“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
- Adam Smith, ‘The Wealth of Nations’ (1776).
Get your Free
financial review
For the last couple of years in corporate presentations, we have referred to the fact that many western governments appear to be in the ‘looting of the Treasury’ stage of economic and cultural proceedings. By way of example, we cited the behaviour of Jamaal Bowman, a congressman representing constituents in New York City, who on September 30th 2023 committed an act of insurrection by attempting to subvert democracy in the United States. That afternoon, Congress was about to vote on a key piece of legislation that would keep the government temporarily funded in order to prevent a shutdown that would have gone into effect only hours later. But Bowman – and many members of his party – did not want the vote to take place, simply because they wanted to embarrass the opposition. So, he deliberately pulled the fire alarm, causing the building to be evacuated. This isn’t some conspiracy theory – the cameras plainly showed Bowman pulling the fire-alarm, and he admitted to it. He subsequently went on to demand that descendants of former slaves receive, “at minimum”, $14 trillion by way of reparations.
And this was way before the grotesque looting of USAID funds and their redirection around the world in support of almost exclusively leftist causes became public knowledge, thanks to Elon Musk and his team at DOGE.
It now appears that the ‘looting of the Treasury’ went into overdrive at least as far back as 2020, when a mysterious ‘virus’ called Covid-19 arose on the world stage. The good folk at Brownstone Institute have covered the fifth anniversary of Covid in some style:
“Democrats remained silent as government mandates transferred trillions of dollars from the working class to tech oligarchs. Republicans dithered as states criminalized church attendance. Libertarians stood by as the nation shuttered the doors of small businesses. College students obediently forfeited their freedoms and moved into their parents’ basements, liberals accepted widespread surveillance campaigns, and conservatives greenlit the printing of 300 years’ worth of money in sixty days.
“With rare exception, March 2020 was a bipartisan, intergenerational capitulation to fear and hysteria. Those who dared to object to the freshly-mandated orthodoxy were subject to widespread contempt, derision, and censorship as the US Security State and a subservient media corps muzzled their protests. The most dominant forces in society used the opportunity to their advantage, pillaging the nation’s treasury and overthrowing law and tradition. Their campaign was devoid of the triumph of Yorktown, the bloodshed of Antietam, or the sacrifices of Omaha Beach. Without a single bullet, they overtook the republic, overturning the Bill of Rights in a quiet coup d’état.
“Perhaps no episode better exemplified this phenomenon than the House of Representatives on March 27, 2020. That day, the House planned to pass the largest spending bill in American history, the CARES Act, without a recorded vote. The $2 trillion price tag was more money than Congress spent on the entire Iraq War, twice as much as the cost of the Vietnam War, and thirteen times more than Congress’s annual allocation for Medicaid – all adjusted for inflation. No House Democrats objected, nor did 195 out of 196 House Republicans. For 434 members of the House, there were no concerns of fiscal responsibility or electoral accountability. There wouldn’t be a whimper, let alone a bang; there wouldn’t even be a recorded vote.”
Over here on this side of the pond, the United Kingdom, now labouring under the yoke of an unashamedly if undeclared Marxist government, has just celebrated a national ‘Day of Reflection’ to commemorate those thousands effectively murdered by their own state, if not by experimental gene therapies of highly dubious safety and efficacy, then by the lockdowns ruinously enforced on the populace by an administration gone totally insane. Daniel Hannan for ‘The Daily Telegraph’ picks up the story:
“What the hell were we thinking? Five years ago, we were sliding towards the most expensive mistake ever made by a British government, a mistake that led to our financial ruin, the annihilation of our basic freedoms and the obliteration of public trust.
“Never before had our civil liberties been so blatantly disregarded. We were subjected to house arrest on the basis of unsupported conjecture, our property rights were violated, our freedom of expression repressed, even our ability to leave the country denied.
“Where were all the human rights lawyers when they were needed? Where were the Doughty Street types, so vocal in their defence of illegal migrants, convicts, and terrorists? The one time that there truly was a national human rights violation, they were cheering it on.
“Meanwhile, the British state told lie after lie after lie. Just three weeks! Facemasks are dangerous! One more month! Facemasks are essential! Squash the sombrero! Young people are at risk! Just two more weeks! Wait for the vaccine! Wait for the second vaccine! Your jab protects others! It’s the third shot that really works! Dangerous new variant! One last lockdown! Just three more weeks!
“As we approach the fifth anniversary, we don’t like to admit that we destroyed our economy, took away part of our kids’ childhoods, permanently aggrandised the state and indebted ourselves for a generation – all for nothing.”
Though it was not, strictly, for nothing. As Brownstone archly point out, some “tech oligarchs” did very nicely out of Covid. In the biggest transfer of wealth in human history, what small family businesses lost ended up in the laps of companies like Amazon and Zoom.
Putting to one side the suspicions that the whole exercise was part of a mass impoverishment and demoralisation process in pursuit of the UN’s “sustainable development goals” and Agenda 2030, the overreaction to what turned out to be a relatively minor virus (if indeed such virus ever existed beyond the realm of a PCR false-positive pseudo-epidemic), the governmental response throughout the anglosphere should have come as no surprise to anyone who, like the US anarchist and author Michael Malice, believes that there is no problem anywhere in the world so bad that government cannot make it worse. And that even if there is no real problem, government will lose no time in creating one, if only to satisfy media and thereby public demand.
The essence of Realpolitik through the ages is nicely displayed by a 43-year-old computer game called ‘Dictator’ which was written by Don Priestley of DK’Tronics and released in 1982 for, amongst others, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. You can play an emulator version online here.
‘Dictator’ puts the player in the role of leader of the fictional Latin American banana republic of Ritimba. The explicit purpose of the game is to survive as long as possible in office, and simultaneously to salt as much away from the Treasury as possible into the leader’s Swiss private bank account. Lest this seem overly easy, the leader is continually beset by interest groups including the peasantry, the landowners, the army and the secret police, and it soon becomes impossible to balance all of their interests without inflaming others into a state of revolution.
Clearly, ‘Dictator’ represents an overly naïve depiction of politics designed solely for the amusement of children, and our democratic systems, corporations and politicians are altogether more principled and ethical today.
………….
As you may know, we also manage bespoke investment portfolios for private clients internationally. We would be delighted to help you too. Because of the current heightened market volatility we are offering a completely free financial review, with no strings attached, to see if our value-oriented approach might benefit your portfolio – with no obligation at all:
Get your Free
financial review
…………
Tim Price is co-manager of the VT Price Value Portfolio and author of ‘Investing through the Looking Glass: a rational guide to irrational financial markets’. You can access a full archive of these weekly investment commentaries here. You can listen to our regular ‘State of the Markets’ podcasts, with Paul Rodriguez of ThinkTrading.com, here. Email us: info@pricevaluepartners.com.
Price Value Partners manage investment portfolios for private clients. We also manage the VT Price Value Portfolio, an unconstrained global fund investing in Benjamin Graham-style value stocks and also in systematic trend-following funds.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
Get your Free
financial review
For the last couple of years in corporate presentations, we have referred to the fact that many western governments appear to be in the ‘looting of the Treasury’ stage of economic and cultural proceedings. By way of example, we cited the behaviour of Jamaal Bowman, a congressman representing constituents in New York City, who on September 30th 2023 committed an act of insurrection by attempting to subvert democracy in the United States. That afternoon, Congress was about to vote on a key piece of legislation that would keep the government temporarily funded in order to prevent a shutdown that would have gone into effect only hours later. But Bowman – and many members of his party – did not want the vote to take place, simply because they wanted to embarrass the opposition. So, he deliberately pulled the fire alarm, causing the building to be evacuated. This isn’t some conspiracy theory – the cameras plainly showed Bowman pulling the fire-alarm, and he admitted to it. He subsequently went on to demand that descendants of former slaves receive, “at minimum”, $14 trillion by way of reparations.
And this was way before the grotesque looting of USAID funds and their redirection around the world in support of almost exclusively leftist causes became public knowledge, thanks to Elon Musk and his team at DOGE.
It now appears that the ‘looting of the Treasury’ went into overdrive at least as far back as 2020, when a mysterious ‘virus’ called Covid-19 arose on the world stage. The good folk at Brownstone Institute have covered the fifth anniversary of Covid in some style:
“Democrats remained silent as government mandates transferred trillions of dollars from the working class to tech oligarchs. Republicans dithered as states criminalized church attendance. Libertarians stood by as the nation shuttered the doors of small businesses. College students obediently forfeited their freedoms and moved into their parents’ basements, liberals accepted widespread surveillance campaigns, and conservatives greenlit the printing of 300 years’ worth of money in sixty days.
“With rare exception, March 2020 was a bipartisan, intergenerational capitulation to fear and hysteria. Those who dared to object to the freshly-mandated orthodoxy were subject to widespread contempt, derision, and censorship as the US Security State and a subservient media corps muzzled their protests. The most dominant forces in society used the opportunity to their advantage, pillaging the nation’s treasury and overthrowing law and tradition. Their campaign was devoid of the triumph of Yorktown, the bloodshed of Antietam, or the sacrifices of Omaha Beach. Without a single bullet, they overtook the republic, overturning the Bill of Rights in a quiet coup d’état.
“Perhaps no episode better exemplified this phenomenon than the House of Representatives on March 27, 2020. That day, the House planned to pass the largest spending bill in American history, the CARES Act, without a recorded vote. The $2 trillion price tag was more money than Congress spent on the entire Iraq War, twice as much as the cost of the Vietnam War, and thirteen times more than Congress’s annual allocation for Medicaid – all adjusted for inflation. No House Democrats objected, nor did 195 out of 196 House Republicans. For 434 members of the House, there were no concerns of fiscal responsibility or electoral accountability. There wouldn’t be a whimper, let alone a bang; there wouldn’t even be a recorded vote.”
Over here on this side of the pond, the United Kingdom, now labouring under the yoke of an unashamedly if undeclared Marxist government, has just celebrated a national ‘Day of Reflection’ to commemorate those thousands effectively murdered by their own state, if not by experimental gene therapies of highly dubious safety and efficacy, then by the lockdowns ruinously enforced on the populace by an administration gone totally insane. Daniel Hannan for ‘The Daily Telegraph’ picks up the story:
“What the hell were we thinking? Five years ago, we were sliding towards the most expensive mistake ever made by a British government, a mistake that led to our financial ruin, the annihilation of our basic freedoms and the obliteration of public trust.
“Never before had our civil liberties been so blatantly disregarded. We were subjected to house arrest on the basis of unsupported conjecture, our property rights were violated, our freedom of expression repressed, even our ability to leave the country denied.
“Where were all the human rights lawyers when they were needed? Where were the Doughty Street types, so vocal in their defence of illegal migrants, convicts, and terrorists? The one time that there truly was a national human rights violation, they were cheering it on.
“Meanwhile, the British state told lie after lie after lie. Just three weeks! Facemasks are dangerous! One more month! Facemasks are essential! Squash the sombrero! Young people are at risk! Just two more weeks! Wait for the vaccine! Wait for the second vaccine! Your jab protects others! It’s the third shot that really works! Dangerous new variant! One last lockdown! Just three more weeks!
“As we approach the fifth anniversary, we don’t like to admit that we destroyed our economy, took away part of our kids’ childhoods, permanently aggrandised the state and indebted ourselves for a generation – all for nothing.”
Though it was not, strictly, for nothing. As Brownstone archly point out, some “tech oligarchs” did very nicely out of Covid. In the biggest transfer of wealth in human history, what small family businesses lost ended up in the laps of companies like Amazon and Zoom.
Putting to one side the suspicions that the whole exercise was part of a mass impoverishment and demoralisation process in pursuit of the UN’s “sustainable development goals” and Agenda 2030, the overreaction to what turned out to be a relatively minor virus (if indeed such virus ever existed beyond the realm of a PCR false-positive pseudo-epidemic), the governmental response throughout the anglosphere should have come as no surprise to anyone who, like the US anarchist and author Michael Malice, believes that there is no problem anywhere in the world so bad that government cannot make it worse. And that even if there is no real problem, government will lose no time in creating one, if only to satisfy media and thereby public demand.
The essence of Realpolitik through the ages is nicely displayed by a 43-year-old computer game called ‘Dictator’ which was written by Don Priestley of DK’Tronics and released in 1982 for, amongst others, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. You can play an emulator version online here.
‘Dictator’ puts the player in the role of leader of the fictional Latin American banana republic of Ritimba. The explicit purpose of the game is to survive as long as possible in office, and simultaneously to salt as much away from the Treasury as possible into the leader’s Swiss private bank account. Lest this seem overly easy, the leader is continually beset by interest groups including the peasantry, the landowners, the army and the secret police, and it soon becomes impossible to balance all of their interests without inflaming others into a state of revolution.
Clearly, ‘Dictator’ represents an overly naïve depiction of politics designed solely for the amusement of children, and our democratic systems, corporations and politicians are altogether more principled and ethical today.
………….
As you may know, we also manage bespoke investment portfolios for private clients internationally. We would be delighted to help you too. Because of the current heightened market volatility we are offering a completely free financial review, with no strings attached, to see if our value-oriented approach might benefit your portfolio – with no obligation at all:
Get your Free
financial review
…………
Tim Price is co-manager of the VT Price Value Portfolio and author of ‘Investing through the Looking Glass: a rational guide to irrational financial markets’. You can access a full archive of these weekly investment commentaries here. You can listen to our regular ‘State of the Markets’ podcasts, with Paul Rodriguez of ThinkTrading.com, here. Email us: info@pricevaluepartners.com.
Price Value Partners manage investment portfolios for private clients. We also manage the VT Price Value Portfolio, an unconstrained global fund investing in Benjamin Graham-style value stocks and also in systematic trend-following funds.
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