Mike Shedlock is a prolific blogger. Becoming popular has let Shedlock appear through television to espouse his views on economies, politicians, stocks and bonds.
are impressive, although not as impressive as during his peak readership years of 2009 through 2012, which peaked at 22 million. Since his peak viewership, his unique page views have fallen -73.7%!
Shedlock has written quite a bit about the Greek Legislature Public Finances Crisis. Read standalone, any one of the stories written by Shedlock about the crisis seems plausible. Yet, if you were to read all of the stories in succession, giving yourself context, you would see that Shedlock writes much of nothing.
In brief, Shedlock hailed the ascension of Greek communist Alexis Tsipras to job of prime minister of Greece. Then Shedlock hammered on the idea of Tsipras telling the
, which Tsipras called on Greeks to reject a bailout proposal from Eurogroup ministers, Shedlock hailed Tsipras as a genius, more or less, the guy dictating to the Eurogroup ministers — the finance ministers of the respective countries of the Euro zone banking system.
Then when Tsipras struck a deal, contrary to his purported analysis, in seemingly mindless reaction,
Of course, if Shedlock understood what side held the winning hands, Shedlock would not find himself shocked and on the wrong side of his many predictions.
For your amusement, I've cherry-picked relevant quotes attributable to Shedlock from the flurry of stories written by him on the Greek Legislature Public Finances Crisis.
The latter three comments reveal Shedlock's persuasion-in-propaganda strategy. Shedlock likes to create simple mantras that he repeats to his readers, hammering away at them for weeks on end. This results in his readers parroting the mantras in the comments they write on Shedlock's blog.
Such a technique is typical in cult formation. Having jargon and mantras leads to group cohesion.
Shedlock would invoke the mantra while deciving his readers to believe that Greeks law givers needed to pay €256 billion, then €330 billion, and then later €400 billion. Before SYRIZA, Greek law givers had been asked and agreed to pay back something closer to €65 billion over 10 years. That is closer to one-fifth of what Shedlock claims.
Shedlock revealed himself to be horribly wrong about the whole Greek Legislature Finances Crises throughout the ordeal. Yet, that didn't stop Shedlock from writing.
. That work contains links to the rest of my writing on what truly happened with the Greek law givers.
Since 2008, Mike Shedlock has become one of the most popular bloggers who tries to write about economies, economics and politics. A
civil engineer by training and historically, a computer analyst by vocation, though working today as a
"a registered investment advisor representative" like many, Shedlock took to blogging when he found himself unemployed. You can read bits and pieces of Shedlock's personal story
here and even more so,
here.
This bit that Shedlock says of himself is quite revealing:
I started a blog in 2005 hoping to be discovered as an economic writer. Given there are millions of blogs the success of which are near-zero, one might even think such a chance would be impossible since I had no background in either economics or investing.
Shedlock has claimed to be an adherent of the so-called Austrian School of Neoclassical Economics. Shedlock claims to have become one after having read a couple of books.
Its last-known major disciple was a guy named Ludwig von Mises. Von Mises based his beliefs on the interest rate theory of a guy name Eugen Böhm-Bawerk. The Austrian School's founder, Carl Menger, had this to say about that theory:
“The time will come when people will realize that Böhm-Bawerk’s theory is one of the greatest errors ever committed.”
Von Mises time preference theory of interest is quite wrong.
In
INTEREST, CAPITALISTS AND FUTURISTIC TIME COPS, I explained how interest comes about.
Time preference is illusory. Persons buy something now — a reckoned belief in the share of the profits. There is no time preference. There are only buying preferences now.
When someone sells cash for bank credits recorded in a checking account, he or she does so to buy banking services now. That one is not being compensated so as to buy something later.
If the world operated as falsely as the Miseans believe, then why do people deposit cash in a bank when bankers aren't paying interest? According to Miseans, bankers must pay interest right now to induce people to forgo present consumption. Yet, at peak credit, deposits were $324.2 billon and today at much lower interest rate, deposits are much higher.
More so, as interest is an kind of income, it must adhere to the same law for all kinds of incomes — copyrights, annunities, wages, and the like. If interest needs one theory to explain it and other kinds of income have another theory, then either theory must be wrong or both must be. There can be only one theory that explains every phenomena of a class of phenomena.
Von Mises spawned his own school that mistakenly gets called the Austrian School. Von Mises biggest disciple was a man named Murray N. Rothbard.
Rothbard was born in the Bronx borough of NYC to Russian-Polish immigrant Jews. Rothbard's thesis advisors were Joseph Dorfman and Arthur F. Burns, the latter who went on the chair the Federal Reserve. It's a massive stretch to call Rothbard an Austrian economist.
I like Rothbard's Conceived in Liberty. He wrote excellent work about the political side of things. Rothbard was a superb champion of liberty and an incredible historian.
However, stupidly, Rothbard claimed there exists double claims of ownership on deposits. Under commercial law, deposits get bought by bankers and they sell credit, which gives depositors rights of action. Likewise, depositors sell their cash and buy bank credits.
Shedlock believes commercial banking is fraudulent because Shedlock believes in a fallacy perpetrated by Austrian the now-dead Rothbard.
Brushing aside that no one uses money — coined metal by weight and fineness — but instead, all use cash, which is bank credit in circulation, here is what Shedlock claims in his
Idiot's Guide to Austrian Economics:
If I give money to a bank and it promises my money will be available on demand, and the next moment it lends a large portion of it out, my property rights are clearly violated. What happens in such instances is twofold. I own my money. Someone else owns my money too.
Logically that is impossible. And that is precisely why it's fraudulent.
That is the basis of Shedlock's thinking and Shedlock's thinking is quite wrong. In short, Shedlock doesn't understand how commercial banking works.
This is why Shedlock opposes commercial banking. Shedlock is quick to reference Rothbard's works What Has Government Done to Our Money along with Case Against The Fed to support his diatribes against commercial banking, especially what many call
fractional reserve lending, which is more like multiple of reserves lending.
As it seems Shedlock holds this view, he believes bankers are evil as he has expressed as much on his blog. Likely, this is why he has sided with the Greeks.
Anyone who knows about Commercial Law knows that a banker is a trader who buys cash and debt by selling bank credits. In a purchase and sale, a customer, known as a depositor sells property in cash or receivables to a banker and buys property in bank credits.
With property in bank credits, the bank customer has a right of action to demand an amount of cash from his banker at a future date. Evidences of such right includes checking account bank statements and passbook savings books.
Bankers become owners of said cash, bank credits from other bankers and debt bought in a purchase and sale from depositors.
In commercial banking law, a deposit isn't a depositum, but truly a mutuum in law of a purchase and sale of cash for deposits.
A banker is a trader whose business consists in buying cash and debts by creating other debts. While the grocer buys food for resale, the banker buys cash or debt and sells credit. A banker sells credits payable on demand as cash.
More so, no one is saving his cash with a banker. In a purchase and sale, selling cash or perhaps other bank credits and buying an interest-bearing account, a bank customer is a capitalist who buys a share of future bank profits, which gets called interest.
Bankers and other capitalists deal in property with confidence in forthcoming profits, transmuting property that lacks saleability into property that does, enabling the adventurer-entrepreneur to transmute property as capital of production into property as wealth for trade.
In spite of the title of his blog publication,
Global Economic Trend Analysis, Shedlock doesn't provide any kind of trend analysis. Instead, Shedlock writes up opinions rooted in fear-mongering to appeal to his conspiracy theory susceptible readers, readers who have formed a cult around him.
To let you know, I have pasted many links on Shedlock's popularly read blog referencing my works for his readers mostly to stop typing the same words in comments that I've written already. To my understanding, that is how the Internet of sharing is supposed to work. I've done so on Forbes and many other sites.
Here are my
Disqus comments on Mike Shedlock's Global Economic Analysis.
Today, In EU Rules Bitcoin is a Currency, US Says Bitcoin is a Commodity; Which Side is Correct? What About Gold and BitGold?, wildly popular "financial" blogger, Mike Shedlock, a guy who once confessed that he has no background in economics outside of reading books from the likes of huckster, cult-like Mises.org, idiotically claimed "bitcoin is both money and a commodity". Shedlock then pushed his mini-cult members to read a flawed work by Murray Rothbard, a long dead college professor associated with Mises.org.
