Fun on Friday: And Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself

If you’re on social media, you’ve seen the memes. They all start with some interesting string of facts and end with “…and Epstein didn’t kill himself.”

In case you’ve been under a rock, or just have better things to do than follow the news, Jeffrey Epstein was a well-connected financier and convicted pedophile. When I say “well-connected,” I mean he hung out with the rich and powerful, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

Epstein allegedly ran flights to a Carribean island that was known as “Pedophile Island.”

You can Google and get more of the sordid details. The important point for this little musing is that Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York.

Now, when a politically connected guy involved in sex trafficking gets collared, that could, maybe, just maybe, be a bad omen for the people who hung out with them. As a result, the arrest definitely wasn’t a good omen for Epstein. From the moment his incarceration was reported, people started saying, “Well, he’ll be committing suicide any day now.”

Why?

Because there was no way rich, politically powerful people were going to let this guy implicate them in a pedophile ring — especially presidents and congressmen. A lot of people assumed Epstein would turn up dead.

And he did.

Epstein committed suicide. Allegedly, he hung himself.

Except virtually nobody believes it was suicide.

And thus the memes.

When I say nobody believes it was suicide, I mean pretty much nobody. This isn’t some idea tucked away on conspiracy theory websites. Almost everybody I’ve talked to accepts it as a given that this guy didn’t commit suicide. (And there’s actual evidence he didn’t, but that’s not really important here.) They readily accept the fact that a guy who could have potentially exposed some of the most politically powerful people in the US was not going to survive to testify in court or even answer questions.

No, I have to be honest. This sudden skepticism of the government narrative pleases me. I wish there was more of it. Because there is an awful lot of BS out there that people just accept lock-stock-and-barrel. We need more healthy skepticism. And the avalanche of Epstein memes reminds us to be skeptical.

Here are just a few things in the economic realm I wish people would be a bit more skeptical about.

• The Fed is a politically independent institution.
• Government spending stimulates the economy.
• The Fed can just keep printing money forever and it won’t matter.
• The national debt is money we owe to ourselves so it doesn’t matter.
• We have the greatest economy in the history of America.
• The trade deal is going to fix the economy.
• Jerome Powell’s claim that “it’s not QE!”
• Gold is a useless relic.
• There is no inflation.

You see? Skepticism is good.

I’ve never been a conspiracy theorist. In fact, as a skeptical person, I tend to be skeptical of conspiracy theories. But some things are just so transparently false, you have to say, “Yeah. No.”

Like the assertion that Epstein killed himself.

Or that the Fed is an independent a-political body.

So, keep the memes coming. Keep undermining the official narrative. And do it more. Because a lot of official narratives are horse-hockey.

Fun on Friday is a weekly SchiffGold feature. We dig up some of the off-the-wall and off-beat stories relating to precious metals and the economy, and share them with you – with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Click here to read other posts in this series