In the last year, the world has printed 9.3% more money. Global M2 money supply has reached $141T in 2026. When inflation starts to run hotter again, they will blame it on Iran and other proximate factors. But the root driver is the money printer has been running hot for the last year. Where? China increased their money supply by 13.6% in the last 12 months. Their M2 is now $50T, making it the largest global driver of fiat inflation. US growth in M2 is just 4.6% over the last 12 months, making the US comparatively responsible. (But make no mistake, this means your dollars have been debased by almost 1/20th of their value in just a year.) Since we live in a global economy, we're subject to the aggregate impact of GLOBAL money printing. The US has been accustomed to being the largest monetary base and therefore largely controlling global debasement. But China's money supply is now 2x as large as the USA's. Your savings are being debased by Chinese monetary policy decisions and you have no control. Nobody asked your permission. Nobody told you it was happening. But your savings just got diluted by 9.3% in one year. Note: I'm currently updating the Global Asset Landscape for 2026 (see prior tweet). It will be out in the next few weeks, stay tuned!

When I was in Australia last December, I found it impossible to transact with any business where there weren't latent government price controls or subsidies of some kind. I came to the realization that with the public sector growing about 5x faster than the private sector, Australia was well on the way to an effectively government run economy, communism by stealth. I dug deeper - the point of no return occurred in about 2013. caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2…

Can anyone pin-point the exact moment where everything in society just got substantially worse???

it hasn't sunk in for most people. we already live in a post-scarcity society. UBI is already here. basic package: disability, medicaid, food stamps etc bonus package: literally getting paid for staying at home and hanging out with your relatives extra bonus: if you are willing to commit fraud, pretend your kids are autistic and get paid for that. get paid for watching your neighbor's kid. pretend you are taking care of your grandma. fake hospice clinic. fake rehab clinic. fake therapy clinic. giga bonus: during a time of crisis take advantage of PPP or CARES and open a fake business and get paid for existing people are shocked when they learn that defense is the FIFTH largest line item in the budget. ahead of defense: social security ($1.6T), interest on debt ($1.1T) medicare ($1T), medicaid ACA ($1T), AND THEN defense ($0.9T) complain about defense all you like, but healthcare fraud is a way bigger factor. hundreds of billions per year. this is only going to get worse, because the fraud is a structural part of the system – payouts to client groups in exchange for votes (normally D). in the US, only 47% of the population actually works (fully 14% of the population is working age and does not work). retirees are 18% and children 22%. the system I described above subsidizes 50m non-working people absolute minimum, but really it's far more because people that are paid to stay home and take care of their relatives are considered "workers" of that 47% of "actual workers" maybe one third does real work, the rest are shuffling papers around or doing fake email jobs. so you have, rough math, 50 million actual workers supporting 300 million dependents. that's the nature of the economy today. it will only accelerate. eventually you will have 10 million using AI tools to do all the work and 340 million dependents. the reason no one roots out the fraud is because it's the system that keeps our extremely fragile polity intact. the fraud is the UBI. the purpose of the system is what it does. of course, it's a deeply unfair system, because you are allowed to commit fraud if you are a politically protected client group of the democrats. DOGE was killed faster than any government program ever, because it attempted to root out the fraud. if you are honest and unwilling to commit fraud, you are a huge loser in this system. your neighbor will have their mortgage subsidized by some government program. they will get favorable SBA loans due to DEI. they will open a fake hospice or autism clinic. they will get paid for taking care of their neighbor's kid and vice versa. the primary skill in the labor market is learning how to extract money from state and federal government programs, not gaining skills or making yourself employable. if you are just trying to work an ordinary wagie job you are a huge sucker. you are paying 40-50% effective all in taxes to everyone else who is a net taker. the sad part is because AI is such a substantial productivity boost, it will actually keep this system going for a while longer, and maybe in perpetuity. AI boosts the 15% of the population that is actually productive so much that the remaining 85% can coast by. no one in charge will change this because they can't think of anything else. the political costs of a real UBI program are too great and we don't have the money for it anyway. so we will keep this covert fraud-based UBI program running indefinitely. unfortunately, if you are an honest wagie, you lose.

Central planning creates poverty.