[Post Note: Don't forget to check out the "See Also" entries below. I also (1-1-2019) just added the following new entries there:

1:Apple Blew $9 Billion Buying Back Its Own Stock. There’s a Lesson Here.

J.V.]

And that same thing, naturally, is that Capitalism Is Obsolete. A fact for which all involved seem to be incapable of seeing; even as it is in their face, grimly mocking them

As you may have noticed, our demented "Clown Car Driver-n-Chief" (to go along with "Corrupter-n-Chief," or "Confuser-n-Chief," etc.), within his infinite grasp of economics, is bashing the Fed Chairman for the main reason that the very rich have gotten used to the idea of free money; at least of course, for them (which for him is just a "shiny" thing; something that gives him the instant adoration, that is the only, real, motivation he ever has, and craves; and for which has always worked for him, if you just wave the shiny thing around enough, shouting whatever exaggerated claim, or other, that pops into that awful cauldron of impulse, that he calls a mind).

Just as the very richest have gotten used to the idea that monopolies are good, for a certain group of "Manifestly Destined" individuals, while everyone else, of course, should have to deal with competition.

The fact of the matter has always been that short term money isn't supposed to cost more than long term money. But it has been tending towards that condition for some time now.

Coincident to that is that fact that, Something over 5 trillion dollars, at least, was pumped into the American economy via "Quantitative Easing," and the Republican tax giveaway that a former Speaker of The House of Representatives orchestrated for his rich masters, between 2008 and 2017 (noting that the "easing" ended in 2015, and the tax giveaway happened after that).

The question then just naturally arises, what happened to all of that money? Why didn't it increase prices as significantly as it would ordinarily have been expected to?

Unfortunately, the answer is both complicated, and straightforwardly simple.

Simple, in the fact that you only need look to where most of the "easing" money went in the first place: to the holders of large securities, and bonds, which the Fed bought with the zeros and ones of computer money; where they only needed to type in a number, and that then became how much they had available to spend.

As well as to say that, in making short term money more expensive, you put the burden of paying for capital on the backs of everyone who is not so "Manifestly Destined;" which is everyone, and everything, medium sized as a business, and down to individual workers. The extension of which, certainly, is credit card debt. which they talked us into with surprising ease (and usury interest rates, that aren't all that much worried about at all anymore); not to mention student debt, and mortgage debt, which at least used to have something of a lobby, in the home construction industry, protecting the mortgage tax deduction, which has naturally been debased now to a significant degree, by the tax giveaway.

Keeping that fact in mind, though, what you have is another, rather warped, example of "Supply Side," economics; supposedly to keep money in the hands of the "jobs" creators, even if the majority of the new jobs will never be able to pay a minimum living wage; precisely because of the fear of inflation, as well as from who's pocket this largess will come.

But now, the real source of purchasing power (the average, working stiff, American consumer), is stretched too thin, to keep the economy humming, from so many disasters, economic and otherwise, that never get fully recovered from (at least not for the majority of us), and so much so that there just isn't any discretionary spending ability left. Thus requiring so much more dogged effort, just to keep from losing any more economic ground, that ever greater numbers are just burning out, or flying out of control, or addictively escaping by whatever means they can still, barely, afford. Which is certainly a big part of why suicides, and addictive excess, and people just exploding as rage bombs, is increasing now. Along with the various system's, functional disasters, we see in both the physical, and social realms.

Describing all of this, however, still doesn't explain where all of that 5 trillion or so went. Or what what was the ultimate effect of it all.

And for that you need only look at how so much venture capital went into things like "BitCoin" mining, or lets just dump "X" machine (in egregious quantities), or "X" process, into, say a series of city economic scapes, or social web spaces, that just instantly disrupt what was once, whatever the small semblance, of operating integration (or integrity) said scapes might have had, sorta working, at any given time, pre disruption; given the already stressed nature of such entities trying to do the basic functionality they were meant to do, as social points of mixed, cooperative effort; but being forced to do so with fewer folks able, or willing, to contribute to supporting it in the first place.

And when you look, I think you'll find that a very significant portion went into those investments that turned over the investment the fastest, with the least worry of having to create something substantial, and then wait for the slow return of profit from the sale of each item. And where, certainly, if anything substantial is made, it is seldom made here.

The thing is, though, I think a further significant portion went into the trash heap of pure waste, in oh so many ways; the most prominent being either simple, abject failure, of what should have been seen as a stupid idea, at the very beginning; or the waste of the disruption causing extra operating problems for the other, already struggling, in place enterprises, because of the lack, or even thought, of proactive integration, with those systems; and finally, because of the ever increasing mass fraud, secret hoarding, and outright thievery, occuring by big players, and small, all across the vast enterprise matrix that makes up this, and rest of the world's, economies.

So the problem for both, old parties, is that their old message stopped working years ago. It was only until recently that somebody figured out how to really manipulate the hell out of the message machine itself. And because so much of this is "information" oriented, it is automatically subject to the new realities of asymmetrical information struggle; where even small players can have a huge impact on entities vastly larger than they are.

And most especially for me is this emphasized as it relates to the Democrats, because they still think that Liberalism will save the day. And worse, they are left to argue amongst themselves for the irrelevant concept of just how much "Liberalism" they can now propose, even knowing it is unlikely to pass in any case. And irrelevant, in this context, because Liberalism itself has become irrelevant now that human skill can no longer be relied upon as a viable store of value. Now that electrified experience retrieval has made it possible to make virtually anything, virtually anywhere. And with ever decreasing human cost factors involved at all.

Surprise surprise that there are thus less folks able to purchase stuff.

Bottom line for me, though, is the even more surprising group think, being exhibited by the economic inteligencia, for the most part now; and that being this notion that government ought to still be able to create "predictability" in economic operating conditions. Because we all just "know" that it is only the government's instability that creates all of the various examples of "turbulence," and thus "uncertainty," that now rocks most systems.

So in that context, perhaps it's not just the demented "Clown Car Driver-n-Chief" who has drank too much of his own Kool-Aid.

The referenced article quick list;

1:'Staring contest' -- Trump's vulnerable, but 2020 Dems off to surprisingly slow start in early states

2:Dow rallies by 1,000 points, erasing record Christmas Eve losses

3:Trump has unsettled Wall Street and Washington, and it will probably get worse

4:The Fed launched QE nine years ago — these four charts show its impact

5:'Climate grief' -- The growing emotional toll of climate change

'Staring contest' -- Trump's vulnerable, but 2020 Dems off to surprisingly slow start in early states

[Post Note: Remember guys, it's the volatility itself that you should really be worried about here. J.V.]