How low interest rates degrade investment quality

"It's often discussed that arbitrarily lowering interest rates and the zero interest rate policy era leads to massive recklessness and unethical and irresponsible behavior. But there's something even more sinister that actually occurs. A lot of people notice how massive corporations are just buying up all of the hard assets and then renting it back to us. [...] Zero interest rate policy isn't merely something that leads to reckless investments. It essentially amounts to free rent for the rich for everything in the economy. If you can rent anything for free, what do you do? You lease everything and then rent it back to the public for a profit."

~ Guy Swann

Why do massive corporations own everything, while the rest of us are stuck renting our lives back from them? Most people see the trend, but very few understand the actual mechanism driving it. In this episode, I break down how zero interest rate policy isn't just "reckless investment" – it's a fraud machine that hands the rich free rent on every productive asset in the economy. What happens when you can borrow anything for less than it's worth? You buy everything.

References from the episode

• Read_944 - Proof of Work in the Real Economy: Wyatt's chapter from The Bitcoinization of Finance (Link: https://fountain.fm/episode/4v4LrOxS12vM15dE3tHT)
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (1841) (Link: https://ia800405.us.archive.org/28/items/memoirsofextraor01mack/memoirsofextraor01mack.pdf)

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Host Links

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• ⁠Bitcoin Audible on X⁠ (Link: https://twitter.com/BitcoinAudible)
• The Guy Swann Network Broadcast Room on Keet (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3na6v839)

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

~ Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds