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The Golden Calf of Increased Tax Rates | RedState - 0 views

www.redstate.com/...en-calf-of-increased-tax-rates

Don-Bongino Taxes Tax-&-Spend Property-Seizure-AND-Redistribution-of-Wealth

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Nov 12 - No Cached

Economics and a degree of common sense also tells us that we will always be more cautious in spending our money than a third party will be.
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Milton Friedman used this brief explanation to drive home the point. There are four ways to spend money.
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You can spend your money on yourself, and when you do both the cost of the product and the quality matters.
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...7 more annotations...
Finally, the most inefficient method to spend money of the four is other people, spending other people’s money, on other people. Cost doesn’t matter because it is not your money and quality doesn’t matter because it is not your product or service either.
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Other people can spend other people’s money on themselves, in this case cost doesn’t matter, as it is not your money, but quality does as you are buying the product or service for yourself.
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You can spend your money on someone else, in this case cost matters but quality is not as important.
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In the final case, I just described to you government spending. And, to be clear, government spending is
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taxation, while deficit spending is future taxation plus interest. It cannot be any other way.
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Finally, we are frequently rhetorically assaulted by the “fair share” moralists on the left.
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The paradoxical truth is that the tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now.
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Gary Edwards on 19 Nov 12

Good argument explaining the relationship between tax rates and tax receipts. excerpt: Economics and a degree of common sense also tells us that we will always be more cautious in spending our money than a third party will be. Milton Friedman used this brief explanation to drive home the point. There are four ways to spend money. You can spend your money on yourself, and when you do both the cost of the product and the quality matters. You can spend your money on someone else, in this case cost matters but quality is not as important. Other people can spend other people's money on themselves, in this case cost doesn't matter, as it is not your money, but quality does as you are buying the product or service for yourself. Finally, the most inefficient method to spend money of the four is other people, spending other people's money, on other people. Cost doesn't matter because it is not your money and quality doesn't matter because it is not your product or service either. In the final case, I just described to you government spending. And, to be clear, government spending is taxation, while deficit spending is future taxation plus interest. It cannot be any other way. Arguing that accumulating debt on your personal credit card is not going to require you to take money from your account in the future to pay the debt is foolish, therefore, why would you think that the national credit card would obey a different set of economic rules? Finally, we are frequently rhetorically assaulted by the "fair share" moralists on the left. ....................... This is an argument where they are correct on principle and completely devoid of substance regarding evidence...........

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Good argument explaining the relationship between tax rates and tax receipts. excerpt: Economics and a degree of common sense also tells us that we will always be more cautious in spending our money than a third party will be. Milton Friedman used this brief explanation to drive home the point. There are four ways to spend money. You can spend your money on yourself, and when you do both the cost of the product and the quality matters. You can spend your money on someone else, in this case cost matters but quality is not as important. Other people can spend other people's money on themselves, in this case cost doesn't matter, as it is not your money, but quality does as you are buying the product or service for yourself. Finally, the most inefficient method to spend money of the four is other people, spending other people's money, on other people. Cost doesn't matter because it is not your money and quality doesn't matter because it is not your product or service either. In the final case, I just described to you government spending. And, to be clear, government spending is taxation, while deficit spending is future taxation plus interest. It cannot be any other way. Arguing that accumulating debt on your personal credit card is not going to require you to take money from your account in the future to pay the debt is foolish, therefore, why would you think that the national credit card would obey a different set of economic rules? Finally, we are frequently rhetorically assaulted by the "fair share" moralists on the left. ....................... This is an argument where they are correct on principle and completely devoid of substance regarding evidence...........</div>

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Cruz Control: What We Gained From the Efforts of Ted Cruz and Mike Lee | The Rio Norte ... - 0 views

therionorteline.com/...forts-of-ted-cruz-and-mike-lee

Utah rionorte Banksters Globalist-Elites Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel Government-thugs

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Oct 13 - No Cached

Gary Edwards on 18 Oct 13

Excellent thinking and a great presentation from "Utah". A must read if ever there was one. Conclussion: "This is where we are in government. Our Republican leadership is failing, even as the Democrats fail at almost everything, especially their big "achievements". Obama and his team are failing because they have refused to change after their ideas didn't work - the Obamacare rollout is a perfect example. Now they are telling America that the solution is more taxes, more borrowing and more intervention - in essence, they want us to paddle harder. Just trust them, they ask - they just aren't quite through fixing things yet. As many observers have pointed out, there are no rational people who think that the current levels of borrowing and taxation can cure our ills. There are only those, many exposed in these most recent government shutdowns, who simply want to delay Obamageddon until someone else's term. The fact is that we simply have enough fatal structural defects in our approach to our governance model that just working harder and spending more cannot fix it. You can't beat structural defects with performance. I've seen it all before in companies who were burning themselves out and wasting their resources by paddling harder against a current that was too powerful…and never recognizing that rescue was only a course change away. Simply paddling harder won't do it, especially when government has been taking paddles away from some through taxation and regulation and pulling some 47% of tax filers completely out of the canoe. This will not get fixed without pain. We need to get ready for it. No amount of avoidance will forestall the inevitable crash - we have to make sure that it is only a hard landing. Something will have to be sacrificed to save the whole; I have little doubt about that. Everything can't be given to everybody - there never was going to be a unicorn in every garage and Peggy Joseph never was going to get Obama to pay

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Excellent thinking and a great presentation from "Utah". A must read if ever there was one. Conclussion: "This is where we are in government. Our Republican leadership is failing, even as the Democrats fail at almost everything, especially their big "achievements". Obama and his team are failing because they have refused to change after their ideas didn't work - the Obamacare rollout is a perfect example. Now they are telling America that the solution is more taxes, more borrowing and more intervention - in essence, they want us to paddle harder. Just trust them, they ask - they just aren't quite through fixing things yet. As many observers have pointed out, there are no rational people who think that the current levels of borrowing and taxation can cure our ills. There are only those, many exposed in these most recent government shutdowns, who simply want to delay Obamageddon until someone else's term. The fact is that we simply have enough fatal structural defects in our approach to our governance model that just working harder and spending more cannot fix it. You can't beat structural defects with performance. I've seen it all before in companies who were burning themselves out and wasting their resources by paddling harder against a current that was too powerful…and never recognizing that rescue was only a course change away. Simply paddling harder won't do it, especially when government has been taking paddles away from some through taxation and regulation and pulling some 47% of tax filers completely out of the canoe. This will not get fixed without pain. We need to get ready for it. No amount of avoidance will forestall the inevitable crash - we have to make sure that it is only a hard landing. Something will have to be sacrificed to save the whole; I have little doubt about that. Everything can't be given to everybody - there never was going to be a unicorn in every garage and Peggy Joseph never was going to get Obama to pay </div>

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Professor Hoppe's new book: "The Competition of Crooks") | The God That Failed - 0 views

thegodthatfailed.org/...uner-the-competition-of-crooks

Hans-Hermann-Hoppe Libertarian Democracy

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12 - No Cached

And perhaps then, finally, will come the realization that democracy – in whose name all these dirty tricks have been done – is nothing more than an especially insidious form of communism, and that the politicians who have wrought this immoral and economic madness and who have thereby enriched themselves personally (never, of course, being liable for the damages they have caused!), are nothing more than a despicable bunch of communist crooks.
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democracy which is causally responsible for the fatal conditions afflicting us now
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The number of productive people is constantly decreasing, and the number of people parasitically consuming the income and wealth of this dwindling number of productive people is increasing steadily. This can’t work in the long run.
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...20 more annotations...
That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation.
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And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic ‘miracles’ would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism.
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the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.:
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In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation – that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government “welfare assistance”, subsidies and monopolistic privileges.
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book’s thesis is that the government is a monopolist of ultimate justice and law enforcement and that every monopoly is always bad from the perspective of the consumer – in this case the citizen. Your alternative solution is a private law society.
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The basic idea is quite simple. Abolish monopoly and encourage competition.
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I can only go to a state court of law, staffed by judges who themselves are paid from taxes to enforce government regulations.
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In this way, government-staged robbery, assault, manslaughter, murder, war is “legally” sanctioned.
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In a private law society, if we had such a conflict, we would instead approach arbitrators who are independent of both parties, and who are competing with other arbitrators for voluntarily paying customers.
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We would not use an inherently biased judge working for and paid directly by the state, who is therefore partisan, but rather a neutral third party, to adjudicate the normal human legal conflicts arising between existing and recognized property rights and private contract law.
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the mediation market.
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My income from my work is my property (not the state’s) and the restaurant is my property (not the state’s).
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Therefore, any government-imposed tax upon me or use restrictions upon my property (such as a smoking ban) would therefore be judged unlawful, as robbery and expropriation.
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the state is nothing but a “great band of robbers,” a mafia, only a much larger, more overwhelming and dangerous one.
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the subject of class consciousness
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“there’s absolutely no reason in any case why the state should have anything at all to do with the production of money.”
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And every newly printed bill causes a redistribution of social wealth.
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More paper money doesn’t make a society richer overall. It’s just more paper. But every new piece of printed paper reduces the purchasing power of all the other previously-existing paper bills
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these machinations, taking place every day on an almost unimaginable scale, are nothing more than a gigantic case of fraudulent theft.
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in a competitive environment, a better kind of money would be produced. Why? Because there’ll always be a demand for means of exchange.
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Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12

Interview with Hoppe where he once again pushes libertarian thinking forward. Hoppe puts most of the blame on "democracy" itself, caling it "an insidious form of communism". Good stuff. Highlighted parts. excerpt: "That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation. And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic 'miracles' would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism. If, and when, this insight finally bears fruit will depend upon the class consciousness of the population. There is a Marxist myth, eagerly promoted by the state, of an irreconcilable clash of interests between employers (capitalists) and employees (workers), or between the rich and the poor. As long as this myth prevails in public opinion, nothing at all will change and disaster is inevitable. A fundamental change can only occur if, instead of this, the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.: In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation - that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government "welfare assistance", subsidies and monopolistic privileges. Only when the producer class clearly recognises this, and publicly speaks out; when the producers are finally confident to take the moral high ground and reject the insolent admonitions from the po

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Interview with Hoppe where he once again pushes libertarian thinking forward. Hoppe puts most of the blame on "democracy" itself, caling it "an insidious form of communism". Good stuff. Highlighted parts. excerpt: "That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation. And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic 'miracles' would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism. If, and when, this insight finally bears fruit will depend upon the class consciousness of the population. There is a Marxist myth, eagerly promoted by the state, of an irreconcilable clash of interests between employers (capitalists) and employees (workers), or between the rich and the poor. As long as this myth prevails in public opinion, nothing at all will change and disaster is inevitable. A fundamental change can only occur if, instead of this, the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.: In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation - that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government "welfare assistance", subsidies and monopolistic privileges. Only when the producer class clearly recognises this, and publicly speaks out; when the producers are finally confident to take the moral high ground and reject the insolent admonitions from the po</div>

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The Manifesto : Porter Stansberry and the Project to Restore America - 1 views

www.theprojecttorestoreamerica.com/TheManifesto

Porter-Stansberry Project-to-Restore-America Liberty-Tryanny Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Oct 12 - No Cached

First, we should have a balanced budget amendment.
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Next, we need a constitutional amendment that ensures sound money.
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Finally... we need a logical way to put a stop to the narrowing of the tax base.
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...5 more annotations...
a constitutional amendment that limits state and federal taxation to 20% of income (from whatever the source) and abolishes all other forms of taxation at the state and local level. Give each household a $24,000 annual exemption.
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We could eliminate the IRS.
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How much did you make? Send the government 20% of it.
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we should word the constitutional amendment to make clear our intentions:
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Every U.S. citizen has the right to keep 80% of his income.
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Gary Edwards on 01 Oct 12

I've been following and reading Porter's publications since September of 2008, when the mighty Marbux pointed me to Porter and the libertarian economists as a first step to understanding the financial collapse of 2008, and the incredible role the Federal government / Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel played. Porter started the Project to Restore Americqa, and wrote this very concise and well thought out manifesto explaining a new direction for America to consider. If you love your country, please take a few minutes to read this. Rarely has the truth been so clearly stated, and a solution so precisely, yet simply, presented. Good stuff. +1 "We have to stop giving our citizens improper incentives. We have to increase the "skin" voters have in the game by spreading the burden of government more equally. And we have to ensure the government doesn't have the power to destroy our currency. Americans now owe $56 trillion in total debt, much of it held by foreign investors. We must spend $3.5 trillion each year on interest. That is already more than the federal government spends, in total. We will never be able to repay these debts - already equal to roughly four times our country's GDP. The largest components of the debts we owe are government debts... and they are growing rapidly and show no signs of stopping. Do you think it's more likely we'll find a way to actually pay down these debts... or simply choose to print more money to pay these debts? That's what we're doing right now. So far, the Federal Reserve has printed more than $2 trillion of new money and used it to finance our government's borrowing binge. So the question is, what can we do to change the direction in which we are headed? We have to fundamentally restructure our system. There must be more balance between rights and responsibilities. There must be some fundamental limit on spending and on taxes. And we need sound money to prohibit the government from taxing us silently via inflation an

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">I've been following and reading Porter's publications since September of 2008, when the mighty Marbux pointed me to Porter and the libertarian economists as a first step to understanding the financial collapse of 2008, and the incredible role the Federal government / Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel played. Porter started the Project to Restore Americqa, and wrote this very concise and well thought out manifesto explaining a new direction for America to consider. If you love your country, please take a few minutes to read this. Rarely has the truth been so clearly stated, and a solution so precisely, yet simply, presented. Good stuff. +1 "We have to stop giving our citizens improper incentives. We have to increase the "skin" voters have in the game by spreading the burden of government more equally. And we have to ensure the government doesn't have the power to destroy our currency. Americans now owe $56 trillion in total debt, much of it held by foreign investors. We must spend $3.5 trillion each year on interest. That is already more than the federal government spends, in total. We will never be able to repay these debts - already equal to roughly four times our country's GDP. The largest components of the debts we owe are government debts... and they are growing rapidly and show no signs of stopping. Do you think it's more likely we'll find a way to actually pay down these debts... or simply choose to print more money to pay these debts? That's what we're doing right now. So far, the Federal Reserve has printed more than $2 trillion of new money and used it to finance our government's borrowing binge. So the question is, what can we do to change the direction in which we are headed? We have to fundamentally restructure our system. There must be more balance between rights and responsibilities. There must be some fundamental limit on spending and on taxes. And we need sound money to prohibit the government from taxing us silently via inflation an</div>

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Freedom Above Fortune - jpe Banister - 0 views

www.freedomabovefortune.com

Joe-Banister IRS IRS-Whistleblower

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 13 - Cached

Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 13

Freedom Above Fortune web site for former IRS Agent and Premier IRS Whistleblower, Joe Banister. I first heard Joe Banister on CoasttoCoastam.com, in a three hour interview discussing his time at the IRS and the incredible illegal and unconstitutional activities the IRS routinely engages in. Joe explains the full story and describes what should be done to stop it. It's all about Trial by Jury, and having informed Americans sitting in judgement of the ruthless IRS. If anyone wants the mp3's, send me an email. excerpt: Please visit AgentForTruth.com for the latest developments. You'll notice that the name of this organization is "Freedom Above Fortune" rather than "Freedom Without Fortune" or "Freedom Instead of Fortune". "Freedom Above Fortune" is an organization dedicated to the concept that no amount of real or perceived economic prosperity ("fortune") is worth trading for your liberty. This is not to say that pursuing economic prosperity is, in and of itself, bad. Rather, it is to say that those who are willing to put their freedom at risk for a few pieces of silver, similar to the manner in which Judas betrayed Jesus Christ, are shortsighted and foolish. If you are willing to sell your freedom for short term financial security, real or perceived, the willingness to sell your very soul can't be far behind. Freedom Above Fortune was founded by Joseph R. (Joe) Banister, a former IRS Criminal Investigation Division Special Agent who learned of serious constitutional questions relating to the federal income tax and the federal banking and monetary systems. Mr. Banister's expertise in the fields of accounting, finance, taxation, and law enforcement enabled him to not only understand these issues but realize that he could play a role in bringing the issues into the public arena for analysis and debate. "

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Freedom Above Fortune web site for former IRS Agent and Premier IRS Whistleblower, Joe Banister. I first heard Joe Banister on CoasttoCoastam.com, in a three hour interview discussing his time at the IRS and the incredible illegal and unconstitutional activities the IRS routinely engages in. Joe explains the full story and describes what should be done to stop it. It's all about Trial by Jury, and having informed Americans sitting in judgement of the ruthless IRS. If anyone wants the mp3's, send me an email. excerpt: Please visit AgentForTruth.com for the latest developments. You'll notice that the name of this organization is "Freedom Above Fortune" rather than "Freedom Without Fortune" or "Freedom Instead of Fortune". "Freedom Above Fortune" is an organization dedicated to the concept that no amount of real or perceived economic prosperity ("fortune") is worth trading for your liberty. This is not to say that pursuing economic prosperity is, in and of itself, bad. Rather, it is to say that those who are willing to put their freedom at risk for a few pieces of silver, similar to the manner in which Judas betrayed Jesus Christ, are shortsighted and foolish. If you are willing to sell your freedom for short term financial security, real or perceived, the willingness to sell your very soul can't be far behind. Freedom Above Fortune was founded by Joseph R. (Joe) Banister, a former IRS Criminal Investigation Division Special Agent who learned of serious constitutional questions relating to the federal income tax and the federal banking and monetary systems. Mr. Banister's expertise in the fields of accounting, finance, taxation, and law enforcement enabled him to not only understand these issues but realize that he could play a role in bringing the issues into the public arena for analysis and debate. "</div>

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The Roberts Jizya and the Art of War - 0 views

www.canadafreepress.com/...47757

tb2 John-Roberts-TB2 ObamaCare-TAX

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 12 - No Cached

he is violating his oath of office in doing so, and that is the only sensible explanation because the Constitution is fairly clear; the United States Constitution expressly grants all powers not specifically enumerated in the document to the states and the People, and nowhere is this particular tax authorized.
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this is rather like Jizya, the Muslim concept of taxation on non-Muslims.
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The purpose of the Islamic Jizya is to compel approved behavior, and as such has been a powerful tool used by Islamic societies to compel conversion to Islam
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...10 more annotations...
In this instance the United States government is using it to compel conversion to socialist medicine, forcing us to either buy expensive private insurance or go on the government plan.
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In short, they are abridging our freedom of religion, a constitutionally protected category.
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What is clear is that this is an abridgement of the Establishment clause, and of the First Amendment.
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The argument that this saves us from a super-stretching of the Commerce Clause is immaterial; we have simply replaced it with a super-stretching of the power of taxation. In the end, dead is just as dead.
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What is really needed is a Constitutional Amendment, and the individual states need to spearhead that.
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We have allowed the United States to move from a representative democratic republic to an empire, a system dominated by a ruling elite, an oligarchy.
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We must return to the Federalism that was at the core of the Republic.
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He is a traitor to his oath, a Benedict Arnold in a black robe
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He has placed his desire for self-aggrandizement over his duty, and so has affirmed the power of government and the ruling elite to do anything to the public they please.
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It’s time we take this country back. That can only happen at the state level.
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Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 12

Another well written article describing in full what that treasonous backstabbing bastard chief justice John Roberts has done to shred and destroy our Constitution. Thanks to the Canadian Free Press and Timothy Birdnow. excerpt: So, why is this so important to our discussion of the ruling by the Roberts Court? Because many on our side seem to believe that John Roberts did us a favor in his decision upholding the Affordable Healthcare Act, or as it is known colloquially, Obamacare. The argument in conservative circles for a silver lining to this dark cloud of human bodily excretions is that this ends the debate over the right to use the Commerce Clause to justify any action of Congress and that it hangs this around Osama's neck, a huge tax increase, for the November elections. While a little soothing may be in order we are making a terrible mistake here, because, A.) an eggplant could see this is unconstitutional and, B.) it simply kicks the can down the road, forcing us to fight yet another unnecessary battle. We should have declared victory here. First, this is not a mere political move on Roberts part. He is Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and as such is not going to tie his name to a partisan decision that will be read about in American textbooks. If he is to violate his oath it will be for personal reasons, such as upholding this law against all expectations. What will he gain personally from doing the right thing and striking it down? Upholding such a crazy law guarantees him a spot in the history books. But he is violating his oath of office in doing so, and that is the only sensible explanation because the Constitution is fairly clear; the United States Constitution expressly grants all powers not specifically enumerated in the document to the states and the People, and nowhere is this particular tax authorized. Furthermore, it violates the principle of equality under the law as only some of the public is actually paying a tax; the rest are buyin

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Another well written article describing in full what that treasonous backstabbing bastard chief justice John Roberts has done to shred and destroy our Constitution. Thanks to the Canadian Free Press and Timothy Birdnow. excerpt: So, why is this so important to our discussion of the ruling by the Roberts Court? Because many on our side seem to believe that John Roberts did us a favor in his decision upholding the Affordable Healthcare Act, or as it is known colloquially, Obamacare. The argument in conservative circles for a silver lining to this dark cloud of human bodily excretions is that this ends the debate over the right to use the Commerce Clause to justify any action of Congress and that it hangs this around Osama's neck, a huge tax increase, for the November elections. While a little soothing may be in order we are making a terrible mistake here, because, A.) an eggplant could see this is unconstitutional and, B.) it simply kicks the can down the road, forcing us to fight yet another unnecessary battle. We should have declared victory here. First, this is not a mere political move on Roberts part. He is Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and as such is not going to tie his name to a partisan decision that will be read about in American textbooks. If he is to violate his oath it will be for personal reasons, such as upholding this law against all expectations. What will he gain personally from doing the right thing and striking it down? Upholding such a crazy law guarantees him a spot in the history books. But he is violating his oath of office in doing so, and that is the only sensible explanation because the Constitution is fairly clear; the United States Constitution expressly grants all powers not specifically enumerated in the document to the states and the People, and nowhere is this particular tax authorized. Furthermore, it violates the principle of equality under the law as only some of the public is actually paying a tax; the rest are buyin</div>

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The Daily Bell - Richard Ebeling on Libertarianism, Anarchism and the Truth of Austrian... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...he-Truth-of-Austrian-Economics

Richard-Ebeling Libertarian banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 12 - No Cached

These are at least two conceivable methods of compelling the government to stop, or limit, its abuse of the monetary printing press.
- Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 12
  
  Ebeling proposes two methods of reining in out of control government printing of paper money. There is a third method; one used by Lincoln and Kennedy. This is the issuance of gold/silver/oil backed reserve notes. The notes represent gold or silver being held on deposit, and are fully redeemable. The value of the gold/silver or another commodity represented floats in the marketplace against goods and services. Nor is there a fixed exchange rate for converting fiat (paper) dollars. The market will figure those things out if left free to do so. And that's one big big "if".
  
  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Ebeling proposes two methods of reining in out of control government printing of paper money. There is a third method; one used by Lincoln and Kennedy. This is the issuance of gold/silver/oil backed reserve notes. The notes represent gold or silver being held on deposit, and are fully redeemable. The value of the gold/silver or another commodity represented floats in the marketplace against goods and services. Nor is there a fixed exchange rate for converting fiat (paper) dollars. The market will figure those things out if left free to do so. And that's one big big "if".</div>
  
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So the normal market pressures of downward price and wage adjustments in the recession are partly counter-acted by a new monetary expansion that is delaying the necessary re-coordination of market activities. Thus, given these two pressures, prices do not fall as much as a post-recession adjustment may require and they do not rise as much or as fast as might otherwise occur due to the renewed monetary expansion.
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At the same time, as you correctly ask, the Federal Reserve has been paying banks a relatively low rate of interest to keep large excessive reserves in their accounts at the Federal Reserve, rather than to fully lend those excessive reserves to private borrowers. And given the low market rates of interest that Federal Reserve policy has generated, even the low rate of interest on unlent excess reserves offered to banks by the Federal Reserve appears the relatively more profitable way to use their available funds.
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...44 more annotations...
Why has the Federal Reserve done this? They infused these two trillion dollars into the financial markets back in 2008-2010 because they feared that an economy-wide bank collapse was possible. They are afraid to reverse this monetary expansion because to do so would reduce potential bank-lending capacity and put upward pressure on interest rates at a time when the Federal Reserve wants to prevent the sluggish recovery from slowing down even more and also raise the cost of the US government's financing of its trillion dollar a year deficits. So, instead, they leave this excess bank lending power sloshing around in the system, while keeping it off the market and from causing significant new price inflationary pressures, by paying banks not to lend those vast sums.
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Austrians argue that economics is fundamentally a science and study of "human action." It attempts to trace out the logic and implications of man's intentional conduct in selecting among ends desired and applying perceived means to try to attain them. Austrians emphasize that all human action and the social and market interactions among men occur in a setting of imperfect knowledge, inescapable degrees of uncertainty and always through the passage of time.
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They try to explain the market processes by which men discover mutual gains from trade.
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They emphasize that the networks of social institutions in which and through which men discover ways to coordinate their interdependent actions in complex systems of division of labor are not the creations of government edict or command; but are most often among those unintended consequences of multitudes of self-interested individual actions and interactions.
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They have developed theories of market competition and the role of the entrepreneur as the individuals always alert to market opportunities, and whose actions tend to bring about coordination between market supplies and demands.
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The Austrian analysis of markets, competition and prices, led them to devastating critiques of the unworkability of all forms of socialist central planning, the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies in virtually all forms of government intervention and regulation, and a theory of money and the business cycle that points the finger of responsibility for inflations and recessions at the doorstep of government monetary and fiscal policies.
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The philosophy of liberty proclaims that each individual is unique and possessing inherent rights to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property.
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It is not surprising that classical liberal and libertarian ideas are often attacked. After all they are the ideas that consistently oppose the current political systems of plunder, privilege and power lusting.
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That government, if it is to exist, is to serve as the protector and guardian of our distinct individual rights, and not the master of men who are obligated to sacrifice themselves for some asserted "national interest," "general welfare," or "common good."
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The only reasonable meaning to the "common good" or the "general welfare" is when each individual is free to peacefully live his life as he chooses and is at liberty to voluntarily associate and interact with his fellow men for mutually beneficial improvements to their lives.
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It is virtually inevitable that those who use political power for their own gain at their neighbor's expense will vehemently resist and oppose any attempt to stop them from feeding at the government trough.
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there is everywhere a class of plundering peoples – politicians, bureaucrats, special interest groups – receiving tax-based income redistributions and subsidies and benefiting from anti-competitive regulations and protections against and at the expense of their fellow human beings.
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This is the great battle of the twenty-first century;
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Austrian Economics, not surprisingly, has been attacked precisely because of its insightful and cogent analysis of how it was government intervention and central bank monetary manipulation that generated the unsustainable boom in the last decade that set the stage for the inescapable bust, which the world is still suffering from.
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There are "natural rights" libertarians
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"utilitarian" or "consequentialist" libertarians.
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most convincing case for human liberty
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Because libertarians have not agreed about this among themselves, nor have they been able to persuade enough others in society to move the world further away from the collectivist premises and the interventionist-welfare state policies that guide so much that goes on in the world.
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I happen to have been most strongly influenced by the "natural rights" defense of liberty, and especially as formulated by Ayn Rand in her philosophy of Objectivism.
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First, it is argued that if one believes that the use of any and all forms of coercion are morally unacceptable in human relationships, then this should also imply that any compulsory taxation, even when for the funding of defense and legal justice, is unjustifiable. And, second, it is argued that the private sector could provide such admittedly essential services far more efficiently and cost-effectively than the monopoly agency of government. Murray Rothbard and David Friedman probably have been among the most well-known and articulate proponents of the anarcho-capitalist position over the last 50 years.
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Others like the Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick and Ludwig von Mises have made the case for constitutionally limited government. Their counter arguments have centered on the ideas that conflicts over jurisdiction, disputes among private defense agencies contracted by different individuals who have disagreements, and the likelihood that "defense" would turn out to be a "natural monopoly" anyway – that is, a tendency for one agency to end up being the single provider of defense and judicial services over a wide geographical area – raise questions about the long-run workability and sustainability of competing defense companies in society.
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From a moral perspective, I am in sympathy with the anarcho-capitalist position, in that I find the compulsory taking of people's income and wealth without their consent for whatever reason to be ethically repugnant.
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We should focus on what we all agree upon:
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This means that the Supreme Court has said that you are the slave of "society" and the government that represents "the people," since, in principle, anything that you do or not do can be argued to have some affect, positive or negative, on others.
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Think about this Court decision. It is saying that if you do not buy health insurance the government will tax you to pay for it. If you refuse to pay the tax, the government will end up attempting to seize financial assets or real property you own in lieu of failure to pay. If you try to prevent this taking of your property, you are subject to arrest and imprisonment. If you resist arrest or imprisonment, the police have the authority to force you to comply – up to and including lethal force to subdue you into obedience.
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the freedom and dignity of the individual human being; and the attempt whenever and wherever on our part to reduce, repeal and abolish all forms of regulation, control, restriction, prohibition on the peaceful and honest affairs of our fellow men.
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Once you accept this premise, there is no end to the minutest detail and content of your life and actions the government cannot claim jurisdiction over to regulate, control or prohibit.
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Here is that end-of-the-road of the notion of unlimited democratic rule by "the people" and those who claim to speak for "the people" and rule on their behalf.
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Ayn Rand, of course, rejected any connection or compatibility with libertarianism. She argued this on two grounds. First, she felt that too frequently libertarians spoke of individual freedom, free markets and limited government, but failed to explicitly and clearly ground their political-economic ideas in a demonstrable philosophy of man, nature and society.
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Government control of money is the potentially most dangerous and damaging form of government power short of outright socialism.
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Rand's political philosophy arises out of the "natural rights" tradition, that rights are inherent in the nature of man and precede government.
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Mises believed that rights were, in a sense, "social conventions" that had evolved out of the discovery that certain social institutional arrangements were more conducive to the mutual betterment of all members of society for achieving their individual goals and values
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What they did agree upon was that, given their respective conceptions of the basis of individual rights, there was no social and economic system more consistent with the protection of those rights and more likely to generate the material and cultural achievements that are potentially possible than laissez-faire capitalism.
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And in the twentieth century, Rand and Mises were two of the most principled and uncompromising advocates for the completely free market society
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Second, she rejected the anarchist elements in the libertarian movement, believing that any reasonable analysis of the reality of man and the human condition strongly suggested the inescapable need for a single legal standard for defining and enforcing individual rights and a single authority to as impartially and "objectively" as possible enforce laws defending each individual's rights to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property.
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"Hardly ever do the advocates of free capitalism realize how utterly their ideal was frustrated at the moment the state assumed control of the monetary system . . .
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A 'free' capitalism with government responsibility for money and credit has lost its innocence.
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From that point on it is no longer a matter of principle but one of expediency how far one wishes or permits government interference to go.
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Money control is the supreme and most comprehensive of all governmental controls short of expropriation."
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Government basically has three ways to acquire the income and wealth of its citizens: taxation, borrowing and printing money
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So, governments throughout history have turned to the monetary printing press to fund the expenditures not covered by taxes or borrowed money
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This "non-neutral," or uneven, impact on prices and wages in the economy during the inflationary process brings in its wake distorted profit margins, misallocations of resources and labor and various mal-investments of capital. Here are the seeds for the artificial and unsustainable "booms" that invariably come crashing down in the "bust" once the monetary expansion that has set it all in motion is stopped or slowed down.
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I believe that the choice and use of money should be left to the market, that is, to the free and voluntary interactive decisions of those buying and selling in the market.
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I consider a private, competitive free banking system to be the only one consistent with a truly free market society.
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Jeb Bush: Capitalism and the Right to Rise - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3893404577100330414585006.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Dec 11 - No Cached

Gary Edwards on 19 Dec 11

Excellent piece of writing describing the essence of Constitutional Capitalism and the abundance that comes from Ordered Liberty through limited and Constitutional Rule of Law. excerpt: We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy's resources should be spent. Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it. In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Excellent piece of writing describing the essence of Constitutional Capitalism and the abundance that comes from Ordered Liberty through limited and Constitutional Rule of Law. excerpt: We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy's resources should be spent. Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it. In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.</div>

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Local view: Federal Reserve has no right to print our money | Duluth News Tribune | Dul... - 0 views

www.duluthnewstribune.com/...223996

Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Feb 12 - No Cached

Gary Edwards on 26 Feb 12

this is a very simple to understand explanation of money and the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. Interesting how these articles aree finally reaching the masses. Even if the explanation is dumbed down, it doe shit at the heart of the matter. We work for our money, producing goods and services. Government seizes and controls this wealth through taxation and regulation. Government does not create anything. Government is caught on an ever increasing cycle of spend, borrow and bail. Banksters do not create wealth. They print it, and then charge us interest to borrow that paper. Simple.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">this is a very simple to understand explanation of money and the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. Interesting how these articles aree finally reaching the masses. Even if the explanation is dumbed down, it doe shit at the heart of the matter. We work for our money, producing goods and services. Government seizes and controls this wealth through taxation and regulation. Government does not create anything. Government is caught on an ever increasing cycle of spend, borrow and bail. Banksters do not create wealth. They print it, and then charge us interest to borrow that paper. Simple.</div>

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"War is a Racket" by General Smedly Butler - 1 views

www.lexrex.com/...warisaracket.htm

Smedly-Butler

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Sep 13 - Cached

by MAJOR GENERAL SMEDLEY D. BUTLER, USMC - Retired TWO-TIME Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient FULL TEXT ON LINE FREE
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GET THE NEW PAPERBACK EDITION including two bonus titles.
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Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13

An accidental find, the full text online of USMC Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler's 1935 book, War Is a Racket. Butler served in the Marine Corps from 1899 to 1931 and at the time of his retirement was the most-decorated Marine in history, for both valor and accomplishments. Following his retirement, he became a vehement anti-war activist and public speaker. This book is easily his most-cited and most-quoted published work. You can capture the flavor from an article he published in a magazine that included the following lines: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler#Lectures I look forward to reading this book. The book was reprinted in 2003 and is available from the linked web site, together with two bonus titles.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">An accidental find, the full text online of USMC Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler's 1935 book, War Is a Racket. Butler served in the Marine Corps from 1899 to 1931 and at the time of his retirement was the most-decorated Marine in history, for both valor and accomplishments. Following his retirement, he became a vehement anti-war activist and public speaker. This book is easily his most-cited and most-quoted published work. You can capture the flavor from an article he published in a magazine that included the following lines: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler#Lectures" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler#Lectures</a> I look forward to reading this book. The book was reprinted in 2003 and is available from the linked web site, together with two bonus titles. </div>

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Gary Edwards on 18 Sep 13

"WAR IS A RACKET" - free online book CHAPTER ONE WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds g

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">"WAR IS A RACKET" - free online book CHAPTER ONE WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds g</div>

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The Daily Bell - Doug Casey on the Continuing Debasement of Money, Language and Banking... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...-and-Banking-in-the-Modern-Age

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 15 - No Cached

This isn't going to last because the way you get wealthy is by producing more than you consume and saving the difference – not by consuming more than you produce, and borrowing the difference. With the Fed keeping interest rates at artificially low levels, hoping to increase consumption, they're making it very foolish to save – when you get ½% or 1% on your savings. So people are saving less and they're borrowing more than they otherwise would. This is a formula for making things worse, not better.
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They are, idiotically, doing exactly the opposite of what they should be.
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In point of fact, the Fed should be abolished; the market, not bureaucrats, should determine interest rates. We wouldn't be in this pickle to start with if the government wasn't involved in the economy.
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...35 more annotations...
The Chinese, the Japanese – everybody is selling, trying to pass the Old Maid card of US Government debt, which represents return–free risk. Nobody other than the Fed is buying, and interest rates would skyrocket if they stopped. The more QE there is, the more distortions it will cause, however, making for a bigger disaster the longer it goes on.
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Will the Fed continue to inflate the money supply? Doug Casey: They have to, because with the huge amount of debt in the world – and the amount of debt in the world has increased something like 40 or 50% just since the Greater Depression started – if they don't keep increasing the amount of money in the world then nobody's going to be able to service the huge amount of debt that is out there. So I don't see anything changing in the years to come. They've truly painted themselves into a corner. They're caught between Scylla and Charybdis, and we don't have Odysseus steering the ship of state.
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Let me say, again, that the Fed serves no useful purpose and it should be abolished. Central banks create "super money" by buying government or other debt with new currency units that they credit to the sellers' accounts at commercial banks. That's the actual engine of inflation.
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But it's greatly compounded in the commercial banking system through fractional reserve lending – which would not be possible without a central bank. Fractional reserve lending allows banks to multiply the money supply several times.
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If $100 of Fed super money, freshly created, is deposited in a commercial bank like Chase or Citibank, then $90 can be lent out with a 10% reserve, the current number. That money is redeposited. They'll then lend out 90% of that $90, or $81, and then 90% of that $81, so it multiplies.
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Central banking and fractional reserve lending go hand-in-hand.
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Without a central bank, any bank that engaged in fractional reserve banking would be considered guilty of fraud and, when discovered, would be punished by a bank run, followed by criminal charges. The point to be made here is that the entire banking system today is totally unsound and totally corrupt.
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In a sound banking system you have two types of deposits – checking account (or demand) deposits, and savings account (or time) deposits. They are completely different businesses. With demand deposits, you pay the bank to store your money securely, and write checks against it. A bank should no more lend out demand deposit money than Allied Storage should lend out the furniture you're paying them to store.
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Savings accounts are completely different. Here you lend money to a bank, perhaps at 3%, and they relend it at 6%, making 3% to cover costs, risks and profits. A sound bank not only has to match the maturities of its deposits with the maturities of its loans, but must insure loans are both highly secured and self-liquidating.
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These principles have been totally lost. Today banks operate as hedge funds.
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As an aside, if someone were to set up a well-capitalized 100% reserve bank in a tax haven, especially using gold as an alternative currency, it would be immensely successful in the years to come – when most all conventional banks will fail.
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By all historical, normal parameters, the stock market is greatly overvalued.
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The trillions of new currency units that the Fed is creating are creating bubbles, and one of them is in the stock market. The biggest bubble, of course, is in the bond market – that's a super bubble.
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Not only does the dollar have no real value but the banks you keep it in are all insolvent.
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There are few sound investments out there. Today there are no investments; there are only speculations.
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From the economist's point of view, the bubbles created by central banking are a disaster, but from a speculator's point of view they're a godsend. It's becoming harder and harder to be an investor; I define an investor as someone who allocates capital to productive business. It's hard to be an investor because you now have to spend more money on lawyers than on engineers and workers if you want to produce something. You're increasingly forced to be a speculator in today's climate.
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Stock and bond markets all over the world are overpriced – with the exception of Russian stocks right now; they could be a very interesting speculation. I wouldn't touch anything in China yet, because all the Chinese banks are going to go bust.
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The Chinese have been more profligate inflating the yuan than the Americans have been with the dollar. It's fantastic what the Chinese have done since Deng liberalized the economy in the early '80s, but now's not a time to be in their markets.
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You've got to remember there are two types of people in the world: people who want to control material reality and people who want to control other people.
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It's that second type who go into politics. They play games – here it's called the Great Game, which dignifies it in a way it shouldn't be – with other people's lives and property. It's been this way ever since the state was created about 5,000 years ago, and I don't think you should play games with other people's lives.
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On the bright side, there are more scientists and engineers alive today than in all of human history put together, and so technology is advancing more rapidly than ever for that reason. That's a huge plus.
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The second good thing is that the average person, at least those who aren't on welfare, tries to produce more than he consumes. That creates capital.
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But I'm afraid that Western civilization reached its peak before World War I. World War I destroyed a huge amount of capital and, more importantly, it changed the moral bases of so many things.
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Then World War II institutionalized the State as the most important part of society – which is perverse, because the state is actually the enemy of civil society.
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I think Western civilization reached its peak in 1913, when it reached its maximum geographical extent. That was coincidental with the peak of its technological and philosophical influence on the world, much the way the Roman Empire reached its peak at about the end of the first century, then went down, slowly at first and then quickly. That's what's happening to the West.
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Relative to the rest of the world, and contribution to world production, our piece of the economic pie is getting smaller and smaller. If we have another serious war it would be absolutely smaller, and the final nail in the coffin. Meanwhile, the US, with its bloated military, is just itching for another war. It's out of control, and unlikely to change at this point. That's a big trend that is in motion that I think is going to stay in motion.
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Europe is in particularly bad shape. The place is a fascist/socialist disaster.
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It was possible for the average European to keep his head above water through tax evasion in the past, but now those governments have broken bank secrecy everywhere, and it will destroy a lot of capital.
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The "nation-state" is a really stupid and dysfunctional idea, and I'm glad it's on its way out.
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That said, even the US, which from a cultural point of view is as much of a country as any place in the world, should actually break up into at least five or six regions.
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Canada should break up into at least five or six regions initially.
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I don't think politically; politics is the problem, not the solution. I think that the ideal solution is for every individual to opt out of the current system. When they give a war, you don't come. When they give a tax, you don't pay. When they give an election, you don't vote. You even try not to use their currency and their banking system. T
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he ideal thing is to let the system collapse under its own weight as opposed to starting a new political party and then continuing to act politically, which is to say to use force on other people.
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Market risk is huge today, but political risk is even bigger. One indication of that was, when the banks in Cyprus went bust some months ago, the government essentially confiscated everybody's account above 100,000 euros, in what they called a "bail-in."
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You need several options. It seems like people haven't learned anything from what happened in Russia in 1917, Germany in 1933, China in 1948, Cuba in 1959, or Vietnam in 1975. Rwanda, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, Ukraine, Syria ... there are lots of examples and these things can and will eventually happen almost everywhere. When the chimpanzees go crazy, you don't want to be where they are. You've got to have a Plan B. You've got to have a crib out of that political jurisdiction. Acting like a plant, and staying put, isn't a good survival strategy for a human.
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Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 15

"Doug Casey: I don't see a real recovery until they stop debasing the currency, radically cut government spending and taxation and eliminate most regulation. In other words, cease doing the things that caused this depression. And that's not going to happen until there's a collapse of the current order. Things have cyclically improved since the height of the crisis of 2008-09. The trillions of currency units created by the Federal Reserve have jammed the stock market higher and kept the big banks from going under. What surprises me is that retail prices have not moved as significantly as I would have expected. The reason, I believe, is that most of that money is still sitting in financial institutions. It has gone into cash out of fear, into stocks because they represent real wealth with earning power and into various speculative assets like artwork and collectible cars. Real estate has recovered somewhat, not because of strong fundamentals but strictly because of money creation. This isn't going to last because the way you get wealthy is by producing more than you consume and saving the difference - not by consuming more than you produce, and borrowing the difference. With the Fed keeping interest rates at artificially low levels, hoping to increase consumption, they're making it very foolish to save - when you get ½% or 1% on your savings. So people are saving less and they're borrowing more than they otherwise would. This is a formula for making things worse, not better. They are, idiotically, doing exactly the opposite of what they should be. Although, I hasten to add, I hate to pontificate on what the Fed "should" do. In point of fact, the Fed should be abolished; the market, not bureaucrats, should determine interest rates. We wouldn't be in this pickle to start with if the government wasn't involved in the economy. In fact, if it wasn't for the state, I suspect we'd all have a vastly higher standard of living, and would be colonizing the Moon, Mars and

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">"Doug Casey: I don't see a real recovery until they stop debasing the currency, radically cut government spending and taxation and eliminate most regulation. In other words, cease doing the things that caused this depression. And that's not going to happen until there's a collapse of the current order. Things have cyclically improved since the height of the crisis of 2008-09. The trillions of currency units created by the Federal Reserve have jammed the stock market higher and kept the big banks from going under. What surprises me is that retail prices have not moved as significantly as I would have expected. The reason, I believe, is that most of that money is still sitting in financial institutions. It has gone into cash out of fear, into stocks because they represent real wealth with earning power and into various speculative assets like artwork and collectible cars. Real estate has recovered somewhat, not because of strong fundamentals but strictly because of money creation. This isn't going to last because the way you get wealthy is by producing more than you consume and saving the difference - not by consuming more than you produce, and borrowing the difference. With the Fed keeping interest rates at artificially low levels, hoping to increase consumption, they're making it very foolish to save - when you get ½% or 1% on your savings. So people are saving less and they're borrowing more than they otherwise would. This is a formula for making things worse, not better. They are, idiotically, doing exactly the opposite of what they should be. Although, I hasten to add, I hate to pontificate on what the Fed "should" do. In point of fact, the Fed should be abolished; the market, not bureaucrats, should determine interest rates. We wouldn't be in this pickle to start with if the government wasn't involved in the economy. In fact, if it wasn't for the state, I suspect we'd all have a vastly higher standard of living, and would be colonizing the Moon, Mars and </div>

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Restore America Plan | - 0 views

www.americandreampreservation.com/...4

america restore plan

shared by Joseph Skues on 17 Jun 10 - Cached

the de jure institutions of lawful government.
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Terminate illicit corporations posing as legitimate governments
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(corp. ref. 28 U.S.C. 3002
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...24 more annotations...
Terminate all presumed powers of attorney
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(for borrowing against one’s own credit).
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I.R.S. (former Puerto Rico Bureau of Taxation).
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End street assaults
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for failing to exhibit a State-issued confession
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of subject-class citizenship.
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End admiralty prosecutions
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“commercial crimes” against the corporate State
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ref. 27 C.F.R. 72.11).
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corporations posing as the state
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which confess the signer to be a legal fiction subject of the United States Federal Corporation (“U.S. person”
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thereby transferring control to incorporated County registrars and tax assessors.
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whereby incorporated “courts” presume the “right” to trespass on families and kidnap children.
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Restore the People’s money and wealth from the banking institutions,
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end all non-consensual and unlawful taxation
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sacred rights of labor and privacy.
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to enforce the Peoples’ divine rights of birth.
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Reabsorb all de facto actors into lawful de jure capacity.
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district court of the United States
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Restore the de jure judicial institutions
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ncluding
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without provoking alarm, controversy or armed conflict.
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Quietly mirror the strategies of 1933
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behind the scenes, without public proclamations or provocative actions
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http://www.cafrman.com/Articles/Art-MI-S1.htm - 0 views

www.cafrman.com/...Art-MI-S1.htm

cafrman MICH 2003

shared by Joseph Skues on 30 Jul 10 - Cached

$1,009 for every man, woman and child
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This does not include all the additional surpluses that exist in the school districts, cities, or counties in Michigan.
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funds that are not required or needed
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...23 more annotations...
But what we have found is that most governments have huge amounts of cash and investments on hand at the end of the fiscal yea
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not being recycled back through the budget process the next year,
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The budget only covers a small portion of the State's financial condition
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The CAFR usually has four categories. Governmental FundsProprietary FundsFiduciary FundsComponent Units
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Enterprise Funds, a component of proprietary funds,
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charges for services or goods, assessments, fines, licenses, etc
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are legally separated organizations for which the government is financially accountable.
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The remainder of the Funds shown above are not part of the budget and are commonly called "off-budget" items
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but should be
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Although taxation is legitimate, running a government surplus isn't.
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it exceeds the government's contract with the community
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Excess taxation isn't what the people bargained for.
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This system is covered in the CAFR Budget System. This system needs to be implemented in all governments. If the State holds the excesses/surplus, it will earn 4% to 5% on that money. If the State returns the money to the people it will receive 20% in revenue because of the increased economic activity. This is elementary economics.
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Total Benefits... 2,282 9,129
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In FY 2002 there were 310,000 unemployed in Michigan, If the $10.13 billion is returned to the people 203,395 jobs are created. This is why it is disastrous for governments to hold excesses/reserves of the taxpayers money.
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The business community suffers the most.
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That is 5 times the amount the Federal government used to stimulate the U.S. economy
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That represents 4 years of reserves.
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Bottle Deposits Fund, another Special Revenue Fund had net expenditures of $3.3 million. But it also had cash and investment reserves of $125 million. The reserves represent almost 37 years of expenditures.
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Michigan Unemployment Compensation Fund, an Enterprise Fund, had net expenses of $665 million. It also had reserves of $1.7 billion. That represents 3 years of reserves.
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These only represent four of the 81 funds shown below that had cash and investment reserves not being used.
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The following items are not included in the amount of surplus shown:
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-Retirement/Pension Funds - only included are 1/2 of the actuarially determined excesses, the taxpayers portion. The other 1/2 is the government employees portion.
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A truly American future - 1 views

www.wnd.com/...a-truly-american-future

Constitutional-Capitalism Crony-Capitalism

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Jul 14 - No Cached

Ours has been a human experiment in which a constitutional republic was created that, aside from its moral and legal rightness, also created an environment in which entrepreneurs could flourish. The results of this experiment have been spectacular. Our lives and the lives of people throughout the world have been enriched by this experiment.
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We are now in a very imperfect political battlefield, on which we are striving to save a constitutional republic by democratic means. Historically, our odds are poor. All democracies in history have ultimately failed. All have descended into mob rule. This is the reason our founders did not give us a democracy. We must be the exception.
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At present, the situation is in doubt. Our president refuses to follow the rules of our constitutional republic; the self-interested cowardice of too many of our members of Congress prevents them from disciplining the president; and our courts are politicized as well. Moreover, many elements of our government are running amok, such as the Federal Reserve with its printing presses and the Environmental Protection Agency with its unending search for more power for itself. As Gilder shows in “Knowledge and Power,” the real advance of knowledge and power to improve human life depends upon a benign human society in which entrepreneurial advance can flourish. He explains this in political terms and in the scientific terms of information theory.
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Gary Edwards on 24 Jul 14

"As economist Julian Simon observed, people always produce more than they consume and always better the human condition of themselves and their neighbors - if they are free to do so. Why was Simon able to make this observation based on American experiences and other more brief episodes in human history? The answer to this question is elegantly described by George Gilder in his book "Knowledge and Power: The information Theory of Capitalism and How It is Revolutionizing Our World." Gilder teaches us about the "economics" of human advance. Establishment economics is, of course, a somewhat murky forest of "supply" and "demand" and "micros" and "macros" and all sorts of other abstractions. Within economics has arisen a sort of political contest as to whether "demand" or "supply" is most important. Does the market respond to "demands" for certain sorts of goods, or are goods unexpectedly "supplied" to the market by inventors and entrepreneurs - as surprises which then create market demand themselves? It is clear that the "supply" side trumps the "demand" side in this controversy. As George Gilder elucidates, potential advances - products and other goods - arise first in the minds of entrepreneurs who, using information, existing tools and skills in assembling and utilizing capital, bring these advances to the market. If the entrepreneur is right about the demand that will arise when his new product becomes available, he is rewarded with the fun of providing it and with profits. In order to do this, the entrepreneur needs a relatively quiet, noise-free environment, where the information comprising his innovation can express itself. His environment needs easily available capital in the hands of free men, so that he has rich opportunities to seek that capital and utilize it. The entrepreneur also needs a system of justice that protects his efforts and his coworkers. He needs a system of individual liberty where the

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">"As economist Julian Simon observed, people always produce more than they consume and always better the human condition of themselves and their neighbors - if they are free to do so. Why was Simon able to make this observation based on American experiences and other more brief episodes in human history? The answer to this question is elegantly described by George Gilder in his book "Knowledge and Power: The information Theory of Capitalism and How It is Revolutionizing Our World." Gilder teaches us about the "economics" of human advance. Establishment economics is, of course, a somewhat murky forest of "supply" and "demand" and "micros" and "macros" and all sorts of other abstractions. Within economics has arisen a sort of political contest as to whether "demand" or "supply" is most important. Does the market respond to "demands" for certain sorts of goods, or are goods unexpectedly "supplied" to the market by inventors and entrepreneurs - as surprises which then create market demand themselves? It is clear that the "supply" side trumps the "demand" side in this controversy. As George Gilder elucidates, potential advances - products and other goods - arise first in the minds of entrepreneurs who, using information, existing tools and skills in assembling and utilizing capital, bring these advances to the market. If the entrepreneur is right about the demand that will arise when his new product becomes available, he is rewarded with the fun of providing it and with profits. In order to do this, the entrepreneur needs a relatively quiet, noise-free environment, where the information comprising his innovation can express itself. His environment needs easily available capital in the hands of free men, so that he has rich opportunities to seek that capital and utilize it. The entrepreneur also needs a system of justice that protects his efforts and his coworkers. He needs a system of individual liberty where the</div>

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The Daily Bell - Richard Ebeling on Higher Interest Rates, Collectivism and the Coming ... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...tivism-and-the-Coming-Collapse

Richard-Ebeling The-Daily-Bell Austrian-Economics Liberty-Tryanny

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 13 - No Cached

The "larger dysfunction," as you express it, arises out of a number of factors. The primary one, in my view, is a philosophical and psychological schizophrenia among the American people.
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While many on "the left" ridicule the idea, there is a strong case for the idea of "American exceptionalism," meaning that the United States stands out as something unique, different and special among the nations of the world.
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the American Founding Fathers constructed a political system in the United States based on a concept on which no other country was consciously founded:
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...95 more annotations...
But the American Revolution and the US Constitution hailed a different conception of man, society and government.
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n the rest of the world, and for all of human history, the presumption has been that the individual was a slave or a subject to a higher authority. It might be the tribal chief; or the "divinely ordained" monarch who presumed to rule over and control people in the name of God; or, especially after the French Revolution and the rise of modern socialism, "the nation" or "the people" who laid claim to the life and work of the individual.
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the idea of individual rights.
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That is, as long as the individual did not violate the equal rights of others to their life, liberty and property, each person was free to shape and guide his own future, and give meaning and value to his own life as he considered best in the pursuit of that happiness that was considered the purpose and goal of each man during his sojourn on this Earth.
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Governments did not exist to give or bestow "rights" or "privileges" at its own discretion.
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Governments were to secure and protect each individual's rights, which he possessed by "the nature of things."
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The individual was presumed to own himself. He was "sovereign."
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The real and fundamental notion of "self-government" referred to the right of each individual to rule over himself.
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Each individual, by his nature and his reason, had a right to his life, his liberty and his honestly acquired property.
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during the first 150 years of America's history there was virtually no Welfare State and relatively few government regulations, controls and restrictions on the choices and actions of the free citizen.
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But for more than a century, now, an opposing conception of man, society and government has increasingly gained a hold over the ideas and attitudes of people in the US.
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It was "imported" from Europe in the form of modern collectivism.
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The individual was expected to see himself as belonging to something "greater" than himself. He was to sacrifice for "great national causes."
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He was told that if life had not provided all that he desired or hoped for, it was because others had "exploited" him in some economic or social manner, and that government would redress the "injustice" through redistribution of wealth or regulation of the marketplace.
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If he had had financial and material success, the individual should feel guilty and embarrassed by it, because, surely, if some had noticeably more, it could only be because others had been forced to live with noticeably less.
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left on its own, free competition tends to evolve into harmful monopolies and oligopolies, with the wealthy "few" benefiting at the expense of the "many."
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They are the crises of the Interventionist-Welfare State: the attempt to impose reactionary collectivist policies of political paternalism and redistributive plunder on a society still possessing parts of its original individualist and rights-based roots.
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it is in the form of communism's and socialism's critique of capitalism.
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Unregulated capitalism leads to "unearned" and "excessive" profits; unbridled markets generate the business cycle and the hardships of recessions and depressions;
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These two conflicting conceptions of man, society and government have been and are at war here in the United States.
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And if it cannot be gotten and guaranteed through the redistributive mechanisms of the European Union and the euro, well, maybe we should return power to our own nation-states to provide the jobs, the social "safety nets" and the financial means to pay for it through, once again, printing our own national paper currencies.
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This is the political-philosophical bankruptcy of the West and the dead ends of the collectivist promises of the last 100 years.
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Ludwig von Mises's book, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, originally published in 1922, demonstrated how and why a socialist, centrally planned system was inherently unworkable.
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The nationalization of productive property, the abolition of markets and the prohibition of all competitive exchange among the members of society would prevent the emergence and operation of a price system, without which it is impossible to know people's demands for desired goods and the relative value they place on them.
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It also prevents the emergence of prices for the factors of production (land, labor, capital) and makes it impossible to know their opportunity costs – the value of those factors of production in alternative competing uses among entrepreneurs desiring to employ them.
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Without such a price system the central planners are flying blind, unable to rationally know or decide how best to utilize labor, capital and resources in productively efficient ways to make the goods and services most highly valued by the consuming public.
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Thus, Mises concluded, comprehensive socialist central planning would lead to "planned chaos."
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And, therefore, there is no guarantee that the amount of investments undertaken and their time horizons are compatible with the available resources not also being demanded and used for more immediate consumer goods production in the society.
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As a consequence, financial markets do not work like real markets.
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Thus, the interventionist state leads to waste, inefficiency and misuses of resources that lower the standards of living that we all, otherwise, could have enjoyed.
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We cannot be sure what the amount of real savings may be in the society to support real and sustainable investment and capital formation.
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Government intervention prevents prices from "telling the truth" about the real supply and demand conditions thus leading to imbalances and distortions in the market.
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We cannot know what the "real cost" of borrowing should be, since interest rates are not determined by actual, private sector savings and investment decisions.
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Government production regulations, controls, restrictions and prohibitions prevent entrepreneurs from using their knowledge, ability and capital in ways that most effectively produce the goods consumers actually want and at the most cost-competitive prices possible.
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This is why countries around the world periodically experience booms and busts, inflations and recessions − not because of some inherent instabilities or "irrationalities" in financial markets, but because of monetary central planning through central banking that does not allow market-based financial intermediation to develop and work as it could and would in a real free-market setting.
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But in the United States and especially in Europe, government "austerity" means merely temporarily reducing the rate of increase in government spending, slowing down the rate at which new debt is accumulating and significantly raising taxes in an attempt to close the deficit gap.
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The fundamental problem is that over the decades, the size and scope of governments in the Western world have been growing far more than the rates at which their economies have been expanding, so that the "slice" of the national economic "pie" eaten by government has been growing larger and larger, even when the "pie" in absolute terms is bigger than it was, say, 30 or 40 years ago.
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European governments, in general, take the view that "austerity" means squeezing the private sector more through taxes and other revenue sources to avoid any noticeable and significant cuts in what government does and spends.
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So there is "austerity" for the private sector and a mad rush for financial "safety nets" for the government and those who live off the State.
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In reality, of course, it is the burdens of government regulation, taxation and impediments to more flexible labor and related markets that have generated the high unemployment rates and the retarded recovery from the recession.
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Instead, the "common market" ideal has been transformed into the goal of a European Union "Super-State" to which the individual countries and their citizens would be subservient and obedient.
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Keynesian policies offer people and politicians what they want to hear. Claiming that any sluggish business or lost jobs are due to a lack of "aggregate demand," Keynes argued that full employment and profitable business could only be reestablished and maintained through "activist" government monetary and fiscal policy – print money and run budget deficits.
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What Britain and Europe should have as its goal is the ideal of the classical liberal free traders of the 19th century – non-intervention by governments in people's lives, at home and abroad. That is, a de-politicization of society, so people may freely work, trade and travel as they peacefully wish, with government merely the protector of people's individual rights.
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Take the benefits away and tell people they are free to come and work to support themselves and their families. Restore more flexibility and competitiveness to labor markets and reduce taxes and business regulations.
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Then those who come to Britain's shores will be those wanting freedom and opportunity without being a burden upon others.
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What was needed was a change in ideas from the statist mentality to one of individual freedom and unhampered free markets.
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In an epoch of collectivist ideas, don't be surprised if governments regulate, control, intervene and redistribute wealth.
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The tentacle of regulations, restrictions and politically-correct social controls are spreading out in every direction from Brussels and its European-wide manipulating and mismanaging bureaucracy.
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In the name of assuring "national prosperity," politicians could spend money to buy the votes that get them elected and reelected to government offices.
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And every special interest group could make the case that government-spending programs that benefitted them were all reasonable and necessary to assure a fully employed and growing economy.
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Furthermore, the Keynesian rationale for government deficit spending enabled politicians to seem to be able to offer something for nothing. They could offer, say, $100 of government spending to voters and special interest groups but the tax burden imposed in the present might only be $75, since the remainder of the money to pay for that government spending was borrowed. And that borrowed money would not have to be repaid until some indefinite time in the future by unspecific taxpayers when that "tomorrow" finally arrived.
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instability
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Keynes argued that the market economy's inherent
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arose from the
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who were subject to irrational and unpredictable waves of "optimism" and "pessimism."
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animal spirits" of businessmen
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Mises argued that there was nothing inherent in the market economy to bring about these swings of economic booms followed by periods of depression and unemployment.
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If markets got out of balance with the necessity of an eventual correction in the economy to, once again, set things right, the source of this instability was government monetary policy.
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Central banks too often followed a policy of trying to create "good times" in the economy by expanding the money supply through the banking system.
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With new, excess funds created by the central bank available for lending, banks lower rates of interest to attract borrowers.
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But this throws savings and investment out of balance, since the rate of interest no longer serves as a reliable indicator and signal concerning the availability of real savings in the economy in relation to those wanting to borrow funds for various investment purposes.
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The economic crisis comes when it is discovered that all the claims on resources, capital and labor for all the attempted consumption and investment activities in the economy are greater than the actual and available amounts of such scarce resources.
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The recession period, in Mises's view, is the necessary "correction" period when in the post-boom era, people must adapt and adjust to the newly discovered "real" supply and demand conditions in the market.
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Any interference with the "rebalancing" of the economy by government raising taxes, imposing more regulations, or new artificial government "stimulus" activities merely makes it more difficult and time-consuming for people in the private sector to get the economy back on an even keel.
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Friedrich A. Hayek, once observed, unemployment is not "caused" by stopping an inflation, but rather inflation induces the artificial employments that cannot be sustained and which inevitably disappear once the inflation is reined in.
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The recession of 2008-2009 was the result of several years of central bank stimulus.
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From 2003 to 2008, the Federal Reserve increased the money supply by about 50 percent.
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Interest rates for much of this time, when adjusted for inflation, were either zero or negative.
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Awash in cash, banks extended loans to virtually anyone, with no serious and usual concern about the borrower's credit-worthiness.
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This was most notably true in the housing market, where government agencies like Fannie May and Freddie Mac were pressuring banks to make mortgage loans by promising a guarantee that they would make good on any bad home loans.
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Since 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve has, again, turned on the monetary spigot, increasing its own portfolio by almost $3 trillion, by buying US Treasuries, US mortgages and other assets.
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So why has there not been a complementary explosion of price inflation?
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In some areas there has been, most clearly in the stock market and the bond market, But the reason why all that newly created money has not brought about a higher price inflation is due to the fact that a large part of all newly created money is sitting as unlent reserves in banks.
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This is because the Federal Reserve has been paying banks a rate of interest slightly above the market interest rates to induce banks not to lend.
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(a) general "regime uncertainty," that is, no one knows what government policy will be tomorrow; will ObamaCare be fully implemented after January 2014?;
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Among the reasons for the sluggish jobs growth in the US are:
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(b) what will taxes be for the rest of the current president's term in the White House
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(c) what will the regulatory environment be like for the next three years – in 2012, the government implemented around 80,000 pages of regulations as printed in the Federal Registry;
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(d) how will the deficit and debt problems play out between Congress and the White House and will it threaten the general financial situation in the country; an
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(e) what wars, if any, will the government find itself involved in, in places like the Middle East?
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China
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is still a controlled and commanded society, with a government that works hard to try to determine what people read, see and think.
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All these building projects have been brought into existence by a government that not only controls the money supply and manipulates interest rates but also heavy-handedly tells banks whom to specifically loan to and for what investment activities.
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Central planning is alive and well in China, with the motives being both power and profits for those inside and outside the Communist Party having the most influence and connections in "high" places.
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In my opinion, China is heading for a great economic crisis, resulting from a highly imbalanced and distorted economic system still guided far more by politics than sound market decision-making.
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global financial markets in any foreseeable future. It is a money that still primarily exists to serve the political purposes of those who sit in the "inner circles" of power in Beijing.
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One hundred years ago, in 1913, how many could have predicted that a year later a European-wide war would break out that would lead to the destruction of great European empires and set the stage for the rise of totalitarian collectivism that resulted in an even worse global war two decades later?
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Thus, whether, at the end of the day, freedom triumphs and the future is one of liberty and prosperity is partly on each one of us.
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Near the end of his great book, Socialism, Ludwig von Mises said:
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"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us . . . Whether society shall continue to evolve or where it shall decay lies . . . in the hands of man."
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In my view, the idea of a "soft landing" is an illusion based on the idea held by central bankers, themselves, that they have the wisdom and ability to know how to "micro-manage" the all the changes and adjustments resulting from their own manipulations of the monetary aggregates. They do not have this wisdom and ability. So hold on for what is most likely to be another rocky road.
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It was Mises's clear vision that once society has broken the relationship between value and payment, sooner or later people would not know the price of anything.
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At this point, investment ceases and business becomes furtive and transactional.
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People cannot plan for the future because they do not understand the reality of the present.
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Society begins to sink.
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Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 13

Incredible. A simple explanation that explains everything. Rchard Ebeling's "Unified Theory of Everything" is something every American can understand. If only they would take a break from "Dancing with the Stars" and pay attention to the future of their country and the world. It's a future where either "individual freedom", as defined by our Constitution and Declaration of Independence, will win out; or, the forces of fascist socialism / marxism will continue to roll and rule. Incredible read!!!!

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Incredible. A simple explanation that explains everything. Rchard Ebeling's "Unified Theory of Everything" is something every American can understand. If only they would take a break from "Dancing with the Stars" and pay attention to the future of their country and the world. It's a future where either "individual freedom", as defined by our Constitution and Declaration of Independence, will win out; or, the forces of fascist socialism / marxism will continue to roll and rule. Incredible read!!!!</div>

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James Madison and the States Natural Right of Nullification ; Publius-Huldah's Blog - 0 views

publiushuldah.wordpress.com

Publius-Huldah USA-Constitution Nullification States-Rights tenth-amendment

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached

What are the Two Conditions Precedent for Nullification?
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The act of the federal government must be unconstitutional –  usually a usurpation of a power not delegated to the federal government in the Constitution; and
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The act must be something The States or The People can “nullify”- i.e., refuse to obey:  the act must order them to do something or not do something.
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...38 more annotations...
If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard [the Constitution] they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.”
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When the act of the federal government is unconstitutional and orders The States or The People to do – or not do – something, nullification is the proper form of interposition.
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When the act of the federal government is unconstitutional, but doesn’t order The States or The People to do – or not do – something (the alien & sedition acts), nullification is not possible. The States may interpose by objecting, as in The Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.
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When the act of the federal government is constitutional, but unjust (the Tariff Act of 1828), the States may not nullify it; but may interpose by objecting and trying to get the Tariff Act changed.
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Our Founding Principles in a Nutshell
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Rights come from God;
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People create governments;
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The purpose of government is to secure the rights God gave us; and
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When a government We created seeks to take away our God given rights, We have the Right – We have the Duty – to alter, abolish, or throw off such government.
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The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.
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The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which … concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”
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These enumerated powers concern: Military defense, international commerce & relations; Control of immigration and naturalization of new citizens; Creation of a uniform commercial system: Weights & measures, patents & copyrights, money based on gold & silver, bankruptcy laws, mail delivery & some road building; and With some of the Amendments, protect certain civil rights and voting rights (for blacks, women, citizens who don’t pay taxes, and citizens 18 years and older).
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It is only with respect to the enumerated powers that the federal government has lawful authority over the Country at large. All other powers are “reserved to the several States” and The People.
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It is to secure our rights to life and liberty by:
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Military defense (Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 11-16); Laws against piracy and other felonies committed on the high seas (Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 10); Protecting us from invasion (Art IV, Sec. 4); Prosecuting traitors (Art III, Sec. 3); and Restrictive immigration policies (Art. I, Sec. 9, cl. 1).
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It is to secure our property rights by:
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Regulating trade & commerce so we can produce, sell & prosper (Art. I, Sec. 8, cl.3). The original intent of the interstate commerce clause is to prohibit States from levying tolls & taxes on articles of commerce as they are transported thru the States for buying & selling. Establishing uniform weights & measures and a money system based on gold & silver (Art I, Sec. 8, cl. 5) – inflation via paper currency & fractional reserve lending is theft! Punishing counterfeiters (Art I, Sec. 8, cl. 6); Making bankruptcy laws to permit the orderly dissolution or reorganization of debtors’ estates with fair treatment of creditors (Art I, Sec 8, cl. 4); and Issuing patents & copyrights to protect ownership of intellectual labors (Art I, Sec 8, cl 8)
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It is to secure our right to liberty by:
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Laws against slavery (13th Amendment); Providing fair trials in federal courts (4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Amendments); and          Obeying the Constitution!
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The fourth Founding Principle in our Declaration is this: When government takes away our God given rights, We have the Right & the Duty to alter, abolish, or throw off such government. Nullification is thus a natural right of self-defense:
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1. As we have just seen, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton saw nullification of unconstitutional acts of the federal government as a “natural right” – not a “constitutional right”. And since Rights come from God, there is no such thing as a “constitutional right”!
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2. The Right of Nullification, transcending as it does, the Constitution; and being nowhere prohibited by the Constitution to the States, is a reserved power.
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The 10th Amendment says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
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Madison’s Report on the Virginia Resolutions (1799-1800)
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Now! Note Well:  Madison actually says, in the same Report Barnett cites, that it is “a plain principle, founded in common sense” that The States are the final authority on whether the federal government has violated our Constitution! Under his discussion of the 3rd Resolution, Madison says:
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“It appears to your committee to be a plain principle, founded in common sense, illustrated by common practice, and essential to the nature of compacts; that where resort can be had to no tribunal superior to the authority of the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges in the last resort, whether the bargain made, has been pursued or violated. The Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the States, given by each in its sovereign capacity. It adds to the stability and dignity, as well as to the authority of the Constitution, that it rests on this legitimate and solid foundation. The States then being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently that as the parties to it, they must themselves decide in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.” [emphasis mine]
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Madison explains that if, when the federal government usurps power, the States cannot act so as to stop the usurpation, and thereby preserve the Constitution as well as the safety of The States; there would be no relief from usurped power. 
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This would subvert the Rights of the People as well as betray the fundamental principle of our Founding:
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…If the deliberate exercise, of dangerous power, palpably withheld by the Constitution, could not justify the parties to it, in interposing even so far as to arrest the progress of the evil, and thereby to preserve the Constitution itself as well as to provide for the safety of the parties to it; there would be an end to all relief from usurped power, and a direct subversion of the rights specified or recognized under all the State constitutions, as well as a plain denial of the fundamental principle on which our independence itself was declared.” [emphasis mine]
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Madison answers the objection “that the judicial authority is to be regarded as the sole expositor of the Constitution, in the last resort”.
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Madison explains that when the federal government acts outside the Constitution by usurping powers, and when the Constitution affords no remedy to that usurpation; then the Sovereign States who are the Parties to the Constitution must likewise step outside the Constitution and appeal to that original natural right of self-defense.
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Madison goes on to say that all three Branches of the federal government obtain their delegated powers from the Constitution; and they may not annul the authority of their Creator.
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but, where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, (casus non foederis,) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them…” [boldface mine]
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Application Today
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When WE THE PEOPLE ratified our Constitution, and thereby created the federal government, WE did not delegate to our “creature” power to control our medical care, restrict guns and ammunition, dictate what is done in the public schools, dictate how we use our lands, and all the thousands of things they do WE never gave them authority in our Constitution to do.
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Accordingly, each State has a natural right to nullify these unconstitutional dictates within its borders.  These dictates are outside the compact The Sovereign States made with each other –WE never gave our “creature” power over these objects.
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To sum this up:
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Nullification is a natural right of self-defense. Rights don’t come from the Constitution. Like all Rights, the right of self-defense comes from God (The Declaration of Independence, 2nd para). Nullification is a reserved power within the meaning of the 10th Amendment. The Constitution doesn’t prohibit States from nullifying, and We reserved the power to do it. God requires us to disobey civil authorities when they violate God’s Law. That’s why the 2nd para of the Declaration of Independence says we have the duty to overthrow tyrannical government. See: The Biblical Foundation of our Constitution. Nullification is required by Oath of Office:  Article VI, cl. 3 requires all State officers and judges to “support” the federal Constitution. Therefore, when the federal government violates the Constitution, the States must smack them down.
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Gary Edwards on 01 Feb 13

Incredible and passionate argument concerning the States natural God given right to nullify and render unenforceable un-Constitutional actions of the Federal Government. As "creators" of the Federal Government, the States are obligated to nullify un-Constitutional actions and interpose Constitutional alternatives. Huldah sites Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton as the primary Constitutional authorities for her rock solid argument. If ever you want to learn about the Constitution, Publius Huldah is clearly the place to go.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Incredible and passionate argument concerning the States natural God given right to nullify and render unenforceable un-Constitutional actions of the Federal Government. As "creators" of the Federal Government, the States are obligated to nullify un-Constitutional actions and interpose Constitutional alternatives. Huldah sites Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton as the primary Constitutional authorities for her rock solid argument. If ever you want to learn about the Constitution, Publius Huldah is clearly the place to go. </div>

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Panama Papers database of offshore companies goes public - Chicago Tribune - 0 views

www.chicagotribune.com/...c-database-20160509-story.html

banksters Panama-Papers database

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 May 16 - No Cached

group of investigative journalists made live the names of thousands of offshore companies based on a massive trove of data on the finances of the rich and powerful that has become known as the Panama Papers.The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists made data on 200,000 entities available on Monday at 1 p.m. CT on its website. They contain basic corporate information about companies, trusts and foundations set up in 21 jurisdictions including Hong Kong and the U.S. state of Nevada. The data was obtained from Panamanian law firm Mossack Foneca, which said it was hacked.Users can search the data and see the networks involving the offshore companies, including, where available, Mossack Fonseca's internal records of the true owners.
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It won't be the full cache of data commonly known as the Panama Papers, since the database will exclude information and documents on bank accounts, phone numbers and emails.The ICIJ said it was putting the information online "in the public interest" as "a careful release of basic corporate information" as it builds on an earlier database of offshore entities.Setting up an offshore company is not by itself illegal or evidence of illegal conduct, and Mossack Fonseca said it observed rules requiring it to identify its clients.But anti-poverty campaigners say shell companies can be used by the wealthy and powerful to shield money from taxation, or to launder the gains from bribery, embezzlement and other forms of corruption. The Group of 20 most powerful economies has agreed that individual governments should make sure authorities can tell who really owns companies, but implementation in national law has lagged.
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Obama To Americans: You Don't Deserve To Be Free - Forbes - 1 views

www.forbes.com/...ns-you-dont-deserve-to-be-free

Obammunism Statism Ayn-Rand-Libertarian

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jan 14 - No Cached

President Obama’s Kansas speech is a remarkable document. In calling for more government controls, more taxation, more collectivism, he has two paragraphs that give the show away. Take a look at them. there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty. Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.
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Though not in Washington, I’m in that “certain crowd” that has been saying for decades that the market will take care of everything. It’s not really a crowd, it’s a tiny group of radicals–radicals for capitalism, in Ayn Rand’s well-turned phrase. The only thing that the market doesn’t take care of is anti-market acts: acts that initiate physical force. That’s why we need government: to wield retaliatory force to defend individual rights. Radicals for capitalism would, as the Declaration of Independence says, use government only “to secure these rights”–the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. (Yes, I added “property” in there–property rights are inseparable from the other three.) That’s the political philosophy on which Obama is trying to hang the blame for the recent financial crisis and every other social ill. But ask yourself, are we few radical capitalists in charge? Have radical capitalists been in charge at any time in the last, oh, say 100 years?
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I pick 100 years deliberately, because it was exactly 100 years ago that a gigantic anti-capitalist measure was put into effect: the Federal Reserve System. For 100 years, government, not the free market, has controlled money and banking. How’s that worked out? How’s the value of the dollar held up since 1913? Is it worth one-fiftieth of its value then or only one-one-hundredth? You be the judge. How did the dollar hold up over the 100 years before this government take-over of money and banking? It actually gained slightly in value.
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Laissez-faire hasn’t existed since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. That was the first of a plethora of government crimes against the free market.
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The typical Republican would never, ever say “the market will take care of everything.” He’d say, “the market will take care of most things, and for the other things, we need the regulatory-welfare state.” They are for individualism–except when they are against it. They are against free markets and individualism not only when they agree with the Left that we must have antitrust laws and the Federal Reserve, but also when they demand immigration controls, government schools, regulatory agencies, Medicare, laws prohibiting abortion, Social Security, “public works” projects, the “social safety net,” laws against insider trading, banking regulation, and the whole system of fiat money.
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Even you, dear reader, are probably wondering how on earth anyone could challenge things like Social Security, government schools, and the FDA. But that’s not the point. The point is: these statist, anti-capitalist programs exist and have existed for about a century. The point is: Obama is pretending that the Progressive PGR -2.02% Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society were repealed, so that he can blame the financial crisis on capitalism. He’s pretending that George Bush was George Washington.
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What Obama is indeed responsible for is the injustice of robbing some to (allegedly) benefit others. To the extent that cronyism, not the free market, sets income, that is an injustice to be laid at the statists’ door.
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There is no such problem as “unemployment” under capitalism. Prices fall to clear the market. Twice the work force could be employed if average wages dropped in half. But that’s nominal wages; with a constant money supply, prices would also fall in half–or slightly more than that. This isn’t just theory. America’s workforce has grown steadily decade after decade, yet the standard of living has risen at the same time. I grant you that the rise has slowed as statist intervention has grown. Think of the phenomenal progress between, say 1900 and 1920 as compared to the minor progress from 1993 to 2013. Most of the progress in the last 20 years has come in the freest area of the economy: electronics and computing.
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Gary Edwards on 02 Jan 14

Harry Binswanger defends laissez-faire capitalism, using Ayn Rand Objectivism.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Harry Binswanger defends laissez-faire capitalism, using Ayn Rand Objectivism.</div>

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Paul Merrell on 02 Jan 14

The major problem with Ayn Rand Objectivism is that it's an "ism." The Utopian ideal it is based on has never existed in reality and likely never will; its principles have never been tested. Moreover, I will argue that Binswanger is incorrect in arguing that the anti-capitalist phenomenon in America began with creation of the Federal Reserve; it dates much farther back. The economic basis for the Revolutionary War was largely the Crown-granted monopolies granted to the first great British "companies" (corporations), which had the effect of forcing North American colonists to pay monopoly rents for common goods and kept American ship owners from importing those goods from elsewhere to sell at a lower price. The Founding Fathers were strongly against privately-owned corporations and government-granted monopolies, with only two exceptions, copyrights for literary works and patents for inventions. The Constitution's prohibition against government-granted monopolies is implicit in its allowance for only two narrowly-defined types. The Founding Fathers' writings explicitly discussed the difference between "natural" monopolies and those created by government or anti-competitive conduct. During the early years of the nation corporations were permitted by the States, but only for public purposes, usually for public works such as bridges or roads for which there was a need to amass capital. These early American corporations were usually chartered only for the time required to complete the public work and to recover the invesment and a small profit, e.g., from tolls for using a bridge or road. Many of the early state constitutions explicitly limited the lifetime of corporations. However, such early opposition to corporations gradually eroded; corporate purposes were expanded, corporations were granted perpetual life, and the corporate form of doing business became much more widespread. Here, it is important to recognize that corporations are market artificialities c

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">The major problem with Ayn Rand Objectivism is that it's an "ism." The Utopian ideal it is based on has never existed in reality and likely never will; its principles have never been tested. Moreover, I will argue that Binswanger is incorrect in arguing that the anti-capitalist phenomenon in America began with creation of the Federal Reserve; it dates much farther back. The economic basis for the Revolutionary War was largely the Crown-granted monopolies granted to the first great British "companies" (corporations), which had the effect of forcing North American colonists to pay monopoly rents for common goods and kept American ship owners from importing those goods from elsewhere to sell at a lower price. The Founding Fathers were strongly against privately-owned corporations and government-granted monopolies, with only two exceptions, copyrights for literary works and patents for inventions. The Constitution's prohibition against government-granted monopolies is implicit in its allowance for only two narrowly-defined types. The Founding Fathers' writings explicitly discussed the difference between "natural" monopolies and those created by government or anti-competitive conduct. During the early years of the nation corporations were permitted by the States, but only for public purposes, usually for public works such as bridges or roads for which there was a need to amass capital. These early American corporations were usually chartered only for the time required to complete the public work and to recover the invesment and a small profit, e.g., from tolls for using a bridge or road. Many of the early state constitutions explicitly limited the lifetime of corporations. However, such early opposition to corporations gradually eroded; corporate purposes were expanded, corporations were granted perpetual life, and the corporate form of doing business became much more widespread. Here, it is important to recognize that corporations are market artificialities c</div>

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Endless Afghanistan? US-Afghan agreement would keep troops in place and funds flowing, ... - 0 views

worldnews.nbcnews.com/...s-flowing-perhaps-indefinitely

war & peace Afghanistan U.S.-Afghan-Agreement perpetual-war

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 13 - No Cached

While many Americans have been led to believe the war in Afghanistan will soon be over, a draft of a key U.S.-Afghan security deal obtained by NBC News shows the United States is prepared to maintain military outposts in Afghanistan for many years to come, and pay to support hundreds of thousands of Afghan security forces.The wide-ranging document, still unsigned by the United States and Afghanistan, has the potential to commit thousands of American troops to Afghanistan and spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.The document outlines what appears to be the start of a new, open-ended military commitment in Afghanistan in the name of training and continuing to fight al-Qaeda. The war in Afghanistan doesn’t seem to be ending, but renewed under new, scaled-down U.S.-Afghan terms. Advertise | AdChoices “The Parties acknowledge that continued U.S. military operations to defeat al-Qaeda and its affiliates may be appropriate and agree to continue their close cooperation and coordination toward that end,” the draft states.
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The 25-page “Security and Defense Cooperation Agreement Between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” is a sweeping document, vague in places, highly specific in others, defining everything from the types of future missions U.S. troops would be allowed to conduct in Afghanistan, to the use of radios and the taxation of American soldiers and contractors.The bilateral security agreement will be debated this week in Kabul by around 2,500 village elders, academics and officials in a traditional Loya Jirga. While the Loya Jirga is strictly consultative, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said he won’t sign it without the Jirga’s approval.
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The copy of the draft -- the full text is available here --  is dated July 25, 2013. As a working draft, it is particularly revealing because it shows the back and forth negotiations, as U.S. and Afghan officials added words and struck out paragraphs. The changes are marked by annotations still revealed in the text. The document is a work in progress. US officials say there have been more changes since July. The draft, however, does indicate the scope of this possible agreement with major implications for Washington, Kabul, U.S. troops and the continuation of America’s longest war.Taken as a whole, the document describes a basic U.S.-Afghan exchange. Afghanistan would allow Washington to operate military bases to train Afghan forces and conduct counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaeda after the current mission ends in 2014. For that foothold in this volatile mountain region wedged between Pakistan and Iran, the United States would agree to sustain and equip Afghanistan's large security force, which the government in Kabul currently cannot afford. The deal, according to the text, would take effect on Jan. 1, 2015 and “shall remain in force until the end of 2024 and beyond.” It could be terminated by either Washington or Kabul with two years advance written notice.
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There is however what U.S. officials believe is a contradiction in the July draft, which would effectively ask American troops to provide training and confront al-Qaeda from the confines of bases. While it says operations against al-Qaeda may be necessary, it also says US troops will not be allowed to make arrests or enter Afghan homes. Advertise | AdChoices “No detention or arrest shall be carried out by the United States forces. The United States forces shall not search any homes or other real estate properties,” it says.“[The contradiction] was a matter of serious consternation at the highest levels” of the Obama administration over the weekend, according to one senior defense official. “It is the one remaining issue that could ultimately kill the deal." However, US officials believe that in a more recent draft, which was circulated among key Pentagon officials and US lawmakers on Monday, the US has won its position on this point.The document doesn’t specifically say how many U.S. and NATO troops would remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014. Afghan officials tell NBC News they hope it will be 10 to 15 thousand. U.S. officials tell NBC News the number is closer to seven to eight thousand, with an additional contribution from NATO. Factoring in troop rotations, home leave, and breaks between deployments, the service of tens of thousands of American troops would be required to maintain a force of seven to eight thousand for a decade or longer. The anticipated costs would likely run into the billions quickly.
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Afghan officials tell NBC NEWS the agreement is critical to Afghanistan’s future stability. Without ongoing military assistance, training and funding, those officials say the government could collapse and Afghanistan would enter a civil war. If the agreement passes, the draft says Washington would commit to a long -term, indefinite military involvement in this land-locked Asian nation.A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council did not comment on the draft version of the agreement, but said that "the President is still reviewing options from his national security team and has not made a decision about a possible U.S. presence after 2014."The agreement circulating this week is unlikely to be the last. It first must pass through the Loya Jirga, then go onto parliament for final approval. “We’re looking at 60-days or more” before the US and Afghanistan sign any agreement, defense officials said. Here are highlights of the July draft of the bi-lateral agreement:
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Cayman Islands and Costa Rica agree to share bank account details with US | World news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...cayman-costa-rica-us-tax

banksters taxation tax-havens

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached

The United States has signed agreements with the Cayman Islands and Costa Rica to help those countries' banks comply with an anti-tax evasion law starting next year, the Treasury Department said on Friday. The deals are part of the US effort to enforce the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which was enacted in 2010 and is set to take effect in July 2014. FATCA requires foreign financial institutions to tell the US Internal Revenue Service about Americans' offshore accounts worth more than $50,000. It was enacted after a Swiss banking scandal showed that 17,000 US taxpayers had hidden substantial fortunes overseas. On Thursday a former UBS banker, Raoul Weil, agreed to be extradited to the US to face charges arising from that scandal.With these two deals, both signed this week, the Treasury has now finished 12 FATCA "intergovernmental agreements" (IGAs), which help countries' financial institutions comply with the law.
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