The Federal Reserve, with its money-pumping machine distorting credit markets and interest rates, along with creating piles of debt among the citizenry, is a totalitarian and destructive force. The Fed destroys time preferences because it turns people into consumption-oriented, gotta-have-it-now debt addicts. The Fed has wrecked the housing market and turned homes into leveraged bets. The Fed has sucked people into revolving debt, student loan debt, and miscellaneous personal debt, all with the promise that the boom was never going to end. The Fed perverted the stock market, baiting pension funds, 401k funds, and personal investments, and thus has wiped out much of the wealth of American retirees and the middle class. The Fed has turned the latest generation of children into a consumption-only class who do not know of the production side of the market, nor do they care. The Fed has established a financial dependency on government that has destroyed the self-sufficiency of an entire generation. Today’s bread and circuses is tomorrow’s lack of saving, invention, and production. The Federal Reserve is a criminal organization and the destroyer of lives.
The latest victim of this system that takes Americans captive is the man who shot his wife and three children to death before committing suicide in Middletown, Maryland. He was $460k in debt on a mortgage and credit cards on a salary of less than $100k per year. The debt, dependency, and financial disintegration drove him crazy. Here is Guido Hulsmann from one of my all-time favorite articles, “The Cultural and Spiritual Legacy of Fiat Inflation.”
The net effect of the recent surge in household debt is therefore to throw entire populations into financial dependency. The moral implications are clear. Towering debts are incompatible with financial self-reliance and thus they tend to weaken self-reliance also in all other spheres. The debt-ridden individual eventually adopts the habit of turning to others for help, rather than maturing into an economic and moral anchor of his family, and of his wider community. Wishful thinking and submissiveness replace soberness and independent judgement. And what about the many cases in which families can no longer shoulder the debt load? Then the result is either despair or, on the contrary, scorn for all standards of financial sanity.
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Monetary inflation is an extremely corrosive social policy. People are incentivized to accelerate future income in the form of debt to buy now instead of saving over time and then buying. Producers have to craft a really fine product to convince you to part with your sound money now rather than later. Inflation inverts the entire process.
At some point you just have to step off the treadmill. (Rather than, say, killing your own flesh and blood.) When you do, you see how truly insane modern society is. All that money for consumer goods of ephemeral worth.
How do you justify portraying a murderer and a coward as a “victim of the system”? People aren’t forced into contracts. No one took a gun to the man’s head and said “buy a house, get a mortgage, and run up credit cards with things you can’t afford.”
News flash: not everyone is in debt. This means that with a bit of determination, people can live debt-free.
News flash: not everyone kills their family. The better ways out of the man’s situation are obvious. Sell the home and the cars and the toys, live like a Spartan, pay off your debt, and as a very last resort: declare bankruptcy.
If our morals have decayed, it’s because we’ve let them. It doesn’t just happen to us. It’s articles like this that encourage moral degeneration and herald the excuses and irresponsibility of the victim mentality.
Murderer and coward, agreed.! Victim also. Correct that noone is forced into contracts. Thus guy probably did what everyone else was doing – i.e.: going along with the herd. Bought his house, leveraged it up with home equity loans, bought an Escalade and boat, flat screen TV, etc. But where did all the credit do do that come from?
Ah, yes, the golden 90′s and (early) 00′s … the age of (faux) prosperity, brought to you courtesy of The Federal Reserve forcing interest rates to artificially (historically?) low rates. So let’s see: absent an understanding of Austrian Economics – which I’m only going to get here, or @ LewRockwell.com, or a couple other notable places – how do I make informed decisions? I certainly don’t know about Mises, von Hayek, or many others by taking Econ 101 at most Universities in the U.S. They’re 99+% Keynesian. So, do I save my $$’s (also known as Federal Reserve Accounting-Unit Devices – or F.R.A.U.D.s) in a bank earning 1.5% interest while inflation runs 6+ percent, eating my wealth? Maybe not. Do I watch my flat-screen TV a lot, listening to the Keynesian talking-heads (Kramer, etc.) about the booming economy and the never-ending prosperity of this new age of never-ending housing price-increases? Probably.
So, yes the FRS plays a huge role in this disaster. Yes, this guy is still personally responsible for HIS actions, but Karen’s point stands. The FED, and the various other central banks, are ultimately responsible for the entire financial disaster facing the World today.
I’m not letting them off the hook.
Support H.R. 1207 (as a start).
Joshua, it’s not about supporting or justifying the man’s actions, but about creating the proper incentives in our society that encourage personal responsibility and sustainable lifestyles, so that one isn’t required to go to heroic measures to avoid temptation and the bad incentives our immoral government has created. Never heard of subprime mortgages? Why rent when so many other people were buying? Why go with an old beater of a car or even no car when so many other poeple have nice, new or nearly new vehicles to drive?
Ultimately, the individual is responsible for their actions, but government incentives and regulations do restrict our choices and make some options unreasonably difficult to choose. We can oppose those government policies while not condoning the murder of one’s families, can we not?
BrianT, agreed. Let’s just say that Karen neglected to paint the murderer as he truly is. If this is hyperbole, it is also irresponsible.
The Fed (with help from the Keynesians), as you say, creates a heard mentality. It is a Sheep Factory, turning men and women into the brainless and the bleating. Some of us even have friends and family who are marred by this horrific mutation. The wool is over their eyes, and I too hope HR 1207 succeeds—both in law and purpose.
That man was a coward. The Fed is a tyrant. I don’t let either of them off the hook.
P.S. I like your “FRAUD” acronym. I’ll have to remember that.
I agree with BrianT and Michael A. Clem. I don’t think that Ms. DeCoster was excusing the husband as if he had no free will. But the evil policies of the State destroys the moral fabric of society. Thus, people put themselves into situations which they would have avoided if they had not been deceived by the disincentives created by the State. When people are desperate, there is no telling what they may do. Not everyone is endowed with the same moral fortitude and tragedies like this can result when those closest to the edge fall over.
I remember listening to a Robert Higgs’ podcast on the New Deal and he said that there was a time when many people opposed going on the government dole. People believed that it was immoral to accept assistance from the State and chose to rely on themselves and their communities. However, FDR’s policies so wrecked the free market that some people could not find work anywhere and chose to go on the dole. Their spirits were so worn down that they compromised their morals. This is what the policies of the State do to the moral character of the people and this is why we cannot let them off the hook.
The governemnt likes to see regular murders occuring. It is easier to justify a police state, millions of prisoners and gun confiscation when murders and rapes are occurring at a regular clip. The government and MSM can blame the crimes on any number of approved reasons 1)drugs, 2) greed/self-interest, 3) guns, 4) testosterone, 5) terrorist etc.
Then the government can explain why more resources need to be confsicated to fight these problems.
Our entire banking system is predicated on ever increasing levels of debt. Every dollar that is in existence today has been created out of debt. Money is debt and debt is money. It is a sick world we live in.
karen: sorry, you are not at your best on this one. i am no fan of the fed., the federal govt. etc., but this guys problems run deeper than the present value of an ordinary annuity. forcing someone to do something and making it attractive to do the same thing is the matter at hand. taking out your whole family is beyond comprehension.
Cleaver post, Im now one of your twitter subscribers
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