1/ My new essay "The Invisible Cost of War in the Age of Quantitative Easing" is live.

Putin was able to invade Ukraine because there are no checks on his tyrannical power.

Democracies in theory should be more constrained in warmaking.

But are they? 🧵

bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/how-th…
2/ One of the greatest argued strengths of democracy is Democratic Peace Theory

DPT observes that democracies are less likely to fight, and especially less likely to fight each other.

Democratize the world, get world peace.

But this story has one big flaw: fiat central banking
3/ Post-1971 America in the role of the world's leading democracy and guarantor of the international system has transformed how it finances war.

In the first half of the 20th century, wars were fought with taxes and "liberty bonds"

WWII was 50% financed by taxes, Korea 100%
4/ Post-1971, everything changed. There would be no more war taxes after 1968, and no more liberty bonds.

War was placed on the national credit card.

America's post-9/11 wars have been paid for exclusively by borrowing.
5/ Combined with the end to conscription--and the rise of drones and robotics--borrowing for war (instead of taxing or raising money specifically for it) has led to a population that is not engaged with and knows very little about the wars its government wages across the world
6/ For example, how many Americans know about Operation Inherent Resolve?

It's a newer 8-year war, launched by Obama, that has cost tens of billions of dollars and is being fought in Syria, Iraq, and Libya.

Paid for entirely by borrowing from the future.
7/ In order to fight the US government's post-9/11 "credit card" wars, the American people have already paid ~ $1 trillion in interest alone, just on the money that their government borrowed to fight those wars.

This is not a widely discussed fact. Some might say it is hidden.
8/ US entitlements remain largely paid by taxes but when it comes to exotic forever wars, they are paid by credit.

This is possible because interest rates on US debt are near-zero and cheap to pay back

But if rates went to 3% the US would owe ~25% of its tax revenue on interest
9/ The Fed has purchased ~ $9 trillion of US debt and financial assets since 2008.

Since March 2020 the Fed has purchased ~ $4.7 million of assets *per minute*

This puts upward pressure on the price of US debt, and downward pressure on rates, reducing the cost of borrowing.
10/ Of course, US treasuries remain the most desired financial collateral in the world.

But 15 years of enormous buying pressure from the buyer of last resort to the tune of almost $10 trillion has had an undeniable impact on the market, mechanically and psychologically.
11/ Without QE/ZIRP, US interest rates would be higher, and the forever wars would be cut shorter.

Of course, proponents of QE and debt monetization do not talk about foreign policy.

In Stephanie Kelton's 300-page "The Deficit Myth," the words Iraq and Afghanistan do not appear
12/ It's true that the post-1971 fiat standard monetary system has made it possible to pay for more social welfare in the US.

But it has also made it possible to pay for a lot more sustained war than otherwise possible.

The latter is almost never discussed.
13/ ZIRP and QE have other negative externalities for Americans.

They may make it possible to continue fighting forever wars without needing to raise taxes or raise war-specific bonds, but they also cause asset inflation and increase inequality.
14/ In the early 90s, the 1% owned about 23% of American household wealth.

Today after three decades of easy monetary policy, with interest rates falling from 8% to 0.08%, the 1% own about 32%.

Meanwhile, the bottom 90% saw their wealth share decline from 40% to less than 30%
15/ In a country where the top 10% own almost 90% of the stocks, asset inflation is a redistributionary phenomenon.

But extreme inequality isn't the only major downside of debt-financed spending.
16/ In the late 1960s, as the gold standard came to an end, and the fiat standard began; in the mid 1980s; and again in the early 2000s, the US embarked on a series of debt-financed military buildups.

Each one ended in a catastrophic financial crisis.
17/ The first was followed by a run on the dollar, the Nixon Shock, the end of the gold standard, and dollar devaluation.

The second was followed by the Savings and Loan Crisis and Black Monday.

The third was followed by the subprime-triggered Global Financial Crisis.
18/ In the fiat age, debt-financed military buildups cause crashes.

And in today's GWOT, America is now at an all-time high of debt-to-GDP ratio, topping 130%

Even if we stop them today, we'll owe $2T on post-9/11 war spending by 2030, and $6T by 2050
19/ It's possible that the interest we owe on the post-9/11 wars eventually eclipses *actual spending* on these wars.

And this comes at a time when demand for US debt has peaked, and the US dollar system is under enormous stress, with Russia and China perhaps splitting away.
20/ Smith, Mill, and Keynes all argued borrowing for war was a bad idea, especially if it caused rates to rise.

But America figured out a magic trick to borrow for sustained war with low rates.

As Cicero said, “nervi belli pecunia infinita”—the sinews of war are infinite money.
21/ So how do we prevent the Credit Card Wars from further eroding democracy?

Conscription could work, but is politically impossible and morally dubious.

War taxes + liberty bonds could work, but these seem politically impossible, too.

Would a war bond even pass the ESG test?
22/ One option would be a move away from the fiat standard to a new kind of more restrained monetary standard.

It may sound far-fetched, and central banks would never choose it willingly, but many of us believe a Bitcoin standard is a future possibility.
23/ This neutral, open, predictably scarce, and decentralized money has grown from an idea to a trillion-dollar asset, and could potentially see a wave of global adoption in the next decade amidst high inflation, fiat devaluation, and financial repression.
24/ If the world's leading democracy couldn't simply issue bonds with one hand and buy them with the other, if its central bank and private sector were constrained by a BTC position, then there would be a spending triage.

Exotic wars might be one of the first things to go.
25/ The US earns enough income to pay for most of its entitlements.

But we borrow to fight the forever wars.

Defensive or just wars could still be fought and waged in a Bitcoin standard, but unpopular ones could not be sustained.

The cost of war would be invisible no longer.
26/ If you enjoyed this thread, you can read the full essay here.

Thanks to @BitcoinMagazine for the opportunity to go so deep into a topic.

I hope this helps spark more debate over war finance ✌️

bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/how-th…
27/ This essay was inspired by the work of thinkers who may disagree but are all hugely insightful

Follow them!

-@sekreps
-@LJBilmes
-@rosellacappella
-@CLeonardNews
-@MacroAlf
-@LynAldenContact
-@LukeGromen
-@thoatley
-@FedGuy12
-@saifedean
-@CryptoHayes
-@BichlerNitzan

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More from @gladstein

Feb 28
My show with @PeterMcCormack on the economics of war is out today

We recorded in early Feb, before most thought Putin would invade Ukraine, but the thesis remains the same

Borrowing for war, as America has done since Vietnam, is a threat to democracy

War finance in America is headed in an undemocratic direction

Decisions about how to pay for war have been taken out of the public's hands

No longer does the US fund war with the people's consent through taxation or liberty bonds

All conflict is now paid for with borrowing
One of the most attractive and important features of a democracy is that it's less likely to go to war than a dictatorship

But fiat currency and central banking is damaging the American democratic model, making it less connected to the people and less able to stop or shorten war
Read 7 tweets
Feb 25
Thread with some recommended organizations to support in Ukraine 🇺🇦 🧵

1) The “Return Alive Foundation,” an NGO obtaining life-saving equipment for Ukrainian soldiers:

savelife.in.ua/en/donate/

(Accepts BTC)
2) The @KyivIndependent, producing some of the best independent media in the region, reporting on the ground from the war

kyivindependent.com
3) The Hospital Medical Battalion, helping healthcare workers in hot conflict zones.

This is an NGO supporting crews of volunteer paramedics on the front lines:

facebook.com/hospitallers/p…
Read 8 tweets
Feb 14
Hello from one of the biggest Bitcoin mines in Norway! 🇳🇴 ✌️

It was a pleasure to visit KryptoVault's Hønesfoss site today to see the impact that CEO Kjetil Hove Pettersen and team are making by harnessing running water to help defend open-source money for people worldwide
One thing I learned from Kjetil is that in addition to helping to secure the global Bitcoin network--which tens of millions of people rely on everywhere from Cuba to Iran to Palestine--they are also assisting local communities in Norway, like our friend here, a local lumberjack
Norway's sustainable forestry industry (Norwegian forests grow by about 25 million cubic meters of timber per year) often dries lumber in the summer sun, taking 2-3 months.

But here, using excess heat from Bitcoin mining, wood takes as little as 4 days to dry
Read 10 tweets
Feb 12
This @ecb paper on CBDCs reveals what kind of plans central bankers are toying with:

-Overcoming use of banknotes for savings
-Overcoming ZLB with negative interest rates on cash
-Easier ability to provide helicopter money
-Larger seignorage income to the state
-End to privacy
Full paper: "Tiered CBDC and the Financial System"

(H/T: @HaggsBoson)

ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps…
I would point out that these “benefits” are mainly monetary, for the state. Ending privacy is nice for them but they have bigger aims

Satoshi knew
Read 4 tweets
Feb 1
Some thoughts on the @saylor / @jack fireside:

On Bitcoin's global impact, Jack says it's important for there to be a world currency where "decisions in Washington don't impact people in Nigeria"

Saylor brings up the Blocksize Wars and says he didn't appreciate their significance when he first learned about Bitcoin but now realizes how critical they were.

Jack points out how remarkable the outcome was given that Satoshi didn't have to get involved.
Jack mentions that in Bitcoin, "nothing is hidden"

This is, IMO, one of the most important parts about Bitcoin.

Everything is open and knowable. There are no smoky back rooms.
Read 20 tweets
Jan 30
1/ Democratic Peace Theory rests on the idea that democracies have “skin in the game” when it comes to war and are less likely to fight than autocracies unless for a narrowly-defined, popular, vital cause.

This book by @sekreps argues convincingly that this theory is broken 🧵 Image
2/ History shows that over time representative governments—especially in this case the US—inevitably turn to financing war through *borrowing* instead of through taxes or war bonds, hiding the immediate costs of war from a public that is less and less interested in war fighting.
3/ America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and the ongoing Global War on Terror) were — unlike WWI or WW2 or even Vietnam — paid for *entirely* by borrowing.

Bush even cut taxes during the Iraq War.

So far Americans have paid ~ $1 trillion on interest for this borrowing spree.
Read 7 tweets

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