Mark Moss argues the U.S. monetary system is rigged: the government prints money to keep interest rates low, creating inflation that erodes debt while inflating asset prices. He calls this dynamic "pumping my bags." A Bitcoin standard would fix it, but that transition takes 30 to 40 years, so you need to understand the current system now.
The system's rigged, man, and this is why you can't get ahead. And if we go to a sound money standard, it fixes that. So you should all want to go to a Bitcoin standard. And that's true, but that's a 30 to 40 year process. And so we have to think about the financial system that we have and how we use that. So the government, they print the money for the debt. They keep rates artificially depressed because they can't afford to pay the interest on it and they need cheaper borrowing. When they do that, it creates inflation, meaning more money gets created and that pushes asset prices higher and consumer prices higher. This system that I'm talking about does 2 things simultaneously. It pushes asset prices higher and it destroys the debt against those asset prices at the same time.
Got it.
So if I use debt to buy assets, they're literally destroying my debt and pumping my bags.
Isn't that a good thing though?
Yeah, it's a great thing.
