Those residing in the Pacific Time zone will have the interest rate of their loans fixed at 5%; Mountain Time will be 6%; Central Time, 7%, and Eastern Time, 8%.
Yes, the above decrees sound absurd, but they also reflect the ridiculous reality in which we find ourselves. The Federal Reserve’s price control of just one interest rate for the entire country is somehow regarded as all well and good, but we’re likely far more outraged at changing our clocks twice per year. The physical pain endured after changing the clocks is much more tangible than the price control’s financial pain, but the principle still applies: tinkering with what represents time and credit has nothing to do with utility and has everything to do with maintaining institutions that lost their utility decades ago. Why do we tolerate such nonsense? What’s read in this article is not an argument for or against changing the clocks; these words are meant to illustrate how preposterous is the notion that Americans should submit to the will of the supremely arrogant who believe that their decrees not only control sunlight but also justifiably undermine the underwriters in every bank in the country.
As your author writes this article, I read that the sun will set at 4:37 in New York and at 5:32 in Miami. Despite the differing sunsets, those cities are in the same time zone, but why? The answer is the same reason why everyone in that time zone is subjected to the same interest rate: because the parasitic control freaks in the District of Columbia said so. And just as those in New York and Miami must set their clocks to a time that might very well be applicable to neither city, the bureaucrats in D.C. tell us that each New Yorker is no more or less creditworthy than each Miami resident. The reader knows this to be objectively absurd, just as the reader knows that Elon Musk is infinitely more creditworthy than your author. To believe otherwise is to believe that the poor can effortlessly pay off a million-dollar loan and that the rich and those who will soon be have no chance of paying off a million-dollar loan.
Just as one’s geographic position determines when the sun will set on him, each person’s financial position determines what amount can be reasonably lent to him. And yet we’re supposed to believe that the Fed and Congress possess a force greater than both physical and human nature. To say that both the Fed and Congress—and all governments, in general— are cartoonishly obsolete and are worse than worthless brings new meaning to “understatement.” The internet has improved living standards for over three decades, but the hellishly hubristic would rather we not notice. The sunset in San Francisco is not the same as in Los Angeles, but we’re told that eight minutes apart is “good enough for government work.” No, it’s not, and the government should have nothing to do with it. MySolarTime.com, which accepts donations, can pinpoint one’s true solar time down to one’s address, just as banks and credit unions are much better suited to assessing the risk of lending to that person than is some overpaid and underworked parasite in D.C.
We’re told that the institutions of monolithic time zones and all-encompassing interest rates must be protected because, well, they’re institutions, but can we afford such profligacy? And even if we could afford those sentimentalities, who would want them? And when those in D.C. further indebt the country in order to pay off existing debt, are we to seriously believe that a one-size-fits-all rate of interest is sufficient and that those who tell us that it is are in a position to offer financial advice? There’s no reforming the Fed, and attempts to do so are futile because the Fed itself embodies the height of futility. Making it more or less “independent” distracts from the real problem: the Fed is tasked with an impossible job. Though it consists of educated economists, the Fed’s knowledge is negligible when compared to that of the entire U.S. economy, and by “economy,” I mean “people”—the vast majority of the 340 million Americans who would not only do just fine if the Fed disappeared but who also wouldn’t even notice its absence.
The sun sets in Houston 15 minutes before setting in Amarillo, TX, but Congress views everyone in the Central Time zone as needing to be on the same exact time. Though this might’ve been a pragmatic approach in the 20th Century and before, why does Congress care about this today? Why must it care about this today? YouTube.com and one’s email provider show their users how they effortlessly navigate the world’s time zones, and with services like MySolarTime.com, it’s reasonable to conclude that instead of each state asking Congress for permission to opt out of Daylight Saving Time or to make it permanent, each county could have its own time zone. And instead of subjecting the entire country to the theatrical Fed fiddling with a price control, each county’s banks, credit unions, and private credit can do what the Fed can only pretend to do: provide liquidity to the world’s most productive people. That the Fed needs to control the price of credit nationwide is just as insulting to American ingenuity as Congress needing to control the time set on one’s microwave.
Controlling both time and credit is not what one finds in an allegedly free country. Here’s hoping that the Fed is abolished before we must change our clocks again—for the last time.
