Off The Cuff: The Costs of Unintended Consequences

In this week's Off the Cuff podcast, Chris and Charles discuss:

• The De-Legitimization of Markets
  • Central planning meddling is killing faith in price discovery
• Japan As A Petri Dish
  • Will be the first to enter the endgame
• The Financial Elites Are Taking All The Chips
  • It pays to be rich these days
• The Costs of Unintended Consequences
  • Central planning always costs more than it's gains

In this week's podcast, Chris and Charles discover a viewpoint that neatly sums up the whole "kick the can" era we now live in: the costs of the unintended consequences of central planning always exceed any benefits that may result.

Politicians and planners around the world are motivated to "Do something! Anything!" to justify their positions and incomes. And so the misguided (and sometimes malintended) efforts to dictate market forces ensue. And since they're dealing with complex systems, no one really has any clue what the ultimate implications of their ham-fisted efforts will be.

But politicians will claim they did "everything we could"; and as for any repercussions, well "nobody saw them coming". At the end of the day, elected officials will get their lifetime benefits and a high-paying private industry job with the financial elites their policies enriched during the "rescue efforts".

But this cycle can't go on forever.