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October
14
2021

Distraction as Policy While Our Economic Rome Burns
Matthew Piepenburg

Desperation and distraction are masquerading as economic policy. Below we see how and why—and at what cost.

COVID: The Great Economic and Political Hall-Pass

If every time I stole a cookie from the jar in front of my mom (age 8), or drove dad’s car (sometimes into a tree) without permission (age 16), failed a dorm-room inspection (age 17), broke a lawnmower for driving over a fence post (each year) or forgot a key anniversary (eh-hmm), it would have been so convenient to have a universal “hall pass” to excuse what is/was otherwise just plain stupid behavior.

Luckily for the grown children running our global financial system into the ground, the COVID pandemic is becoming precisely that: “A global hall pass for excusing decades of stupid.”

As we’ve written many times, inexcusably high debt levels, tanking growth data, struggling work force figures, embarrassing wealth disparity and insider market rigging between Wall Street and DC was well in play long before COVID made the headlines.

But now, the architects of such “pre-COVID stupid” have the current COVID narrative to justify and excuse even, well… more stupid.

The Latest Jobs Report “Explained” …

Take, for example, the latest job reports data from those DC-based creative writers at that comic-book publication otherwise known as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Known for years on Wall Street as mathematical magicians capable of turning 12% inflation into a 2% CPI lie, that same BLS is operating yet again to fib away the latest (and otherwise telling) jobs data.

The September jobs report was the second consecutive and disappointing report from the BLS, which they were quick to blame on “pandemic-related staffing fluctuations.”

Hmmm. That’s a nice phrase, no? “Pandemic-related staffing fluctuations.”

But the real description boils down to something more PRAVDA-like under the new Biden Vaccine Mandate, namely: “Obey or we take your job away.”

Needless to say, not everyone is obeying.

Since 2020, employment in local government education is down by 310,000; in state government education, employment is down by 194,000 jobs, and in private education the numbers are down by 172,000.

Ouch.

Why such “staffing fluctuations”?

The answer is simple: Many educated folks in the education sector don’t like being mandated to inject a vaccine into their bodies which by all reports from vaccinated infection rates, is no vaccine at all, but a debatable form of treatment at best.

Thankfully for all of us, I’m not interested in debating the hard vaccine data here, as folks like me should not be proffering unwanted medical expertise, which I clearly lack.

No one, myself included, really knows everything about mutating virology, but I’d wager to say that many of us are more mathematically dubious than Fauci is medically honest…

Jefferson (and History) Ignored

For followers of American history and markets, however, certain ideals and facts are easier to track despite distraction-as-policy tactics.

We are reminded, for example, of how passionately Thomas Jefferson warned us circa 1776 that a private central bank would eventually destroy our nation, and that only an educated population could save it.

Sadly, the new President is taking the inverse approach: Firing teachers and propping bankers.

Fast-forward some 240+ years from our founding fathers to our semi-conscious Biden, and we discover a nation wherein a private central bank effectively finances our national debt while the teachers, students and institutions charged with making citizens wiser, educated and free now find themselves locked out of their offices, classrooms and lecterns.

Seems a little upside down, no?

Red or blue, most of us can agree than nothing coming out of the White House in recent memory remotely resembles the vision or freedom-driven intellect of founding fathers like Jefferson, despite his known flaws.

Instead, we have seen red and blue administrations whose grasp on coherency, let alone math, history, economics or even Afghan geography is questionable at best.

Biden’s Response

And what does Biden (or his “advisors”) have to say about the recent and scary numbers within a gutted and “locked-out” educational labor force?

Well, you’ll have to see it to believe it.

Really? Really? Really?

That’s right folks.

The President of the United States, home to the world’s reserve currency and former beacon of global freedom, is telling Americans not to worry about the slow death of genuinely informed dissent (as well as educational access and jobs) or the attempted popularizing of otherwise tyrannical mandates, but to focus instead on the vaccine rates at United Airlines?

Yes. Really.

The leader of the free world is boastfully telling us that the “bigger story” is a fully vaccinated United Airlines (who were forced to choose between a jab or job), so why worry about the problems in that silly ol’ educational sector or outdated Bill of Rights?

Playing with Minnows While Ignoring Whales

Where ever one stands on the understandably divisive vaccine issue, how can anyone compare a private airline’s vaccine rate to a national education, civil liberty and employment crisis?

Why are politicians, Davos dragons, statisticians, media bobble-heads and central bankers focusing our/your attention more on a virus with a case fatality rate of less than 0.5% than they are on openly addressing whale-sized issues like unsustainable debt, rising inflation, embarrassing labor inequality, a dying currency or even more declining GDP?

Deliberate and Desperate Distraction as Policy

Well, history tells us why.

As anyone not banned from a classroom knows, the history of desperate leaders seeking to distract, censor and control the masses in times of a self-inflicted and debt-induced cycle of internal economic rot is long and distinguished.

As Biden doubles down on the bad (yet deliberately distracting) hand of what was hoped to be an optically humanitarian policy of vaccine mandates, the masses are getting restless as well as fired…

Solution?

Criminalize the non-consenting as anti-vaccine, anti-science or anti-American “flat-earthers” while denying open discussion on such otherwise relevant topics as basic math, constitutional law, calm science or individual rights…

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Matthew Piepenburg, Commercial Director at Matterhorn Asset Management and co-founder of SignalsMatter.com, has extensive experience in alternative investments, law, and finance, with particular expertise in managed futures, credit and equity investing. He also has years of experience researching, evaluating and investing in alternative investments: hedge funds, private equity vehicles, VC and real estate. Matthew Piepenburg's skills include asset allocation, portfolio management and macro economic analysis. He has written numerous white papers on the long-term distortions of central bank policies here and abroad. He has guest lectured at numerous family office forums, law firms and universities, including Georgetown, Brown, Harvard and Cal State. Matthew Piepenburg is also a published author and regular contributor to The Good Men Project and the author of the Amazon No1 New Release “Rigged to Fail,” which bluntly details the systemic and structural flaws behind central-bank distorted capital markets. 

All of these combined monetary distortions are directly responsible for the staggering level of currency debasement ignored in plain sight by a majority of policy makers and investors, which is why Matthew is committed to informing of, as well as addressing solutions to, these systemic fault-lines in the global system. Toward this end, all rivers flow toward precious metals as currency insurance (hence Matterhorn role in Zurich) as well as sober yet actively managed portfolio construction (hence the SignalsMatter service). 

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