Simon Black, o nosso amigo “americano voador”, compara a actual estratégia dos bancos centrais ao desastroso plano militar ofensivo alemão que desencadeou a I Grande Guerra, o malfadado “Schlieffen Plan”.
“One of the most bizarre things about World War I was how predictable it was. Tensions had been building in Europe for years, and the threat of war was deemed so likely that most major governments invested heavily in detailed war plans.
The most famous was Germany’s “Schlieffen Plan”, a military offensive strategy named after its architect, Count Alfred von Schlieffen.
To describe the Schlieffen Plan as “comprehensive” is a massive understatement.
As AJP Taylor describes in his book War by Timetable, the Schlieffen Plan called for rapidly moving hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the front lines, plus food, equipment, horses, munitions, and other critical supplies, all in a matter of DAYS.
Tens of thousands of trains were criss-crossing Europe during the mobilization, and as you can imagine, all the trains had to run precisely on time.
A train that was even a minute early or a minute late would cause a chain reaction to the rest of the plan, affecting the time tables of other trains and other troop movements.
In short, there was no room for error.
In many respects the Schlieffen Plan is still with us to this day– not with regards to war, but for monetary policy.
Like the German General Staff more than a century ago, modern central bankers concoct the most complicated, elaborate plans to engineer economic victory.
Their success depends on being able to precisely control the behavior of hundreds of millions of consumers, millions of businesses, dozens of foreign nations, and trillions of dollars of capital.
And just like the obtusely complex war plans from 1914, central bank policy requires that all the trains run on time. There is no room for error.
This is nuts…”
Exclusivo Tornado / IntelNomics
