Thursday, April 9 — A History Lesson
Your money, explained like I'm family.
The Debase Brief
Thursday, April 9 — A History Lesson
Written by Unc LASTE · Your money, explained like I'm family
Your grocery bill feels like it's playing a cruel game. The chicken that used to fill your cart for a week now barely covers three days. Your gas tank empties faster, not because you're driving more, but because each fill-up hits harder. The apartment you could afford two years ago now takes a bigger bite of your paycheck. This isn't your imagination. This is history repeating, and nobody's teaching the lesson.
In March 1968, LBJ faced the same choice every government faces when wars get expensive: tell the truth and raise taxes, or lie and print money. Vietnam was bleeding the Treasury. Oil prices were spiking after the Six-Day War. Gold was draining from Fort Knox as other countries cashed in their dollars for metal. LBJ chose the printer. Within three years, the lie got so big that Nixon had to slam the gold window shut. No more exchanging dollars for gold. Just trust us, he said.
Today we're watching the same movie with different actors. Middle East conflicts spike oil prices. The debt grows by millions every hour just in interest. The money supply expands while officials swear inflation is tamed. But here's the difference: there's no gold window left to close. No backstop to abandon. Just your purchasing power getting slowly strangled while everyone pretends it's not happening.
The good news? You're reading this. You're asking questions. Most people feel the squeeze but can't name it. You can. And once you see the pattern, how governments choose printing over honesty every single time, you can position yourself differently. Your parents couldn't see this coming in 1968. You can see it now.
They tell you inflation is under control. They show you charts that say everything's fine. Meanwhile, the money printer keeps running. Every month, more dollars chase the same stuff you need to live. The government spends more than it takes in, has for decades, and the bill gets paid by making your savings worth less. This is the game, and you're not supposed to understand the rules.
The debt ceiling used to mean something. Now it's theater. They raise it, they spend more, they print more. Your paycheck stays the same while everything it buys shrinks. The politicians argue about who's to blame while the machine keeps running. Left, right, doesn't matter, the printer doesn't pick sides.
This is why Bitcoin exists. Not as a get-rich scheme. Not as a tech toy. As a lifeboat. A network that can't be diluted, can't be controlled, can't be turned off when things get inconvenient. While they print more dollars, Bitcoin's supply stays fixed. While they change the rules, the code stays constant. It's the first money in history they can't debase when the bills come due.
Every crisis ends the same way: they print. Every time they print, you get poorer. The only question is whether you see it coming.
They told you banks were safe. They told you the system had rules. Then one day in 1999, they changed those rules while you were watching Seinfeld reruns. Glass-Steagall had kept your local bank separate from Wall Street's casino for 66 years. Your deposits here, their bets over there. A wall between boring and dangerous. Clinton signed it away with a pen stroke.
Here's what that wall did: After the crash of 1929, when banks gambled with depositor money and lost everything, Congress said never again. Commercial banks handle your checking account. Investment banks play with risk. Two different animals. Two different cages. That worked from 1933 to 1999. Your grandfather's savings stayed boring and safe while Wall Street did whatever Wall Street does.
The banks hated it. They watched investment firms make fortunes while they collected your two percent fees. So they lobbied. They donated. They promised innovation and efficiency. What they meant was: let us use your savings account to bet on mortgages.
Nine years. That's all it took from "trust us" to total meltdown.
By 2007, your local bank wasn't just holding your mortgage. They were packaging it with a thousand others, slicing it into pieces, selling those pieces, betting against those pieces, then borrowing money to bet bigger. The wall was gone. Your savings and their casino shared the same building. When the music stopped in 2008, they had your money at the poker table.
You know what happened next. Bailouts. Your tax money saving the banks that gambled with your savings. But here's the part nobody talks about: they never rebuilt the wall. Instead, they printed. And printed. And printed. Every crisis since then gets the same solution. Print more. Make the money worth less. Make you poorer without touching your account balance.
Today's banks are bigger than they were in 2008. More concentrated. More connected. The regional banking wobbles you're seeing aren't random. They're symptoms. When rates move, when deposits flee, when commercial real estate shakes, these banks shake harder because they're still playing casino games with your checking account.
The wall between safe and risky is gone. But there's a new wall being built. One they can't tear down with legislation. One that doesn't need permission from Washington. Bitcoin is that wall. Not between different types of banks, but between you and all banks. Between your savings and their system. Between what you earned and what they print.
Glass-Steagall protected your grandparents by separating functions. Bitcoin protects you by separating systems. They can print their money. They can bail out their friends. They can change their rules. But they can't print Bitcoin. 21 million. That's the wall that doesn't come down.
Next week's inflation report drops Tuesday, and it'll show whether those wild oil swings are hitting your gas pump yet. Watch how the Fed reacts, they've been itching to cut rates, but if prices spike from this Middle East mess, your mortgage might stay expensive longer than they promised.
The debt ceiling isn't a ceiling anymore. It's a suggestion. They raise it, suspend it, ignore it, then raise it again. Every time they do, they're borrowing from your future earnings to pay for spending that happened yesterday. Your savings are the collateral for promises they never intended to keep.
But there's one ledger they can't rewrite. 21 million Bitcoin. No midnight vote changes it. No crisis justifies printing more. While they mortgage your tomorrow to fund their today, this network keeps the same promise it made on day one. Fixed supply. Unchangeable rules. A life raft in their sea of debt.
You can keep playing their game, or you can opt out. The choice has always been yours.
Choose Your Lens
Same data. Your reality.
Retiree / Fixed Income
You saved for decades, played by the rules, and now your fixed income buys less every month. The same government that promised your Social Security would be enough keeps printing money that makes your nest egg shrink, and they wonder why you're worried about making it to the end of the month.
But you've survived worse markets and tougher times, you know how to stretch a dollar and spot the waste others miss, and that wisdom matters more now than ever.
Small Business Owner
If you run a small business, you're watching your margins disappear into thin air. Your supplier prices jump every few months, but you can't raise your prices that fast without losing customers, so you eat the difference. The game is rigged against you, but here's what they don't want you to know: every small business that survived the '70s inflation learned to price in tomorrow's costs today, not yesterday's.
Real Estate
If you're watching mortgage rates and wondering when to make your move, you're seeing the same pattern that crushed buyers in the 70s and 80s. The Fed says they're fighting inflation while the government keeps spending, your future home gets more expensive not because it's worth more, but because your dollars buy less.
The good news: real estate still beats holding cash when currencies crumble. Lock in a fixed rate before they climb higher, and let inflation eat away at your mortgage while rents keep rising around you.
Equities / Investor
If you're managing a portfolio, you've watched your "safe" positions get eaten alive by the money printer while the market rewards risk-taking you know can't last. The same debasement that's crushing savers is forcing you into trades that keep you up at night, because standing still means losing purchasing power every single day.
Student / Young Professional
If you're grinding through unpaid internships while your student loans pile up, you're watching the same game that crushed your parents' generation, except the stakes are higher and the ladder's been pulled up further. Your degree costs more, your first job pays less in real terms, and that "starter" apartment takes half your income instead of a quarter.
But you have one advantage they didn't: you're learning the rules early. While your peers chase higher salaries that won't outrun the money printer, you can build skills that matter, live below your means even when it hurts, and put your savings where they can't be diluted away.
Beginner / I'm New Here
If you're just starting to notice your paycheck doesn't stretch like it used to, you're not failing at budgeting, you're discovering a game that's been running long before you started playing. The rules keep changing, but once you see how they work, you can start making moves that actually protect what you earn.
Expat / Global
If you're living abroad, you're watching two currencies play against you, the one you earn in and the one you send home. Your family asks why the money you send doesn't stretch like it used to, and you can't explain that both governments are printing their way out of problems while you're caught in the middle.
But you see what most people miss: currency isn't just paper, it's trust, and you've learned to spot when that trust is breaking because you live it every day.