Sick Thoughts Of Capitulating

The day I capitulate and declare that all is well—when it's clearly not—will be the day before chaos reigns.

Almost daily, where I reside in Philadelphia, I jog or walk past the United States Mint and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Both institutions are merely a couple of blocks apart in Old City, housed in heavily guarded structures made of marble and cement that appear impervious, even to a Category 5 hurricane.

From the exterior, to the fortified loading ramps for incoming and outgoing 18-wheelers, to the police who diligently patrol on foot and passively survey sidewalk activity — everything about these buildings exudes a sense of security.

However, as tourists walk through the front doors to peruse carefully assembled exhibits explaining our monetary system, the back rooms in these buildings are busy generating pure inflation. There, PhDs in suits hand down flawed monetary policies that are, by mathematical certainty, setting our country down the wrong course.

There are days, like one I experienced early this week, when I simply stand in awe of these buildings. Everything about them screams stability, and their inhabitants will passionately argue that stability is precisely their raison d'être. Yet, it's hard to ignore the facts. Income inequality is widening, and inflation is spiraling out of control, disproportionately affecting the middle and lower classes. Meanwhile, limousine-liberal economists like Paul Krugman take to the airwaves, confidently proclaiming an economic victory utilizing these institutions…for reasons they can't even clearly articulate.

“The economic data have been just surreally good. Even optimists are just stunned,” he recently said on CNN. “This is a goldilocks economy.”