In the early 1530s, a Spanish conquistador named Diego de Ordaz was exploring modern-day Venezuela when he first heard rumors of a nearby City of Gold.
Ordaz thought he was about to hit the jackpot. And he wasted no time ordering expeditions of the area to find this city– what eventually became known as El Dorado.
The mission failed, and most of Ordaz’s men died. But one survivor, a crewman named Juan Martinez, claimed that he had been captured and held prisoner for 10 years in El Dorado.
Martinez told sensational tales about the city’s golden structures adorned with precious stones, and even said that the local king bathed in gold dust every morning.
Martinez also said that the people of El Dorado were all so rich with gold that no one really had to work. They had constant festivals and would often feast for seven days straight.
Europeans were instantly hooked. And more expeditions were immediately launched.
The conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro (half brother to Francisco Pizarro) was so fanatical about El Dorado’s existence that he marched thousands of people through the jungles of South America for eighteen months looking for the city.
Pizarro came up empty-handed, and most of his men died.
And yet there were still countless expeditions launched over the next several decades in search of the lost City of Gold.
Everyone desperately wanted to believe in this fairy tale– that there was a place overflowing with money where everyone could live for free and spend their lives feasting and drinking.
Maybe this desire is hard coded in our DNA because there still seem to be people who believe in it.
Today’s version of El Dorado is the printing press. Politicians seem to have a fanatical belief that they can conjure paper money out of thin air and pay for everything.
For instance, #RentStrike2020 is a nationwide movement in the Land of the Free to simply cancel rent.
People want months of rent and mortgage payments to be forgiven. Poof, disappeared.
And the Bolsheviks have answered their call.
Congress is now considering the Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act which would cancel all rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the pandemic, and possibly beyond for up to a year.
And the law would be retroactive, so they’d go back in time to March 13 to cancel rent.
The government would then set up a fund for landlords and mortgage holders “allowing them to recoup their losses, so long as they agree to abide by a set of fair renting and lending practices for a period of five years.”
Some of those conditions include not raising the rent for five years, and not denying renters based on credit history, or criminal record.
This is insane. First the government will tell landlords that the contracts they signed are void. And then, if someone wants to rent your property who has a history of not paying rent, you’re not allowed to reject them.
But as long as you bend the knee to DC, they’ll print the money to pay you.
Another bill proposes to pay $2,000 per month, for the next year, to every American over the age of 16 who makes less than $130,000 per year.
This includes high school students, and people who were previously not working.
Naturally the bill doesn’t mention costs. Why bother with such a trivial detail?
But based on the number of people who qualify, the cost could easily top $4 trillion.
That’s more than the entire federal tax revenue last year! They would literally spend every penny they collected in taxes last year just for that one program.
But no one really cares anymore. There are no rules, and both the government and central bank have decided they’ll do whatever it takes during this pandemic.
What’s really remarkable is that they seem to believe all this deficit spending and money printing will produce favorable results.
If you could simply print money to become a prosperous nation, then Zimbabwe would be the wealthiest country in the world.
But that’s not how it works. Creating more money is not the same as creating value.
Value creation is difficult. It requires talented people to work hard work and produce; it cannot be conjured out of thin air by a bureaucrat.
Right now the economy is shrinking. Millions of people have lost their jobs, which means there’s a whole lot less value being created.
Yet simultaneously they’re printing more money than ever.
You don’t have to have a PhD in economics to understand the mismatch here.
But then again, politicians aren’t exactly known for their grasp of finance.
For example– Queen Bolshevik, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, gleefully celebrated oil’s MINUS $40 price earlier this week, and predicted that the crash would prompt people to switch over to renewable energy sources.
What is this person thinking?? Ultra-cheap oil will compel people to use MORE oil, not less. Duh.
If anything she should hope for a $150 oil price and record high profits for oil companies. Renewable energy would be MUCH cheaper at that point, and people would have a big incentive to switch.
AOC clearly has no understanding of finance or economics… which is ironic because she’s one of the biggest fanatics of the printing press myth.
No one has to work. No one has to pay their rent. They government is just going to print money and send everyone a check every month.
It took nearly 500 years, but America has finally found the lost city of El Dorado. It’s called the Federal Reserve.
And just like El Dorado, its wealth is entirely mythical.
