Will banks kill the cannabis industry to save themselves? Is this another sign of the cannabis recession in 2023?
Virtually no country is immune to the effects of the U.S. Federal Reserve. The American central bank secretly bailed out Canadian banks in the 2008-09 recession.
So it would be unwise to view Fed actions as having no bearing or consequence for the Canadian economy, including the cannabis industry.
In short, central banks may kill cannabis (and other private sector jobs) to bail out governments and save themselves.
Banks Kill Cannabis to Save Themselves
At one point, the money printing had to stop. During covid, the meme “money printer go brrr” became popular. Before, only academics and Ron Paul fans spoke about central bank policy.
But printing money affects all of us—our basic freedoms. One side of every transaction is money. And it’s been nationalized by the state and disconnected from consumer demand.
The result? The rich get richer, while the poor get poorer. This is the core issue behind the cannabis recession.
But for whatever reason, to blame the Fed is to invoke “conspiracy theory.” But it is trendy and mainstream to argue vaguely about how “we” need to tax “the rich” or make them “pay their fair share” (as if none of that is already happening).
The fact is: an increase in the money supply has caused inflation. Not “corporate greed.”
Fortunately, the Fed stopped printing money in 2022. Even they realize you cannot inflate your way out of a crisis. It’s not the money itself that people need but the purchasing power.
If current trends continue, the Fed will have destroyed three trillion U.S. dollars by the end of the year. The idea is to create a “soft landing” for the economy.
In reality, the banks will kill cannabis and the private sector to save themselves and the government.
How Not to Fix an Economy
Curbing inflation may be painful, but reducing the money supply and aggregate demand (sum of all goods and services produced) is easy.
The Fed is following through with the first tenet. But government deficit spending remains untouched. And this comes at the expense of the cannabis industry and other private actors.
Consider: The government refuses to stop spending money while the Fed stops printing it and begins to raise interest rates.
Typically, with rising rates, a government budget (really, any budget) would reduce its expenses. But in the U.S., Joe Biden speculates using the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling.
In Canada, we have a finance minister who’s not trained in finance and a drama teacher prime minister who thinks you grow an economy by running up credit card debt.
(And Canadians must be listening; Canadian credit card debt is the highest level on record. Over one-third of Canadians said they couldn’t cover an unexpected $500 expense).
In essence, you don’t fix an economy by tasking the same people who broke it with fixing it. The only “solutions” we see from Washington or Ottawa are more of the same: increased government spending, bureaucracy, and higher taxes.
How Banks Will Kill Cannabis to Save Themselves and Bailout the Government
This is how banks will kill cannabis to save themselves and bail out the government.
With rising interest rates, financing debt becomes costlier. Suppose governments don’t reduce their spending and impose higher taxes. In that case, there will be a crowding out of the remaining available credit.
Instead of credit going to cannabis businesses or other private sector actors, wasteful bureaucratic hands will get their hands on it first.
The crowding-out effect emphasizing government work over the private sector spells economic disaster. Only someone with a complete lack of understanding of economics sees “public sector” spending as beneficial for the private sector.
The reality is rising rates and increased government spending will crowd out private-sector investment and drive down real wages.
It’s as if the economy were a cruise ship. Perhaps the ship is stranded at sea without means of communication. There’s a finite amount of food on board. Everyone assumes the guests, particularly pregnant women and children, will be fed first.
Nope, the crew gets first dibs. And if there’s nothing left for the guests, then so be it. Although, in the magical fairy tale land of government reasoning, in this example, the crew eating all the food somehow produces more food.
Governments are parasites on productive economies. You could argue that it’s a good parasite. Like maggots. Maggots can clean wounds and prevent infection by consuming dead tissue and leaving healthy tissue untouched.
Maggots, leeches, and guinea worms are parasites that have had medicinal uses throughout history. Of course, we have better means of cleaning wounds in modern medicine than using maggots.
Likewise, we have better means of avoiding and resolving conflict, establishing the rule of law, and regulating an economy than through the parasitic state.
Cannabis Recession 2023 Unavoidable
Banks will kill cannabis and other private sector goods and services to save themselves and bail out the government. It’s already happening.
Central banks everywhere exist to support the banking industry. They routinely ignore the signals from the real economy.
An actual “soft landing” would include governments cutting their budgets just like households. When you lose your job, you don’t run out and “stimulate” your household finances by running up the credit card.
Many economists have “physics envy.” They are crunching numbers and appearing to do something “scientific.” But their mathematical models of the economy neither describe nor predict the market economy.
None of these economists saw the 2008 crisis coming. They didn’t even anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But they’re confident that this time, their debunked methodology will work.
It won’t. Economics is not an esoteric discipline confined to a small group of academics. It is the logic of human action.
The money supply is collapsing, and credit is drying up. The way back to prosperity is by investing in private sector jobs, like the cannabis industry.
Instead, the U.S. and Canada are pursuing a policy of imposing higher taxes on families and businesses while continuing to crowd out private-sector investment with their record-level deficit spending.
This is how we will get a cannabis recession in 2023.
Fighting inflation without reducing government expenditures is like trying to get stoned by smoking CBD strains.