[Excerpted from The Road to Serfdom]

No doubt an American or English “fascist” system would greatly differ from the Italian or German models; no doubt, if the transition were effected without violence, we might expect to get a better type of leader. Yet this does not mean that our fascist system would in the end prove very different or much less intolerable than its prototypes. There are strong reasons for believing that the worst features of the totalitarian systems are phenomena which totalitarianism is certain sooner or later to produce.

The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet reached its all-time high in May 2022. Since then, it was supposed to drop at a steady pace and shed three trillion US dollars by 2024. The normalization of monetary policy was built on the idea of a soft landing for the economy. However, the Fed may be killing the private sector to save the government.

Once again, the economic system is trying to adjust to political and monetary interventions. The year 2023 marks the end of a historical period characterized by zero-cost credit.

The monetary expansion that began in the early 2000s led to the great financial crisis of 2008 and the emerging markets boom. Exaggerated demand expectations and easy access to capital caused an overexpansion of production capacity and the subsequent industrial restructuring between 2015 and 2018.