Another Brick in the Wall: the GDP, Gold and Silver [View article]
Here here Oz !!!!
Lets get us a different govt like Huck Finn said he wanted!!!
Cept now the impotent states are all the same wussies controlled from DC
The Austrians were right before WW1 they saw coming, and have been right ever since. Keynes like Marx are lying bastards - both responsible for most all war deaths of the late 19th and whole 20th century. Especially Stalin's incredible genocides against his own countrymen.
Govt produces nothing. Gives naught to nobody not first stolen from others. Is the worlds single largest consumer and waster of natl resources.
Screw this CFR/NWO/Intl Banking/MICC cabal that JFK & IKE warned us about the perils of.
Silver - Better Than Gold, But Still a Commodity [View article]
And being that enough new money from nothing was created in just these past six months that is EQUAL to ALL the new money created during SIR ALAN's ENTIRE EIGHTEEN YEAR REIGN!
Now if thats not inflation buddy, NOTHING is.
JPM = Federal Reserve = fraudulent criminals who've broken constitutional law in 1913. The Congress, Wilson & SCOTUS were ALL equally criminal and complicit.
Separation of powers is meaningless when ALL three branches are run and positions filled by the CFR/NWO/Int'l Banking/MICC cabal.
As banking & Wall Street outsider Joe Kennedy said, "fifty men run the country, and thats a high figure"
For the really inquisitive - get your mind blown at just how damn incestuous our govt of professional criminals really is:
Silver - Better Than Gold, But Still a Commodity [View article]
Well picking one nit does not an argument make.
Please see this one:
What Has Government Done to Our Money? mises.org/money.asp
AS I said, concentrate on the true meaning of money. OW your entire view is corrupted with a foundation of clay.
Just as the general American understanding of our own history - what the state has compulsorily imbued for over 100 years, has most of us fully BS'd with its nonstop creation of problems that lead to the freedom stealing solutions that was govts ends in the 1st place.
Not only that, but it is FIAT that allows the debt finance of wars on the unborn that the people would NEVER stand for if taxed for wars in the here and now boys.
Silver - Better Than Gold, But Still a Commodity [View article]
Yes, yes, that all "sounds" very nice. But you see people are not free when govts and tyrannts control the currency.
Injury to insult is that NONE have resisted inflating the paper, money receipt from nothing, money supply to spend on themselves, and wars for profit, only to be paid back with INTEREST on the backs of those not even born yet.
The world has been decivilizing ever since the bankers put their roadblocks to freedom and prosperity with their govt sanctioned monopoly cartels that preclude ANY competition.
Doubt me?
Check out the horrors of inflation - unbelievable!
Seizing Your Assets To Cover Retirement Promises: How The Government May Do It
BTW, Keynes & Marx loved fiat money, of course they were BOTH in the banker's pockets as were MOST ALL the progressive intelligensia of the time from media to academe to govt. All schooled by the same teachers of the Euro-dictators, whose policies we copied, from master race eugenics to planned societies and economies, like that grand success the USSR.
Gold is a trusted commodity least able to be manipulated by rulers and govts. Over MILLENIA free markets chose it w/o the say so of any authority.
It is the most saleable commodit. When offered gold or paper in payment for a good or service, which would YOU prefer given the choice?
There is ZERO interest expense that we currently pay to the Fed for using our own money, when the people use a money they freely chose to use instead of legal tender at gunpoint of legal govt counterfeiting.
PM monies arose to eliminate the problematic double coincidence of wants that barter generally requires. They are the most trustworthy intermediate mediums of exchange. Harder for govts to debase than printing press inflation, which BOTH reduce buying power of existing money units.
America went to a paper money system only at banker behest precisely to enrich themselves with the gains from inflation they steal by way of the reduced buying power of last users, plus a big fat interest income on every dollar created from nothing. A $0.04 dollar and 100 yrs of 6% interest compounded robbed us all being millionaires ourselves.
THAT has been the opportunity cost of allowing private bankers to print unbacked money in America the same as they'd done to England pre-1700, and why fiat was forbidden in our Constitution. The founders were fully aware of Banker treacheries, they'd lived with the King's!
The Fed has already inflated 96% of the dollar's purchasing power away for starters.
Add in the $2.20 principle and interest each dollar borrowed into existence from thin air has cost total over 75 years.
Wouldn't all agree the Fed's made enough off the people for doing nothing but rolling the presses?
I say stiff the Fed the entire national debt and confiscate all the gold they stole for collateral, then coin and distrubute that to all Americans in recompense for three generations of robbery, the opportunity cost of which is that we aren't all the millionaires we would have otherwise been with the accumulation of compounding intergenerational wealth !!!
Bush & Co ???; as criminal as this admin is - it is NOT responsible for what was built by Democrats & done by the FED.
Clinton, Kerry, Gore, McBama ALL work for the same masters; the CFR/NWO/Fed'l Reserve/Int'l Banking cabal.
You know, the conspiratorial cabal that those kidders Wilson, lifelong Democrat cum Rep, IKE, & JFK lamented and warned the people against, the shadow govt of the MICC?
Found this of interest too:
Gerard Jackson BrookesNews.Com Monday 22 September 2008
As the financial crisis unfolds Americans have nothing to fear other than Congress. Ignorant politicians helped create this monetary mess and ignorant politicians will make it worse if they are not stopped. John McCain believes that the fault lies with Wall Street's 'unbridled corruption and greed". Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson took a similar line when he announced: "Raw capitalism is dead". For my money the most amusing condemnation came from the ever-so righteous Thomas Frank1 who pompously wrote:
No, this is the conservatives' beloved financial system doing what comes naturally. Freed from the intrusive meddling of government, just as generations of supply-siders and entrepreneurial exuberants demanded it be, the American financial establishment has proceeded to cheat and deceive and beggar itself — and us — to the edge of Armageddon. It is as though Wall Street was run by a troupe of historical re-enactors determined to stage all the classic panics of the 19th century. (Get Your Class War On, Wall Street Journal, 17September 2008)
Apart from once again revealing an utter ignorance of economics, economic history and the history of economic thought — an ignorance that he shares with Republicans — he also exposed — in between whining about nasty Republicans beating up angelic Democrats — his unreasoning hatred of capitalism and a deep seated loathing for defenders of the free market. The last point is important because critics on both sides of the political divide fail dismally to see that the crisis was actually created by a refusal to allow the free market do its work.
Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were political creations that were run on the basis of political considerations. Yet the brilliant Mr Paulson seriously claims that their collapse is a condemnation of capitalism.
Nevertheless, Republicans have inadvertently found themselves in the favourable position of being able to take the moral high ground. After all, it was the Democrats led by Pelosi, Reid, Barney Frank and Dodd who confounded President Bush's attempt to reform these entities way back in 2005. And it was Democratic hacks that ran Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac in the interest of the Democratic Party, funnelling millions of dollars into the party's coffers while siphoning off scores of millions for themselves. It's also true that the drive by Democrats to force these 'companies' into making loans to people who were not credit worthy damaged their viability. This in itself was a recipe for financial grief.
If incompetence, political corruption and the unadulterated greed of the likes of Franklin Raines, the Clinton-appointed former head of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2004, were all there is to it, then America would not be facing a financial crisis.
It ought to be clear that the Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac crisis is part of a larger and far more serious economic crisis, one that few economic commentators foresaw. There is nothing new here; financial crises are as old as banking itself. And every single one of these crises that ripped through economies shared the same characteristic irrespective of time or place. They were all preceded by a credit expansion. That is to say, credit unbacked by real savings. In plain English, monetary expansion.
One now hears constant chatter about billions of dollars being lost or spent on rescues. In fact, we have moved from billions to trillions. But one vital question is rarely or ever asked: Where did all this money come from? Answer: the Fed. Since1980 this bastion of monetary stability has expanded the money supply2 by some 700 per cent. And it is this wild monetary policy that fuelled the speculative frenzies of the '80s, '90s and the Bush administration.
Every speculative frenzy that I know off was triggered by a monetary expansion. Although these frenzies obviously require huge amounts of credit to sustain them the economic commentariat still treat them as if they are a form of mania the roots of which are purely psychological. It was not always so. When writing of the "mob mind" that was still running rampant in stock market in 1928-1929 Benjamin M. Anderson summarised a speech made after the crash to New York State Chamber of Commerce
. . . which discussed, among other things, the phenomenon of the mob mind which had been so manifest in the year and a half that had preceded the crash. The speaker made the generalisation, familiar to social psychologists, that the more intense the craze, the higher the type of intellect that succumbs to it. (Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States 1914-1946, LibertyPress, 1979, p. 203).
The key to starting speculative booms is the rate of interest. By forcing the rate down below the market rate (the rate at which the demand for and supply of capital are equalised) the central bank creates excess credit that expands the demand for assets. If the rate is kept low enough there eventuates a situation where
it becomes impossible to make even the roughest kind of estimate of the probable rise in prices. Insecure sentiment governs the market; as prices continue to soar and profits are easily earned, the movement may rapidly reach fever-point. There is almost no limit to the rise in prices in spite of the fact that credit becomes more and more expensive. But when prices ultimately come to rest, and the prospect of further profits disappears, the credit position is so strained and the rate of interest is so high as immediately to bring about a contrary movement, which proceeding in analogous fashion may rapidly drag down prices even below their normal level3. (Knut Wicksell, Interest & Prices, Sentry Press, New York, N. Y., 1936, p. 98).
There is virtual agreement among economists (the Austrians are the usually the exception) that the money supply should expand at the same rate as output if a deflation is to be avoided. Firstly, it is plain to see that whatever measure of money supply is used, it would be absurd to deny that it has not risen at a far greater rate than output. Then there is the fact that deflation is not defined by falling prices but a contractionary money supply. As the nineteenth century amply demonstrated, falling prices, economic growth and an expanding job market are perfectly compatible. Even Milton Friedman admitted this when he observed that after the Civil War
[T]he price level fell to half its initial level in the course of less than fifteen years and, at the same time, economic growth proceeded at a rapid rate. The one phenomenon was the seedbed of controversy about monetary arrangements that was destined to plague the following decades; the other was a vigorous stage in the continued economic expansion that was destined to raise the United states to the first rank among the nations of the world. And their coincidence casts serious doubts on the validity of the now widely held view that secular price deflation and rapid economic growth are incompatible. (Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States 1867–1960, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971).
Irrespective of what the likes of Frank and Paulson assert the problem is not the market but disequilibrium caused by ill-advised monetary policies that distort the both the capital and price structures. These policies create a myriad of opportunities to exploit unsustainable 'investment' opportunities that will vanish as soon as the central bank applies the monetary brakes, even if it does so slowly. For instance, the recessions of 1980-1982, 1990, 2000, and the 1994 slowdown were all preceded by a reduction in the rate of growth of the money supply.
However, no matter what evidence one presents in defence of the market, the fanatical likes of Thomas Frank will always blame the market and Republicans.
Note: Fears off a 1930s type of depression are totally unfounded. I shall explain why next week.
----------------------...
1. So-called American patriots like Frank, Pelosi, Reid, Biden, Dodd, etce., remind me of Roosevelt, another Democrat who always put his party before his country. Before Roosevelt's inauguration Hoover pleaded with him to cooperate in dealing with the banking crisis in an effort to avert further economic suffering. Roosevelt refused. To ensure that the facts would be correctly reported by history Hoover recorded the incident in his memoirs:
A statement of Rexford G. Tugwell (one of Roosevelt's close advisers) is worth repeating. James Rand, a responsible industrialist, ten days before the inauguration, had telephoned me this statement of Tugwell's as a warning. I confirmed his telephone message in the following letter, as I wanted it in the record:
My dear Mr. Rand:
I beg to acknowledge your telephone message received through Mr Joslin as follows:
"Professor Tugwell, adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt, had lunch with me. He said they were fully aware of the bank situation and that it would undoubtedly collapse in a few days, which place the responsibility of the collapse in the lap President Hoover. . . ."
When I consider this statement of Professor Tugwell's in connection with the recommendations we have made to the incoming administration, I can say emphatically that . . . [they] would project millions of people into hideous losses for a Roman holiday.
Yours faithfully,
HERBERT HOOVER
Some years afterwards, I asked Ray Moley why Roosevelt refused to cooperate with me in the banking crisis. He wrote to me:
I feel when you asked him on February 18th to cooperate in the banking situation that he either did not realize how serious the situation was or that he preferred to have conditions deteriorate and gain for himself the entire credit for the rescue operation. In any event, his actions during the period from February 18th to March 3d would conform to any such motive on his part. (Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression 1929-1941, The MacMillan Company: New York, 1952, pp. 214-15).
2. The Austrian definition of money: currency component, all checkable deposits, savings deposits, U. government demand deposits and note balances, demand deposits due to foreign commercial banks, and demand deposits due to foreign official institutions. (Some Austrians exclude savings deposits because they are immediately lent out and are therefore not available on demand.)
The Austrian definition of money is in keeping with Walter Boyd's classic definition:
By the words 'Means of Circulation', 'Circulating Medium', and 'Currency', which are used almost as synonymous terms in this letter, I understand always ready money, whether consisting of Bank Notes or specie, in contradistinction to Bills of Exchange, Navy Bills, Exchequer Bills, or any other negotiable paper, which form no part of the circulating medium, as I have always understood that term. The latter is the Circulator; the former are merely objects of circulation. (Walter Boyd, A Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt on the Influence of the Stoppage of Issues in Specie at the Bank of England, on the Prices of Provisions, and other Commodities, 2nd edition, T. Gillet, London, 1801, p. 2).
3. Wicksell points out that even if rates are not lifted the speculative frenzy will burn itself out.
Rebel my friend; it goes all the way back to monarchist big govt pro bank Hamilton and his fractional reserve shylocks of special UNGENERAL govt privilege; which fails the Gen'l Welfare AND Equal Protection clauses by leaps & bounds.
Jackson killed the 2nd BUS off and paid off America's debt the first and LAST time in our history. Only because our currency no longer cost taxpayers compounding interest for it's use, as the shylock Fed now charges. Prices were stable and American wealth accumulation was staedy and rising all the way to the CW. The exceptions were under high protective tarrifs - ie GOVT intervention.
After the taxes and fiat of the CW up until 1913 w/the FED & Inc Taxes enacted, was another period of almost true free markets free from govt and Americans flourished. The downfall actually began earlier when Big Biz finally got it's ICC to regulate fat profits while stomping out pesky little profit encroaching small competition.
What Americans dont understand is that BOTH parties long ago traded in maximum freedom Jefferson for massive govt Hamilton.
The proof for you idiot Republicans that still think our party is any much different than those commie coddling war mongering and profiteering Morgan Dems, is the incessant praise the likes of Newt or Trent Lott lavish on FDR, one of our most criminal presidents ever, right up there w/Lincoln, TR, Wilson & Bush's.
99% of Americans still believe the Govt is a net positive - it is not. Govts costs to humanity and civilisation far far far outweigh it's puny net benefits.
The same people behind the Fed & the Inc Tax are the same people that opened the New Republic to agitate against the Germans and entry into the war that Wilson got re-elected promising we'd never enter. The SAME people were behind FDR's confiscation of the people's gold and IT's presumed subsequent loss to the Fed as loan collateral.
Look what the Maestro said back in the day:
Alan Greenspan - “Gold and Economic Freedom” 1967 "An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense – perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire – that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. . . . This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights."
Law of Supply & Demand Is Dead for Gold & Silver [View article]
Oh Danny Boy......tsk tsk.
The idea is that govt has nothing to do with it.
Without the interest to a special few from debt fiat, Jackson paid off the debt and restored the constitutional money.
That ignorance of the founders knowledge of the Kings BoE and it's problems can be so blatantly displayed is hilarious.
Danny, praytell what may the Maestro ever mean here please?
Alan Greenspan - “Gold and Economic Freedom” 1967 "An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense – perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire – that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. . . . This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights."
Law of Supply & Demand Is Dead for Gold & Silver [View article]
The South primarily lost from inflating their buying power away 2-3x the North's inflation rate.
AIG had bids - they opted for govt. What this Govt just did is about as unAmerican as it gets.
We the people are in for a very rude awakening once power's greed crashes the system and the people revolt, those fema camps will be put to their intended use. I wouldn't doubt all we say here enables those most percieved as threats to the state to be 1st in line for extended vacations. Never doubt our govt is capable of such, it has been done before.
Law of Supply & Demand Is Dead for Gold & Silver [View article]
And THAT is the key.
The people actually believe govt is just and necessary when there's never been a time that govts weren't just the ruses of breadcrumbs and circuses for the few to rob the many. We have in spades the elite rule Hamilton always wanted that central banks a la the BoE are central to.
Our founders KNEW THIS well. Elites have retaught the masses otherwise on the masses' dime.
McBama is calling good lil troopers like dlaw to service, Iraq too.
Another Brick in the Wall: the GDP, Gold and Silver [View article]
Lets get us a different govt like Huck Finn said he wanted!!!
Cept now the impotent states are all the same wussies controlled from DC
The Austrians were right before WW1 they saw coming, and have been right ever since. Keynes like Marx are lying bastards - both responsible for most all war deaths of the late 19th and whole 20th century. Especially Stalin's incredible genocides against his own countrymen.
Govt produces nothing. Gives naught to nobody not first stolen from others. Is the worlds single largest consumer and waster of natl resources.
Screw this CFR/NWO/Intl Banking/MICC cabal that JFK & IKE warned us about the perils of.
Ditto on Shadowstats !!
Gold and Silver Are Not Proven Inflation Hedges [View article]
Silver - Better Than Gold, But Still a Commodity [View article]
Now if thats not inflation buddy, NOTHING is.
JPM = Federal Reserve = fraudulent criminals who've broken constitutional law in 1913. The Congress, Wilson & SCOTUS were ALL equally criminal and complicit.
Separation of powers is meaningless when ALL three branches are run and positions filled by the CFR/NWO/Int'l Banking/MICC cabal.
As banking & Wall Street outsider Joe Kennedy said, "fifty men run the country, and thats a high figure"
For the really inquisitive - get your mind blown at just how damn incestuous our govt of professional criminals really is:
Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy
www.lewrockwell.com/ro...
And good on Geo & Bot for knowing the score damn few Americans even have an inkling of.
Silver - Better Than Gold, But Still a Commodity [View article]
Please see this one:
What Has Government Done to Our Money?
mises.org/money.asp
AS I said, concentrate on the true meaning of money. OW your entire view is corrupted with a foundation of clay.
Just as the general American understanding of our own history - what the state has compulsorily imbued for over 100 years, has most of us fully BS'd with its nonstop creation of problems that lead to the freedom stealing solutions that was govts ends in the 1st place.
Not only that, but it is FIAT that allows the debt finance of wars on the unborn that the people would NEVER stand for if taxed for wars in the here and now boys.
Silver - Better Than Gold, But Still a Commodity [View article]
mises.org/multimedia/m...
Silver - Better Than Gold, But Still a Commodity [View article]
www.lewrockwell.com/bl...
Silver - Better Than Gold, But Still a Commodity [View article]
Injury to insult is that NONE have resisted inflating the paper, money receipt from nothing, money supply to spend on themselves, and wars for profit, only to be paid back with INTEREST on the backs of those not even born yet.
The world has been decivilizing ever since the bankers put their roadblocks to freedom and prosperity with their govt sanctioned monopoly cartels that preclude ANY competition.
Doubt me?
Check out the horrors of inflation - unbelievable!
Seizing Your Assets To Cover Retirement Promises: How The Government May Do It
news.goldseek.com/Gold...
PM's NOT REAL MONEY YOU SAY?
How Abolishing the Fed Would Change Everything (for the better)
mises.org/multimedia/m...
Get Government Out of Coin Manufacture
www.mises.org/story/31...
The Corrupt Origins of Central Banking
www.mises.org/story/31...
(maybe the author knows more than this mere clown does?)
Thomas Paine on Paper Money
mises.org/story/2942
(Or this one? Concentrate on section II please author - it defines money)
What Has Government Done to Our Money?
mises.org/money.asp
I'd love to hear any feedback please!
BTW, Keynes & Marx loved fiat money, of course they were BOTH in the banker's pockets as were MOST ALL the progressive intelligensia of the time from media to academe to govt. All schooled by the same teachers of the Euro-dictators, whose policies we copied, from master race eugenics to planned societies and economies, like that grand success the USSR.
Gold, Silver and Deflation [View article]
It is the most saleable commodit. When offered gold or paper in payment for a good or service, which would YOU prefer given the choice?
There is ZERO interest expense that we currently pay to the Fed for using our own money, when the people use a money they freely chose to use instead of legal tender at gunpoint of legal govt counterfeiting.
PM monies arose to eliminate the problematic double coincidence of wants that barter generally requires. They are the most trustworthy intermediate mediums of exchange. Harder for govts to debase than printing press inflation, which BOTH reduce buying power of existing money units.
America went to a paper money system only at banker behest precisely to enrich themselves with the gains from inflation they steal by way of the reduced buying power of last users, plus a big fat interest income on every dollar created from nothing. A $0.04 dollar and 100 yrs of 6% interest compounded robbed us all being millionaires ourselves.
THAT has been the opportunity cost of allowing private bankers to print unbacked money in America the same as they'd done to England pre-1700, and why fiat was forbidden in our Constitution. The founders were fully aware of Banker treacheries, they'd lived with the King's!
Need Gold? Check Your Fed Holdings [View article]
How much, any lost? How much recovered?
Just asking. I vaguely remeber hearing something about metals.
Need Gold? Check Your Fed Holdings [View article]
Add in the $2.20 principle and interest each dollar borrowed into existence from thin air has cost total over 75 years.
Wouldn't all agree the Fed's made enough off the people for doing nothing but rolling the presses?
I say stiff the Fed the entire national debt and confiscate all the gold they stole for collateral, then coin and distrubute that to all Americans in recompense for three generations of robbery, the opportunity cost of which is that we aren't all the millionaires we would have otherwise been with the accumulation of compounding intergenerational wealth !!!
Week in Review: Drama Galore [View article]
Clinton, Kerry, Gore, McBama ALL work for the same masters; the CFR/NWO/Fed'l Reserve/Int'l Banking cabal.
You know, the conspiratorial cabal that those kidders Wilson, lifelong Democrat cum Rep, IKE, & JFK lamented and warned the people against, the shadow govt of the MICC?
Found this of interest too:
Gerard Jackson
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 22 September 2008
As the financial crisis unfolds Americans have nothing to fear other than Congress. Ignorant politicians helped create this monetary mess and ignorant politicians will make it worse if they are not stopped. John McCain believes that the fault lies with Wall Street's 'unbridled corruption and greed". Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson took a similar line when he announced: "Raw capitalism is dead". For my money the most amusing condemnation came from the ever-so righteous Thomas Frank1 who pompously wrote:
No, this is the conservatives' beloved financial system doing what comes naturally. Freed from the intrusive meddling of government, just as generations of supply-siders and entrepreneurial exuberants demanded it be, the American financial establishment has proceeded to cheat and deceive and beggar itself — and us — to the edge of Armageddon. It is as though Wall Street was run by a troupe of historical re-enactors determined to stage all the classic panics of the 19th century. (Get Your Class War On, Wall Street Journal, 17September 2008)
Apart from once again revealing an utter ignorance of economics, economic history and the history of economic thought — an ignorance that he shares with Republicans — he also exposed — in between whining about nasty Republicans beating up angelic Democrats — his unreasoning hatred of capitalism and a deep seated loathing for defenders of the free market. The last point is important because critics on both sides of the political divide fail dismally to see that the crisis was actually created by a refusal to allow the free market do its work.
Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were political creations that were run on the basis of political considerations. Yet the brilliant Mr Paulson seriously claims that their collapse is a condemnation of capitalism.
Nevertheless, Republicans have inadvertently found themselves in the favourable position of being able to take the moral high ground. After all, it was the Democrats led by Pelosi, Reid, Barney Frank and Dodd who confounded President Bush's attempt to reform these entities way back in 2005. And it was Democratic hacks that ran Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac in the interest of the Democratic Party, funnelling millions of dollars into the party's coffers while siphoning off scores of millions for themselves. It's also true that the drive by Democrats to force these 'companies' into making loans to people who were not credit worthy damaged their viability. This in itself was a recipe for financial grief.
If incompetence, political corruption and the unadulterated greed of the likes of Franklin Raines, the Clinton-appointed former head of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2004, were all there is to it, then America would not be facing a financial crisis.
It ought to be clear that the Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac crisis is part of a larger and far more serious economic crisis, one that few economic commentators foresaw. There is nothing new here; financial crises are as old as banking itself. And every single one of these crises that ripped through economies shared the same characteristic irrespective of time or place. They were all preceded by a credit expansion. That is to say, credit unbacked by real savings. In plain English, monetary expansion.
One now hears constant chatter about billions of dollars being lost or spent on rescues. In fact, we have moved from billions to trillions. But one vital question is rarely or ever asked: Where did all this money come from? Answer: the Fed. Since1980 this bastion of monetary stability has expanded the money supply2 by some 700 per cent. And it is this wild monetary policy that fuelled the speculative frenzies of the '80s, '90s and the Bush administration.
Every speculative frenzy that I know off was triggered by a monetary expansion. Although these frenzies obviously require huge amounts of credit to sustain them the economic commentariat still treat them as if they are a form of mania the roots of which are purely psychological. It was not always so. When writing of the "mob mind" that was still running rampant in stock market in 1928-1929 Benjamin M. Anderson summarised a speech made after the crash to New York State Chamber of Commerce
. . . which discussed, among other things, the phenomenon of the mob mind which had been so manifest in the year and a half that had preceded the crash. The speaker made the generalisation, familiar to social psychologists, that the more intense the craze, the higher the type of intellect that succumbs to it. (Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States 1914-1946, LibertyPress, 1979, p. 203).
The key to starting speculative booms is the rate of interest. By forcing the rate down below the market rate (the rate at which the demand for and supply of capital are equalised) the central bank creates excess credit that expands the demand for assets. If the rate is kept low enough there eventuates a situation where
it becomes impossible to make even the roughest kind of estimate of the probable rise in prices. Insecure sentiment governs the market; as prices continue to soar and profits are easily earned, the movement may rapidly reach fever-point. There is almost no limit to the rise in prices in spite of the fact that credit becomes more and more expensive. But when prices ultimately come to rest, and the prospect of further profits disappears, the credit position is so strained and the rate of interest is so high as immediately to bring about a contrary movement, which proceeding in analogous fashion may rapidly drag down prices even below their normal level3. (Knut Wicksell, Interest & Prices, Sentry Press, New York, N. Y., 1936, p. 98).
There is virtual agreement among economists (the Austrians are the usually the exception) that the money supply should expand at the same rate as output if a deflation is to be avoided. Firstly, it is plain to see that whatever measure of money supply is used, it would be absurd to deny that it has not risen at a far greater rate than output. Then there is the fact that deflation is not defined by falling prices but a contractionary money supply. As the nineteenth century amply demonstrated, falling prices, economic growth and an expanding job market are perfectly compatible. Even Milton Friedman admitted this when he observed that after the Civil War
[T]he price level fell to half its initial level in the course of less than fifteen years and, at the same time, economic growth proceeded at a rapid rate. The one phenomenon was the seedbed of controversy about monetary arrangements that was destined to plague the following decades; the other was a vigorous stage in the continued economic expansion that was destined to raise the United states to the first rank among the nations of the world. And their coincidence casts serious doubts on the validity of the now widely held view that secular price deflation and rapid economic growth are incompatible. (Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States 1867–1960, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971).
Irrespective of what the likes of Frank and Paulson assert the problem is not the market but disequilibrium caused by ill-advised monetary policies that distort the both the capital and price structures. These policies create a myriad of opportunities to exploit unsustainable 'investment' opportunities that will vanish as soon as the central bank applies the monetary brakes, even if it does so slowly. For instance, the recessions of 1980-1982, 1990, 2000, and the 1994 slowdown were all preceded by a reduction in the rate of growth of the money supply.
However, no matter what evidence one presents in defence of the market, the fanatical likes of Thomas Frank will always blame the market and Republicans.
Note: Fears off a 1930s type of depression are totally unfounded. I shall explain why next week.
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1. So-called American patriots like Frank, Pelosi, Reid, Biden, Dodd, etce., remind me of Roosevelt, another Democrat who always put his party before his country. Before Roosevelt's inauguration Hoover pleaded with him to cooperate in dealing with the banking crisis in an effort to avert further economic suffering. Roosevelt refused. To ensure that the facts would be correctly reported by history Hoover recorded the incident in his memoirs:
A statement of Rexford G. Tugwell (one of Roosevelt's close advisers) is worth repeating. James Rand, a responsible industrialist, ten days before the inauguration, had telephoned me this statement of Tugwell's as a warning. I confirmed his telephone message in the following letter, as I wanted it in the record:
My dear Mr. Rand:
I beg to acknowledge your telephone message received through Mr Joslin as follows:
"Professor Tugwell, adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt, had lunch with me. He said they were fully aware of the bank situation and that it would undoubtedly collapse in a few days, which place the responsibility of the collapse in the lap President Hoover. . . ."
When I consider this statement of Professor Tugwell's in connection with the recommendations we have made to the incoming administration, I can say emphatically that . . . [they] would project millions of people into hideous losses for a Roman holiday.
Yours faithfully,
HERBERT HOOVER
Some years afterwards, I asked Ray Moley why Roosevelt refused to cooperate with me in the banking crisis. He wrote to me:
I feel when you asked him on February 18th to cooperate in the banking situation that he either did not realize how serious the situation was or that he preferred to have conditions deteriorate and gain for himself the entire credit for the rescue operation. In any event, his actions during the period from February 18th to March 3d would conform to any such motive on his part. (Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression 1929-1941, The MacMillan Company: New York, 1952, pp. 214-15).
2. The Austrian definition of money: currency component, all checkable deposits, savings deposits, U. government demand deposits and note balances, demand deposits due to foreign commercial banks, and demand deposits due to foreign official institutions. (Some Austrians exclude savings deposits because they are immediately lent out and are therefore not available on demand.)
The Austrian definition of money is in keeping with Walter Boyd's classic definition:
By the words 'Means of Circulation', 'Circulating Medium', and 'Currency', which are used almost as synonymous terms in this letter, I understand always ready money, whether consisting of Bank Notes or specie, in contradistinction to Bills of Exchange, Navy Bills, Exchequer Bills, or any other negotiable paper, which form no part of the circulating medium, as I have always understood that term. The latter is the Circulator; the former are merely objects of circulation. (Walter Boyd, A Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt on the Influence of the Stoppage of Issues in Specie at the Bank of England, on the Prices of Provisions, and other Commodities, 2nd edition, T. Gillet, London, 1801, p. 2).
3. Wicksell points out that even if rates are not lifted the speculative frenzy will burn itself out.
Gerard Jackson is Brookesnews' economics editor
How Precious Is Silver? [View article]
Jackson killed the 2nd BUS off and paid off America's debt the first and LAST time in our history. Only because our currency no longer cost taxpayers compounding interest for it's use, as the shylock Fed now charges. Prices were stable and American wealth accumulation was staedy and rising all the way to the CW. The exceptions were under high protective tarrifs - ie GOVT intervention.
After the taxes and fiat of the CW up until 1913 w/the FED & Inc Taxes enacted, was another period of almost true free markets free from govt and Americans flourished. The downfall actually began earlier when Big Biz finally got it's ICC to regulate fat profits while stomping out pesky little profit encroaching small competition.
What Americans dont understand is that BOTH parties long ago traded in maximum freedom Jefferson for massive govt Hamilton.
The proof for you idiot Republicans that still think our party is any much different than those commie coddling war mongering and profiteering Morgan Dems, is the incessant praise the likes of Newt or Trent Lott lavish on FDR, one of our most criminal presidents ever, right up there w/Lincoln, TR, Wilson & Bush's.
99% of Americans still believe the Govt is a net positive - it is not. Govts costs to humanity and civilisation far far far outweigh it's puny net benefits.
The same people behind the Fed & the Inc Tax are the same people that opened the New Republic to agitate against the Germans and entry into the war that Wilson got re-elected promising we'd never enter. The SAME people were behind FDR's confiscation of the people's gold and IT's presumed subsequent loss to the Fed as loan collateral.
Look what the Maestro said back in the day:
Alan Greenspan - “Gold and Economic Freedom” 1967
"An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense – perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire – that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. . . . This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights."
Law of Supply & Demand Is Dead for Gold & Silver [View article]
The idea is that govt has nothing to do with it.
Without the interest to a special few from debt fiat, Jackson paid off the debt and restored the constitutional money.
That ignorance of the founders knowledge of the Kings BoE and it's problems can be so blatantly displayed is hilarious.
Danny, praytell what may the Maestro ever mean here please?
Alan Greenspan - “Gold and Economic Freedom” 1967
"An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense – perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire – that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. . . . This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights."
Law of Supply & Demand Is Dead for Gold & Silver [View article]
AIG had bids - they opted for govt. What this Govt just did is about as unAmerican as it gets.
We the people are in for a very rude awakening once power's greed crashes the system and the people revolt, those fema camps will be put to their intended use. I wouldn't doubt all we say here enables those most percieved as threats to the state to be 1st in line for extended vacations. Never doubt our govt is capable of such, it has been done before.
Law of Supply & Demand Is Dead for Gold & Silver [View article]
The people actually believe govt is just and necessary when there's never been a time that govts weren't just the ruses of breadcrumbs and circuses for the few to rob the many. We have in spades the elite rule Hamilton always wanted that central banks a la the BoE are central to.
Our founders KNEW THIS well. Elites have retaught the masses otherwise on the masses' dime.
McBama is calling good lil troopers like dlaw to service, Iraq too.