A Modest Proposal

by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,

Decades ago, John Maynard Keynes famously wrote in his novel The General Theory:

"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank-notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal-mines. . . and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again. . . there need be no more unemployment."

To Keynes, all that mattered was that people were employed doing something, anything. The quality of employment didn't matter.

Today, renowned Nobel Prize winning economists like Paul Krugman repeat Keynes' opinion.

Krugman has even suggested that spending trillions of dollars to defend against a counterfeit alien invasion would save the economy.

This, coming from a guy who has won society's most 'esteemed' prize for intellectual achievement.

But following these principles, Mr. Bernanke has backed himself into a corner. He has printed so much money that only the mere suggestion of scaling back his bond-purchasing program sends financial markets roiling.

In other words, they don't have any plan or exit strategy. They're only making this up as they go along.

Bernanke further claims that his money printing and bond buying will remain in effect until the unemployment rate falls dramatically.

Since unemployment remains rather high despite trillions of dollars created during the last couple of years it is a perplexing qualifier.

Considering that the 'quality' of jobs doesn't matter in this Keynesian worldview, however, I've come up with a straightforward thought.

The Fed is now printing $85 billion / month... roughly $1 trillion annually. So if they truly need to move the needle, I propose that Mr. Bernanke cuts out the middleman (i.e. the 'market') and hires workers himself.

To do what, you might ask?

Count. Specifically, count the amount of money he’s creating.

It’s simple. You assign everyone a range of numbers and have them count as he prints.

On average (I’ve tested this), it takes about 5-6 seconds per number.

Sure, one two three four is quick. But how long does it take to say 16,847,512,971…? (You’re saying it right now, aren’t you?)

I’ve calculated that it would take a special workforce of roughly 1 million people, including supervisors and support staff, in order to count the amount of money that Mr. Bernanke is creating.

This assumes that these folks count eight hours per day, with two weeks of paid vacation and ten federal holidays. This is, after all, a cushy financial sector job.

At $50,000 per worker, Bernanke would be adding substantially to the economy… not to mention really moving the needle on the unemployment rate.

"Oh but this is absurd..." Of course it is.

And it's a hell of a lot easier than putting together an alien invasion hoax. Besides, I'm sure the government could never bring itself to stage a false flag operation. Not in the Land of the Free... right?