Photo Credit: Dunk|| Aside from the last election, I can’t think of a worse pair to choose from.

I wrote a piece 4.6 years ago to kvetch about the lousy choices in the 2016 Presidential Elections. It is no better today in political terms, and times are worse in prospect now.

Whereas the last post focused on individual choices, and why it is stupid to look to politicians to increase prosperity, this one is going to point to a grimmer reality. We are headed for a crisis, and the following parties are out of touch with reality:

• The far-left
• The far-right
• Trump
• Biden
• Congress, inhabited by the permanent government of the Purple Party
• The grand majority of the media, which is innumerate, and economically illiterate
• The American people generally

You can’t get something for nothing. You can’t print or borrow prosperity. Prosperity comes from producing products or services that other people want. Everything else is a sideshow.

These are realities that the next President and Congress will bump into, regardless of who is elected:

• We will begin to run into borrowing limits.
• We will begin to experience inflation — at least, poor people will experience inflation. DC doesn’t care about poor people. They will only get alarmed if inflation affects the middle and upper classes.
• Monetary policy will either prove impotent, or it will take over areas that properly belong to private banks, leading to favoritism in the provision of credit.
• Municipal pension funds will see their funding levels deteriorate. Medicare’s funding will deteriorate. So will that of Social Security.
• Some major currencies will experience a crisis. It may not be the US Dollar. It might be the Euro, Yen, or Yuan. Personally, I think the Euro is structurally the weakest, but seeing a major currency fail will set the world on edge, and make everyone ask what currency defines value.

Ask yourself this: who cares about the long run? I don’t see anyone among major politicians who cares about the long run. This is the sort of behavior that exists prior to a revolution. Self-interested parties bicker with one another over short-term matters, while long-term problems are ignored.

Now, many people, including the editors of Barron’s praise the Fed for being a guardian of the economy while Congress and the White House bicker. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Fed has been complicit with the government by not letting recessions clear out bad debt, and forcing Congress and the Executive Branch to own up to their foolish policies.

Instead, the Fed has encouraged public and private debt to the degree that bailouts by the Fed and Congress MUST happen, or we will get a depression. And as a result, will they finally begin monetizing the debt of the US Government directly, so that we can have severe inflation? That may be the only way to get rid of the debt, but will it create a revolution en route?

Friends, the promises of venal politicians are catching up to us. The unwillingness to have stable policies like balanced budgets, which work really well if adhered to, are a remote dream of our parents.

Okay, we may not have a crisis by 2025, but a crisis is coming, and with most crises, the weakest are hurt the most. To that end, the Democrats should be the most cautious about deficits, but the short-term governs politics.

To that end, I will say that your vote doesn’t matter. There are bigger economic forces that will constrain politicians, and the same result is coming regardless of who is elected. The Republicans and Democrats are a duopoly which should be abolished, and they cooperate together for bad policy that harms average people in America.

PS — the far right and the far left in the media live to create fear. They lie to their bases to stir them up. Don’t listen to them. Economically and politically, the truth is in the center, if we will ever remember to run balanced budgets, and not run profligate monetary policies.