The “Iron Maiden."  She was the staunch and sturdy leader of Great Britain who once held up F. A. Hayek’s masterwork “Road to Serfdom” and declared “This is what we believe in.”

Hayek’s work is a road map for what could go wrong when individual freedoms are lost and central planning becomes the answer for every ill.  When truth is bent to meet the moment and government decision making is the proposed cure all, “serfdom” is the destination.

Margaret, in believing Hayek’s cautionary, also declared that Socialism cannot sustain itself.  Socialism can not last because eventually “you run out of other people’s money."

Well Margaret, you can’t believe what has happened.

Enter the Federal Reserve and Central Banking.

Once created for the proposed purpose of easing temporary strains in the financial system, the central planners that are now the central banks, have made certain that governments “will not run out of other people’s money."

The natural circuit breaker to inordinate spending and socialisms that Margaret pointed to is no longer in play.  Money is now “created” to sustain the programs that, in Ms. Thatcher’s world, would eventually become “unsustainable."

There are no balanced budgets but rather “pixilation” of the currency to meet wants of ravenous government programs.  Quantitative easings, proposed as a necessity to save the day, become imbedded in the mechanism that is the all-providing central government.  Peter borrows from Paul as the Federal Reserve blows smoke and polishes mirrors by purchasing Treasury debt and ill created mortgage paper.  Reagan once said “there is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program."  We can extend that comment to include “temporary Federal Reserve emergency easing."

As the central planners that are the Federal Reserve create the money to indirectly feed the central government and its programs, the discipline of borrowing money that is not created is also twisted.  Low interest rates allow the government appetite for money to balloon without market forces driving up rates and thus curtailing the activity.

Believe it or not Maggie, those that should run out of other people’s money, won’t.  Pixilation of the currency, keyboard strokes from computers will make certain of that.

What is more likely to occur is the “people” running out of “their own” money due to bad central planning.

James Longstreet