The collapse of Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse recently was a catastrophe long in the making. A quick perusal of the bank’s financial statements from recent years shows that we’re dealing with something analogous to a classic bank run. Credit Suisse’s pool of liquid assets declined more than 50 percent from 2021 to 2022, mostly in October 2022, from CHF 229.9 billion to CHF 118.5 billion as depositors withdrew their money.
Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.
Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.
I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.
—Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
During tax season, many people try to provide you with practical ways to lower your tax bill and mitigate your exposure to both tax payments and reporting. Instead of repeating such advice, I would rather discuss the role of taxes in society or, in particular, why we don’t need taxes.
On October 29, 2018, on Lion Air Flight 610 out of Jakarta, Indonesia, a Boeing 737 MAX’s safety control pushed the plane’s nose down hard, paused for five seconds, then repeated this cycle, over and over. The pilots fought to pull the nose back up, only to get overpowered again and again. The passengers fell back against their seats, then fell forward, over and over. The seconds stretched on across all these souls’ last moments alive.
Access to energy has long been taken for granted as society became quite used to relatively stable prices and the ample abundance of energy. Meanwhile, the business side of energy was relegated to industry insiders, policymakers, and market traders dealing with the matter as a profession. However, the perceptible rise in prices and the fear of supply shortages have pushed energy considerations to the forefront of societal consciousness.
The panopticon is a hypothetical surveillance and control system first imagined by philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the eighteenth century. It’s envisioned as a tool to control the behavior of a large number of people with as little effort as possible. Here is one description: “The panopticon is a disciplinary concept brought to life in the form of a central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells.
Amidst the wreckage of bank failure grow lucrative deals. Shares of New York Community Bank Inc. surged with the announcement that the FDIC had made NYCB a “sweetheart deal” as the deposit insurer “priced the assets to move quickly,” wrote Wedbush analyst David Chiaverini in his upgrade of the stock, as reported in Bloomberg.
After raising rates by 25-bps on Wednesday, in addition to lending $300 billion to bankrupt institutions last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reassures the public that the banking system is “sound and resilient” to quell concerns over recent bank failures. Reiterating:
In addition, we are committed to learning the lessons from this episode and to work to prevent events like this from happening again.
