Summary: Perception Management overrides hard science in monetary policy<br> Bank of England states "QE Not Ideal In Longer Term"<br> Rented a VHS video lately? Blockbuster up 53% in a week<br> <br> <br> <br> The McAlvany Weekly Commentary<br> with David McAlvany and Kevin Orrick<br> <br> Absolutely Original, Blockchain Secured, Digital Art—Only $69 Million<br> March 16, 2021<br> <br> “It’s impossible to call the top, but when the side effects of dysfunctional policy are all around you, it’s worth pausing. Maybe it’s worth shorting the markets, maybe that’s the answer, but it’s certainly worth recognizing, like the health officials in Europe, if the consequences of continuing on are grave, in some instances literally grave, perhaps we reconsider our next steps and only take actions with prudence and respect.” — David McAlvany<br> <br> Kevin: Welcome to the McAlvany Weekly Commentary, I’m Kevin Orrick along with David McAlvany. <br> <br> Dave, we read a lot of books, and it’s not always about interest rates and bonds and that type of thing. You and I both share a really good book that was written called Magic and Showmanship, and it’s really how does a magician manage perception of the audience? And as we look at what’s going on today, with perception management from the Federal Reserve, or perception management with getting people to either take the vaccine or be fearful of the vaccine, or COVID, what have you, seems that there’s an awful lot of perception management and very little hard science.<br> <br> David: Well, that’s right. When you look at public policy and you look at Central Bank policy, and you look at the social reactions to the things that are said, there is a lot of managing of perceptions. And that’s an important thing that happens. It’s one of the reasons why we’re interested in a book like that to say, “What’s really going on here?”<br> <br> Kevin: And the hard sciences guys feel very, very pressured to write their papers with a certain paradigm in mind. If you were writing papers 600 years ago about what body does the solar system circle, you would write a paper on Earth. Otherwise, you’d be burned at the stake. They had to manage perception.<br> <br> David: And that’s the case today, you have the sort of dominant themes, the dominant players, the dominant narratives, the dominant paradigms. And if you diverge from that at all, there’s very little toleration, which is suggestive of a lack of— I would suggest it’s a lack of integrity within scholarship, because there’s an inability to even have a conversation and consider something that might actually challenge the status quo in the current paradigm.<br> <br> Kevin: Okay. Like with the dollar. As long as everybody agrees that you can print unlimited amounts of dollars and borrow unlimited amounts of money, then we all can play the game. Or later, I’d like to talk a little bit about this new piece of artwork that sold for a whole lot more money than I’ll probably ever see. But okay, so let’s look at the practical side of perception management. Let’s say everybody panics and the dollar no longer has value. That’s a problem if you’re a central banker.<br> <br> David: There’s consensus that that’s not going to happen. We’ve sampled the economists, they all come from good schools, the PhDs speak for themselves. And therefore we don’t have to worry because as we, the children in the crowd, the children in the audience, look to the adults, those with the PhDs, they’re not afraid, we shouldn’t be afraid.<br> <br> Kevin: Vaccines are the same type of thing. Are we accurately going to see how the vaccines affect us? And for perception management alone, you would have to be careful what you say.<br> <br> David: Side effects from the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine have caused more than a dozen health agencies in as many countries across Europe to temporarily suspend the use of that partic...
