Ben Bernanke had no idea what was going to happen to the economy. Watch this collection of his statements from the past. This should be one reason to realize that we need to audit the fed. The fed manipulates the economy and we need to know what they do.
For those unfamiliar with those who say what was coming you can watch the following video compiling historical clips showing that Peter Schiff was right.
(HT: Mises.org)
A new study has found that rising global temperatures over the years can be directly correlated to the rise in US Postage Stamp rates. Read the article, Shock: Global temperatures driven by US Postal Charges, for proof of this alarming trend. (HT: Jeffrey Tucker)
John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel, recently wrote an article explaining the long history of the scam that we know as global warming. He details the story of those who invented the idea in order to generate a steady stream of “scientific” funding from the United States and other governments. Read The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam to get the full story.
Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Institute has recently been blogging through the book Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine. The supposed goal of patents and copyrights is to increase innovation. In the introduction the authors point the reader toward the conclusion that “intellectual property is an unnecessary evil.” I plan to read through the book and also the articles that Jeffrey Tucker has written as mises.org.
The Senate voted on Monday to confirm the President’s anti-gun choice for Attorney General, Eric Holder. Gun Owners of America shows how the senate voted and makes it easy to tell your senator whether they did a good job. Jim DeMint stood up for our constitutional rights while the increasingly liberal Lindsey Graham showed that he’s most concerned to get along with everyone (except conservatives).
Mises.org has posted an excellent article on free-market education to their site. I recommend that you go read it for yourself, but will give a short synopsis here. A teacher in a San Diego high school decides to sell advertising on tests and quizzes to local area businesses and parents. This helps the teacher to do his best job in class without incurring more expenses himself. People allowed to operate within the free-market will figure out a profitable way to do the best thing for all parties involved. Taxpayer funded schools (or anything else for that matter) are nothing but a drain on the taxpayer and will always do a poor job. Think of the irony of congress getting a pay raise while they demand pay cuts for the automaker executives. We need to remember the housing bubble which precipitated the current crisis started with the fed and it’s socialist manipulation of credit. Congress could control or abolish the fed if they cared. Shouldn’t they take a pay cut – or be fired?
Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, the Son of God. He came to bring order and reconciliation to a world fallen into sin. The birth of Jesus is not merely a fact of ancient history. We can live triumphant today with the knowledge that the defeat of all of our foes commenced with the death and resurrection of Jesus in the first century. The story begins with the promise of the offspring of the woman who would come to defeat the serpent:
The Lord God said to the serpent . . .
” . . . I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:14-15)
The people who lived before Christ lived in general darkness, but Christ came to bring light to the world:
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shined. (Isaiah 9:2)
. . . when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away . . . But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed . . . And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another . . . (2 Corinthians 3:14-18)
Jesus was born into the world to rule the world in peace, justice, and righteousness:
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 9:6-7)
All authority over all things was given to Jesus by the Father:
“I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14)
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)
Jesus will continue to reign until all enemies have finally and completely been abolished:
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death . . . When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:25-28)
Merry Christmas!
Ron Paul before the U.S. House of Representatives, November 20, 2008
Madame Speaker, many Americans are hoping the new administration will solve the economic problems we face. That’s not likely to happen, because the economic advisors to the new President have no more understanding of how to get us out of this mess than previous administrations and Congresses understood how the crisis was brought about in the first place.
Except for a rare few, Members of Congress are unaware of Austrian Free Market economics. For the last 80 years, the legislative, judiciary and executive branches of our government have been totally influenced by Keynesian economics. If they had had any understanding of the Austrian economic explanation of the business cycle, they would have never permitted the dangerous bubbles that always lead to painful corrections.
Today, a major economic crisis is unfolding. New government programs are started daily, and future plans are being made for even more. All are based on the belief that we’re in this mess because free-market capitalism and sound money failed. The obsession is with more spending, bailouts of bad investments, more debt, and further dollar debasement. Many are saying we need an international answer to our problems with the establishment of a world central bank and a single fiat reserve currency. These suggestions are merely more of the same policies that created our mess and are doomed to fail.
At least 90% of the cause for the financial crisis can be laid at the doorstep of the Federal Reserve. It is the manipulation of credit, the money supply, and interest rates that caused the various bubbles to form. Congress added fuel to the fire by various programs and institutions like the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FDIC, and HUD mandates, which were all backed up by aggressive court rulings.
The Fed has now doled out close to $2 trillion in subsidized loans to troubled banks and other financial institutions. The Federal Reserve and Treasury constantly brag about the need for “transparency” and “oversight,” but it’s all just talk — they want none of it. They want secrecy while the privileged are rescued at the expense of the middle class.
It is unimaginable that Congress could be so derelict in its duty. It does nothing but condone the arrogance of the Fed in its refusal to tell us where the $2 trillion has gone. All Members of Congress and all Americans should be outraged that conditions could deteriorate to this degree. It’s no wonder that a large and growing number of Americans are now demanding an end to the Fed.
The Federal Reserve created our problem, yet it manages to gain even more power in the socialization of the entire financial system. The whole bailout process this past year was characterized by no oversight, no limits, no concerns, no understanding, and no common sense.
Similar mistakes were made in the 1930s and ushered in the age of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society and the supply-siders who convinced conservatives that deficits didn’t really matter after all, since they were anxious to finance a very expensive deficit-financed American empire.
All the programs since the Depression were meant to prevent recessions and depressions. Yet all that was done was to plant the seeds of the greatest financial bubble in all history. Because of this lack of understanding, the stage is now set for massive nationalization of the financial system and quite likely the means of production.
Although it is obvious that the Keynesians were all wrong and interventionism and central economic planning don’t work, whom are we listening to for advice on getting us out of this mess? Unfortunately, it’s the Keynesians, the socialists, and big-government proponents.
Who’s being ignored? The Austrian free-market economists—the very ones who predicted not only the Great Depression, but the calamity we’re dealing with today. If the crisis was predictable and is explainable, why did no one listen? It’s because too many politicians believed that a free lunch was possible and a new economic paradigm had arrived. But we’ve heard that one before–like the philosopher’s stone that could turn lead into gold. Prosperity without work is a dream of the ages.
Over and above this are those who understand that political power is controlled by those who control the money supply. Liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats came to believe, as they were taught in our universities, that deficits don’t matter and that Federal Reserve accommodation by monetizing debt is legitimate and never harmful. The truth is otherwise. Central economic planning is always harmful. Inflating the money supply and purposely devaluing the dollar is always painful and dangerous.
The policies of big-government proponents are running out of steam. Their policies have failed and will continue to fail. Merely doing more of what caused the crisis can hardly provide a solution.
The good news is that Austrian economists are gaining more acceptance every day and have a greater chance of influencing our future than they’ve had for a long time.
The basic problem is that proponents of big government require a central bank in order to surreptitiously pay bills without direct taxation. Printing needed money delays the payment. Raising taxes would reveal the true cost of big government, and the people would revolt. But the piper will be paid, and that’s what this crisis is all about.
There are limits. A country cannot forever depend on a central bank to keep the economy afloat and the currency functionable through constant acceleration of money supply growth. Eventually the laws of economics will overrule the politicians, the bureaucrats and the central bankers. The system will fail to respond unless the excess debt and mal-investment is liquidated. If it goes too far and the wild extravagance is not arrested, runaway inflation will result, and an entirely new currency will be required to restore growth and reasonable political stability.
The choice we face is ominous: We either accept world-wide authoritarian government holding together a flawed system, OR we restore the principles of the Constitution, limit government power, restore commodity money without a Federal Reserve system, reject world government, and promote the cause of peace by protecting liberty equally for all persons. Freedom is the answer.
Original at The Austrians Were Right.
The book Pillars of Prosperity is a collection of speeches and essays by Ron Paul that lay out his “views of the proper role of government, namely that it should serve only to protect the life and property of its citizens.” In a 1984 speech (page 3) he shows the folly of big government and how it is perpetuated by the politicians. The problems of big government stem from the ease in which they are duped into supporting bad policy. Ron Paul points out that:
the politician, per se, is a lot less important than he appears. He is basically a puppet of public opinion that reflects the prevailing ideas of the intellectual and thought leaders.
Bob Inglis, the Republican congressman from South Carolina, gives an excellent example of this in his votes for the bailout bill. He rejected sound economics that predicted the crisis. He rejected free market solutions that would have eliminated the problem. He failed to realize that current government involvement by congress and the fed means that we have nothing more than a centrally planned “free market” (socialism). He said that doing something was better than nothing while blindly following the socialist elite who said that the bailout was the only way.
Unfortunately as Ron Paul continues to explain:
Political success is the single goal that drives participants in our political system. No invitations to participants are sent to men of principle, upholders of equal rights, and defenders of the Constitution. Determined political aspirations under today’s circumstances are key to achieving a successful political career—the career being an end in itself. We must be aware that this system of politics is not conducive to bringing about changes necessary to solve our problems. The legislative and political intrigues that control the system for the benefit of the special interests must one day come to an end if personal liberty is to be restored.
We all must realize that no President or member of Congress will ever save us from our problems. Central planning to prevent chaos will always turn into centrally planned chaos. This chaos makes the politican think that he just needs to do more and that is always the wrong answer.
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