By Mike Archer. The more I listen to the experts describe the ups and downs, in and outs and phony successes and ‘not-to-worry’ failures of the stock market, the more I am reminded of drunken gambling addicts asking for one more stake because the next roll of the dice is going to make everything right.
I believe we are in worse shape than the self-interested salary men of the old media understand. I prefer to rely on the cold, precise and realistic appraisal of investment broker, Peter Schiff.
“It’s not like we’ve got more factories turning out more stuff. All that they do is they get asset prices to rise so that people can borrow more money against those inflated asset values and then spend it. But we’re buying things that are made in other countries. It doesn’t evidence economic growth here, it evidences the economic growth in the countries who are able to produce all the things that we have to borrow money to consume.” – Peter Schiff
And when the cost of borrowing money in order to bet it on the stock market, or the real estate market, or the roulette table, gets back to realistic/normal levels – i.e; when lenders start having to actually charge for debt, very few are going to have the money to pay back to those from whom they borrowed unless they can borrow more, against assets which have finally stopped having their value inflated by the speculators and the lenders.
Until and unless we can discover how to make something of real value and sell it to someone with real money we will continue to rely on the gambling sheets which our business newspapers and broadcasts have become for reports about the latest sure thing on which to risk the money we don’t really have.
In Abbotsford, the Economic Indicators have been telling us the truth for a decade or so as the real investment community, the real employers and those operating in the real economy have left us in droves as we continue to borrow from ourselves, give away tax-free status and pay rich and successful companies just to come and to do business here while taking all the profits out of the community.
And the purveyors of this gargantuan waste of their friends’ and neighbours’ money – City Council, the Chamber of Commerce, the ADBA and the favoured landowners – have created a closed circle so that all they hear is their own self-flagellation and impenetrable conviction that they have somehow earned the right to waste our money on their gambling.