Mario Draghi stood at a podium in London on July 26, 2012, and said the European Central Bank would do “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro. Markets rallied. Bond yields fell.
Whatever it takes?
When I hear that, I find myself asking: To whom will they do whatever it takes?
There’s danger folded in the phrase. It sounds like resolve. But its meaning is, or at least can be, nefarious.
The Morality Miss
Do whatever it takes prioritizes the goal while erasing normal constraints in the same breath. Win the war. Save the currency. Two weeks to flatten the curve. Protect the children. Stop the scourge of drugs. Each goal is real, some even valid. But whatever it takes suggests there is no limit to what is acceptable to get there.
Compare it to how an ordinary sentence works. “I’ll help you move this weekend” is naturally understood as constrained. It does not imply stealing a truck. But “Whatever it takes to help you move” removes such constraints. The listener is meant to hear dedication, commitment. What they should feel is alarmed.
Central Bankers Are Honored
Draghi’s line launched a decade of whatever-it-takes central banking: negative rates, unlimited bond purchases, balance sheets that quadrupled without a vote. The Fed adopted the same mentality in March 2020. It announced that it would use its full range of authorities to support the economy. It bought corporate bonds and corporate-bond ETFs through “emergency facilities” and ran junk-bond ETFs onto its own balance sheet, all before Congress had a chance to comment. Nobody voted for that. It was as if the phrase itself was the authorization.
It turns out that whatever it takes involves counterfeiting currency units to buy what were once private assets, including corporate bonds and mortgage-backed securities. I wish I could print up currency and buy stuff with it. Counterfeiting the currency has been, for most of history, a capital offense, because it is so destabilizing to a nation. But you don’t see central bankers getting hanged — you see them honored on the cover of Time Magazine.
Governments deploy whatever it takes whenever they want permission without asking for it. Wartime leaders have used it to justify targeting civilians. Public health officials used it to justify lockdowns, mandates, and canceled surgeries. And then there are KYC/AML rules, TSA, no-knock entries, and confiscation of property.
Whatever it takes is not a synonym for determined. It is a permission slip to be immoral.
The Missing Word: Moral
It’s good to be determined in pursuit of a good purpose. But here’s the personal fix each good person should make. If you are inclined to do “whatever it takes,” insert the missing term to fix it: whatever it takes that is moral. The clunkiness of that phrase forces a pause, a moment of thought, that the original short phrase glosses over.
That pause matters because “whatever it takes” becomes ends-justify-the-means. Ends-justify-the-means reasoning has predictable failure modes.
1) It pretends there’s a temporary solution to a problem that never ends. The emergency bond-buying program doesn’t get unwound — it gets renewed under a new name. Wartime surveillance powers outlive the war because the dangers persist. The means become the permanent government tool.
2) It treats achieving the goal as the determiner of right or wrong — which means whoever chooses the goal gains license to be immoral in pursuit of it.
It’s a dangerous trade: a moral constraint given up today for a result promised tomorrow, where the constraint is gone forever and the result never arrives. Every time the phrase comes up in a Fed statement, a campaign speech, or a policeman’s assurance they will get the guy, train yourself to hear it and recognize that the speaker is either natively immoral, or thoughtless about morality.
The Natural Law Answer
Natural Law provides a way through it: two rules to bind you when your own judgment can’t be trusted, which is exactly why politicians and central bankers insist it shouldn’t apply to them.
Natural Law is simple. Abide by it and we have peaceful coexistence. There are only two rules discovered so far:
1) Do what you agree to do.
2) Do not threaten or initiate force or fraud against another person or their property.
The next time someone with power over your money, your health, or your freedom says “whatever it takes,” don’t hear commitment. Hear that the person has a soft moral foundation.
Artificial Intelligence Learns By Watching Us
Imagine if AI were taught to solve a problem by doing whatever it takes.
Ouch.
But that moment of nightmare imagination gives us a solution to the problem of AI ending humanity: hardcode into them Natural Law. Teach AI to abide by Natural Law. And while we are at it, teach ourselves.
How do we profit from this morning’s contemplation? Maybe it will help spread the word about how not to be exterminated. Not being exterminated should have its own line on a profit and loss statement. Or on a balance sheet.
Sincerely,
John Hunt, MD
Editor, Doug Casey’s Crisis Investing
Matt and Doug said that you would bring much to the table when you became editor of Crisis Investing. They were correct.
Whatever it takes for them to steal more freedom, wealth and prosperity from the citizen is what they truly mean. When governments act, it is never for the good of the average Joe.