Washington’s latest bailout scheme will rob you blind for years to come.

I object!

Sometimes the stuff we talk about here is pretty academic. This country is up… that sector is down. Sometimes it’s all about a specific stock idea that you might care to invest in.

But today, I am writing to you about something that affects me on the most personal level (I’ll just bet it affects you the same way too), and I’m really ticked off about it.

Bandits in Academic Robes

I’ve got a statement in front of me right now by Gregory Mankiw and Kenneth Rogoff, baldly stating that they wish to take away a major portion of my hard-earned money (and yours) for years to come – and give it to idiots.

Rogoff and Mankiw are your classic ivory tower types who spend their adult lives hiding out in the nooks and crannies of our shadow government, pontificating on how the little people ought to live.

Mankiw has degrees from Harvard, Princeton and MIT, and did a stint as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. When he wasn’t busy demonstrating his skills as a chess prodigy, Rogoff managed to collect sheepskins from Harvard, MIT and Yale. Both get their schemes and rants published regularly in the top economic policy journals.

In Too Deep

Some say these are real smart guys. Certainly their word is trusted as cant in the highest circles of the land. They are exactly the kind of clowns who got us into the mess we’re in these days. So when they propose to rob us blind, I get worried – and I get mad.

These wise guys have looked around at all those poor folks who are drowning in debt: garden-variety rubes with insane mortgages no one could service… crooked corporations with loans they can’t pay off… banks that are (STILL!) sitting on toxic bonds – even Washington itself, which is now borrowing a dollar for every two dollars it spends.

The conclusion they have come to? None of these fools can possibly pay off this debt the way things are currently structured. Just can’t be done. The capital alone is mind blowing, and the daily accrual of interest is staggering.

Washington’s Secret Tax

So they have come up with a way to force you, me, and everyone we know to pay it off for them – in essence, by way of a massive secret tax that will never get voted on by Congress or be signed by any president.

Here’s how their scheme will work: They propose that Washington deliberately jack up the inflation rate three-fold. That way, all those folks who borrowed dollars of a certain size – that is to say, dollars that could purchase a certain amount of goods – could pay off those debts in dramatically smaller dollars that could buy a heck of a lot fewer goods.

Let me try and demonstrate in the simplest of terms why this is great for idiots and terrible news for regular, normal, virtuous folks like you and me.

The Wages of Sin

Let’s say you lent your ne’er-do-well nephew a hundred bucks when a strong dollar could buy a dozen eggs. Instead of investing that money in, oh I don’t know, chickens and feed, he spends that money on what he usually spends money on – horses and beer – with the usual results: a hangover and not much else.

Now his current paycheck is $10 a week, and he’s got to cover room and board with most all of it. (Yeah, I know, my wage figures are a century out of date, your nephew would never settle for a loan that small, and nobody buys chickens anymore. But they are nice round figures that are easy to understand, so let’s just go with them for now.)

It would take him a hundred years just to pay back the principal. As for interest? As they say in Jersey, “fergeddaboudit.” But what if he could earn $20 a week, without working any harder (which is good, because we all know that his allergy to working hard is what got him in trouble in the first place).

Now he can pay you back much faster, right?

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

Yes and no. But mostly no.

That is to say, yes, your nephew could pay you back, but the only way to make double the paycheck without double the work is to halve the purchasing power of each dollar.

So while he suddenly can pay you back, each dollar he pays you can only buy six eggs. Oh and by the way, each dollar you work for at your decent job can only buy six eggs too. Also, all the money you have worked so hard to save? It just got cut in half too.

This is what Rogoff and Mankiw (and Bernanke, Geithner and Obama too, for that matter) are proposing. The only way we can avoid a massive tsunami of defaults that would make the current round of Wall Street failures and house foreclosures look like a frog hiccupping in a small pond, is to deliberately induce inflation rates between 6% and 12% for years to come.

That way, all those folks who are up to their neck in it can pay off in cheap, watered-down dollars. And all those folks like you and me, who work their rears off, save against the future, and pay off debt whenever possible? Our savings and paychecks, even our stock market gains – all denominated in dollars – get watered down too.

This Is Really Happening, and It’s Happening Right Now

Think this is just theoretical? That I am just another one of those cranky ivory tower types too?

I used eggs in my example on purpose. This week, the Labor Department announced that they have climbed 40% in the past month. Nor are eggs isolated in their increase. Also setting new multi-month highs this month are beef, cotton, coffee, vegetables, crude oil and gasoline.

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This is no theory. No sour griping. Anyone involved in dollar trading knows it’s happening already. Just take a look at the dollar index chart above and you can see that the wise guys are already bailing out.

They know the truth: Washington is looking to rob us blind. And this time, I am taking it personally.

Other Related Topics: Economic Growth , Editor Adam Lass , U.S. Dollar , WaveStrength Options Weekly

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