Liquidity: The Destructor of Economies and Liberty

Liquidity: The Destructor of Economies and Liberty
by Alex Merced

I always believed and still believe that innovations that make our day to day tasks simpler and easier is the key to raising the standard of life. Although, in making investment more convenient we have sown the seeds of our own destruction. The primary deterrent to anyone saving or investing capital has always been liability, the risk that the bank may go under, or that they won't be able to get out of their investment in a good time at a good value. In trying to accommodate to this fear we have focused on created several institutions to separate these liabilities from investment. Although, when separating liability from those who rightfully should own that liability you distort the economic calculation between risk and reward which will always yield unintended consequences.

Through different legal structures and mandatory insurance programs people became more and more willing to invest their capital, but they also became less concerned with what they were investing it, and with who. On top of this through trading markets and derivatives we made it possible for investors to get their return on their investments in short and shorter a period of time, creating more demand for investment.

Due to these "innovations" the time horizon for investors became less and less as "liquidity" increased. Is there any inherent problems with these innovations? Trading Markets and Derivative products in themselves were great innovations, yet the underlying separation between ownership of enterprise and liability caused by the underlying corporate structure caused a level of moral hazard that was heightened by the amount of liquidity provided to any investment. The check's a balances built into structures like a Limited Partnership were gone, and along with it much of the prudence and calculation that makes investment and it's benefits sustainable.

You couple this with the fraud of fractional reserve banking, and the leverage it allows, the end result you have is self-destructing economic whirlwind. As an economy is destroyed, liberty dissipates with it as people begin to look and blame each other for the lack of resources.

The answer to all this is a sound belief in ownership of property, and the liability that should come with it or else in a world without this basic principle, Liquidity will eventually be the catalyst of the economies destruction.