Lost in the Arctic

 

I haven’t written a blog post for a while. This is mainly as I am slightly alarmed that my not-entirely-optimistic take on the path we’re taking as a country (everything is going to fall apart) has gone mainstream, and the one thing a tinfoil-hat wearing loon finds more disturbing than anything else is when people start agreeing with him. I have written frequently that currency debasement leads to high inflation, instability and ultimately social unrest…and, well, I suppose I could just say that, now, we are living in interesting times, are we not…

There was a story I was fascinated by as a kid: about a Victorian voyage of exploration through the Arctic where a ship got stick in the ice over winter: as the months of darkness went by, it transpired that the officers’ food supply was contaminated, and they went slowly mad as a result. The crew’s food was not affected: but although sane, the crew had to obey the increasingly bizarre commandments of their officers, or risk death for disobedience.

I’m beginning to see how the crew must have felt. I’d previously thought we were run by idiots: I am beginning to wonder if the elites across the west – not just the politicians, but the media, commentariat, top journalists  etc – are  in fact, actually, slightly mad too. Stuck staring at their twitter feeds, the real world adjacent increasingly alien to them, I wonder if their brains are going a bit, well…off.

Take energy: in the previous nine years, we have closed down most of our remaining thermal power stations (twelve in total) and shut down nuclear capacity, and only built as a replacement some intermittent renewables, and as a stop gap are relying on gas. We then, effectively, decided to turn off access to that gas continent-wide, by sanctioning Russia. And yet, the fact that energy prices are going wild, and we face blackouts, is - according to our elites, and I am told by Radio 4 time and again - somehow…erm, well unexpected?

In what world is there no sane person who didn’t think this would happen?

We’re constantly told “no one could have predicted this…” What? How is this not obvious? If you shut down reliable power you have…no reliable power. Platitudes, meet physics. Physics, meet platitudes.

Or, take inflation: inflation took hold prior to the Ukraine invasion (although this is now ignored, obviously). It took hold as it is directly as a result of unrestricted, massive, money printing, which we undertook when we idiotically shut the country down for COVID: and inflation is now being forced ever higher by the Wiemerisation of the energy markets. And yet, we are told constantly – no one could have predicted this…

What? It’s eminently f****g obvious.

The total amount of money that changes hands in an economy, equals the total money value of goods that change hands, ie nominal spending equals nominal income. In economics, this is called the Equation of Exchange. Basically, if you increase money printing, the price of stuff goes up. It’s not the only thing that’s important – you also need velocity to increase – as if money is printed and is kept in someone’s pocket, then clearly prices are unchanged. But at some point, people realise money is losing value, the currency is being debased, and bring forward purchases, which in turn stimulates inflation further. And people are starting to realise that 40% of all money printed in the west – ever – has been printed in the last two years. And inflation is rising, and rising, and rising...

And only today Germany has said that, to fight inflation, they are going to print another £65 billion euros. No doubt Truss is shortly going to announce that we’ll print another £100 billion or so, again to, ultimately, “fight inflation”.

These people are mad.

Oh, and what happened to the crew, you might ask? Well, they all died. Cold, starving and driven to death by insane sadists with no grip on reality.

I’m sure we’ll be fine though.