Election 08' and the federal reserve
columnist: Mark William Campbell

Have you ever been tempted to cheat at Monopoly? I have. After all, it's just a game, I had a few beers in me and the dice weren't being kind. How to cheat though? Trying to manipulate the dice roll was too unpredicable, moving my Iron further than the roll was just plain folly, and every other way from checking the chance cards to stealing someones Hotel was bound to get me caught and sent straight to jail, without passing Go or collecting $200.

Then it hit me, steal money from the bank! I was acting as "the banker", people trusted me... If i added a $20 here, a $50 or a $100 there to my money i could, if I was subtle, slowly gain that precious monopoly. I won the game of course, i just seemed to get lucky, to just have money to ride out the bad times and just enough money to invest in those Hotels in the good times. I never went bust, I never was in someones debt and as the game developed it became clear that the monopoly board was coming under control of one player. Free enterprising businessmen were shot to flames by my omnipresent economic 'talent' and quickly surrendered their collateral to my Empire.

I get the feeling that central bankers played A LOT of monopoly when they were younger.

Yesterday the Federal reserve, The Bank of England and The European Central Bank vowed to print $200 billion of receipts to try and help with the liquidity crises in the markets. Many analysts have pointed out the folly of injecting more easy credit into a problem that was caused by easy credit. Adherents to the Austrian view of the business cycle, the most visible recently being Ron Paul, have seen this coming for a while. The stupifying, worldwide, flogging of this dead horse is both delaying and making worse the markets self correction.

The media has generally taken it's usual shallow stab at this, no surprises there. What would be nice to know however, 2 things.

-who quietly exited the market yesterday?
-who used the one day gains to get out of what will be useless stock?

Bernanke, King and friends are unelected, secretive and have few checks on what is, after close inspection, extremely vast power. We have no gaurantees on their intentions and no way to hold them to account. They have the power speed up, slow down and crash our economies. If the Fed and the BoE have been discussing this move, and they are unwatched and have few rules on their contacts, then how do I know this move has not been precipitated to get key players with the inside scoop out of the market?

I am not accusing or conspiring, I am simply pointing out that in this worldwide game of monopoly no one is watching the banker. Trust comes from transparency, everyone you trust in your life you do so because they are open and honest, their behaviour is something you feel you can count on. Our central bankers are so secretive, our public officials and our media present such a weak case against their secrecy and our economic performance over the larger cycles indicate  that something is not right.

Unfortunately there are too many home truths to be revealed, too many vested interests that will be hurt and too much to gain for those who truly covet power. Authoritarianism is the logical conclusion of crashing your economy, thinking that the men who rise to the highest positions of economic power are actually dummies when it comes to the economy is shaky logic.

Next time I play Monopoly, i think we'll use cigarettes for money.

Socially Bookmark this article! BlinkList Blogmarks Bloglines Buddymarks CiteUlike del.icio.us Digg It Diigo DZone Ekstreme Earthlink feedmelinks Furl Google Give a Link Gravee igooi ISEdb Lilisto Linkagogo Linkroll ma.gnolia Maple.nu Marktd Mr. Wong Netscape Netvouz Newsvine Onlywire PlugIM RawSugar reddit Scuttle Segnalo Simpy Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Taggly tagtooga TalkDigger Technorati Tellfriends Yahoo MyWeb

Reader Comments:

Want to comment on this article? Leave your comment here. Your email address is required to track your comment. However, we will neither publish your email address nor distribute it to other organizations or persons. The only reason we might use it would be if we needed to contact you regarding your comment. All comments are subject to our terms of use policy.

Leave A Comment
Your Name:
Your Email Address*:
Your Comment: