So.
Been a stretch eh? Yeh, the main road got blown in real good and
the phone line went down somewhere on it's 2814 poles and the powers
been a flickering at times, but we're all surviving up here, I mean
that's what fire wood is for. Bob and his brother Bob and his other
brother Bob cleared our twenty three miles of road even though the
path meanders a little out over the ditches at times, come spring
thaw we'll all have to be a mite careful about following their
rectilinear rectitude. Yes it was quite a storm, the wind howling
for three days straight from all four directions and in between. Six
inches of snow all piled up against anything that it could get a grip
on. Our D7 was in it's glory as we built a ski hill beside the barn
to keep the cattle from succumbing to barn fever, it being a wee bit
cramped in there for the whole bunch, with all the cleaning we'd have
to do up after them. They've taken to camping out on top and even
requisitioned straw and hay to be brought up to them, but we put a
stop on that because legally they're on the wrong side of the fence
and they darn well know it.
Austerity.
That's what cultivated Herb calls it. The rectitude behind our 70
miles of remaining blown in for weeks on end. Although the sign
which says “Rough road ahead” may be buried and no one realizes
that life exists beyond the contours of our nearest outpost, but
that's a crock, they know we're here with all the joking we overhear
about us squatters. Cultivated Herb was telling us of the Basel
Committee which in 1974 due to stagflation convened itself out of the
central-bank Governors of the Group of Ten countries of the member
central banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which
included Canada. A key objective of the Committee was and is to
maintain “monetary and financial stability.” To achieve that
goal, the Committee discouraged borrowing from a nation’s own
central bank interest-free and encouraged borrowing from private
creditors, all in maintaining the stability of the currency.
The
presumption was that borrowing from a central bank with the power to
create money on its books would inflate the money supply and prices.
Borrowing from private creditors, on the other hand, was considered
not to be inflationary, since it involved the recycling of
pre-existing money. What the bankers did not reveal, although they
dang well knew it themselves, was that private banks create the money
they lend just as public banks do. The difference is simply that a
publicly-owned bank returns the interest to the government and the
community, while a privately-owned bank siphons the interest into its
capital account, to be re-invested at further interest, progressively
drawing money out of the productive economy.
Thus
our far sighted and truly caring governments had to impose austerity
upon us all, so that we could support our impoverished bankers
without financing too large a deficit. It makes for an honest
humility to be able to wake in the morning and realize we are doing
our small part up here, to live isolated from the mainstream of
humanity for weeks on end to give that much needed stability to our
currency. But lord, it's hard to be humble. Seventy miles of ten
foot drifts to the nearest six pack. Look out widow Rachael, you got
some tax free hooch?
You
keep that pot covered, eh.