100-to-1: Here’s Why the Economy Is Doomed

Andy Snyder|September 27, 2022

A fighter fights… a baker bakes… and the Fed ruins the economy.

We were reminded last night of the story of a great inventor. He was a man who thought his creation was so grand and so original that it would change the shape of war.

At best, he figured, it would end war entirely. At worst, it would keep countless men off the battlefield.

But like so many well-intentioned ideas… its results were devastating.

Jay Powell and his market-fixing crew should heed the lesson.

Dr. Richard Gatling’s inventions never seemed to work out quite like he hoped they would. At the age of just 21, he invented a screw propellor for steamships. Such a thing would surely shrink the world, he figured.

But news traveled too slowly in those days. Gatling’s heart broke when he learned a similar device had been patented just a few months earlier.

He also invented a drill to help sow rice and wheat. It worked well enough… but the market was flooded with such inventions at the time. Have you ever heard of a Gatling drill? I bet not.

But a Gatling gun… now there was an invention.

Gunning for Battle

The doc was quite proud of his fast-shooting revelation. His machine could fire 100 rounds in the time it took one soldier to load his weapon.

And with this invention, his timing was perfect. The nation was in the midst of the Civil War.

The doctor thought he’d save countless lives with his 100-to-1 machine. With such an efficient weapon, the army could send thousands of men back home to their families and farms. There’d be no need for the vast majority of them.

“It occurred to me,” he said, “that if I could invent a machine – a gun – which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease…”

Ah… but give a baker an oven… and he bakes.

Even though the Northern army didn’t officially adopt the weapon until years after its invention, Union officers personally purchased a dozen of the guns for their troops.

After all, fighters like to fight.

The Gatling gun did well in every battle it was used in. It did so well, in fact, that fighters picked even more fights.

The guns were towed around the world… and used to take out indigenous tribes in Africa and nomads in central Asia. And, of course, Lieutenant John “Gatling Gun Parker” used them to fire 18,000 rounds in just eight minutes… killing untenable amounts of Spanish soldiers during the Battle of San Juan Hill.

The world’s “liberators” were free to torment the globe. With such power in their hands, Gatling’s dream of ending war was shattered.

And now we turn to the battle of our day – the battle to keep the global economy from flatlining.

Mandated Power

Things aren’t good.

The euro has sunk, the pound is looking worse than ever and the yen has an IV stuck in its bony arm.

This, of course, is the sort of problem the Federal Reserve and its central bank brethren throughout the world were created to solve. The banking elites went to Georgia to devise a system that would end all the trouble.

But bankers bank and manipulators manipulate.

The Fed has new mandates. It controls the money… and the jobs… and now it is getting into the equality and environment game. It prints money not just to keep banks solvent but also to keep the economy growing and prevent stocks from washing away.

It has swap lines… special lending programs… and liquidity facilities. And it probably even owns a chunk of your neighbor’s mortgage.

It’s gone from one main idea to 22 ever-expanding programs. It prints money and stuffs it where it sees fit.

It’s 100 times stronger than it once was.

With power like that… every battle turns into a war.

As investors, we have no choice in the matter. We can’t “vote ’em out” or ignore their mandates. Like an army general, the members of the Fed are there because of who they know and what promises they’ve made.

It’s imperative, though, that we know how these things work.

We can’t be so naïve as to believe a new gun will end war… or a new government program will save the markets and our retirement.

Big guns don’t end wars. They merely create bigger wars.

Fighters fight… bakers bake… and the Fed ruins the economy.