More and more money is being extracted from of the production and consumption economy to pay the FIRE sector. That's what causes debt deflation and shrinks markets. If you pay the banks, you have less to spend on goods and services.

The myth is that if housing prices go up, Americans will be richer. What banks - and behind them, the Federal Reserve - really want is for new buyers to be able to borrow enough money to buy the houses from mortgage defaulters, and thus save the banks from suffering from more mortgage defaults.

Most people think of the economy as producing goods and services and paying labor to buy what it produces. But a growing part of the economy in every country has been the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which comprises the rent and interest paid to the economy's balance sheet of assets by debtors and rent payers.

Throughout history, the only way of restoring stability is to write down the debts. That is treated now as if it's something that can't be done. But it's the only thing that's going to revive the economy.

It's amazing that Europe says, "What are we going to do with these refugees?" It's as if it doesn't realize that being part of NATO and bombing these countries forces them to choose to live by fleeing, or to stay and get bombed.

Money is not a factor of production. But in order to have access to credit, in order to get money, in order to get an education, you have to pay the banks.

The underlying strategy of the Fed is to tell people, "Do you want your money to lose value in the bank, or do you want to put it in the stock market?" They're trying to push money into the stock market, into hedge funds, to temporarily bid up prices. Then, all of a sudden, the Fed can raise interest rates, let the stock market prices collapse and the people will lose even more in the stock market than they would have by the negative interest rates in the bank. So it's a pro-Wall Street financial engineering gimmick.