The 1940s vs 2020s: Debt Levels, Monetary Policy, and Cryptos as Global Currencies | Lyn Alden

Inflation is proving stickier than anyone would have hoped. Lyn Alden, the author of Broken Money: Why Our Financial System Is Failing Us and How We Can Make It Better and my guest today, offers a cogent explanation of why, likening it to the fiscal-driven inflation of the 1940s.
Lyn explains how the pandemic-era fiscal stimulus continues to affect our economy, along with increasing geopolitical instability and the runaway federal deficit. We also discuss bitcoin’s special role in emerging markets, vulnerabilities in our banking system, and the problem with India’s central bank digital currency.
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Time stamps:
00:00 - Introduction
07:35 - How the deficit is accelerating
15:05 - The evolution of every fiat currency
22:31 - Digital bank runs
32:33 - Taxation of crypto and capital controls
36:26 - India’s central bank digital currency
41:21 - How traceable is bitcoin?
45:31 - How we’ll reset government debt
50:13 - Where to invest now

[@MauldinEconomicsYouTube]

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[@ralfhildenbrand2698]

Lyn is truly brilliant. I would wish our governments would listen to such brilliant minds.

[@NatiaMaisuradze-ey5iq]

Seeing patterns recur in financial markets over time is quite fascinating. Artur Grandi's book offers a systematic approach to keeping investments stable and explores opportunities, including cryptocurrencies.

[@mikesimpson4915]

I’m 61yrs, and have been in the markets in banking for several years and have been very sceptical of bitcoin from inception. Lyn has opened my eyes with this interview and am looking forward to reading the book. Thank you.

[@twitafftwitaff7029]

You should also pick up and read Jeff Booths book: The price of tomorrow. It is a great addition to Lyn's book

[@47allenr]

Very educational. I hope we see more of Lyn Alden on Mauldin Economics.

[@rajachan8588]

Terrific episode. People like Lyn should be featured more. Thanks 🙏

[@Jontellis]

Love Lyn! 🧠

[@P__114]

Lyn is the best

[@dr.orange1605]

Amazing interview!

[@jonbarker92]

I came here from Twitter. Great interview !

[@jonathantan3690]

Amazing as usual from my all time favourite Ms Lynn. Bravo!

[@leyu85]

Very illustrative interview ❤

[@anandagarwal7237]

Excellent analysis

[@vfc1860]

Lyn’s the best

[@vfc1860]

She is my go to brain

[@thesilentgeneration]

I wish I understood completely what she talks about, but some of it makes sense to me. So, it's all about leverage or debt that we have gotten ourselves into and now have great difficulty getting out. Or no way to get out!

[@P__114]

Read her book, it’s incredible

[@sh4969]

I learnt some thing about India , India has already has 10,000 metric tons of silver in Febuary it brought 8% of silver that's in the world. If it does that every month for 2024 that is 8x12=96% of world silver above ground for one Country. So that's common knowledge doing research so the silver price could jump up to $100 then $300-$800 then in 10 years it could go up to $60,000 a ounce & beyond. Who knows? But remember to buy seeds to grow food in your garden or land you have if the whole banking system collapses.

[@TheGoldeagle99]

...at 50:33 he mentioned agricultural commodities and U.S. based oil...are there any companies in the stock market that are strictly U.S. oil companies?...

[@MauldinEconomicsYouTube]

Devon Energy is an example.

[@FloydThePink]

In a grid down scenario, how do you spend bitcoin or trade it for cash? What if that pile of dollars you get for a bitcoin is hyperinflated to zero value? So far I do not have an answer for this, so staying with silver (until GSR goes below 30ish).

[@Robert-un3cf]

You mean a scenario where the whole power grid goes down, or the whole internet (for an extended time)? Both of these systems are extremely robust and fault tolerant due to their large scale distributed nature. Not too dissimilar from bitcoin itself. Personally Im not basing my decisions on the expectation of a hypothetical remote possibility.

[@juicymelodic]

When the power grid goes down. The civilization ends. 80% of the first world starves to death within 1 month.

[@julietrapp1764]

Lyn is a brainiac. It's a privilege to listen to what she thinks.

[@piotrmarianna]

Well organized interview, but since the topics are quite fact-based, it would have been great addition - if the supporting charts and ideas were presented in graphical form. Yes, it takes extra effort to prepare, but it would have enhanced this interview by 50%, imo. Just verbal descriptions don't do that.

[@thesilentgeneration]

Does anyone have any idea how all of this will affect the Philippine economy, as its fiat money is linked to the dollar. I just don't know how much control the government has over its money.

[@aperson1181]

how come TIPS over longer treasuries?

[@Baha2490]

Guaranteed to follow inflation.

[@jgalt308]

`So you really don't understand that "fiat" thing, huh?

[@kylejohnson4083]

Argentina? George Gammon and his crew are there right now and they couldn't find anyone in Argentina to accept Bitcoin! It looks like Stable coins are what Argentinians want. The practical use of bitcoin has a LOOOOOONG way to go. Please watch all of his videos regarding his "freedom" tour of Chile and Argentina and judge for yourself.

[@twitafftwitaff7029]

It's practical use is happening now.

[@davebrewer7170]

Bitcoin will never be widespread medium of exchange. Why spend Bitcoin when you can spend dollars? Ever heard saying - bad money forces out the good? No one uses gold to make day to day purchases, but gold is clearly money. Stop imagining bitcoin used for day to day purchases. Anyone who does that on a regular basis to buy a daily coffee is an idiot that doesn’t understand bitcoin

[@genestone4951]

You think you understand, but you don't. The POS (point of sale) issue is more about usage cost than Bitcoin vs a stablecoin. Layer 2 networks like Lightning solve that. The bigger problem tho is pure FX related. If you hold a fiat, and you hold Bitcoin, it would be dumb to spend the Bitcoin. You hold the good money and you spend the bad money. This is the same reason that Microstrategy issues Dollar denominated bonds to buy Bitcoin. He's borrowing bad money to buy good money.

[@wasdwasdedsf]

lol gammon in argentina and shows us how nobody cares or want to use bitcoin? what a surprise from the establishment puppet...

[@meagain2222]

Maitreya says the world will eventually adopt a one world currency which gets its value from all commodities. This would eliminate individual countries having their own currency which can be inflated at will and that makes the currency worth less and less.

[@MauldinEconomicsYouTube]

That would imply global cooperation. I'm not optimistic.

[@psikeyhackr6914]

Adam Smith used the word 'education' Eighty Times in Wealth of Nations. He wrote "read, write and account" multiple times. Is there any western nation that could not have made accounting/finance mandatory in high schools since Sputnik? No way! Those kids gotta read *The Catcher in the Rye* .

[@psikeyhackr6914]

What about Planned Obsolescence and Depreciation? A couple of decades ago I asked a PhD economist to explain how an automobile engine worked. He couldn't even start though he drove an SUV that was Whiter than he was. I decided to go to college for engineering in 7th grade and was debating between mechanical and electrical engineering in 11th grade. I went to college for Electrical Engineering and worked for IBM eventually. How anyone could not figure out that Planned Obsolescence was going on in automobiles by 1980 is beyond me. Karl Marx used the word 'depreciation' 35 times in the first two volumes of his major work. Where is the data on what American consumers have lost on the depreciation of automobiles each year since Sputnik? Economists mention GDP a lot but not NDP. Net Domestic Product does not make it onto the radar screen. The Depreciation of Capital Goods, like industrial robots and 18-wheel trucks, gets subtracted but not Joe Blow's automobile. So we have been running the planet on defective algebra while the world population has tripled. The concept of GNP/GDP was developed in the late 1930s and then WWII pulled the United States out of the Great Depression. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations has been free on the internet since 2001. He used the word 'education' Eighty Times. He wrote "read, write and account" multiple times, not "read, write and arithmetic". Milton Friedman never pointed that out while he was slapping us around with "the Invisible Hand". Smith only used that term one time. So we have now had decades of stoopid Planned Obsolescence Consumer Economics where economists do not have to do algebra and seem to be technological illiterates. Happy E-waste to planet Earth! Gotta stop those Chinese from using RISC-V. LOL A little light reading: *The Screwing of the Average Man* (1974) by David Hapgood

[@jefferyjeffery1707]

Well....not really!! Spending in the 1940's....war & post WW2 transition, in the US. Yes...there was massive 1940's spending deficits. Ok...but that spending went to building infrastructure. And building infrastructure will rapidly grow GDP. That drastically expands the economy...and then increases tax flow back into govt. In which.... This 1940's spending....created a HUGE boom in the US economy for the next 20 years. That in turn created another boom in new US technology....that fed into another US boom. In fact....massive deficit spending to incresse infrastructure and GDP...is exactly what Japan did. To suddenly becoming a booming country. That dominated the world.

[@cekz5199]

Shes talks good talk and is convincing but its just circular speak. All decent mmt economist debunk most these understandings of debt. Theres no debt crisis private vs govt debt is like a seesaw floating on water. The water is the wealth of the nation and the debt just shifts back and forth. Its only a crisis if the hinges break and there becomes only govt debt or only private debt as you need govt and private investments ( short term and long term) aka risky and risk adverse.

[@cloudiermonk]

We need a btc mixer

[@genestone4951]

Bisq or Lightning.

[@cloudiermonk]

@genestone4951 they have blocked lighting in the USA can't use it if you want to.

[@altaimountain]

come on. China doesnt have a social credit system. I thought Lyn would be more informed than that. I don't see how bitcoin is beneficial for money transfers and settlements. I can send money in an instant over the globe thru western union and a dozen of other money transfer service providers for a token fee straight to the bank account. Why would I need to open an account at some crypto exchange, do KYC, buy btc, send it, pay a hefty fee only for recipient to receive a different dollar amount coz in the meantime btc went up or down 5-10% and the recipient then needing to cash out btc into their currency thru equally complicated process. This is all too cumbersome and def no sovereign power is gonna use btc for anything. all these potential use cases for crypto failed already. its not a currency, its just another digital token to hoard, just like stocks. theres literally no difference btw buying nvdia calls and buying bitcoin. the motivation is the same and the difficulty of buying an asset is similar.

[@PonziZombieKiller]

Charlie Munger

[@roystroble3354]

Who's this dude

[@davidwestwater2219]

Bitcoin only matters

[@Mauitaoist]

She?

[@Reotha]

"Hehe"-Michael jackson