Kerby Anderson
Three years ago, a presenter at an international conference compared the printing of currency to alchemy. Although I didn’t hear the message, I read enough about it to see the connection.
If you are not familiar with the term, it points to alchemists who tried to turn cheap “base” metals into gold. The idea goes all the way back to Aristotle, who believed that all matter combined the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. He guessed that these elements could be changed by the action of heat and cold, or dampness and dryness.
Why did alchemists want to create more gold? Gold has been a store of value for thousands of years and has been used as money in so many civilizations. The science of the alchemists was flawed, but so was their economics. If they had been able to create gold, they would have ruined its value because it would no longer be scarce and would decline in value.
The story of gold and alchemy is an apt illustration of what central banks and governments have been doing for centuries. Instead of creating gold, they have been creating currency out of thin air. Although we talk about cranking up the printing presses and printing more dollars, the reality is that the Federal Reserve or the US Treasury merely changes numbers on computers.
You know the result: inflation and a devalued dollar. In previous commentaries, I have posted a picture of the declining value of the dollar since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. A dollar back then purchased what today would be considered $26 of goods and services.
Now that Congress has suspended the debt ceiling, expect the devaluation of the dollar to continue. Alchemists tried all sorts of experiments to create gold. The modern-day alchemists create currency instantaneously with no cost.

Kerby Anderson
The latest information from the World Economic Forum shows that the Davos crowd wants you to give up your car. Tucked inside a briefing paper is a plan to reduce the number of cars around the world by 75 percent.
The title of the paper is: “The Urban Mobility Scorecard Tool: Benchmarking the Transition to Sustainable Urban Mobility.” It begins with the prediction that more than two-thirds of the world’s population will be urban by 2050. The paper argues that the only way to achieve the climate goals of the Paris Agreement is to push for “electrification, public transport, and shared mobility.”
That means fewer cars. The goal is to reduce the number of vehicles from 2.1 billion to 0.5 billion in less than 30 years. This would be one way to slash emissions from passenger vehicles. I have another suggestion on how to slash emissions. We can restrict participants at World Economic Forum events from flying in private jets that have a significant carbon footprint.
Let me ask you a question. Do you like owning a car? It gives you much greater mobility than mass transportation. In fact, you may live in an area that has inadequate mass transportation.
The push toward more electric cars assumes that states are producing enough additional electricity for those electric cars. How is your state doing these days in producing enough electricity to cool your home? Do you think it will be able to produce enough additional electricity to power more electric cars on the road?
Reducing the number of cars will require massive central planning. I’m not sure too many Americas are ready for politicians and bureaucrats to control their lives in this way.