Free To Choose [ to go broke I suppose ]

Those of you who follow this blog, and there aren't many I admit, may remember what I said about Milton Friedman.  I paraphrased him saying in his book that it would be "wonderful for us" if what all we produced were dollars, and other countries were willing to exchange goods for those dollars.

Well, I found the book, and yes, it is there, and is a fair assessment of what he said.  Page 34 to be exact.

I suspect that policy makers are taking that LITERALLY.  They are more than willing to run up the debt on the national credit card until one day...

quote [positing a hypothetical scenario in 1980 that isn't quite so hypothetical today]:

...everything is cheaper in Japan [ comment:  it could be anybody we are trading with, like just everybody everywhere these days] so that there was nothing in the US that they would be willing to buy..  If the Japanese exporters were willing to burn or bury their dollars, that would be wonderful for us.

They don't have to burn nor bury them.  Just receive interest and expand their market share.  Eventually, the USA won't be able to make good on the debts, and that will be that for the US economy.

Even though their dollar holdings will be worthless, they will still have the factories and the skilled working class.  We will have a bunch of worn out and useless junk, and everybody will be unskilled and desperately poor.  If that isn't what's happening, then maybe I'm wrong.  But the Fed cannot raise interest rates, for if they do, they cannot pay interest on the debt without severe dislocations.  That's a fact, Jack.  Our prosperity is a mirage.

That's what globalism brought us.  If you think your stock and bond holdings will save you, think again, sucker.