Money and Disaster

(this letter found in a traveling case, written upon one of my journeys to the Southern realms, and misplaced.  Please forgive my tardiness in posting it to you, dear Midas...)


My dear Midas,

It is interesting to watch the world in the throes of a great crisis, as it is now.  Perhaps it is a time to learn something about the lessons of good administration of money in your realm, and why and how when crises such as these befall us we should learn where and how to place blame so as not to expose our own part in it.

As you, and I, know clearly, the cause of the great worldwide financial panic and depression overtaking us is very simple.  That is, governments throughout the world have for far too long controlled the issue of money in their jurisdictions.  This control, by means of threats of violence against those who would produce their own money, and justifications based on the governments' sole ability to "prevent fraud", and "stop counterfeiting", and so forth, has yielded the greatest financial implosion that any of us will probably ever witness.

Certain extra-governmental authorities, styling themselves as "central banks", who have persuaded the government to allow them to control the money and currency of a nation in exchange for providing a mechanism of almost invisible theft of the property of the citizenry from them for the government's use, unfortunately have learned to late that they are like a boulder in a rushing stream - apparently immovable, solid for years, decades, even centuries, until the inexorable force of the true market washes their foundations from under them, and they go tumbling down the falls to crash and fragment into a million pieces below.

I often wonder, dear Midas, whether these folks knew of the cataclysm to come, and made hay while the sun shone, or were truly so stupid as to believe that the rock would remain fixed to its streambed forever.  I tend toward the former.

Yours,

Epimenides