End The Fed! https://www.zerohedge.com/political/end-fed https://www.fff.org/2020/03/05/end-the-fed/ In response to the potential economic downturn in the economy arising from the spread of the Coronavirus, the Federal Reserve dropped the federal funds rate by half a point - to a range of 1% to 1.25%. Ironically, after the Fed’s announcement, the stock market dropped 786 points or 2.9%. The Fed’s aim is to stimulate economic activity. By lowering interest rates, the idea is to get businesses to expand operations with more loans and to get consumers to go deeper into debt by purchasing more items. The result of the Fed’s artificial economic “boost” will be the same as it has been since the Fed was established in 1913: a bubble of malinvestment and consumer loan defaults that will end up plunging the country in a bubble-bursting recession or even depression. That’s because genuine prosperity in a country cannot be generated by central bank manipulations. If that were the case, every country on earth would be characterized by ever-growing standards of living. In fact, a central bank does the exact opposite — it lowers a nation’s standard of living through its artificial manipulations of interest rates and its expansion and contraction of the money supply. The never-ending cycle of monetary crises and chaos shouldn’t surprise anyone. The Federal Reserve is a socialist institution, in that it is based on the socialist concept of central planning. A central bank consists of a board of government commissars who have the responsibility of planning the monetary affairs of hundreds of millions of people. It cannot be done. Socialism is an inherently defective economic system. It produces monetary crises and chaos, which is what we have seen in the United States since the Fed was established in 1913. The Fed’s monetary destruction The United States once had the finest monetary system in the world, one based on gold coins and silver coins. That was the system the Constitution brought into existence. The Constitution expressly states that the federal government would possess the power to coin money, not print it. It also expressly states that no state shall make anything but gold and silver coins legal tender. As Milton Friedman and the Austrian school of economic thought have shown, the Fed’s manipulations produced the 1929 stock market crash, which U.S. officials falsely blamed on “free enterprise” rather than on the Fed. That led to the Great Depression, which President Franklin Roosevelt used as the excuse for converting America’s gold-coin, silver-coin system to one based on irredeemable Federal Reserve paper notes. The FDR regime made it felony for any American to possess gold coins. Everyone was required to deliver his gold coins to the U.S. government, which gave people irredeemable paper promissory notes in exchange, which FDR then quickly devalued, wiping out a large portion of peoples savings. It’s worth mentioning that the FDR regime nationalized gold without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment. Then, decade after decade, the Fed inflated the paper money supply to finance the ever-burgeoning expenses of the U.S. welfare-warfare state that came into existence in the FDR regime. At the same time, the Fed continued its monetary manipulations as part of its efforts to “plan” economic growth. The result has been nothing but a series of monetary crises and chaos. Booms and busts, bubbles and bursting bubbles. And a never-ending devaluation of people’s money, to such an extent that silver coins, which FDR, for some reason, had not made a felony to possess, were ultimately driven out of circulation by all the bad money that the Fed was flooding into the economy every decade since 1913. Ending the Fed Nonetheless, many Americans have come to believe that the Fed must remain a permanent fixture in American life. Despite the monetary chaos the Fed has produced for the past 100 years, and the manner in which it has plundered and looted people through inflationary expansion of the money supply, the idea of dismantling the Fed scares such Americans to death. But dismantling the Fed is the only way to restore a society that is based on genuine economic prosperity, one based on capital accumulation and free trade. There are no short cuts to genuine prosperity. Resorting to a central bank to “stabilize” or “boost” the economy through monetary manipulation is a fool’s errand. Among the best things that Americans could ever do is dismantle the Fed and establish a free-market monetary system, one in which government plays no role whatsoever. The ideal is to separate money and the state, just as our ancestors separated church and state. That would be a major step in the direction of liberty and genuine economic prosperity. On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 08:28:41AM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
Why audit the Fed when we know the system of usury it runs, cyclically brings chaos and massive wealth disparities?
In other words, just end it already. 'Member the Fed!
Calling Things By Their Real Names https://www.zerohedge.com/political/calling-things-their-real-names http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/01/calling-things-by-their-real-na...
One does not need money to convey one's thoughts, but what money does allow is the drowning out of speech of those without money by those with a lot of money.
In last week's explanation of why the Federal Reserve is evil, https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan20/fed-evil1-20.html I invoked the principle of calling things by their real names, a concept that drew an insightful commentary from longtime correspondent Chad D.:
Thank you, Charles, for calling out the Fed for their evil ways. We have to properly name things before we can properly address them. I would add that the Fed's endless creation of "money" to hand out to connected bankers (not all bankers) is just one facet of the evil. The evil also manifests itself as extraordinary political-economical power in a system that allows legalized bribery disguised as free speech.
One does not need money to speak/write to convey one's thoughts, but what money does allow is the drowning out of speech of those without money by those with a lot of money. In essence, the ultra-rich (i.e. the top .01%) get a huge megaphone to blare their thoughts, many of which are deliberately used to disorient and confuse the common man through the major media and so-called higher institutions of learning. Hence, we get common folk actively fighting for policies and laws that are against their own personal interests, such as promoting "free trade" agreements that are really managed trade agreements, whereby domestic workers are forced to complete with workers in other countries who make a pittance and are not protected by labor or environmental laws.
These agreements are part of a legal, yet unjust, framework that gives unfair, competitive advantages to large, multinational businesses at the expense of their smaller domestic and international competitors, which includes the abridgment of basic rights to settle disputes in a real court of law, not some kangaroo arbitration process with biased "judges".
And we must not forget the bailouts, lack of prosecution for economic crimes, such as fraud and monopolistic and deceptive trade practices, and tax loopholes, all of which are bought in one way or another from the compromised "representatives" and "public servants" within the system.
The evil manifests itself as an enabler and promoter of an endless warfare state that is used to maintain an empire based upon the dollar that uses force, bribery, and blackmail to keep various peoples within the empire in line, which includes those within the host country(ies) (i.e. the USA (and the UK)) at the center of the empire. It causes the host country to befriend countries (i.e. frenemies) that hold values that are diametrically opposed to the values of the host country. The empire's tactics also breeds resentment towards citizens of the host country, many of whom want nothing to do with the empire, by those who live in the empire outside the host country.
While massive resources are used to support the empire of the dollar, the host country rots from a lack of resources due to taxes, debt, and the misappropriation of resources. Numerous people enlist in the military to supposedly protect the country, but end up really protecting the empire and yet others enlist out of economic desperation, which ironically and perversely, is largely caused by the existence of the very thing they end up serving and protecting.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the evil manifests itself in the severe abuse of our natural resources that leads to (as you've put) a landfill economy and the resultant, potential collapse of the biosphere that currently supports human life.
All these things represent the three heads of Cerberus and the body of Cerberus is usury, one of the most destructive forces known to humanity. Its exponential growth function will always lead to the depletion of natural resources because all the resources that would be of use to humans do not grow in that same manner and many of them are finite in the sense of people being able to obtain them in an economical way (e.g. metal ores and energy). Other natural resources like fisheries and forests can only be harvested at certain levels at certain times or they will collapse to a nonviable state.
Usury also always leads to massive wealth disparities that destabilize societies. Over time, the interest on the outstanding debt, especially if the money is debt-based, will find its way to those with assets, who end up buying more assets that get them more interest that enables them to buy yet more assets, etc.
If the Federal Reserve System was simply a decentralized clearing house for financial transactions and it was not allowed to buy government debt and we had a currency that was not based upon usury, would it be evil? It's fair to say that the Fed has become more and more evil, because it had fundamental flaws (features?) from its inception or it has been changed by evil actors over the years. Either way, we must end its current incarnation, before it leads our country down the road to perdition.
P.S. We were warned of some of this evil by our forefathers; see the Democratic Platform from 1900. Please note how they referred to our country as a republic. https://patriotpost.us/documents/469
Thank you, Chad, for succinctly summarizing all that we must call by their real names: predatory, parasitic, false, evil.