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It’s not very often that you hear a senior government official refer to their economic situation using the word ‘crisis’. Yet with uncharacteristic bluntness of any government official anywhere, at least one senior Chinese government official is sounding the alarm bells. And he would know. Guan Tao oversees the foreign exchange of China’s $4 trillion stockpile of reserves, so he has an incredibly unique view of capital flows and currency movements in and out of the country.
Exactly 199 years ago, in 1815, a “temporary” committee was established in the US Senate called the Committee on Finance and Uniform National Currency.
It was set up to address economic issues and the debt accrued by the US government after the War of 1812.
Of course, because there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government measure, the committee became a permanent one after just one year.
It soon expanded its role from raising tariffs to having influence over taxation, banking, currency, and appropriations.
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I’ve worked out a mathematical model which shows that, even with absurd assumptions (7%+ GDP growth for years at a time, low interest rates, etc.), it is simply not feasible for the US government to ‘grow’ its way out.
Working for the government was always pitched as somehow being better guaranteed than risky corporations. However, he who makes the laws never goes to jail for breaking them - a plain fact of life. The problem with government pensions has been they promised whatever sounded nice, with zero accountability. The presumption that tax revenue was an endless pit is one of those fallacies that nobody ever investigates.
One Chart Showing Who's Really In Control
You can see from this chart that over the last 113 years, tax revenue as a percentage of the nation’s money supply has swung wildly, from as little as 3.65% to over 40%.
But something interesting happened in the 1970s.
1971 was a bifurcation point, and this model went from chaotic to stable. Since 1971, in fact, US tax revenue as a percentage of money supply has been almost a constant, steady 20%.
You can see this graphically below as we zoom in on the period from 1971 through 2013– the trend line is very flat.
What does this mean? Remember– 1971 was the year that Richard Nixon severed the dollar’s convertibility to gold once and for all. And in doing so, he handed unchecked, unrestrained, total control of the money supply to the Federal Reserve.
