Strange Bedfellows Indeed: Trump and AOC Converge on Monetary Policy
The comments below are an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by John Rubino
President Trump and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez don’t agree on much and would be loath to admit it if they did. But their ideas on monetary policy are converging on the same goal: Easy money forever.
Trump is trying to force the deep state to devalue the dollar, and AOC is basically doing the same thing.
It would be ironic if the most outspoken socialist in Congress turned out to be instrumental in re-electing Trump by making easy money acceptable just in time for 2020.
But—as strange as this new alignment of the political stars looks at first glance—it’s also inevitable. Once a society takes on more debt than it can ever hope to pay off, the only way to avoid another Great Depression is to inflate away the currency. Thus, it should come as no surprise that both ends of the ideological spectrum are rationalizing lower (and soon negative) interest rates and next-gen QE.
And it won’t be a surprise when these policies create exactly the kind of chaos that always results when governments try this kind of thing.
Now for the gold plug: Each and every time something similar has happened in the past, gold and silver preserved purchasing power, which is to say they soared in local currency terms. This time will be no different.