622 irony and the gold standard

They said Irony died after 9/11. At the time, I thought it was because events were so heavy that irony didn't work anymore. 

These days, I'm hearing that the kids don't do irony. And it's because reality is too ironic to make fun of. 

Apparently at some point in the past month, the big banks in the US got together and created a stablecoin, Genius USD. This is an attempt to replace the dollar as the global reserve currency. 

This is because the US debt has gotten to the point where it's obviously not going to get paid off. 

This is perhaps because we've spent the $100 trillion the retiring baby boomers are expecting to receive in social security. 

I'm far far far from a banker or financial person, but my understanding is the maneuver goes something like this: create stablecoin, dump debt into stablecoin, watch inflation skyrocket, presto change-o, debt is gone.

(And so are your life savings.)

I know I'm simplifying this, but I don't know enough to know how. Or what I'm getting wrong. For us little guys, that doesn't matter so much. The point is this: crazy shit is about to happen. To your 401k.

And it's probably not crazy good shit.

At the same time, European countries have started flying their gold out of the US. For the past 80 years, since the end of WW2, most countries thought the safest place in the world to store your gold was in the vault at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 

No more. 

So we've got US banks working to create a privatized replacement for the dollar. The US government (Dear Leader) looking to print it's way out of trouble, but also bullying for lower interest rates, two things that don't really go together. And foreign money looking at the whole situation and saying, "we're out of here."

More and more, I get the notion that Dear Leader is a convenient stooge. A distraction from the real action. 

I've heard it said he's "the salesperson sent to sold us the end of the American Dream."

Like most people, I'm pretty tired of talking about this crappy reality show. In the attention economy, this moment is like opening Al Capone's vault. High ratings for a bunch of hype.

How are we going to navigate our way out of this? 

I'm not sure, but my guess is there's going to be a reckoning. You don't get to go around being the belligerent and acting like the innocent forever. Combine geopolitics with burning through a continent of resources at a rate unseen in human history with the ensuing climate change, and any hopes for a Cadillac-smooth ride through the 21st century are gone. 

Perhaps we could ride an ebike through the flood, or fire, or whatever is coming, but that's going to require us, um, getting out of our cars.

Most of the world never got into them. Most of the world runs on 125cc motorbikes. 

Simply put, the car-based American lifestyle is unsustainable. Hard stop. Can't keep it going. Don't know how long we're going to struggle trying. There aren't enough resources on Earth to keep this party going. 

Right now, we're bitching because all the money is collected at the top. The rich have it all. We're fighting for scraps. 

Meanwhile, there's this other thing happening: consumer lifestyle running into a dead end.

Correlation is not causation, but it sure seems like they're related.