I read ZeroHedge on a regular basis. I think I would be very rich if I could bet against their predictions. As the old joke goes, they have predicted five of the last three recessions. They are not entirely off base, but the world has not collapsed and its not going to collapse, most likely. What they get right is that most of our troubles are linked to the currency arrangements. Floating fiat currency has unleashed all sorts of new forces that policy makers cannot comprehend.

Money is a store of value. Going to the market with my goats to trade for shoes is a big hassle. I have to find someone who wants goats, but also has shoes. The ability to store the value of those goats into coin makes the whole thing easier. Giving central banks the right to arbitrarily alter the value of the coin is, in effect, the right to arbitrarily alter the value of my goats and by extension, my labor. That’s another way of saying the Feds get to alter the value of me. That’s a terrible weapon with unknown unknowns. Sorting through all of these unknown results has befuddled our rulers for several decades now.

Even so, the world has not changed all that much. The currency manipulation is due, in large part, to the need for governments to raise money. The corporatist state needs a lot of money to buy off interest groups, satisfy grievance groups, pay for cradle to grave custody of the citizens and empire maintenance. Normal taxing is limited by economic growth, which is about 5% per year after inflation. US debt has grown ten percent a year since 1980, so it is not hard to see what has been happening.

Instead of exponential credit growth, how about the government sell ads on our money? They could offer Walmart, for example, the chance to sponsor the twenty. Instead of Jackson on the front, it could the Walmart logo with “Brought to You By Walmart!” Singles could be festooned with ads from small companies. Since each run could have different sponsors, your handful of singles would have a bunch of different ads. Given the booming strip club culture in America, these ads would sell like crazy. “This pole dance brought to by the Federal Reserve and the good folks at Budweiser!”

Of course, another way to do this would be to let big companies offer their own currency. A big reason central banks are forever fiddling with currency values is to satisfy the demands of global corporations. Europeans have always preferred authoritarian government, but Americans would rather have global corporations to the shoving around of the citizens. That way we can pretend to be a self-governing republic. That means the state has to “do a lot of favors” for the global operators.

The truth is, we are breaking up into corporate camps anyway. The MacCult calls themselves “Apple families”so letting them have their own currency is not a great leap. Look at how irritating they are with ApplePay and that has been out for just a few months. That would make it easy for the MacCult to spot “haters” because those would be the people using GoogleBucks or MSMoney. It would have to be backed by stock or other assets, but it worked in the 19th century during the free banking era.