The Senate may have pulled the trigger on hyperinflation Saturday.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, listed the harm inflicted by Democrats since Joe Biden’s inauguration.
"Damage Biden & Pelosi have already done," he tweeted Sunday, and listed them as:
- Canceled KeystoneXL & killed jobs
- Ended border wall construction amid surge
- Halted deportation of criminals
- Passed a bill to defund police
- Sided with unions to keep schools closed
"This week?" Scalise continued. "Pelosi is coming for your gun rights."
As bad as those items are, they’re not the worst of it.
After a marathon weekend and hours of Senate Democrats browbeating Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., into toeing the party line, the Senate approved its massive $1.9 trillion CARES Act, which purports to be a COVID relief package.
Not a single Republican voted for it; not a single Democrat voted against it.
The Babylon Bee, a satirical website, proved once again that there’s often little difference between satire and fact when it tweeted afterwards, “Gang Of Masked Bandits Steals Another Few Trillion From Your Grandchildren.”
But generational theft may not be the worst of it. The CARES Act, in concert with a largely closed economy, may be enough to bring the United States to its knees, especially if it prints more money to finance it.
Scion Asset Management founder Michael Burry began sounding the alarm nearly a year ago, when he emailed BNN Bloomberg that he had set up his very first Twitter account to warn the public of a coming crisis.
Burry gained fame in 2008 when he foresaw the home mortgage crisis and made a bundle betting against the U.S. housing market.
"I joined Twitter because I was deeply saddened by a national shut-in that is devastating the livelihoods of Americans in many ways," Burry said in the email. "I saw the prevailing narratives ignoring the masses that are not at lethal risk from COVID-19."
He argued that there was no need to shut down the economy, because only a small percentage of Americans were considered “at risk” from COVID.
And he’s not alone. Last month, Bank of America Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett hinted that if the United States continues on its current path, a Weimar-like period of hyperinflation may be in our future.
Joel Griffith, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Economic Institute, tells Newsmax that "concerns are rising, and it’s not just free market economists or conservative economists."
He observes that even "Larry Summers, who’s a pretty center-left former President Obama advisor — he’s warning too that there’s going to be some negative repercussions from this next stimulus package."
Summers cautioned in a Washington Post column that the nearly $2 trillion CARES Act could "set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation . . . Stimulus measures of the magnitude contemplated are steps into the unknown."
Griffith tells Newsmax that the signs are already appearing. "We’ve seen prices begin to rise," he says. "It’s not all directed to money printing, but it’s one of the reasons. And if you look at the value of our dollar overall, the dollar has declined by 10% versus other currencies."
ZeroHedge reported that Burry posted a lengthy Twitter thread last month, in which he compared U.S. events and conditions in 2010-2021, to those in 1914-1926 in the German Weimar Republic, which led up to the most devastating hyperinflation in world history.
Griffith agrees that "the worse-case scenario is hyperinflation. When you have more dollars chasing the goods and services available, that means you’re going to increase the cost of those goods and services, and by diminishing the value of the dollar, it’s a hidden tax on everyone who has tried to save and prepare for the future."
He adds, "we’ve begin devaluing [the dollar] now. The balance sheet of the Fed has increased by more than $4 trillion over the course of the last year. That’s $40,000-plus for each family of four. It’s printed the money."
On Feb. 21, Burry tweeted, "People say I didn't warn last time. I did, but no one listened. So I warn this time. And still, no one listens. But I will have proof I warned."
Shortly after that he deleted his tweets.
Most recently Burry warned of a stock market bubble that will eventually burst, just as he warned of the 2008 housing market bubble.
The freedom each state has to independently deal with the pandemic may be the one saving grace for the country.
Griffith observes that "there are eight states that have a bigger economy now than they had pre-pandemic."
It’s past time to take the advice Burry offered nearly a year ago and open the country before it’s too late.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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