenever the opportunity of “having your cake and eating it too” is presented to a people, it seems more likely than not that they take it.
Gold and silver-based monetary systems won’t let people enjoy more than they save. Instead, it seems rather foolish. For the majority of the population there’s no need to treat money and debt with utmost respect.
It comes easy because it came with compromise.
John Maynard Keynes, the man which we can thank for how our Central Banking system operates today said:
“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”
Now we see what compromise, sown into our economic system, has reaped today.
Fiat money is a tool for politicians to capture the hearts of voters promising social change, “fair market competition,” and prosperity.
Tt seems a jester’s task to expose it.
Whoever is a friend of fiat…
Compromise is easy. It allows a person to agree with a lot of different people all at once.
And unfortunately, for sound money idealists the world wants more through the use debt. In exchange, it will suffer the consequences.
Alasdair Macleod writes:
The Future of Fiat
“Malinvestments of the last fifty years are being exposed by the rise in interest rates, increases which are driven by a combination of declining faith in the value of major currencies and contracting bank credit. The rise in interest rates is becoming unstoppable.”
One sector to look at mal-investments is in green initiatives.
Will Green Initiatives become mal-investments?
Near the start of his Presidency, Biden set a climate goal to eliminate carbon-emissions from the power-grids across America by 2035, and he wants to achieve a “net-zero” economy by 2050.
Seems unlikely…
Until recently, Biden and his team were implementing this initiative through policy, even through threats of windfall taxes for certain oil companies.
Now they’re taking it one step further…
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Federal Reserve’s Climate Change Mandate
Several weeks ago, Powell made a strong statement regarding the Fed’s involvement in directing social policy:
“…it is not the Fed’s role to tell banks which businesses they can and cannot lend to, and this guidance is not intended to do so…Federal Reserve is not and will not be a ‘climate policymaker.’”
Despite the Fed Chair’s statement, he voted to dispense guidance on climate change.
Last Tuesday, the Federal Reserve, FDIC, and Comptroller of the Currency sent out guidance for banks.
“Banks will also have to conduct a “climate-related scenario analysis”—don’t call them stress tests—that extend “beyond the financial institution’s typical strategic planning horizon” and account for potential losses in “extreme but plausible scenarios.” Does this mean anticipating a melting Antarctica? What’s extreme and what’s plausible is far from clear.”
Bankers Seek Legal Cover After Backing $1.5 Trillion of ESG Debt
“In the handful of years they’ve existed, sustainability-linked loans have mushroomed into a $1.5 trillion market. SLLs let borrowers and lenders say that a loan is tied to some environmental or social metric. But the documentation to back those claims generally isn’t available to the public, nor is the market regulated.”
What constitutes “sustainability” is quite abstract. Yet, banks are holding a significant amount loans based on initiatives supported by the Federal policies.
The BoA has $12.9B in sustainable loans.
JP Morgan has $10.3B in sustainable loans.
And Citibank has $8.3B in sustainable loans.
While green bonds are totalling at almost $650B.
We have yet to realize what will become of the money invested in these funds, or what will be the consequences.
But if we were to speak against it, I am certain it would be considered a foolish joke anyway.
Talk to you soon.
And take care.
