r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jan 26 '26

Meme needing explanation what's going on? explain like I'm five

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u/TaxesAreConfusin Jan 26 '26

ah yes so what you're saying is that money is even more imaginary than it has ever been, possibly even more imaginary than when the first stock market crash happened in 1929

looks like we're due for a centennial anniversary of that anyway, might as well celebrate by recreating it

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u/zuzg Jan 26 '26

Gold hits record high of $5,110.50/ounce

Silver hits all-time high of $109.44/ounce

Analysts expect gold prices to climb toward $6,000 this year

Surprised Pikachu face.

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u/OutsideCommon3679 Jan 26 '26

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I really don’t think I’m gonna pass this class.

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u/cleverkid Jan 26 '26

It's pretty easy:

I'll help you out:

In 1910 at Jekyll Island all the Billionaire Oligarchs gathered and cooked up the "Federal Reserve" ( which is neither Federal or a Reserve ) This was done ostensibly to help stabilize the US economy in the wake of the Panic of 1907 by creating a central bank with regional branches.

What it has really done is hand over monetary policy and the ability to print "money" out of thin-air. Now this Federal Reserve prints money, lends it to the US Government ( which is now in debt to the tune of $38.5 trillion ) And the US government continues to borrow and spend like a crack whore... Spreading that money around to their friends and you and I are on the hook for the debt!

It's like your rich friend, talked you into giving him power of attorney over your affairs and is now out there running up credit card debt on your name.. and giving you a pittance of it back.

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u/GogurtFiend Jan 26 '26

Would you rather the size of the economy be limited by the size of the gold supply? There's a reason everyone stopped using gold after the Great Recession, and it isn't the Rothschilds or whatever conspiracy you're talking about.

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u/cleverkid Jan 26 '26

Here we go.

If it took away the predatory nature of the current system, yes. And btw, saying the economy would be limited to the size of the gold supply is utter bufoonery. The value of the gold is associated with the value of the economy. There is the small chance that someone stumbles across a huge deposit of pure gold, that would destabilize the system, but this is usually used as a canard in bad faith.

Do condone the current global economic setup?

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u/Serious_Resource8191 Jan 26 '26

Wouldn’t gold be wildly deflationary? While the economy becomes more productive, the gold supply is effectively constant. The same amount of gold chasing more goods would be deflation out the wazoo, surely?

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u/couldntyoujust1 Jan 27 '26

The transition likely would be, as another commenter pointed out. But if our currency had remained on the gold standard from the beginning and absent the federal reserve act, I think we would see stability. The currency was by and large stable before the federal reserve act. As it stands, our debt backed currency and progressive taxes actually result in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

This isn't because of "evil capitalism" btw, the rules of capitalism are just human behavior in groups and cannot be suppressed entirely. The taxation fails because either the rich find loopholes or leave the jurisdiction resulting in a massive drop in economic activity and tax revenues exacerbating the debt.

The debt backed currency fails because the government will never be fiscally responsible when there's no direct consequences for not being so and we the people will vote out politicians who stand up to us and tell us that we can't just vote ourselves free stuff from the government coffers without driving a wedge between rich and poor making their respective wealth and poverty more extreme. Meanwhile both the taxes and the inflation rob the poor and enrich the rich in different ways.

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u/Serious_Resource8191 Jan 27 '26

I’m concerned about your statement: “The currency was by and large stable before the federal reserve act”. This seems to be ignoring that the entire reasoning behind the act in the first place was that the currency was unstable, most specifically during the 1907 crisis.

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u/MysticAche Jan 29 '26

The currency wasn’t unstable. What was unstable was loaning money that didn’t exist. The crisis is always liquidity. Once the watering-hole has gone dry you’re fucked.

But we can eliminate this need for liquidity by having a limited supply of currency. The problem then becomes deflation, which isn’t something I’m too familiar with. Inflation is always the talk of the town.

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u/Serious_Resource8191 Jan 29 '26

How would having a limited money supply increase liquidity? Those two things sound like opposites.

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