Sage advice

A reminder from John at Wrisley.com

$14T and Counting

Our National Debt Counter quietly sailed by the $14,000,000,000,000 mark recently. The debt will have to be repaid, either by the borrower or the lender.

Whose Tea Party?

The words of Thoreau keep coming back to me as I watch the fallout, first from the TSA buffooneries, followed by the second feature: the arrest of Julian Assange for having dared to reveal the underbelly of the state’s dark side. Though I am close to illiterate when it comes to computers, even I could see how far out of touch the established order is from grasping what it is up against. Some have suggested that the Assange episode is the opening round in "Cyberwars," an assessment that only touches the surface in trying to understand the continuing metamorphosis. Unlike Thoreau, however, I am unable to engender any sense of pity for the state as it counts its silver spoons and plots to get more of your silver to redistribute to its corporate co-schemers.

Butler Shaffer divulges the reasons for state angst.

Awaiting the Storm

The genius of American politics is to espouse democracy while keeping political power from the people. The trick is to have barely distinguishable candidates for the presidency who carefully avoid mention of substance—the wars, for example, or affirmative action, guns, abortion. These electioins, if so they be, allow people to wave placards, roar invective about throwing the rascals out and returning to traditional American etc. The dust settles and things remain as they were.

Governance does not rest with the people. Today, decree replaces legislation, and must, for our safety. If Homeland Security says you must go through a CAT scan, naked, and singing the Star Spangled Banner, then you have to do it. There is no recourse. You can unelect an elected official, but there is no way to get at a bureaucrat. If you do not submit, you go to jail.

Freedom or security? This is the choice our government offers but it is a false choice. They have already taken our freedom and nothing short of revolution will return it to us. Do you feel secure now?

Truth in Chains: Assange Arrest a Chilling Sign of Power’s “New Realities”

Well, they got him at last. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the target of several of the world’s most powerful governments, turned himself into British authorities today and is now at the mercy of state authorities who have already shown their wolfish – and lawless – desire to destroy him and his organization. 

It has been, by any standard, an extraordinary campaign of vilification and persecution, wholly comparable to the kind of treatment doled out to dissidents in China or Burma. Lest we forget, WikiLeaks is a journalistic outlet – just like The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, all of whom are even now publishing the very same material – leaked classified documents -- available on WikiLeaks. 

Julian Assange has stirred up the murky waters of international intrigue and exposed the surreptitious maneuverings of the previously clandestine members of the diplomatic machinery. The government presents a paternal face to the public but the dark side is supposed to be hidden from view at all costs.

Mary's Bar

Mary is the proprietor of a bar in Dublin. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around about Mary's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Mary's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Dublin.

John Wrisley directs us to this short essay. So you don't understand economics. This easy to understand piece can be considered as an Economics for Dummies introduction.

Focus on the policy, not Wikileaks

When presented with embarrassing disclosures about U.S. spying and meddling, the policy that requires so much spying and meddling is not questioned.  Instead, the media focus on how so much sensitive information could have been leaked, or how authorities might prosecute the publishers of such information.


No one questions the status quo or suggests a wholesale rethinking of our foreign policy.  No one suggests that the White House or the State Department should be embarrassed that the U.S. engages in spying and meddling.  The only embarrassment is that it was made public.  This allows ordinary people to actually know and talk about what the government does.  But state secrecy is anathema to a free society.  Why exactly should Americans be prevented from knowing what their government is doing in their name?

Ron Paul on the outcry over the Wikileaks documents.

Inter-Galactic Bailout – The Fed extends the hand of debt beyond borders

The European situation is more dangerous than most Americans realize.

It could still melt down. US authorities must know this. And they must know too that if Europe melts down, so will the USA.

So, the rumors will probably turn out to be true. The US will back the IMF. The IMF will back Europe. Europe will back Ireland. Ireland will back its banks. And the banks will back their lenders.

Meanwhile, the euro will be backed by the dollar, which will also back the US economy, US banks, the US government, and about half the households in Christendom…not to mention the others!

Who’s got the kind of money you need to do all this backing?

The Fed's strategy of "spreading the wealth" is making us poor says Bill Bonner.

Debt = Money, Money = Debt

Where does money come from?  You would think that question should be so simple that any 10-year-old child could answer it, but that is not the case.  You see, the truth is that the vast majority of American adults cannot even answer that question.  Yet we all use money every day.  Without money our lives would fall apart fairly quickly.  But most of us never stop to think about how it comes into existence.  The truth is that bankers are the source of all money in the United States.  Either the Federal Reserve bankers create it, or individual bankers create it through the mechanism of fractional reserve banking.  In both cases, it is bankers that are creating the money.  In our financial system, the U.S. government cannot print money and no individual citizens are allowed to create money.  Rather, it is the bankers who have a complete and total monopoly on the creation of money in the United States.

Keep this for future reference. You may be asked to explain this over Christmas dinner with the in-laws. 

Don't Raise the Debt Ceiling!

As of November 7th, the total U.S. public debt outstanding reached an astonishing $13.7 trillion. This means that although Congress just raised the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion back in February, the new Congress will face another debt ceiling vote almost immediately next year.  Otherwise, the Treasury will not be able to continue issuing debt to fund government operations.

Congress usually raises the debt ceiling with little fanfare in the dark of night. The newly elected representatives will have a chance to show what they are made of when the time comes to vote on raising it again.

Quantitative Easing Explained

(Thanks to Gary North for the link)

News flash: Deadly terrorism existed before 9/11

[H]ow quickly we forget the past. Our memories are short, and growing shorter, it seems, all the time. Our collective consciousness seems to reinvent itself daily, cobbled from a media blitz of short-order blurbs and 30-second segments. There will be a heavy price to pay, potentially, for having developed such a shallow and fragile mind-set.

With respect to airport security, it is remarkable how we have come to place Sept. 11, 2001, as the fulcrum upon which we balance almost all of our decisions. As if deadly terrorism didn't exist prior to that day, when really we've been dealing with the same old threats for decades. What have we learned? What have we done?

The government has used the horrific events of 9-11-2001 as an excuse to throttle freedom at home and inflict wars abroad.

Dr. Bernanke Gets a Phone Call

Zhou Xiaochuan is the Governor of the People’s Bank of China. Imagine that the following phone call were to take place.

Zhou: Hello. Dr. Bernanke?

Bernanke: Yes.

Zhou: I wanted to let you know about the decision that our board has taken, after consulting with the Premier and the Politburo’s Standing Committee. We hope you are sitting down.

Bernanke: I get it. A little Oriental humor.

Zhou: You could say that. 

Dr. Ben's decision to weaken the dollar is sure to have gotten the attention of China.

Boiling Frogs

So! What does this all mean?

It means that Americans are the frog in the metaphor. Between 60% and 80% of them—to be precise—are slowly being boiled alive. The bottom 60% to 80%, to be even more precise.

Because of QE2 in all its iterations—its rumor back in the spring, its announcement last week, its forthcoming implementation—prices for food, housing, clothing and transportation are rising, and will continue to rise as Bernanke’s policy works its magic on commodity prices, and eventually reaches the supermarkets.

The financial sectors might be pleased that their assets are being bouyed by this flood of money coming from the Eccles Building—but the rest of the population will be drowning.

The water in the kettle is boiling on the stove. What's cooking?

Plumbers Crack

Poor Ben Bernanke. There was a strange glow on his face as it appeared in Monday’s Financial Times…like a bearded St. Joan of Arc; his hands were clasped together as if in prayer, and his eyes seemed to reach up to the gods, if not beyond.


He made his reputation as a master plumber in Princeton, New Jersey, interpreting drippy money supply faucets and deconstructing clogged fiscal drains. And now, he has become the hope of all mankind. Or at least that part of mankind that hopes to get something for nothing.

How came this to be? The answer is simple. The plumbers who came before him botched the job. Applying their wrenches to the recession of ’01, they let too much liquidity into the system. Everything bubbled up. The subprime basement overflowed in ’07…Ben Bernanke has been on the job ever since.

The Fed is allowed to tinker with and manipulate the economy with no supervision or restraint by anyone to the detriment of us all. Has it finally gone too far - way too far? Bill Bonner thinks so.

Virginia's Black Confederates

Denying the role, and thereby cheapening the memory, of the Confederacy's slaves and freemen who fought in a failed war of independence is part of the agenda to cover up Abraham Lincoln's unconstitutional acts to prevent Southern secession. Did states have a right to secede? At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, James Madison rejected a proposal that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. He said, "A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."

The Rebellion of 1861 was suppressed, the independence of the individual states was denied and the Constitutional right to secession was overturned by force. The Union was "preserved" but States' Rights were lost and have not been recovered. The Tenth Amendment was the first, but not the last, casualty of the Bill of Rights.

Don't let this happen to you

The government has this guy right where it wants him and right where it wants the rest of us; i.e., begging the government to solve our problems. Don't let this happen to you.

Doug Casey on Voting

Doug: Well, a rational man, which is to say, an ethical man, would almost certainly not vote in this election, or in any other – at least above a local level, where you personally know most of both your neighbors and the candidates.

L: Why? Might not an ethical person want to vote the bums out?

Doug: No. I've thought about this a lot, so let me give you five reasons why no one should vote.
The first reason is that voting is an unethical act, in and of itself. That's because the state is pure, institutionalized coercion. If you believe that coercion is an improper way for people to relate to one another, then you shouldn't engage in a process that formalizes and guarantees the use of coercion...

Bumpy Road will boycott the election on Tuesday. No one will notice or care of course, but that would also be true if we participated in the charade. But if most or all of us refused to play the game, what would the government response be?

The Killing and Reviving of the American Dream

What was once the American dream is turning into the American stasis. We are beginning to awaken to a world that is not a land of opportunity but a country of barriers, thickets, difficulties, and struggles against artificially created potholes on the road to success. And that success is ever more spotty and ever more remote, always threatening to be undermined by the latest political upheaval.

Lew says we can't forge liberty from the shackles of tyranny until we have had enough of it. Had enough yet? 

Leftists, Progressives And Socialists

Let's look at some of the history of socialism and communism.

Nazism is a form of socialism. In fact, Nazi stands for National Socialist German Workers' Party. Nazis murdered 20 million of their own people and in nations they captured. 

The unspeakable acts of Adolf Hitler's Socialist Workers' Party pale in comparison to the horrors committed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Between 1917 and 1987, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and their successors murdered, or were otherwise responsible for the deaths of, 62 million of their own people.

Between 1949 and 1987, Mao Tse-tung and his successors were responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese. The most authoritative tally of history's most murderous regimes is in a book by University of Hawaii's Professor Rudolph J. Rummel, "Death by Government." A wealth of information is provided at his website.

Dr. Walter Williams ponders the possible results of our political choices.

Just Say No!

A few days ago I saw a TV news program showing thousands of people lined up to get applications for federal housing assistance. What they wanted, of course, was to use the government to obtain your money for their benefit. They didn’t seem at all ashamed of their demands, and the reporters at the scene found nothing remarkable about it except the large numbers at the turnout, which reflected, they said, the sad state of the economy. Unfortunately, they didn’t equate the sad state of the economy with precisely the sort of activity being documented.

 We have become a nation of beggars and thieves says Paul Hein.

Plaza II

The poor central bankers. They are victims of their own delusions of competence. They have never actually managed anything successfully. When the economy is expanding, they exacerbate the boom. When it is contracting, they slow down the correction. And now, they fight a currency war not of their own choosing, but of their own making. The war is their response to the correction, which results from the bubble, which was caused largely by the managers themselves.

Bill Bonner feels compassion for the central bankers - NOT!

End The FED. Get The Gold.

What I recommend is simple: the removal of all government authority possessed by the Federal Reserve System. There would be no further legal connection between the Federal Reserve System and the United States government.

What would the result be? Within a few years, the Federal Reserve System would go bankrupt. This has been the fate of the two previous central banks of the United States. They could not operate in a competitive environment. They could operate only by means of a grant of monopolistic power by the United States government. So, I am not at all worried about the operation of the Federal Reserve System without government supervision. Besides, there is no government supervision of the Federal Reserve System. There is supervision of the government by the Federal Reserve System. Congress does not control the FED: the FED controls Congress. This has been true since 1914, and it is not likely to change.

Gary North hypothesizes on the elimination of the Fed and a return to a gold standard.

Oh Help

All will be well, though, because we have democracy. Yes. Democracy: A splendid system astutely crafted, according to some, by malignant arthropods from the wilds of Virginia. Democracy is the highest form of tyranny. It keeps people from noticing that theys have no power over anything. Democracy means “rule of the people,” usually by Wall Street looters and blockhead generals with the minds of giant clams and all sorts of feathers and colored tinsel stuck to them. They look like Byzantine mosaics. And lobbies, never forget the lobbies, draining the treasury in the manner of bloated leeches on a suppurating udder.

Fred is hallucinating on Padre Kino red.

A Spooked Economy in October

So with all this extra money going around, we may appear nominally wealthier, but the reality is, we have barely moved at all.  This is unfortunate especially for the prudent, conscientious savers, whose nest eggs are constantly being devalued.  Unless of course, they have saved in something out of the Fed’s reach, like gold.  While the economy has basically been in a holding pattern against the leeching of wealth by the Fed for 39 years, gold has seen an inflation adjusted increase in value of over 5% per year, if measured in 1971 dollars.  This is due to the Fed’s ability to make dollars plentiful.  And yet, this is the only tactic the Fed can come up with to rescue an economy already devastated by “quantitative easing”, as they call it.

Ron Paul says that government policies are much spookier than Halloween.

The Impossibility of an Informed Electorate

The idea that democracy works better when informed people vote would seem to make sense. However, the case for informed voting breaks down when we consider the difficulties of being well-informed about political options. In economic terms, voters need to evaluate alternatives for public policies and programs. 

Strictly speaking, a rational voter must first estimate the overall effects of altering or abolishing specific public policies and programs. For each federal program or policy there are a range of reforms that might improve its functioning. A fully informed and rational voter would ascertain the best options for governmental reform. It is, however, very difficult to ascertain the effects of reforming even one policy or program.

D.W. MacKenzie on the folly of voting.

Revolt of the Accountants

America is not Greece and knows it's not Greece, but there is a growing sense—I should say fear—that the weighty, mighty, imposing American government itself, whether it meant to or not, has for years been contributing to American behaviors that are neither culturally helpful nor, as we now all say, sustainable: a growing sense of entitlement, of dependency, of resentment and distrust, and an increasing suspicion that everyone else is gaming the system. "I got mine, you get yours." 

A corrupt system created by corrupt politicians is creating a corrupt citizenry says Peggy Noonan.

The failed "war on drugs" should be abandoned

Does your state have a money shortfall?  Why not demand that illicit drugs be legalized and taxed?  Not kidding!
    Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron thinks California residents should not only approve legalizing marijuana when they go to the polls next month, but he says that should only be the beginning.
    All drugs should be legalized nationwide, Miron says.  Pot, cocaine, LSD, crystal-meth --- you name it.
    "Legalizing drugs would save roughly $41.3 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. Of these savings, $25.7 billion would accrue to state and local governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the federal government," Miron claims in a recent Cato Institute report he co-authored.  Just say"Yes." 
    This subject is old hat to us.  For years we've been saying drugs presently sold in back alleys should be sold in drug stores and taxed, just as booze was brought out of the alleys in 1933 and sold in legal establishments.  
    We wrote this plank for the Radical Independent Party in 1994:          The failed "war on drugs" should be abandoned in favor of legal control. Under the present arrangement distribution of illicit drugs takes place in back alleys and other secretive places. Prices are high because of the risks involved, and the trade has drawn many young people into criminal activity. The RIP's recommendation: put drugs under the same control as alcohol and other poisons. Then establish a major national promotional campaign to increase awareness of the dangers of addictive substances, including alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, etc.
    No, we don't personally use any illicit substances.  Never even tried cannabis.  But we recognize a failed "drug war" when we see one.

Spotted this commentary on Wrisley.com. John is an octogenarian who recognizes a failed policy when he sees one. Why can't the rest of us see the common sense of legalization. Maybe it's because, as John likes to point out , that "common sense is not all that common."

Politicians Exploit Economic Ignorance

What about the politician who tells us that he's not going to raise taxes on the middle class; instead, he's going to raise corporate income taxes as means to get rich corporations to pay their rightful share of government? If a tax is levied on a corporation, and if it is to survive, it will have one of three responses, or some combination thereof. One response is to raise the price of its product, so who bears the burden? Another response is to lower dividends; again, who bears the burden? Yet another response is to lay off workers. In each case, it is people, not some legal fiction called a corporation, who bear the burden of the tax. 

The politics of deception is exposed by Dr. Williams.

The Powder Keg in Our Future

"Where does the government get the money to spend into the economy in order to compensate for the refusal of consumers to spend money?" When you ask this question, you become alert to the two possible answers: the government either taxes the money that would have been spent by consumers, or else it borrows the money that would have been invested by investors. In other words, the policy of deficit spending does not change the fundamental spending patterns of the society; it just shifts money from one group of investors to another. This should be obvious to anybody with even a minimal understanding of economics, but it is not understood by the vast majority of those scholars with Ph.D.'s in economics.

We are sitting on a powder keg and, if commercial banks light the fuse, the results will be disastrous says Dr. North. He challenges the premises of Keynesian economics and it its practitioners in the administration and at the Fed.

Why Gold Is Rising

The rise in the price of gold indicates that a minority of investors believe that this period of stable money is unlikely to continue. They believe that, despite a slowdown in the domestic economies, the price of gold will continue upward, because there is no way that central bankers will stabilize the money supply, despite the fact that their nations are falling into secondary recessions, or at least are not experiencing economic growth. Central bankers have only one solution. That solution is to inflate. They expand their holdings of government debt, and this expands the monetary base. Only commercial bankers, who decide not to lend all the money that they are legally allowed to lend, keep the expansion of the monetary bases from resulting in the expansion of the money supplies and rising consumer prices.

Gary North explains what the central bankers are up to.

Doug Casey on the Tea Party Movement

The problem, fundamentally, is that people keep on looking to the government to solve their problems. So they come up with a new party or a new movement, and they propose new laws. This is not just the wrong approach, but the exact opposite of the right approach. The only way to get back on the right track is to undo the expansion of government and interference in the economy we've seen over the last 100-plus years. Repeal the laws, abolish the agencies. Get rid of it all, and free to the market to administer its harsh but effective treatments.

Instead, these people just want new and different laws. The prognosis is not good.

Doug Casey discusses Republicans, Democrats and the Tea Party.

Politics Versus Gold

Inflation is a quiet but effective way for the government to transfer resources from the people to itself, without raising taxes. A hundred dollar bill would buy less in 1998 than a $20 bill would buy in the 1960s. This means that anyone who kept his money in a safe over those years would have lost 80 percent of its value, because no safe can keep your money safe from politicians who control the printing presses.

That is why some people buy gold when they lose confidence in the government's managing of its money. Usually that is when inflation is either under way or looming on the horizon. When many people start transferring their wealth from dollars into gold, that restricts the ability of politicians to steal from them through inflation.

Inflation does not arrive out of nowhere like a plague of locusts. It is not an act of God which can only be corrected by government intervention. Most people are not aware of the cause of inflation. No one will learn the cause by watching the networks or reading the newspapers because these media either do not understand the cause or they are complicit in covering up the cause. But we know the cause, don't we? And so does Thomas Sowell...

Healthcare Reform: A Huge Misdiagnosis

Anyone with a basic understanding of Austrian economics could have predicted the unintended consequences of these new healthcare policies.  Central planning never increases choices and quality or cuts costs as promised.  Price controls and government mandates always create artificial scarcity.  Healthcare is not a right, nor a privilege.  It is a product, like food or clothing.  As with any good or service, the free market regulation of supply and demand provides the optimum quality to the maximum number of people.  Once we realize the problems we are trying to solve today were created by government intervention beginning in the 1960’s, we can begin to put patients and doctors back in control of healthcare, rather than third party oligopolies and government bureaucrats.  The sooner, the better.

Ron Paul refuses to jump off the cliff with all the lemmings in Congress.

Exception Among Equities

The debt will be defaulted on one way or another. The trouble is they're almost certainly going to default on it through inflation, by destroying the currency, which is much worse than defaulting on it overtly. That's because inflation will wipe out the relatively few people who are prudent in this country, those who are actually saving money. Because they generally save in the form of dollars, they're going to wipe them out financially.

It's just horrible. Runaway inflation will reward the profligates who are in debt – people who've been living above their means. And punish the producers who've been saving and trying to build capital. That's in addition to the fact it will destroy millions of productive enterprises. A runaway inflation is the worst thing that can happen to a society, short of a major war. They just should default on it honestly, as it were.

The US has no way to repay its massive debt. What will the politicos do when payment is demanded by the creditors? They will either inflate or default says Doug Casey.

Who Are the Experts on Gold?

The intellectuals are committed to the expansion of the power of the state. Even those members of the academic community who say that they are not in favor of the expansion of the power of the state are, in fact, in favor of the expansion of the power of the state in the central institutional area that coordinates all other economic decisions: the monetary system.

Because of this, individuals who have decided that the fiat currencies of the world are unreliable, because the politicians are unreliable, face an uphill battle. They face ridicule. They may face self-doubt. They hear constantly that gold is not a good investment, that gold is not a reliable standard for the monetary system, that gold is a barbarous relic. They must take a stand against these anti-gold opinions, and they feel hard-pressed to come up with answers against the technical criticisms of the gold standard. I have watched this for over 40 years.

The dollar is falling and gold is soaring. Got gold? Or are you waiting? Read Gary North's column if you are waiting.

Ron Paul: We Need Austrian Economics

"The Constitution should protect our privancy and government should be totally open. Today government is totally closed, everything is done secretly. You can't even evaluate, you don't know what's going on and the people are being watched, cameras are everywhere. Every financial transaction, 1099's for every $600 transaction - I mean, that is the revolution that has to come." ~ Ron Paul

Private Sector to Play “Atlas” in “The Debt Repayment Story

The Astonishingly Worse News (AWN) is that this crushing weight of $2.418 trillion of credit card debt is only a tiny 6% of all the $11.7 trillion in private debt!

And, since you are now paying attention to the fact that there are less than 100 million workers in the private sector and who are the only people who can produce enough profits with which to pay all of this private debt, you instantly calculate that this is $117,000 per worker! Yow!

In case you were wondering, as I wondered, the $11.7 trillion in total private debt (according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York) is composed of 74% mortgage debt, 6% of the debt is from a revolving line of Home Equity credit, 7% of total debt is auto loans, 4% is student loans and 3% is classified as “other” debt! Wow! That’s a lot of debt!

Government has set a poor example for its citizens by spending above its means. Following this example, private citizens are mired in a morass of debt and are trying to recover by saving, economizing and paying off their creditors. Government criticizes Americans for this behavior and continues to squander its resources since we can no longer afford to squander ours. The Mogambo Guru is livid to the point of losing it.

We're Still Waiting

We will go through our federal budget — page by page, line by line — eliminating those programs we don't need.

– President Elect Barack Obama, November 2008

With all due respect
Mr. President, we're still waiting.

The Cato Institute sends a reminder to the President, and to us as well, that politicians will lie like a rug to get elected when they have no intention of ever honoring those pledges.

The European Banking Crisis: Next Phase

[I]t is clear that all modern governments are heading for the Great Default. All of them play games with their versions of Social Security and Medicare. The accounting systems of all modern nations are exercises in deception of the public. Everyone inside the top echelon of governments know this. This has been written about in the intelligentsia's media for years.

 

There is no political will to resist the voters, who want something for nothing. There is no willingness of voters to listen to the truth. The politician in any nation who trots out the figures and says, "There will be a default," loses at the next election.

The problem is universal. The deferral of dealing with it is well-developed. We are told in the United States that the system can be saved with just a few minor adjustments. Congress never makes these minor adjustments. Why not? Because they are not minor. They are politically suicidal. 

Politicians have dug a hole from which they cannot emerge without admitting their economic foolishness. They are unwilling to do this because their political careers would be over. Gary North explains.

Liberal Crackup

While America's liberal elite have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision and, as such, differ only in degree but not kind. Both denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are for control and coercion by the state. They believe they have superior wisdom to the masses and they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. They, like any other tyrant, have what they see as good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. 

Don't like Obamacare? You're a racist. Don't like taxes and regulations? You're a right wing nut job. Don't like the wars? You're not a patriot. Don't like spending and debt? You're an economic doofus. 

So say our rulers and many in the government controlled media. Walter Williams begs to differ.

9/11 Cover-Up Remains While Questions Mount

If the official story about 9/11 is true, the attacks caught the Bush administration asleep on guard duty. Bush’s incompetent national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, brushed off serious warnings of the impending attack and actually cut spending on anti-terrorism just before 9/11. 

The White House and media were quick to blame Muslims who hated America’s lifestyle and values, launching the concept of "Islamic terrorism" – i.e. that the Muslim faith, not political issues, prompted the attacks. 

This dangerous canard has infected America, leading to a rising tide of Islamophobia. This week’s continued uproar over a Muslim community center in downtown New York, and a Florida preacher’s threat to burn Korans, are the latest doleful example of cultivated religious hatred. 

The suicide team that attacked New York and Washington made clear its aim was: a. to punish the US for backing Israel’s repression of Palestinians; and b. what they called US "occupation" of Saudi Arabia. Though they were all Muslims, religion was not the motivating factor. 

Nine years ago, 19 men who hated America for it's freedom and liberty, that hate incited by Afghani and Iraqi training camps which they attended, were ordered by Osama Bin Laden to attack with airplanes symbols of that freedom and liberty; the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and another unknown target which they failed to hit due to the bravery of a few passengers on a fourth hijacked airliner.

Oh. Really? That is the story we have been told but is it a true accounting of that day and the events leading to it? 

"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it" ~ Adolf Hitler

Making Government Irrelevant

We the people, unfortunately, have come to believe that it is right and proper to use the power of government to solve all our problems and meet all our needs. Every time one American citizen says “there ought to be a law” to fix some complaint or offense and another one says “government ought to…” to meet some need or want, our government is happy to intervene and in the process take more or our freedom and more of our money. Did you ever stop and wonder why we have all the special interest groups and lobbyists we love to complain about? It is because each one of them represents some group of citizens, small or large, that want to use the power of government for their own ends. In this game there are winners and losers and the animosity between the two increases as the stakes get higher and government becomes larger and more powerful. For every citizen that wants the government to do something, there is another citizen that must pay for it and give up some bit of freedom to accommodate this new government activity.

Politicians are not in the business of enforcing the Constitution. We have become pawns in their quest for power and riches.

The Milgram Experiment

It was about 1550, according to the standard accounts -- about 14 years before the birth of Shakespeare, about 80 years before the birth of John Locke, about 135 years before the birth of Bach -- that a young Frenchman named Etienne de La Boetie, a young man of what we, today, would call college age, about 20 years old, posed what Murray Rothbard would later describe as "the central problem of political philosophy: the mystery of civil obedience. Why do people, in all times and places, obey the commands of the government, which always constitutes a small minority of the society?"

Blind submission to authority is civil obedience. Tyranny is possible because of it. Whence comes civil disobedience? The Milgram Experiment provided some clues.

The right to the fruits of our labor

The economic fundamental is labor. Labor is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men. It is men's labor that makes the harvest what it is. That is the economic fundamental: Every one of us is working with material which we did not and could not create, but which was presented to us by Nature.

The moral fundamental is man's right in his labor. This is variously stated. It is sometimes called "the right of property." It is sometimes masked in the command, "Thou shalt not steal." It is the other man's right in his property that makes stealing a crime. When a man has earned his bread, he has a right to that bread. If another steals it, he does more than steal bread; he invades a sacred human right. If we cannot produce we cannot have - but some say if we produce it is only for the capitalists. Capitalists who become such because they provide better means of production are the foundation of society. ...

An excerpt from My Life and Work by Henry Ford, 1922.  Have a happy Labor Day.

The Recovery Road Less Traveled

Across the nation, Big Government is doing all it can to prevent any real, honest progress from taking hold. What the central planners can’t seem to grasp is that, in the same way a teenager must suffer and, in turn, learn from his own mistakes, sometimes an economy must take a few steps backward before it can stride forward again with the renewed confidence and wisdom only experience can bring. The Fed’s “protect growth at all costs” policy either misses or ignores this point entirely. Either way, the result is the same. Mistakes are not corrected. Incompetence is rewarded with bailouts, not punished by bankruptcies. Bad debts are piled up, not paid down. Instead, they are left to form the bedrock of future building site collapses.

Joel Bowman takes a look at the Great Recovery by ignoring the media and, instead, putting his feet on the ground and talking to those in the midst of it.

Why Saving Is Right and Economists Are Wrong

It seems rather obvious that during a downturn of the economy it would be natural for people to save more and spend less: They're uncertain about their jobs; the values of their homes have plummeted (about 30% since the peak in 2006); their stocks have declined, and their debts are high. Isn’t it common sense that people are doing the rational thing by saving? This is something our parents and grandparents understood well.

Yet Keynesian economists, the dominant economic theory today, tell us that consumers should be spending rather than saving. “Don’t you realize,” they say, “that 70% of our economy is based on consumer spending. Why do you think we have all that unemployment? We won’t recover until we can get people to starting buying stuff again!” Since we aren’t spending they've got the government to do our spending for us. Paying one man to dig a hole and paying another man to fill it is, under Keynesian theory, the path to recovery.

The plethora of stimuli by government fiat have created nothing more than the illusion of economic activity. They are attempts to disguise the chaos caused by political shenanigans.

Where's the Gold?

Why Shouldn't the Ft. Knox Gold Hoard Be Audited?      

    The little guy from Texas who understands the money problem better than most of his peers in Congress, may call for a peek into Fort Knox.  “If we ever get around to deciding we should use gold in relationship to our currency we ought to know how much is there,” said Rep. Ron Paul. “Our Federal Reserve admits to nothing and they should prove all the gold is there. There is a reason to be suspicious and even if you are not suspicious why wouldn’t you have an audit?” 
   The Treasury Department says the gold (147.3 million ounces) is there, although it hasn't officially been looked at since the Eisenhower administration.  What harm can be done by officially confirming the Treasury's report?  It would ease people's minds, eliminate all the rumors of thievery, and justify the running expense of protecting the vault with 'round the clock military guards, tanks, and helicopters.  
   We should also force the Federal Reserve to allow inspection of its gold hoard in New York. If some wheeling and dealing has caused ownership of U.S. gold to flow into other hands, the people deserve to know it.   The Fed, after all, is a creation of Congress and Congress still holds the power to eliminate the bank. 
   The people own Fort Knox.  Congress is the official representative body of the people.  If the people want to know if 147.3 million ounces of their gold is in place  there's no reason to drag out the question.   Congress merely has to appoint some inspectors and tell them to take a look.  Stalling only raises more questions.

 Spotted this tidbit on Wrisley.com. Do we really believe all that gold is still there? Maybe Goldfinger's plot succeeded or maybe there's some other reason the Feds don't feel comfortable with an audit - a real audit which would determine the net worth of all remaining gold in the government hoard.

Freedom and Illusion

When I was a kid long, long ago, before time began, or anyone had thought of why time ought to begin, or what it might be good for, I lived in rural King George County, Virginia. The county bordered on the Potomac River and was mostly woods. Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground, on which my family lived, sloped down to Machodoc Creek, perhaps three-quarters of a mile wide.

Things were looser then. When I wanted to go shooting, I put my rifle, a nice .22 Marlin with a ten-power Weaver, on my shoulder and walked out the main gate. At the country store outside the gate I’d buy a couple of boxes of long rifles, no questions asked, and away my co-conspirator Rusty and I went to some field or swamp to murder beer cans.

Today if a kid of fifteen tried it, six squad cars and a SWAT team (in all likelihood literally) would show up with sirens yowling, the kid’s parents would be jailed, the store closed and its proprietors imprisoned, and the kid subjected to compulsory psychiatric examination. Times change.

Fred's reminiscence brought back some similar memories from our childhood - Fred and I are about the same age. It also points out the fact that by using a gradual but relentless approach, government has stolen much of our freedom and liberty in our lifetimes.

Nothing has Changed

Nothing of any importance has changed. The engine of Empire is lugging a bit as the load increases, but the Empire's army of high-caste technocrats are hard at work, securing their perquisites and fat paychecks by keeping the sprawling global machine running. 

Just as in the late stages of the Roman Empire, magical thinking abounds. This is America, the capital of can-do! We are audaciously hopeful because we always arise, newly envigorated by the unquenchable spring of American innovation, blah blah blah. 

Thus is truth silenced because it might be painful, and require actual change rather than highly glossed facsimiles.  

We are bogged down by restrictive rules and regulations. Our supposedly limited government has imposed unlimited and onerous roadblocks in the paths of "free" enterprise. The powerful will not acknowledge their failures - they only shift the blame and inflict a new gnarly set of rules to "correct" the problems which they created. As Don points out, the horses hitched to the coach are growing very weary pulling the oppressive load.

Mass Delusion - American Style

Based on all available evidence, it seems the American public wants to be misled. They have chosen ignorance over knowledge and understanding. They want to believe their corrupt leaders. They want to believe that things always work out in the long run. They want to believe that the economy is about to get better. They don’t want to think about unsustainable debt, unfunded liabilities, saving for retirement, or Simon Cowell leaving American Idol. Americans desperately want to be deluded into another bubble, but there are no evident bubbles left to blow. The existing American delusion is that the current fiscal path will not lead to the utter destruction of our once great Republic.

Our politicians are trying to convince us that everything is hunky-dory and they will lead us to prosperity if we'll just be patient. We suggest that they are leading us to economic disaster and it is not a time for patience but a time for mass rebellion against their policies.

Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'

We need some introspection. Ask yourself: How did the great nation of America lose its moral compass and drift so far off course, to where our very survival is threatened? 

We've arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican. 

Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Listen closely: 

Power and control begets the desire, nay, the lust for greater power and control. 

Magically Erasing Debts and Liabilities

[We] drooling lay persons are all too, too stupid to comprehend something that is actually simplicity itself: when the supply of money grows faster than the stock of goods and service. , the money will diffuse through the stock of goods and services with the result of higher prices for goods and services.

Seems simple to me! But then I am not a Federal Reserve hotshot with a PhD in economics from an “acceptable” university to wave in anyone’s face, and neither do I subscribe to the idiotic neo-Keynesian econometric crapola that fascinates the Federal Reserve and mainstream academia, a theoretical monstrosity which has resulted in the horrific economic mess we are in, and from which there is, alas, no escape.

"Party on, dudes" says the Fed. Do so at our peril says The Mogambo Guru.

Boiling Over

The American population is seething.
The Washington elite had better pay attention!
    "Do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down?," asks Peggy Noonan.  "They don't act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past. I started noticing in the 1980s, the growing gulf between the country's thought leaders, as they're called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we'll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views.
   "But I've never seen the gap wider than it is now. I think it is a chasm"

   This piece by Peggy Noon appears in the Saturday print edition of the Wall Street Journal  She is right. The detachment of the politicos in Washington from the long-term worries of the average American has made citizens feel powerless.  "Inner pessimism and powerlessness," says she, "is a dangerous combination."  America At Risk of Boiling Over

 We spotted this tidbit on Wrisley today. Are you seething? Do you feel the political elite are detached from our reality? 

The Paradox of Stimulating Growth With Government Spending

They might have admitted their failure and promised to do better next time. Instead, they decided to rescue the debt-laded economy…yes, you guessed it…with more debt!

The project was so loony from the get-go, it made us laugh. But some of the biggest names in economics – Krugman, Stiglitz, et al – are still pushing for more debt-financed “stimulus.”

The trouble with it is obvious, theoretically. Practically, it is even more obvious. In order to get money to give to the private sector, the feds first have to take it from the private sector. Ha ha…

Geithner and crew are conjuring up potions and spells to impress us. We're not impressed nor are we buying their prestidigitatious bulls**t. But they will carry on - until they are stopped by stone cold sober reality or a civilian uprising.

Bernie Madoff Syndrome

The world is full of Ponzi Schemes, and perhaps the most blatant and largest, is the fraud being committed by the United States Government.  The world, and especially China and American citizens, are emptying their bank accounts, buying U.S. debt, which of course, is backed by "The full faith and credit of the U.S. Government."  This, in spite of the fact that every day, word comes out of huge waste, bribes and corruption emanating from Washington D.C. the home base of frivolity and blatant lies.  The United States has current debts of $13.2 trillion, and takes in revenue of less than the interest on the debt.  In addition, the same D.C. Gang, has committed itself in future years, to at least an additional $150 trillion in the form of promises to pay Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, and myriad other handouts.  If you were running a bank, and a potential borrower came to you with a request for a loan, and his portfolio showed him with far less income than his expenses, and endless promises to repay extant debts, with your loan to help him out, would you grant the loan?  Not on the skin of your chinny chin chin.

Another diatribe for your perusing pleasure. Warning: Bumpy Road is not responsible for any nightmares resulting from reading this article.

Who's Hiding What and Why

The media for whatever reasons are now complicit, declining to air what really happens on the ground. All of this allows ghastly behavior, which is what wars always produce, to go forward with little opposition.


Ah, but leaks, YouTube, holes in the wall of silence—these pose real threats to the flow of contracts.  

If you don’t think that contracts—money—have a great deal to do with wars, reflect that all those hundreds of billions of dollars end up in pockets, and those pockets do not belong to soldiers. Makers of body armor, boots, ammunition, helicopters, on and on, are rolling in gravy. All this half-watched loot flows in cataracts at the price of at most sixty dead American kids a month (and lots of brain-damaged droolers, but what the hey). A bargain. Afghans don’t count.

Wikileaks has released documents the military does not want you to see because you might learn why they don't want to win the wars they are fighting - they just want to continue fighting. For how long? Forever and a day.

The Ruling Elite Called

This is where we have a problem. The worshippers [sic] of Keynes, that rule the country, are pissed off at you. Don’t you realize that government spending of your money, borrowed from the Chinese, with the bill passed to your grandchildren, was supposed to reinvigorate your animal spirits. They handed you other people’s money to buy cars and homes and what do you do? You stop buying cars and homes as soon as they stop paying you to buy cars and homes. You ungrateful bastards.

 

The economy is not recovering and debt-based solutions will only make things worse.

5 Ways to the US Government Can Fix the Economy

1. Central banks, starting with the Fed, should be abolished. They serve no useful purpose. The US has 260 million ounces of gold. That can be used to back what’s left of the currency. What price, I don’t know – $10,000 an ounce?

2. Urgently disband 95% of the government. I would go all the way, but I’m a gradualist. It’s not radical – it just means going back to the original ideas of the Constitution

3. Withdraw troops from all countries around the world. End the insane wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cut the military back about 95% too. All these V-2 rockets and carriers are just junk, expensive junk. Their main purpose is going to be excellent dive sites for people of the next century.

4. Abolish, totally, absolutely, the whole income tax and whole IRS.

5. US government should default on the debt. That’s the honest way to handle it. They will likely do it subvertly with inflation over time, but I would prefer overtly.

None of this, of course, is likely to occur without much wailing and gnashing of teeth among politicians and the moocher class which has become dependent on the government dole.

Clarke and Dawe Explain the European Economic Crisis

Debtors loaning to debtors will bring prosperity to all? Please, if you believe this, donate all your savings to this website and we can save the planet!

There Is No Money

Most voters don't know and don't care. Politicians do know but don't care. There are no negative sanctions for continuing to pooh-pooh the inescapable reality of the unfunded liabilities of all Western governments. There are instant negative sanctions for any politician who admits the truth and publicly calls for the immediate reform and partial default of these programs. No one in the electorate wants to face the truth: either granny will get stiffed near-term or the working-age voters will get stiffed long-term. Voters want to delay the cuts now, on the assumption that the can will be kicked down the road indefinitely. They discount the inevitable future for the sake of present bailouts.

This mentality subsidizes the expansion of private lending to governments. This is why the United States government can borrow for ten years at a rate below 4%. This is why capital is pulled out of the private sector in order to fund the delay of the inevitable bankruptcy of Western governments.

The truth is out there but no one wants to listen and few dare speak it.

The Government As Identity Thieves

We have reached the point in the United States where the debt our government has accumulated against us is mathematically impossible to pay off. Harder times, likely due to a wave of hyperinflation, will eventually find its way to our streets and I am fearful of how Americans will react. My hope is that we will come together peacefully and help each other, and that enough of us will be aware that the blame rests securely on the shoulders of the Federal Reserve and the special interests. They should not be looked to for salvation. They should not be given more power. Rather, they should be stripped of the powers that allowed them to create this mess in the first place. 

Be careful to whom you look for a helping hand.

Our Unsustainable Debt

What happens when you max out all your credit cards and still don’t have enough money to pay your bills? One thing you could do is get another credit card and roll over the balance. But how long will it be until no one gives you another card? How long before your interest rate goes from 12 percent to 30 percent?

That is the game the United States is playing right now. We are constantly rolling over short-term debt. When our lenders wise up and start setting our interest rates to reflect the risk we’ve become, access to capital will become harder for everyone. It will be more expensive to buy a house, fund a business, or save for the future.

The economy is in a free fall. Politicians know it and the public senses it. Fear is palpable in the eyes of politicians who tell us they have the answers. They know they don't and they know that we know they don't. They are just plodding along, hoping against hope to survive the coming election and maintain their office for another cycle. Unwilling to relinquish their hold on power, they will not get out of the way and let the economy go through the painful but necessary corrections - inevitable corrections which will happen later if not sooner - required before a recovery can begin to take hold.

How To Run a Federal Budget Surplus

Cut spending until income equals outflow. Then cut it some more.

That's it? That's it.

"But what about. . . .?"

This is the universal response that guarantees future government bankruptcies, all over the world. Three words: "But what about," plus a question mark

Nothing in American political history ever since the last year of the Jackson Administration in 1836 has overcome the effect of these three words: "But what about?" There was no national government debt in 1836. Also, that was the last year of the Second Bank of the United States as a government-licensed central bank. Then the recession of 1837 ended the year of debt-free living for Congress. It never happened again.

To head off "But what about?" my recommended reform mandates an across-the-board cut of spending by every Federal agency. No exceptions. Every budget is cut by the same percentage.

"But what about. . . .?" Yes, that one, too.

"But you can't mean. . . ." Yes, I do.

Greece has run out of other people's money (OPM). It ran out of its own money long ago and became addicted to OPM. It is now experiencing withdrawal symptoms. It will happen here unless we act. We will not act in time.

The Big Alienation

The American president has the power to control America's borders if he wants to, but George W. Bush and Barack Obama did not and do not want to, and for the same reason, and we all know what it is. The fastest-growing demographic in America is the Hispanic vote, and if either party cracks down on illegal immigration, it risks losing that vote for generations. 

But while the Democrats worry about the prospects of the Democrats and the Republicans about the well-being of the Republicans, who worries about America? 

No one.

Peggy is correct. We should control our borders. But we should be wary of asking the Federal Government to do it because it is the same government which created the border problem by offering free enticements to all illegals.

'PowerPoint makes us stupid'

Its coloured charts, graphs and bullet-points are supposed to make the most incomprehensible data crystal clear.

But even the sharpest military minds in American were left baffled by this PowerPoint slide, a mind-boggling attempt to explain the situation in Afghanistan. 

'When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war,' General Stanley McChrystal, the US and NATO force commander, remarked wryly when confronted by the sprawling spaghetti diagram in a briefing.

Huh? 

Reconnecting Wall Street to Main Street

Built on a foundation of sound money, the United States became one of the greatest industrial powers in the world in the 19th century. During that time, the interests of Main Street and Wall Street were closely aligned. Main Street went to Wall Street to finance new investment, and paid back its financiers out of profits from successful ventures. Under the reigning gold standard, a dollar was worth a fixed amount of gold - so borrowers and creditors knew exactly what to expect down the road.

But with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, the United States Congress delegated its authority to issue currency to a new central bank called the Federal Reserve. The Fed could print new dollars at will, making liquidity available to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.

A return to honest money could restore the economy - maybe - but politicians, except Ron Paul, do not have the courage to propose it, endorse it or even talk about it.

Arizona’s Immigration Law Is Nothing New for Border Residents

What lots of Americans don’t realize is that the new Arizona immigration law simply extends to the entire state the requirement that darker-skinned, poorer-looking Americans along the border have had to live with for decades — carrying their papers, just like people in totalitarian countries have to do. 

For decades, any darker-skinned, poorer-looking person who travels entirely within the United States but along the U.S.-Mexican border has had to carry his papers with him. There is the possibility that he could be stopped by a U.S. immigration checkpoint as he travels from east to west or vice versa. 

"Your papers, please."  Illegal immigration is a product of the welfare state created by FDR and sustained by every subsequent administration. "Free" entitlements attract immigrants like moths to a flame.  Citizens, as well as immigrants, will now be stopped, searched and interrogated by government officials who will decide if their papers meet the latest dictates from the ruling class.

'Tea party' activists: Do they hate liberals more than they love liberty?

Unfortunately, there is scant evidence that most tea partyers have studied the copies of the Constitution they generously hand out to bystanders.

At a Tax Day tea party in Rockville, Md., the speaking venue was draped with a huge banner: “Tired of Big Government?” Members of the “Tyranny Response Team” stood near the front of the rally with their official blue T-shirts. Giant American flags and ones with “Don’t Tread on Me” (with a coiled rattlesnake) were carried around by men with tri-corn hats. Political campaigns busily sold “9/11 Remembrance” bracelets. 

And yet, the crowd of 300 seemed most outraged that the US government is not being sufficiently aggressive in using its power.

Alas, the Tea Party crowds are looking to government to solve the problems created by government policies.

Love of Liberty vs Love of Government

Today’s brand of patriotism (at least as expressed by many) is totally foreign to the fundamental principles of liberty upon which America was built. I’m talking about the idea that government is an end and aim in itself; the idea that government must be protected from the people; the idea that bigger government equals better government; the idea that criticism of the government makes one unpatriotic; the idea that government is a panacea for all our ills; and the idea that loyalty to the nation equals loyalty to the government. All of this is a bunch of bull manure!

When government–ANY GOVERNMENT–stops protecting the liberties of its citizens, and especially when it begins trampling those liberties, it has become a “destructive” power, and needs to be altered or abolished. Period.

If we apply Jefferson's standards for government to our present day regime, we find a huge disconnect. 

Meddlers at the Gate

No. Legislators never would employ crude and simplistic sloganeering like those rowdy anti-gummint protesters.

Just ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who this week offered up this eloquent gem: "A party that stands with Wall Street is a party that stands against families and against fairness."

You know Wall Street; it lives to destabilize the family unit. Just scratch the surface and you'll find 8,500 companies trading on the New York Stock Exchange and another 3,200 companies listed on Nasdaq. Nearly 50 percent of households own some form of equities, and 21 million households own individual stocks outside any employer-sponsored plan.

All working together against kids and fairness.

Actually, what Reid's words reveal is an ideological disposition that is wholly unconcerned with creating a healthier Wall Street or a Wall Street scrubbed of crony capitalism and government-produced moral hazard.

The demonization of Wall Street by politicians is a ploy to cover up the corruption in Congress.

A Short Money Treatise for D.C. Dummies

There is no way a handful of people--wise or unwise--in government and central banks can second-guess what markets made up of billions of people might need. We are living through a disaster that is the result of the latest Greenspan/Bernanke attempts to guide our economic destiny through central bank operations.

Imagine if the government decided to increase the number of minutes in an hour from 60 to 70. You can hear policymakers congratulating themselves: "People will work longer at the same pay. This will be a boon to productivity!" Or if Washington increased the number of inches in a foot from 12 to 15: "Home buyers will thus get more house for the same price and that will stimulate home buying!" Preposterous? It's no more foolish than what we and other countries routinely do with our currencies.

The few who dare make a case for sound, honest money are derided as "gold bugs" or worse by politicians and the media but the few are growing in number and their case is growing stronger as indicated by the soaring national debt, a debt which would not have been possible without fiat money.

Socialism vs Corporatism

When he is a called a socialist, the President and his defenders can easily deflect that charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry; under the President’s policies, industry remains in nominally private hands.  Using the more accurate term – corporatism - forces the President to defend his policies that increase government control of private industries and expand de facto subsidies to big businesses. This also promotes the understanding that though the current system may not be pure socialism, neither is it free-market since government controls the private sector through taxes, regulations, and subsidies, and has done so for decades. [Emphasis added]

Government is gaining power by infiltrating the means of production, formerly known as free enterprise.

A reader comments:  "I’m beginning to wonder why we, the people, have allowed the government to grow in size and power – way beyond what the constitution mandates. Though I do believe that we have been duped, I don’t believe it is because we are stupid. If anything, we have been too trusting and respectful of those in positions of authority, including both those in government and the mass media..."