In recent posts I have warned about the accelerating purchasing power destruction caused by unrestricted money printing which has created the perception of prices rising (inflation), when in reality, it is value of our money falling (depreciation).
"Trump is entirely correct about the rising costs associated with coin production. Last year, the US Mint's annual report revealed that it costs 3.69 cents to produce and distribute a penny, resulting in a loss of 2.69 cents per coin for the federal government.
As of last year, about 250 billion pennies were in circulation in the US, equivalent to about 700 per person.
The US Mint's total loss on the year for pennies was about $85.3 million.
Don't tell Trump and the DOGE team, but the nickel costs about double its face value to produce and distribute.
In 2011, Kyle Bass recognized that the metal in a nickel coin was worth well above its face value. He stated then, "I just bought a million dollars' worth of them."
Imagine that! The change in your cash register is worth more in material value than the cost of producing it. This distortion is happening because of the massive dilution of new, freshly created dollars into the already existing pool of dollars.
It's kind of like pouring a half a gallon of water into a gallon of scotch. After that, the Scotch just doesn't deliver the same punch, ya know?
There are a lot if issues business owners need to consider right now but I think that purchasing power erosion is going to be a critical factor moving forward. The entire financial construct called the US economy is being undermined and strip-mined from within and we're all just now finding out how bad it really is.
Soon it will be pretty obvious to everyone including those who relied on the TV news' journalistic malpractice all this time.
Last week, disruption was visited upon Washington DC's business-as-usual eco system in the form of a massive algo-attack which pierced straight through to the single most important vein of power and influence there: money.
The clock struck 2 AM on Jan 21, 2025.
In Treasury’s basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting.
“We’re in,” Akash Bobba messaged the team. “All of it.”
"This wasn’t a hack. This wasn’t a breach. This was authorized disruption."
“The beautiful thing about payment systems,” noted a transition official watching their screens, “is that they don’t lie. You can spin policy all day long, but money leaves a trail.”
This is really gonna leave a mark on the permanent bureaucracy where legions of over-paid, underworked government and shadow-government actuaries many of whom have no clue who signs their checks are going to discover that they're suddenly unemployed. Not just that but they are for the most part un-employable too since who is going to hire them when the government stops paying their salaries?
"The paychecks have stopped coming for thousands who wanted to turn American life upside-down and inside-out. This happened most colorfully at the fake-news outfit called Politico this week. Turned out they were a subsidiary of the blob. Who knew? (Everyone who was paying attention to the jive they published.) Management had to send out a memo that reporters and editors would not get paid this week, or maybe ever again. Boo hoo."
Although I can't honestly say I feel too badly that my tax dollars won't be funding those salaries considering how much more they are needed elsewhere in the country.
"There you see how this thicket of not-for-profits and quasi-government institutions not only control foreign policy, but domestic policy. Hundreds of billions flow out of the Treasury through the budgets of the government agencies into this massive ecosystem that uses that money to control domestic politics. If you want to know why voting has had no bearing on public policy for decades, there is the answer. What matters to the politicians is this massive ecosystem, not your vote."
Regardless of which policies or revelations are coming from the new administration it is pretty clear that disruption is the game plan re-construction is the goal. Whether it's the tariff whack-a-mole game of which country is next or the will-he-won't-he game of military interventions, the conclusion is what I wrote about a few weeks ago: "Get ready for disruption".
There will be many good things that will come from this but just like any detox effort there will also be some pain. The good new is that entrepreneurs (business owners) are resilient and resourceful unlike the government drones being given pink slips right now. For me that bodes well for the future.
Here's wishing you all a great week!
These are some of the links I thought were interesting:
"So can a typical family of four survive on $80,000 in America today?"
"since July 2018, the US labor force has added 4.6 million foreign-born workers, while the number of native-born workers has declined by nearly 700K."
"The fear was fake. They told you that. They said you weren’t in danger and trusted you not to hear them."
