Ron Paul On The Fed

Quote - Xu Kuangdi

Xu Kuangdi,the former mayor of Shanghai (1995-2001), was interviewed by the Saudi Gazette (read here) recently and when asked about China adopting a western-style democracy, this was his reply:

Recently I was speaking to a top US leader who also asked this question. I asked him: “What is democracy?” He said, “One man, one vote.” But, where does one man, one vote lead in a society where the middle class is still relatively small compared to so many poor people? In Venezuela, it produced Chavez.
China already experimented with mass democracy during the Cultural Revolution, and it was a catastrophe. Do we want some young Red Guard standing on the table today, harassing entrepreneurs and trying to turn back the market economy?

From my very limited knowledge about China's government, I'm not a big supporter. What caught me about this answer was his public expression of respect for the entrepreneur and the market economy. The founders of the United States shared similar fears of a democracy, which is why they were founded as a Republic. It was refreshing to read this answer considering the market economy and the entrepreneur are two entities that are being relentlessly attacked here in the west.

His perspective on where the US failed:

The real problem for the American economy, in my view, resulted from (former Federal Reserve Chairman) Alan Greenspan reducing the interest rate too much back in 2002. When money is too easy, it is too easy for people to be irresponsible: They get in trouble by borrowing more than they can afford. As China tries to stimulate its own economy, making money too cheap would be a mistake there as well.

On losing trade with the US:

Despite what many think, less than 3 percent of China’s annual GDP growth comes from the trade surplus with the US. The rest comes from investment and domestic consumption. So, even if China loses 2 percent of its GDP growth from exports falling to the US, we are still in decent shape.

Quote - Abraham Lincoln

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. - Abraham Lincoln

Working Together

The AP is reporting on staff at Mr. B's Pancake House who have donated to their owner some free time to help keep the restaurant open. You can read it here.

17 employees got together and decided to work only for tips for 1 day shift in an effort to help the restaurant out during these stressful economic times. Customers who found out tipped more generously and each employee managed to earn $51 that day.

Most workers and employers understand that they depend on each other mutually in order to be successful. Fortunately, for the employees, they didn't have a union boss preventing them from providing this act of generosity.

You can check out Mr. B's Pancake House here.

Dan Mitchell On Obama's Stimulus

Stephen Halbrook on the 2nd Amendment

Ron Paul on Morning Joe

Congressman Ron Paul explains why the US is in its mess, and what they need to do (and not do) to get out of it:

Canadian Revenue Agency Propaganda

Yes folks, let us remember: You are owned by the government and therefore you must report all that you earn. You are BAD if you don't and you hurt little kids.

Thank you CRA, I almost thought I was an individual for a moment.

And Thank you LewRockwell.com for bringing this piece of propaganda crap to my attention. Please notice how the comments section of the video on YouTube has been turned off. I wonder why?

Truth to Power

Former BBC producer Tony Benn went on BBC to appeal to their audience to donate money for citizens on Palestine. He went further and bashed the BBC for their negligence for not promoting the appeal themselves and buckling to Israeli pressure.

Credit Given Where Credit Due

The NDP, a political party in Canada I have no use for, is doing something right in Ontario.

Teaching assistants and contract faculty at York University have been on strike for 12-weeks looking for more job security. The Liberal government in Ontario has tried to force through legislation ordering staff back to work as soon as today, however the NDP has blocked the legislation. The Globe and Mail is reporting on it here.

The union and the university need to work this out. Many contract workers are forced to reapply for their position every year irregardless of how long they have been in their position. If they are able to push the universities hand on this, they should be allowed to and the government should butt-out. It could easily be said that the university has simply been sitting tight waiting for the government to intervene, and this does a serious injustice to the rights of the workers.

Many people will ask, what about the students? The students are looking into the possibility of a class-action law-suit against the university, although they are weighing the pros and cons of taking such action. Their action is for them to decide. I would simply recommend to look elsewhere for your education next year.

The government has no place picking a side in this disagreement.

Will You Still Be Pro-Obama in 4 years?

Most people who voted for Obama during the past election hold the same perspective as those who support liberty on a few issues: the economy, war, and civil liberties. We all hope Obama will perform better than Bush on these three issues. If we are ever to get real change on these issues, we need to be honest with ourselves over the next four years when evaluating Obama's performace. In 2012, we need to ask, has the substance Obama brought to government really provided change for the better?

Bretigne Shaffer, from The Campaign For Liberty, has written an open letter to her pro-Obama friends asking them to reconsider their traditional perspective on American politics in 4 years if Obama proves to do no better on the economy, war, and civil liberties than did Bush. Below are parts of her letter:

On war:

Obama was not an anti-war candidate, and he is not an anti-war president. His opposition to the US occupation of Iraq was based not on a principled stance against pre-emptive invasion and occupation of a foreign country, but on his view that it had damaged the US's credibility and therefore its ability to engage in military interventions in the future. Senator Obama voted to continue funding the Iraq war and voted against a 2007 pullout in June of 2006. He does not plan to bring troops home from Iraq, but to redeploy them in Afghanistan, and he "support[s] plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marine Corps by 27,000 Marines." (from Obama's website, change.gov)

In an article for Foreign Affairs last year, Obama said "I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened." (Emphasis mine.) He has promised AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that he will "...do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything." Coming from the future leader of one of the most heavily nuclear-armed nations in the world, these are chilling words. Prior to his election, Obama also spoke of expanding the war on terror to Pakistan (indeed, by the end of his first week in office, he had already ordered air strikes on villages in Pakistan, killing at least 17 people including three children), and prior to his inauguration he remained silent as the Israeli government killed hundreds of civilians in Gaza with weapons provided by the US government.

And the predictions:

1. The US will still have an active military presence in Iraq.
2. The US will have attacked at least one more country that poses no direct threat to us. (I'm not even going to count his early air strikes on Pakistan.)
3. Military spending will have increased.
4. US citizens will be no safer from terrorist attacks. I say this because I believe the (sadly all-too-accurate) perception of the US as an imperialist warmongering nation will persist. I realize this one is open to interpretation. I would just ask you to honestly ask yourselves at the end of these four years whether this is the case.

My one caveat to this section is this: If the US government becomes financially unable to maintain its empire abroad, then Obama's military aspirations may be hampered by budget constraints. However I maintain (and Obama's own words support me here) that this will not be because of any lack of will on his part.

On civil liberties:

In his first few days in office, President Obama signed executive orders to 1) close Guantanamo within a year; 2) officially ban the use of torture in the military; 3) close the CIA-run secret prisons around the world; and 4) review detention policies and procedures and review individual detention cases. He has also suspended the military trials at Guantanamo for 120 days, and has acted to combat government secrecy. These are all good things and Obama is receiving well-deserved praise for them.

More important though, the fundamental problems facing civil liberties and human rights in this country do not stem from the operation of some detention centers. The damage inflicted has its roots in such things as the USA PATRIOT ACT (which Obama voted to re-authorize), drug law enforcement, and the repudiation of the very foundation of due process of law, habeas corpus. The big questions then, are: 1) whether Obama's administration will actually follow through on his executive orders and close Guantanamo, close the CIA prisons and truly end torture (there is also of course the question of what will then happen to the detainees); and 2) whether Obama will be able to tackle the more fundamental problems such as restoring habeas corpus and due process.

And there are some fundamental issues that Obama has not even taken on. While he is aware of the fact that more than one percent of American adults, and one out of every nine black men, are in prison, he does not tackle this issue head on. Nor does he really address the war on drugs in its entirety, nor the increasingly dangerous police state it has helped to spawn. To his credit, he has promised to end the illegal federal raids on medical marijuana clinics, and to eliminate the inherently racist sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine. However these measures don't even come close to addressing the fundamental problem that is the drug war itself. And some of his moves so far do not inspire hope: His appointment of Eric Holder, formerly a big proponent of mandatory minimum sentencing is worrisome. Even more disturbing, Obama has pledged to strengthen two federal programs ("Community Oriented Policing Services" (COPS) and the Byrne grant program) that have actually contributed to increased militarization of local police forces.

And the predictions:

1. More than 1% of US adults will still be in prison. This number will very likely be even higher than it is today, and the black and Hispanic portion of that population will not have decreased by any significant amount.
2. We will still suffer from the kind of police abuse that is becoming more and more common: military-style raids on unarmed civilians in their homes; the shooting and tasering of unarmed citizens; and police and judicial corruption leading to the jailing of many more innocent people than can be acceptable under any system. The militarization and aggressive behavior of police forces will probably become worse before they get any better. This is another one that is somewhat open to interpretation. I would ask you to rely on your own honest judgement regarding whether you believe things have really changed in this area.
3. "No-Fly" lists will still be in place, and there may even be more restrictions on travel.
4. There will be more restrictions on gun ownership and the right to self-defense.
5. The police tactics and suppression of dissent at the 2012 RNC and DNC conventions will be just as brutal as they were in 2008.
6. Government surveillance of US citizens will continue (remember that bill Obama voted for that gave immunity to the telecoms companies that assisted with this in the past?),

On the economy:

It is true that President Obama has inherited a tremendous problem from the previous administration. Any president would be hard-pressed to come out of the next four years claiming victory in this area. In fact, the best that anyone could do would be to not make things any worse by allowing markets to function, overvalued assets to depreciate and poorly run companies to fail. Barack Obama is not going to do that.

With his support for the massive financial-industry bailouts, and his plans for stimulus packages to get the economy on track again, President Obama is doing all the wrong things. What got us into this mess was too much borrowing and spending, too much government involvement in markets, and now he wants to implement more of the same as the solution. I'm not even going to ask you all to agree with my assessment. Just watch what happens.

And the predictions:

1. The US will have massive inflation. The dollar will lose at least 50% of its value against most goods and services, and certainly against the goods and services most people use every day. This is a very conservative estimate. It will probably be much worse.
2. Unemployment in the US will be worse than it is now. It will be at least in the double digits.

A Day On The Ice

Sunday was my one day off this week. Saturday was supposed to be a day off as well, although, as normal, I was working. So, because I worked on Saturday, Sarah and I had a day planned of chores on Sunday. We needed to get groceries, to do laundry, there was school work, she wanted to clean the bathroom, we had a bit shopping to do, etc. A bunch of stuff to keep us busy for the day, but nothing that was overly enjoyable.

Fortunately, Saturday night, a friend of mine, Mike, gave us a call and invited us out to his girlfriend's lake to go skating. It has been too long since I've had the opportunity to skate on an open lake. I convinced Sarah we'd be able to do this and still get our chores done. I figured this would be a 1 hour thing; we go to the lake, skate around for awhile, get some much needed exercise, and then get on with the day.

Well, the chores didn't get done, which is okay, they weren't important. The entire day was spent skating on the lake. Once we got there, we met up with our friends and discovered the intention was to skate across the lake to Amanda's (the girlfriend) camp. It wasn't too far and it made for a great day. The ice had some rough patches, but it was smooth enough to make for some pleasant skating. The first strides on skates always feel the greatest, however the stamina I once had as a chubby 14 year old on skates is no longer with this chubby 25 year old.

Once we got to the other side we built a fire on the edge of the lake, warmed up a little bit and cooked some hot dogs. Amanda had a propane stove in the camp so we were even able to boil some water and enjoy some hot chocolate. Amanda's sister even brought some Bud Light out; not my favourite but it does the trick in a pinch. I turned an empty beer can into a hockey puck; it worked alright for a while, but the wind plays some mean defense.



It was a much needed simple day. We got a lot of exercise, took a lot of pictures, visited with some friends and enjoyed the outside. It was just what I needed and I couldn't have spent the day in a better way. I consider it my celebration for my recent promotion.

Anyway, this a slide show of some of the better photos I managed to take; still learning how to use the new camera.

So Right.

Ron Paul and Peter Schiff speaking truth to power:



Peter Schiff is going to be making a keynote speech to the New Brunswick Securities Commission in Fredericton in early May. I hope to find some way in to hear it.

More Change

So Obama has taken his right of passage as POTUS and committed his very first murder. He must be so proud of murdering those 15 Pakistani's. It's good to know another president is in power that likes to wipe his ass with the constitution. It's also heart warming to see peace being brought forth in such a graceful and respectable manner. Thank you for change, Obama, because if this was Bush, he just would've destroyed the entire country.

In further news, MORE CHANGE! When Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about the incident, in the name of the transparency Obama pledged to bring to the White House, Gibbs said,"i'm not going to get into these matters".

Please watch:



This reminds me nothing of the many times Scott McClellan, Tony Snow, or Dana Perino refused to answer many, many important questions and shrugged them off an insignificant.

Ron Paul On The House Floor, Again

Quote

I'm currently reading an article title On "Private Tyrannies". The author referenced an Ayn Rand quote I thought was rather interesting:

A disastrous intellectual package-deal, put over on us by the theoreticians of statism, is the equation of economic power with political power. You have heard it in such bromides as: "A hungry man is not free," or "It makes no difference to a worker whether he takes orders from a businessman or a bureaucrat." Most people accept these equivocations — and yet they know that the poorest laborer in America is freer and more secure than the richest commissar in Soviet Russia. What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion. The difference between political power and any other kind of social "power," between a government and any private organization, is the fact that a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.

Ron Paul On The House Floor

Audio of "Economic Depressions - The Cause and The Cure"

You can listen to Murray Rothbard's essay posted below here just in case your eyes are tired.

The Irrational Religious Fanatic: No matter which religion, they're all full of hate, and they all love to terrorize.

My brother posted this on his blog:

"Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure"

In 1969, Murray Rothbard wrote an essay describing the business cycle, why Keynes is wrong, why Mises is right, and why this was important at that time. The essay was titled Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure and while reading it, you might think it was written in reference to the economic issues we are suffering from today.

I would suggest anyone who finds economics even relatively interesting to take 20 minutes and read the entire essay. I've provided a lot of quotes from it below; I probably should have just posted the entire thing.

On government intervention in the economy:

The idea that increased government spending or easy money is "good for business" and that budget cuts or harder money is "bad" permeates even the most conservative newspapers and magazines. These journals will also take for granted that it is the sacred task of the federal government to steer the economic system on the narrow road between the abysses of depression on the one hand and inflation on the other, for the free-market economy is supposed to be ever liable to succumb to one of these evils.

All current schools of economists have the same attitude. Note, for example, the viewpoint of Dr. Paul W. McCracken, the incoming chairman of President Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers. In an interview with the New York Times shortly after taking office [January 24, 1969], Dr. McCracken asserted that one of the major economic problems facing the new Administration is "how you cool down this inflationary economy without at the same time tripping off unacceptably high levels of unemployment. In other words, if the only thing we want to do is cool off the inflation, it could be done. But our social tolerances on unemployment are narrow." And again: "I think we have to feel our way along here. We don't really have much experience in trying to cool an economy in orderly fashion. We slammed on the brakes in 1957, but, of course, we got substantial slack in the economy."

Note the fundamental attitude of Dr. McCracken toward the economy – remarkable only in that it is shared by almost all economists of the present day. The economy is treated as a potentially workable, but always troublesome and recalcitrant patient, with a continual tendency to hive off into greater inflation or unemployment. The function of the government is to be the wise old manager and physician, ever watchful, ever tinkering to keep the economic patient in good working order. In any case, here the economic patient is clearly supposed to be the subject, and the government as "physician" the master.

It was not so long ago that this kind of attitude and policy was called "socialism"; but we live in a world of euphemism, and now we call it by far less harsh labels, such as "moderation" or "enlightened free enterprise." We live and learn.

On Marx and the Business Cycle:

The currently fashionable attitude toward the business cycle stems, actually, from Karl Marx. Marx saw that, before the Industrial Revolution in approximately the late eighteenth century, there were no regularly recurring booms and depressions. There would be a sudden economic crisis whenever some king made war or confiscated the property of his subject; but there was no sign of the peculiarly modern phenomena of general and fairly regular swings in business fortunes, of expansions and contractions. Since these cycles also appeared on the scene at about the same time as modern industry, Marx concluded that business cycles were an inherent feature of the capitalist market economy. All the various current schools of economic thought, regardless of their other differences and the different causes that they attribute to the cycle, agree on this vital point: That these business cycles originate somewhere deep within the free-market economy. The market economy is to blame. Karl Marx believed that the periodic depressions would get worse and worse, until the masses would be moved to revolt and destroy the system, while the modern economists believe that the government can successfully stabilize depressions and the cycle. But all parties agree that the fault lies deep within the market economy and that if anything can save the day, it must be some form of massive government intervention.

On the entrepreneurs role in the economy:

In the market economy, one of the most vital functions of the businessman is to be an "entrepreneur," a man who invests in productive methods, who buys equipment and hires labor to produce something which he is not sure will reap him any return. In short, the entrepreneurial function is the function of forecasting the uncertain future. Before embarking on any investment or line of production, the entrepreneur, or "enterpriser," must estimate present and future costs and future revenues and therefore estimate whether and how much profits he will earn from the investment. If he forecasts well and significantly better than his business competitors, he will reap profits from his investment. The better his forecasting, the higher the profits he will earn. If, on the other hand, he is a poor forecaster and overestimates the demand for his product, he will suffer losses and pretty soon be forced out of the business.

The market economy, then, is a profit-and-loss economy, in which the acumen and ability of business entrepreneurs is gauged by the profits and losses they reap. The market economy, moreover, contains a built-in mechanism, a kind of natural selection, that ensures the survival and the flourishing of the superior forecaster and the weeding-out of the inferior ones. For the more profits reaped by the better forecasters, the greater become their business responsibilities, and the more they will have available to invest in the productive system. On the other hand, a few years of making losses will drive the poorer forecasters and entrepreneurs out of business altogether and push them into the ranks of salaried employees.

If, then, the market economy has a built-in natural selection mechanism for good entrepreneurs, this means that, generally, we would expect not many business firms to be making losses. And, in fact, if we look around at the economy on an average day or year, we will find that losses are not very widespread.

On the Ricardian Theory of the business cycle:

The Ricardian analysis of the business cycle went something as follows: The natural moneys emerging as such on the world free market are useful commodities, generally gold and silver. If money were confined simply to these commodities, then the economy would work in the aggregate as it does in particular markets: A smooth adjustment of supply and demand, and therefore no cycles of boom and bust. But the injection of bank credit adds another crucial and disruptive element. For the banks expand credit and therefore bank money in the form of notes or deposits which are theoretically redeemable on demand in gold, but in practice clearly are not. For example, if a bank has 1000 ounces of gold in its vaults, and it issues instantly redeemable warehouse receipts for 2500 ounces of gold, then it clearly has issued 1500 ounces more than it can possibly redeem. But so long as there is no concerted "run" on the bank to cash in these receipts, its warehouse-receipts function on the market as equivalent to gold, and therefore the bank has been able to expand the money supply of the country by 1500 gold ounces.

The banks, then, happily begin to expand credit, for the more they expand credit the greater will be their profits. This results in the expansion of the money supply within a country, say England. As the supply of paper and bank money in England increases, the money incomes and expenditures of Englishmen rise, and the increased money bids up prices of English goods. The result is inflation and a boom within the country. But this inflationary boom, while it proceeds on its merry way, sows the seeds of its own demise. For as English money supply and incomes increase, Englishmen proceed to purchase more goods from abroad. Furthermore, as English prices go up, English goods begin to lose their competitiveness with the products of other countries which have not inflated, or have been inflating to a lesser degree. Englishmen begin to buy less at home and more abroad, while foreigners buy less in England and more at home; the result is a deficit in the English balance of payments, with English exports falling sharply behind imports. But if imports exceed exports, this means that money must flow out of England to foreign countries. And what money will this be? Surely not English bank notes or deposits, for Frenchmen or Germans or Italians have little or no interest in keeping their funds locked up in English banks. These foreigners will therefore take their bank notes and deposits and present them to the English banks for redemption in gold – and gold will be the type of money that will tend to flow persistently out of the country as the English inflation proceeds on its way. But this means that English bank credit money will be, more and more, pyramiding on top of a dwindling gold base in the English bank vaults. As the boom proceeds, our hypothetical bank will expand its warehouse receipts issued from, say 2500 ounces to 4000 ounces, while its gold base dwindles to, say, 800. As this process intensifies, the banks will eventually become frightened. For the banks, after all, are obligated to redeem their liabilities in cash, and their cash is flowing out rapidly as their liabilities pile up. Hence, the banks will eventually lose their nerve, stop their credit expansion, and in order to save themselves, contract their bank loans outstanding. Often, this retreat is precipitated by bankrupting runs on the banks touched off by the public, who had also been getting increasingly nervous about the ever more shaky condition of the nation's banks.

The bank contraction reverses the economic picture; contraction and bust follow boom. The banks pull in their horns, and businesses suffer as the pressure mounts for debt repayment and contraction. The fall in the supply of bank money, in turn, leads to a general fall in English prices. As money supply and incomes fall, and English prices collapse, English goods become relatively more attractive in terms of foreign products, and the balance of payments reverses itself, with exports exceeding imports. As gold flows into the country, and as bank money contracts on top of an expanding gold base, the condition of the banks becomes much sounder.

This, then, is the meaning of the depression phase of the business cycle. Note that it is a phase that comes out of, and inevitably comes out of, the preceding expansionary boom. It is the preceding inflation that makes the depression phase necessary. We can see, for example, that the depression is the process by which the market economy adjusts, throws off the excesses and distortions of the previous inflationary boom, and reestablishes a sound economic condition. The depression is the unpleasant but necessary reaction to the distortions and excesses of the previous boom.

Why, then, does the next cycle begin? Why do business cycles tend to be recurrent and continuous? Because when the banks have pretty well recovered, and are in a sounder condition, they are then in a confident position to proceed to their natural path of bank credit expansion, and the next boom proceeds on its way, sowing the seeds for the next inevitable bust.

On the role of a central bank:

But if banking is the cause of the business cycle, aren't the banks also a part of the private market economy, and can't we therefore say that the free market is still the culprit, if only in the banking segment of that free market? The answer is No, for the banks, for one thing, would never be able to expand credit in concert were it not for the intervention and encouragement of government. For if banks were truly competitive, any expansion of credit by one bank would quickly pile up the debts of that bank in its competitors, and its competitors would quickly call upon the expanding bank for redemption in cash. In short, a bank's rivals will call upon it for redemption in gold or cash in the same way as do foreigners, except that the process is much faster and would nip any incipient inflation in the bud before it got started. Banks can only expand comfortably in unison when a Central Bank exists, essentially a governmental bank, enjoying a monopoly of government business, and a privileged position imposed by government over the entire banking system. It is only when central banking got established that the banks were able to expand for any length of time and the familiar business cycle got underway in the modern world.

The central bank acquires its control over the banking system by such governmental measures as: Making its own liabilities legal tender for all debts and receivable in taxes; granting the central bank monopoly of the issue of bank notes, as contrasted to deposits (in England the Bank of England, the governmentally established central bank, had a legal monopoly of bank notes in the London area); or through the outright forcing of banks to use the central bank as their client for keeping their reserves of cash (as in the United States and its Federal Reserve System). Not that the banks complain about this intervention; for it is the establishment of central banking that makes long-term bank credit expansion possible, since the expansion of Central Bank notes provides added cash reserves for the entire banking system and permits all the commercial banks to expand their credit together. Central banking works like a cozy compulsory bank cartel to expand the banks' liabilities; and the banks are now able to expand on a larger base of cash in the form of central bank notes as well as gold.

So now we see, at last, that the business cycle is brought about, not by any mysterious failings of the free market economy, but quite the opposite: By systematic intervention by government in the market process. Government intervention brings about bank expansion and inflation, and, when the inflation comes to an end, the subsequent depression-adjustment comes into play.

Mises theory of the business cycle:

Without bank credit expansion, supply and demand tend to be equilibrated through the free price system, and no cumulative booms or busts can then develop. But then government through its central bank stimulates bank credit expansion by expanding central bank liabilities and therefore the cash reserves of all the nation's commercial banks. The banks then proceed to expand credit and hence the nation's money supply in the form of check deposits. As the Ricardians saw, this expansion of bank money drives up the prices of goods and hence causes inflation. But, Mises showed, it does something else, and something even more sinister. Bank credit expansion, by pouring new loan funds into the business world, artificially lowers the rate of interest in the economy below its free market level.

On the free and unhampered market, the interest rate is determined purely by the "time-preferences" of all the individuals that make up the market economy. For the essence of a loan is that a "present good" (money which can be used at present) is being exchanged for a "future good" (an IOU which can only be used at some point in the future). Since people always prefer money right now to the present prospect of getting the same amount of money some time in the future, the present good always commands a premium in the market over the future. This premium is the interest rate, and its height will vary according to the degree to which people prefer the present to the future, i.e., the degree of their time-preferences.

People's time-preferences also determine the extent to which people will save and invest, as compared to how much they will consume. If people's time-preferences should fall, i.e., if their degree of preference for present over future falls, then people will tend to consume less now and save and invest more; at the same time, and for the same reason, the rate of interest, the rate of time-discount, will also fall. Economic growth comes about largely as the result of falling rates of time-preference, which lead to an increase in the proportion of saving and investment to consumption, and also to a falling rate of interest.

But what happens when the rate of interest falls, not because of lower time-preferences and higher savings, but from government interference that promotes the expansion of bank credit? In other words, if the rate of interest falls artificially, due to intervention, rather than naturally, as a result of changes in the valuations and preferences of the consuming public?

What happens is trouble. For businessmen, seeing the rate of interest fall, react as they always would and must to such a change of market signals: They invest more in capital and producers' goods. Investments, particularly in lengthy and time-consuming projects, which previously looked unprofitable now seem profitable, because of the fall of the interest charge. In short, businessmen react as they would react if savings had genuinely increased: They expand their investment in durable equipment, in capital goods, in industrial raw material, in construction as compared to their direct production of consumer goods.

Businesses, in short, happily borrow the newly expanded bank money that is coming to them at cheaper rates; they use the money to invest in capital goods, and eventually this money gets paid out in higher rents to land, and higher wages to workers in the capital goods industries. The increased business demand bids up labor costs, but businesses think they can pay these higher costs because they have been fooled by the government-and-bank intervention in the loan market and its decisively important tampering with the interest-rate signal of the marketplace.

The problem comes as soon as the workers and landlords – largely the former, since most gross business income is paid out in wages – begin to spend the new bank money that they have received in the form of higher wages. For the time-preferences of the public have not really gotten lower; the public doesn't want to save more than it has. So the workers set about to consume most of their new income, in short to reestablish the old consumer/saving proportions. This means that they redirect the spending back to the consumer goods industries, and they don't save and invest enough to buy the newly-produced machines, capital equipment, industrial raw materials, etc. This all reveals itself as a sudden sharp and continuing depression in the producers' goods industries. Once the consumers reestablished their desired consumption/investment proportions, it is thus revealed that business had invested too much in capital goods and had underinvested in consumer goods. Business had been seduced by the governmental tampering and artificial lowering of the rate of interest, and acted as if more savings were available to invest than were really there. As soon as the new bank money filtered through the system and the consumers reestablished their old proportions, it became clear that there were not enough savings to buy all the producers' goods, and that business had misinvested the limited savings available. Business had overinvested in capital goods and underinvested in consumer products.

The inflationary boom thus leads to distortions of the pricing and production system. Prices of labor and raw materials in the capital goods industries had been bid up during the boom too high to be profitable once the consumers reassert their old consumption/investment preferences. The "depression" is then seen as the necessary and healthy phase by which the market economy sloughs off and liquidates the unsound, uneconomic investments of the boom, and reestablishes those proportions between consumption and investment that are truly desired by the consumers. The depression is the painful but necessary process by which the free market sloughs off the excesses and errors of the boom and reestablishes the market economy in its function of efficient service to the mass of consumers. Since prices of factors of production have been bid too high in the boom, this means that prices of labor and goods in these capital goods industries must be allowed to fall until proper market relations are resumed.

Since the workers receive the increased money in the form of higher wages fairly rapidly, how is it that booms can go on for years without having their unsound investments revealed, their errors due to tampering with market signals become evident, and the depression-adjustment process begins its work? The answer is that booms would be very short lived if the bank credit expansion and subsequent pushing of the rate of interest below the free market level were a one-shot affair. But the point is that the credit expansion is not one-shot; it proceeds on and on, never giving consumers the chance to reestablish their preferred proportions of consumption and saving, never allowing the rise in costs in the capital goods industries to catch up to the inflationary rise in prices. Like the repeated doping of a horse, the boom is kept on its way and ahead of its inevitable comeuppance, by repeated doses of the stimulant of bank credit. It is only when bank credit expansion must finally stop, either because the banks are getting into a shaky condition or because the public begins to balk at the continuing inflation, that retribution finally catches up with the boom. As soon as credit expansion stops, then the piper must be paid, and the inevitable readjustments liquidate the unsound over-investments of the boom, with the reassertion of a greater proportionate emphasis on consumers' goods production.

Thus, the Misesian theory of the business cycle accounts for all of our puzzles: The repeated and recurrent nature of the cycle, the massive cluster of entrepreneurial error, the far greater intensity of the boom and bust in the producers' goods industries.

On the role of government during a depression:

In the first place, government must cease inflating as soon as possible. It is true that this will, inevitably, bring the inflationary boom abruptly to an end, and commence the inevitable recession or depression. But the longer the government waits for this, the worse the necessary readjustments will have to be. The sooner the depression-readjustment is gotten over with, the better. This means, also, that the government must never try to prop up unsound business situations; it must never bail out or lend money to business firms in trouble. Doing this will simply prolong the agony and convert a sharp and quick depression phase into a lingering and chronic disease. The government must never try to prop up wage rates or prices of producers' goods; doing so will prolong and delay indefinitely the completion of the depression-adjustment process; it will cause indefinite and prolonged depression and mass unemployment in the vital capital goods industries. The government must not try to inflate again, in order to get out of the depression. For even if this reinflation succeeds, it will only sow greater trouble later on. The government must do nothing to encourage consumption, and it must not increase its own expenditures, for this will further increase the social consumption/investment ratio. In fact, cutting the government budget will improve the ratio. What the economy needs is not more consumption spending but more saving, in order to validate some of the excessive investments of the boom.

Thus, what the government should do, according to the Misesian analysis of the depression, is absolutely nothing. It should, from the point of view of economic health and ending the depression as quickly as possible, maintain a strict hands off, "laissez-faire" policy. Anything it does will delay and obstruct the adjustment process of the market; the less it does, the more rapidly will the market adjustment process do its work, and sound economic recovery ensue.

The Misesian prescription is thus the exact opposite of the Keynesian: It is for the government to keep absolute hands off the economy and to confine itself to stopping its own inflation and to cutting its own budget.

On the great depression and the Keynesian revolution:

It has today been completely forgotten, even among economists, that the Misesian explanation and analysis of the depression gained great headway precisely during the Great Depression of the 1930s – the very depression that is always held up to advocates of the free market economy as the greatest single and catastrophic failure of laissez-faire capitalism. It was no such thing. 1929 was made inevitable by the vast bank credit expansion throughout the Western world during the 1920s: A policy deliberately adopted by the Western governments, and most importantly by the Federal Reserve System in the United States. It was made possible by the failure of the Western world to return to a genuine gold standard after World War I, and thus allowing more room for inflationary policies by government. Everyone now thinks of President Coolidge as a believer in laissez-faire and an unhampered market economy; he was not, and tragically, nowhere less so than in the field of money and credit. Unfortunately, the sins and errors of the Coolidge intervention were laid to the door of a non-existent free market economy.

If Coolidge made 1929 inevitable, it was President Hoover who prolonged and deepened the depression, transforming it from a typically sharp but swiftly-disappearing depression into a lingering and near-fatal malady, a malady "cured" only by the holocaust of World War II. Hoover, not Franklin Roosevelt, was the founder of the policy of the "New Deal": essentially the massive use of the State to do exactly what Misesian theory would most warn against – to prop up wage rates above their free-market levels, prop up prices, inflate credit, and lend money to shaky business positions. Roosevelt only advanced, to a greater degree, what Hoover had pioneered. The result for the first time in American history, was a nearly perpetual depression and nearly permanent mass unemployment. The Coolidge crisis had become the unprecedentedly prolonged Hoover-Roosevelt depression.

Ludwig von Mises had predicted the depression during the heyday of the great boom of the 1920s – a time, just like today, when economists and politicians, armed with a "new economics" of perpetual inflation, and with new "tools" provided by the Federal Reserve System, proclaimed a perpetual "New Era" of permanent prosperity guaranteed by our wise economic doctors in Washington. Ludwig von Mises, alone armed with a correct theory of the business cycle, was one of the very few economists to predict the Great Depression, and hence the economic world was forced to listen to him with respect. F. A. Hayek spread the word in England, and the younger English economists were all, in the early 1930s, beginning to adopt the Misesian cycle theory for their analysis of the depression – and also to adopt, of course, the strictly free-market policy prescription that flowed with this theory. Unfortunately, economists have now adopted the historical notion of Lord Keynes: That no "classical economists" had a theory of the business cycle until Keynes came along in 1936. There was a theory of the depression; it was the classical economic tradition; its prescription was strict hard money and laissez-faire; and it was rapidly being adopted, in England and even in the United States, as the accepted theory of the business cycle. (A particular irony is that the major "Austrian" proponent in the United States in the early and mid-1930s was none other than Professor Alvin Hansen, very soon to make his mark as the outstanding Keynesian disciple in this country.)

What swamped the growing acceptance of Misesian cycle theory was simply the "Keynesian Revolution" – the amazing sweep that Keynesian theory made of the economic world shortly after the publication of the General Theory in 1936. It is not that Misesian theory was refuted successfully; it was just forgotten in the rush to climb on the suddenly fashionable Keynesian bandwagon. Some of the leading adherents of the Mises theory – who clearly knew better – succumbed to the newly established winds of doctrine, and won leading American university posts as a consequence.

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"So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause"

Queen Amidala, Star Wars III

Maybe its a little over-dramatic, maybe not, we will see.

Today We Get CHANGE!

Southern Avenger On The Young Americans For Liberty

Celebrities Love Obama, So?

Is anyone else creeped out by this?

Flo White's Money Bomb

Max Keiser On Gaza and the Financial Holocaust

Max Keiser on the silence around the world in regards to Gaza:

It's not only reflecting badly on the Israelis, it's reflecting badly on humanity. It's not that I'm ashamed to be an American, it's that I'm ashamed to be a human being.

On the funding of the holocaust in Gaza:

Well, the question is, who's funding all of this? And, unfortunately because of the global banking system, and the way it's connected through the back offices of all of these banks, and it's all fiat currency, we all fund it. Until the globe goes to an Austrian school of economics and goes back to a gold standard, the ability to print fiat money to conduct this type of atrocity is going to continue. . .listen to Ron Paul in America"

Dr. Paul's Walls And Currency Depreciation

The quote at the end is a good one:

"It is not money, as is sometimes said, but the depreciation of money - the cruel and crafty destruction of money - that is the root of many evils. Inflation destroys individual thrift and self-reliance as it gradually erodes personal savings. Few policies are more calculated to destroy the existing basis of a free society than the debauching of its currency." - Hans F. Sennholz

The Hero Of Flight 1549

You can find a detailed profile of Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, III here.

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"Misery loves company. . .They don't redistribute the wealth. Government redistributes poverty." - Peter Schiff

The US Federal Supreme Court Continues To Write Law

Yahoo has reported on the Supreme Court's latest ruling here, and this is from the article:

The Supreme Court said Wednesday that evidence obtained after illegal searches or arrests based on simple police mistakes may be used to prosecute criminal defendants.

The justices split 5-4 along ideological lines to apply new limits to the court's so-called exclusionary rule, which generally requires evidence to be suppressed if it results from a violation of a suspect's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches or seizure.

This gives police further ability to violate individual's rights with disregard, and the Supreme Court is essentially wiping their collective fat ass with the Bill of Rights.

The case that was being ruled on is as follows:

Coffee County, Ala., sheriff's deputies found amphetamines in Herring's pockets and an unloaded gun in his truck when they conducted a search following his arrest. It turned out that the warrant from neighboring Dale County had been recalled five months earlier, but the county sheriff's computers had not been updated.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said the evidence may be used "when police mistakes are the result of negligence such as that described here, rather than systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements."

So essentially, the police violated the individual's rights, but this is O-KAY because of a clerical error.

To top it off, this evidence is being used to further infringe on the individual's rights and charge him with a non-crime of holding an unloaded fire-arm and a chemical.

Israelis Fire On Palestinians Holding White Flags

The Belfast Telegraph has reported that the Israelis have fired on fleeing Palestinians which were holding white flags. You can read the article here. From the article:

At least three Palestinians in Gaza were shot dead yesterday after Israeli soldiers fired on a group of residents leaving their homes on orders from the military and waving white flags, according to testimony taken by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. The testimony was rejected by the military after what it said was a preliminary investigation.

Also, Bolivia has cut its diplomatic ties with Israel and is seeking genocide charges against Israeli officials. Haaretz.com has reported on this and the following is from their piece:

Bolivian President Evo Morales said on Wednesday that his country is breaking diplomatic ties with Israel over its 19-day-old campaign in Gaza, and said he will ask the International Criminal Court to bring genocide charges against top Israeli officials.
Bolivia had diplomatic relations with Israel. [But] considering these grave attacks against...humanity, Bolivia will stop having diplomatic relations with Israel," Morales said in a speech before diplomats in the government palace.

Apparently Perspective Matters

Nicholas Kristof, of the leftist New York Times, has written a piece on sweatshops in developing countries and the lift out of poverty they provide their people. From the article:

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

Not that I'm a fan of sweat shops, but any trade agreements in the west need to be careful not to stunt the growth of the manufacturing sector of the east. It takes time for economies to grow, and we can't expect the people of China to enjoy the living standards of the west over night simply because we say they should. Sweatshops existed in the west once, too, and they built a lot of the wealth and capital we've been enjoying for the past century.

The Transparency Of The Federal Reserve

Liberty Alive In Britain

Britains march in protest to the UK government banning guns.

"The largest peaceful protest in Britain's history."

Yoachim of Fiora

I'm in the process of listening to Murray Rothbard's speech The Emergence Of Communism. I've listened to the first 5 minutes of it about 10 times as I'm unfamiliar with a lot of the references. At this rate, I'll finish the speech in a few years.

He begins the speech with reference to Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium in which Cohn writes of an extremely influential Abbott in Italy during the 12th century. The Abbott's name was Yoachim of Fiora. Rothbard argues that the ideology behind communism can be derived from Yoachim's doctrine.

Yoachim's doctrine can be broken down into three ages:

- 1st: Age of the father, the old testament, holy trinity, age of the law, rule by fear
- 2nd: Age of the Son, Jesus Christ, Christianity, faith & submission
- 3rd: Age of the holy spirit, of perfect joy, the end of property, noone works, one vast monastery until last judgement, the end of human history

Yoachim claimed the third age would occur in 50 years.

Rothbard makes an excellent point about 50 years as a quantity, which is the purpose of this post. To quote Rothbard, "50 years is a good time because it makes everyone hopped up, and its not soon enough that you're pestered quickly by empirical reality".

That one quote made me think of global warming and Al Gore.

Yoachim of Fiora was so influential, he was very close to having the Pope accept his theory as official Catholic doctrine; almost.

As a side note, Rothbard points out that the significant difference between Yoachim and Marx is that Yoachim didn't have to deal with the allocation of resources and the division of labour because during the third age, everyone was a spirit.

Ron Paul: How We Got Into This Mess

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Jack Hunter, aka the Southern Avenger, has written a piece in the Charleston City Paper trumpeting against foreign intervention.

In the piece he quotes former CIA counter-terrorism expert Michael Scheuer:

If America were blessed with a non-interventionist foreign policy, we could all thank Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for giving President-elect Barack Obama a thoroughgoing lesson in the absolute irrelevancy of Israel and Palestine to the national interests of the United States. More than a week into Israel's invasion of Gaza, America is still alive and kicking and none of our citizens are dead, which is the way it should be, as this is their religious war and not ours. If stubborn non-interventionism were our creed — as the Founders intended — the Gaza war could continue for two more days or two more months and we could simply shrug and mutter 'Who cares?' America could simply go on its way, rebuilding its economy and marveling over the madness of two religions fighting to the death over a barren sandpit at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.

Dennis Kucinich: Half Of Gazans Are 13 Or Younger

Murray Rothbard : The Gold Standard Before the Civil War

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Part 3
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Part 5

The Gore Effect

From the Urban Dictionary:

The phenomenon that leads to unseasonably cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global warming. Hence, the Gore Effect.

- Australia, November 2006: Al Gore is visiting two weeks before summer begins. The Gore Effect strikes: "Ski resort operators gazed at the snow in amazement. Parents took children out of school and headed for the mountains. Cricketers scurried amid bullets of hail as Melburnians traded lunchtime tales of the incredible cold." (The Age)

- New York, March 2004: "Gore chose January 15, 2004, one of the coldest days in New York City's history, to rail against the Bush administration and global warming skeptics... Global warming, Gore told a startled audience, is causing record cold temperatures." (NY Environment News)

Olmert Says Jump, Bush Says How High?

When it came up for the UN to vote for Resolution 1860, a resolution calling for the complete cease-fire in Gaza, it was an easy decision for the world. The resolution passed 14-0. Now, there are 15 members of the Security Council, so one nation abstained from voting, the United States. It was obviously a difficult decision for them.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had helped prepare the resolution and apparently had intended on voting for it. Something went wrong, though, as she didn't end up casting that vote.

Yesterday the Jerusalem Post published an article entitled PM: Rice left embarrassed in UN vote. The following is taken from the article:

Rice did not end up voting for Resolution 1860, thanks to a phone conversation Olmert held with US President George Bush shortly before the vote, the prime minister told a meeting of local authority heads in Ashkelon as part of a visit to the South.

Upon receiving word that the US was planning to vote in favor of the resolution - viewed by Israel as impractical and failing to address its security concerns - Olmert demanded to get Bush on the phone, and refused to back down after being told that the president was delivering a lecture in Philadelphia. Bush interrupted his lecture to answer Olmert's call, the premier said.

America could not vote in favor of such a resolution, Olmert told Bush. Soon afterwards, Rice abstained when votes were counted at the UN.

What is it about Israel that it demands the American's blind support?

Marc Faber's 2009 Outlook

"That's the problem of society. If people cannot accept the downside of capitalism, then they should become socialist. . .they should go to eastern europe 20 years ago." - Marc Faber

Bill Casey To Step Down

Independent MP Bill Casey from Cumberland-Colchester (my home district) has decided not to run for re-election.

I do not know a lot about Bill Casey. He was part of the Conservative Party of Canada. He's been the MP for Cumberland-Colchester here in Nova Scotia for 16 years. I'm not sure how to measure this, but he has seemed to serve the district well. He has often won large victories with very little competition and this illustrates a large amount of local support.

In June of 2007 Bill Casey voted against the Conservative government's budget because it forced Nova Scotia to choose between their offshore deals or an enriched equalization formula. This contradicted the Atlantic Accord and, from Casey's perspective, broke a contract the province of Nova Scotia had made with the Federal Government.

I always enjoy individuals who speak truth to power and Bill Casey did just that. He essentially sacrificed his political career for what he thought was right. Harper quickly booted Casey from the Conservative caucus after he voted against the budget.

Casey still enjoys a lot of local support in Nova Scotia and one can hope he continues his political career here at the provincial level. Individuals who will stand behind their principles are hard to come by, regardless of their political stripe.

Schiff For Senate 2010

There is a grass roots effort building up to recruit Peter Schiff to run for senate against incumbent Democrat Chris Dodd in Connecticut. Schiff is well known to liberty lovers, he is a student of Austrian economics, he predicted the occuring economic collapse, and he is a talented public speaker. Dodd's approval ratings are at all time lows as he battles scandals in regards to his relationship with Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. He had been a staunch supporter of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac throughout most of the decade and has received over $160,000 from these two companies.

The founders of this movement created a website at the beginning of the year which can be found at www.schiff2010.com.

The Norwich Bulletin, a local Connecticut newspaper wrote the following about Schiff's chances:

Schiff, on the other hand, is a dark horse, but would appear to have the background in the one area that could prove to be Dodd’s Achilles’ heel — Schiff’s an expert on the nation’s financial markets. Dodd, of course, is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and at the forefront of the financial meltdown.

An Austrian school economist, Schiff is frequently seen as a guest commentator on CNBC, Fox News, CNN and Bloomberg Television, and just as frequently quoted in major financial publications. He supposedly predicted the economic crisis we’re now facing, and served as economic advisor to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul during the 2008 GOP primaries.

There’s no clear indication yet whether he actually has any interest in being a candidate, but if so, he’d likely give Dodd a run for his money on this one issue.

Here's a YouTube clip of Schiff's response to the idea during his weekly radio show Wall Street Unspun (this is how I first found out about it):



The Western Standard, a Canadian publication, has picked up the story oddly enough. You can read their piece here. The folks at the Western Standard contacted the people who created www.schiff2010.com and received the following statement:

Last July, we spoke with Schiff at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas for quite awhile. During conversation, we asked him about running for office and "what would you do if a grassroots movement tried to get you in office?" He said he would be interested and would respond positively if someone tried, and more or less, "at the very least I would take the publicity," implying that he would enjoy it even against extreme odds. We have also talked with people close to Peter at EuroPacific Capital (we are young investors) and they are very excited about the project.

Hopefully there will be enough support gained to convince Schiff it will be worth his efforts.

Day 17 In Palestine

BuffaloBeast.com On Obama

I don't read the website, but buffalobeast.com has created a list of the 50 most loathsome people in America and has this to say about Obama:

50. Barack Obama

Charges: Beyond a few token acts of bipartisan marketing, Barry's major duty in the Senate was to avoid legislating, so he could pretend Washington-outsider status and nullify attacks on his non-existent policy positions. That's the thing about Obama and his candidacy: He was a blank slate, the pinnacle of vapid public relations—onto which the benighted masses may project their sincerest, yet unfounded, hopes in the wake of the worst administration in history. Couldn’t disown Rev. Wright, until he suddenly could, and then marred his first moments as president ahead of time by inviting a pastor whose advice to gays is just to refrain from sex for life. Promised not to run for president, then did; vowed to take public election funds, then didn't; backed telecom immunity, then accepted the nomination at the AT&T sponsored convention; expressed displeasure with Clinton's hawkish foreign policy and vote for war in Iraq, then named her as Secretary of State. And despite all that, he's plenty affable. There's nothing more loathsome than a likable politician.

Exhibit A: “Yes we can” is the “Just do it” of politics.

Sentence: Presiding over the decline of an exhausted empire.

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"With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." - James Madison referring to Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution

Footage of Israeli Soldiers

Conservative Columnist In Favor Of Slavery

TheRawStory.com has reported on Conservative columnist Tony Blankley's assessment that the draft is necessary in order for the US government to win the clash of civilizations. This provokes the question, why is it important for one civilization to win over another? Isn't this really as frivolous as which team will when a baseball game, and doesn't this line of thinking have the potential to kick start a war the likes of World War I? Of course, that's the whole purpose, as he explains on Fox News:

I don't like it, I love the volunteer army ... but we don't have enough troops. When George Bush wanted to have the surge, he was told by the senior generals we didn't have the extra 20,000 troops to finish the war. ... Now Obama wants to go to Afghanistan ... but he says we don't have the troops unless we pull them out of Iraq. What happens if Pakistan goes jihad-y? We don't have the troops to go in there and stop them from taking over the nuclear weapons.

Not only, Mr. Blankley, do you not have the troops, you don't have the money either. So get out of the Middle East and support a rational policy that brings all troops home. Start supporting individual freedom and stop worrying about civilizations clashing.

Disturbing Quotes

The Jerusalem Post has an article on what Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu has written to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. From the article:

Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings.

Apparently Eliyahu was not available for comment, however his son, chief rabbi of Safed, gave the following stellar quote for the piece:

If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.

These are the people the United States government supports blindly; these are the people our own Liberal leader Mr. Ignatieff is defending.

Obama Fails On Torture

Over the weekend Barack Obama was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC. When asked a question in regards to the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, Obama gave the following reply:

It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize and we are going to get it done but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom who may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it's true. And so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo American legal system, by doing it in a way that doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up.

I could take the time to dissect what this politic-talk means, but legal analyst Glenn Greenwald from Salon.com would certainly do a better job:

What [Obama's] saying is quite clear. There are detainees who the U.S. may not be able to convict in a court of law. Why not? Because the evidence that we believe establishes their guilt was obtained by torture, and it is therefore likely inadmissible in our courts (torture-obtained evidence is inadmissible in all courts in the civilized world; one might say it's a defining attribute of being civilized). But Obama wants to detain them anyway -- even though we can't convict them of anything in our courts of law. So before he can close Guantanamo, he wants a new, special court to be created -- presumably by an act of Congress -- where evidence obtained by torture (confessions and the like) can be used to justify someone's detention and where, presumably, other safeguards are abolished. That's what he means when he refers to "creating a process."

Further in the interview Obama makes a statement that he has recognized that "Dick Cheney's advice was good". The Campaign For Liberty does a good job further dissecting this here.

This essentially means Obama's policies towards Guantanamo will remain in line with the Neo-Conservatives and that he truly is providing no new change, no new hope. The fight between the left and the right in the US continues to become more and more obsolete as the fight between the people and the government becomes ever-so more important.

An Excellent Piece On H.Res.34

Joe Murray, from Philadelphia's The Bulletin, wrote a piece on the resolution the US Congress passed entitled "Recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process."

The piece has some good quotes from Dennis Kucinich, Pat Buchanan, and Ron Paul.

The Onion On The Money Hole

Hilarious. . .

In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

The Bank Of England Pushes For Secrecy

One of the oldest central banks in the world, The Bank Of England, is pushing through legislation that will allow the bank to print money without declaring it. The Telegraph in the UK reports on it here.

It appears that without the legislation, the Bank Of England doesn't feel it can properly overhaul financial institutions:

The ostensible reason for the reform, which means the Bank will not have to print details of its own accounts and the amount of notes and coins flowing through the UK economy, is to allow the Bank more power to overhaul troubled financial institutions in the future, under its Special Resolution Authority.

Lord James of Blackheath had the following to say about it while debating the issue in the House of Lords:

Remove [this] control and there is nothing to stop an unreported and unmonitored flooding of the money market by the undisciplined use of the printing presses.

"If we went down that path we would be following a road which starts in Weimar, goes on through Harare and must not end in Westminster and London. That is the great fear that the abolition of that section will bring about – but the Bill abolishes it.

Quite right.

Arrested For Holding A Plant

Andrew Carroll, self-proclaimed non-pot smoker, and about 40 protesters held a rally in the small town of Keene, New Hampshire to voice their opposition on the war on drugs.

During a radio broadcast on FreeKeene, after Carroll was released, Carroll advised the cops treated him respectfully. The radio broadcaster even mentioned that one of the cops is a listener to FreeKeene and has spoken publicly about his own opposition on the war on drugs.



Carroll moved to New Hampshire from California as part of the Free State Project. From the website:

The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire.

Live Free or Die.

Globe Heading For Ice Age?

If so, global warming advocates will have their ass handed to them.

Pravda, a Russian publication, has published an article Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age which investigates the cyclical ice ages the Earth experiences. They argue we're on the precipice of another, given historical paleoclimatology evidence.

Check out this grim quote from the article:

About 325,000 years ago, at the peak of a warm interglacial, global temperature and CO2 levels were higher than they are today. Today we are again at the peak, and near to the end, of a warm interglacial, and the earth is now due to enter the next Ice Age. If we are lucky, we may have a few years to prepare for it. The Ice Age will return, as it always has, in its regular and natural cycle, with or without any influence from the effects of AGW.

My fears are confusing me, should I be hoarding gold or moving south?

Canadian Eric Sprott On Gold and Silver

Eric Sprott is a 40-year, successful veteran of the investment industry. He manages $4.8 billion worth of hedge and mutual funds for Sprott Asset Management. He is also from Canada and he mentioned in this interview that every Canadian should old some physical gold.

In the interview he said:

For the reason that if there is one thing I believe in—and I’m thinking as a Canadian here—it’s that I would love people in Canada to own gold as I think it’s the safest asset they can own.

So if you can make it a little bit easier for them by breaking it down to a smaller unit, then they have a chance to get in. For us, it’s a reasonably profitable business because the premiums are quite high, as you know.

He converts his own gold bars into Canadian Maple Leafs and sells them here.

You can listen to him talk about the future of gold and silver in the following video.

Quote

“It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.” - Ludwig von Mises

Kucinich: No More Federal Reserve

75% of what Congressman Kucinich says in this video I completely disagree with, but its worth posting simply because of his accurate remarks in regards to the Federal Reserve. Its good to see a Democrat come out against the FED.

Scary Stuff

The Associated Press is reporting here that 70,000 Iranian students have requested permission from Tehran to suicide bomb Israel.

If Ahmadinejad allows this to occur, Israel will almost certainly strike back at Iran kick-starting a full out war in the Middle-East.

All because of a few rockets and an over reaction.

Hank Paulson Versus Peter Schiff

The Emperor Has No Clothes

The Disgraceful Canadian Government On The Massacre Of Palestinians

Much of my postings are filled with American content. There is always a lot more news out of the United States and they are the center of most events in the world. Not to mention, its interesting to watch in almost slow-motion an empire coming to its knees.

Sometimes I have to remind myself I'm a Canadian living in Canada so I should probably know my own government's role in current events. After posting the Bill Moyers video, I wondered what Prime Minister Harper had to say about the conflict in Gaza. The Globe and Mail reported on it here, and this is a quote:

Our government has already been clear. We want an effective and durable ceasefire for this conflict. We are asking it of both parties to this conflict.

This statement gives no acknowledgment of the civilians in Palestine being massacred and bombed illegally under UN law with American weapons by the Israeli government. Harper side steps the issue almost completely giving an obviously political answer. Everyone wants a cease fire. Even the Israeli government. They're just willing to ensure anyone who might fire at them will be dead.

The Liberals do worse. One reference of their opinion on the conflict from the Toronto Star wrote:

the Liberals, through newly-annointed leader Michael Ignatieff, insist that Israel bears no responsibility, that its destruction of Gaza is a measured response to Hamas' sporadic rocket attacks and that the Islamic organization is solely to blame.

At least Harper gave an air of neutrality. The National Post has Mr. Ignatieff quoted saying,"Canada has to support the right of a democratic country to defend itself." Unfortunately, Ignatieff is referencing the Israeli government and not the democratically elected Hamas in Palestine. The Canadian government doesn't like Hamas, therefore their elections do not count. Ignatieff went on to say, "Hamas is to blame for organizing and instigating these rocket attacks and then for sheltering among civilian populations." Yes. Hamas sheltered among civilians, so it is their fault the civilians have to die, not the Israeli government who is actually doing the killing!

Mr. Ignatieff, I'd like to thank you for ensuring I will never vote Liberal while you're head of the party. I was waiting patiently to decide what I thought of you. I thought I'd have to wait for the vote on the budget, however, this disgraceful and immoral support of state terrorism being conducted by the Israeli government has solidified my dislike of you.

Although, maybe Mr. Ignatieff is right. Why should we blame the Israeli government when they decide to massacre and bomb countless Palestinian civilians that had absolutely nothing to do with the rockets the extremists were firing into their territory? What ridiculousness. If you're going to take a side, Mr. Ignatieff, at least take the side of the suffering.

As Bill Moyers says in the below posted video, "one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression." We must always remember that those who fought in the French Revolution and American Revolution were also looked upon as terrorists to the oppressive state they were over-throwing.