Economics

[TrueLight]

By- Mickey Paoletta   
http://www.articlebliss.com/Art/317264/73/Debt-Voodoo-Stealing-People-s-Wealth.html
Debt Voodoo: Stealing People’s Wealth


Voodoo Economics: Engineered Debt and Theft

Voodoo is the practice of conjuring up some preferred reality which otherwise is scientifically – or lawfully – impossible in the normal world. Take inflation, for instance. The promise of inflation has always been attractive in that promises are made by politicians and bankers. They promise us that the more debt accumulated by a nation, the greater the prosperity there will be for all (especially the bankers and their surrogates, the debt collectors).

That is not an allegation “way out there” somewhere in some mindless graduate thesis program. Pay attention to what comes next.

John Maynard Keynes: Guru of Debt Miracles

Keynes advocated the absurd notion that governments could spend themselves into prosperity by going into debt (voodoo economics). Keynes' tragic economic theory actually helped conceal the inadequacies in the intentionally flawed Federal Reserve Banking System.
John Maynard Keynes (pronounced "Kanes") was a self-avowed socialist who served as economic advisor to presidents, prime ministers, and even dictators. Keynes explained the negative effects of inflation in his book, "Economic Consequences of the Peace." On page 235, Keynes wrote: "By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on
the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose."
Government-sanctioned monetary theft by deception is being instituted on a scale the world has never seen. If the cause of inflation were understood by the people, then totalitarian, socialistic government would be unattainable. This ruthless theft is not an accident! President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated, "If it happens in politics you can bet that it did not happen by accident".
Through governmental control of education, the true meaning of inflation over the years has been mistaught. Erroneously, people define inflation as a “general rise in prices”. A “general rise in prices" is the result – not the cause- of inflation. Others “define” inflation as…

- labor unions pressuring higher wages

- oil/gas prices

- automobile price increases

- greed


Inflation: “Debt” by Design

As suggested above, through the effects of a hidden tax called "inflation" (i.e. massive increases in debt money), the American economy is intentionally being destroyed from within and its people are being forced into servitude.
“Leadership" of both political parties (democratic and republican) have stolen the wealth of their citizens. More and more officials are enjoying “engineered theft”, including presidents, senators and Congressional representatives, governors, and judges. Bankers (international or trans­national) and the leadership of the American Bar Association play the controlling and directing roles, staying mostly in background shadows under various levels of concealment.
From the shadows, they direct the more openly greedy operators like the rapacious debt collectors. All participate in confiscating the real wealth of the American people through "inflation" and debt.

Voting Debt and Inflation

Elected officials …

1) promise not to raise taxes (gaining office by your vote)

2) then vote to increase federal debt (gaining your wealth by their vote).

Federal debt redistributes your wealth into their pockets via taxation/inflation. Given the current definition of inflation, who even thinks to blame politicians and bankers as the cause of inflation? Real inflation creators lie among elected officials and bankers (using debt collectors as enforcement).
In 1967, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Banking System, understood inflation in his "Gold and Economic Freedom":
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept cheeks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. Gold is a protector of property rights. This accounts for the statists’ hatred toward the gold standard.
The money elite control governments by creating and controlling debt. The old proverb, “The borrower is slave to the lender”, still holds. The United States Corporate Government has spent itself into a democratic-socialistic system while the American people slept. (The United States became a “for-profit" federal corporation. See 28 USC §3002(15)(A) for definition of "United States" as a federal corporation.)
Inflation Finances Tyranny through Debt Theft
Influential political scientists supported the change in the definition of inflation to conceal corrupt activities. The only logical value for Keynes' views is Keynes' own explanation: By using this hidden tax called "inflation," "that not one man in a million can diagnose", governments and bankers (the current Administration is loaded with bankers) are able to secretly confiscate the people's wealth by devaluing people's assets (pension accounts, saving accounts, insurance payments) and decreasing the purchasing power of paychecks, stocks, bonds.
The bankers and their debt collector allies will keep plundering. Why not? Either Americans legally repudiate debt structure, including inflation, returning to honest money or America will live in tents, as the rapacious, privileged few gain power through the politico-economic “engineered deceit” called inflation

[TrueLight]

An excellent quick book on austrian economics

http://www.conciseguidetoeconomics.com/

[TrueLight]

Jobs, homes vanish but Wall Street back in black
GRAHAM BOWLEY
October 19, 2009

One of the most powerful forces behind the resurgence is not the banks, but the US Government, writes Graham Bowley.

EVEN as the US economy continues to struggle, much of Wall Street is minting money - and looking forward to a return to hefty bonuses.

Many Americans wonder how this can possibly be. How can some financial institutions be prospering so soon after a financial meltdown, even as legions of people worry about losing their jobs and their homes?

It may come as a surprise that one of the most powerful forces driving the resurgence on Wall Street is not the banks, but Washington. Many of the steps that policymakers took last year to stabilise the financial system - reducing interest rates to near zero, bolstering big banks with taxpayer money, guaranteeing billions of dollars of financial institutions' debts - helped set the stage for this new era of Wall Street wealth.

Titans like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are making fortunes in hot areas like trading stocks and bonds, rather than in the ho-hum business of lending money. They also are profiting by taking risks that weaker rivals are unable or unwilling to shoulder - a benefit of less competition following the failure of some investment companies last year.

So, even as big banks fight efforts in Congress to subject their industry to greater regulation - and to impose some restrictions on executive pay - Wall Street has Washington to thank in part for its latest bonanza.

''All of this is facilitated by the Federal Reserve and the Government, who really want financial institutions to get back to lending,'' said Gary Richardson, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

''But we have just shown them that they can have the most frightening things happen to them, and we will throw trillions of dollars to protect them. I have big concerns about that.''

Not all banks are doing so well. Giants like Citigroup and Bank of America, whose fortunes are tied to the ups-and-downs of ordinary consumers, are struggling to turn themselves around, as are many regional banks.

But the decline of certain institutions, along with the collapse of once-vital competitors like Lehman Brothers, has consolidated the nation's financial power in fewer hands. The strong are now able to wring more profits from the financial markets and charge higher fees for a wide range of banking services.

''They are able to charge more for all kinds of services because companies need banks and investment banks more now, and there are fewer strong ones to help them,'' said Douglas Elliott of the Brookings Institution.

A year after the crisis struck, many of the industry's behemoths - those institutions deemed too big to fail - are, in fact, getting bigger, not smaller. For many of them, it is business as usual. Over the past decade, the financial sector was the fastest-growing part of the US economy, with two-thirds of growth in gross domestic product attributable to incomes of workers in finance.

Now, the industry has new tools at its disposal, courtesy of the Government.

With interest rates so low, banks can borrow money cheaply and put those funds to work in lucrative ways, whether using the money to make loans to companies at higher rates, or to speculate in the markets.

Fixed-income trading - an area that includes bonds and currencies - has been particularly profitable.

''Robust trading results led the way,'' said Howard Chen, a banking analyst at Credit Suisse, describing the latest profits.

To prevent a catastrophic financial collapse that would have sent shock waves through the economy, the Government injected billions of dollars into banks. Some large institutions, like Goldman and Morgan, have since repaid their bail-out money. But most of the industry still enjoys other forms of Government support, which is helping to stoke profits.

Goldman Sachs and its perennial rival, Morgan Stanley, transformed themselves into old-fashioned bank holding companies. That switch gave them access to cheap funding from the Federal Reserve, which had been unavailable.

Those two banks and others, like JPMorgan, were also allowed to issue tens of billions of dollars of bonds that are guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

With the FDIC standing behind them, the banks could borrow on highly advantageous terms. While some have since issued bonds on their own, they nonetheless enjoy the benefits of their cheap financing.

NEW YORK TIMES

[TrueLight]

Working through Chinese currency conundrum
JOHN GARNAUT
October 19, 2009

Exports are cheap and the people bear the burden, writes John Garnaut.

THE weekend's world financial headlines were again dominated by the thorny question of whether China is or is not a currency manipulator.

A US Treasury report stopped short of answering ''yes'', opting for the less confrontational conclusion that the yuan is undervalued.

This should not be controversial.

The yuan is undervalued and it means China's exports are under-priced. This goes some way to explaining China's oversized trade and current account surpluses and the Anglo world's corresponding deficits, which still lie at the heart of the world's economic imbalances.

An undervalued Chinese currency doesn't help the rest of the world export its way out of recession, and nor does it help China. Tying up $US2.1 trillion in US Treasuries and other foreign paper - equivalent to half of China's GDP - is hardly the most productive way for a developing country to invest its savings.

But as the Australian Treasury has long understood, the fact that the US Treasury is right about China's undervalued currency doesn't bring the world any closer to solving the problem.

China is not about to float or substantially revalue its currency, especially as its huge, labour-intensive export sector has just been smashed by the global economic downturn. Nor will it throw open capital accounts when the global financial crisis has so eloquently demonstrated that free-flowing capital has a downside.

The challenge is to reframe the question in a way that defuses the confrontation and gives Chinese policymakers more political space to address the problem in ways that are easier to explain as being in China's best interests.

Huang Yiping, who recently left his job as Citigroup's chief Asia economist to focus on these global systemic questions at Peking University, suggests an alternative.

He notes that the currency is just one factor that makes Chinese exports cheaper than they should be.

While China's goods markets have been liberalised - prices of more than 95 per cent of products are determined by the market - the markets for inputs into the production process have not. "Factor markets, including markets for labor, capital, land, energy and the environment, remain highly distorted," writes Huang in a recent paper - ''Factor Market Distortion and Current Account Surplus in China''.

"Many employers of migrant workers still do not make social welfare contributions for their employees,'' Huang wrote. ''Outside the property sector, land prices are artificially determined by the Government. These distortions generally push factor prices and, therefore, production costs below levels otherwise would be in market environment. Cost distortions in China are equivalent to production and investment subsidies. They artificially increase production profits and raise investment returns. Both Chinese and foreigners invest massively in China, given cheap labor, cheap capital, cheap land and cheap energy. Producers enjoy extraordinary profits that do not exist in other countries.''

Half a century ago, gross distortions in China's factor markets led directly to a huge famine, in which more than 30 million peasants starved to death. The Chinese state tried to fund the development of an industrial and military machine (and also its bloated bureaucracy) by forcefully acquiring agricultural produce for less than market rates while simultaneously preventing peasants from leaving their villages to partake in more profitable activities elsewhere.

Famines are a thing of the past in China and the economic welfare of the country's citizens has improved beyond recognition. But the underlying urban-industrial bias remains.

The world is groaning under the flood of cheap Chinese imports and reliance on Chinese capital. But the burden is much greater for the vast majority of China's 1.3 billion citizens who subsidise Chinese production with unenforced labour standards, constrained investment choices, stolen peasant land, depleted national mineral resources and toxic land, water and skies.

China's central bank, its banking regulator, and apparently many of its top leaders understand that China needs to produce less ''goods'' and more ''services'' that people prefer to consume, while also giving them a greater share of national income to pay for them.

[TrueLight]

Ron Paul talking directly to Geithner in the House Financial Services Committee October 29th

Federal Reserve As Lender of Last Resort Contributes to Moral Hazard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-ELw3z0BY8

[sucky]

Free market= lulz

[Collin Li]

Free market= lulz

What was your Political Compass score?

[sucky]

Economic Left/Right: -6.80
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.95

[Collin Li]

Socialism = lulz

[Trent]

Socialism = lulz

This.

[periwinkle]

  Just been to an event at  Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think-tank, in Westminster
  http://www.adamsmith.org/
 
   Heard a speech from the Libertarian blogger The Devil's Kitchen
   http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/

  Spoke with the Devil and a few other people, including the director of the Institute, who scoffed at the fact that Economics majors these days are forced to do so much maths; he opined that economists with strong mathematical inclinations are often "unable to see the wood from the trees".

 And had about 7 glasses of freely provided wine
   
    that is all

 

[Collin Li]

  Just been to an event at  Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think-tank, in Westminster
  http://www.adamsmith.org/
 
   Heard a speech from the Libertarian blogger The Devil's Kitchen
   http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/

  Spoke with the Devil and a few other people, including the director of the Institute, who scoffed at the fact that Economics majors these days are forced to do so much maths; he opined that economists with strong mathematical inclinations are often "unable to see the wood from the trees".

 And had about 7 glasses of freely provided wine
   
    that is all

 

Jason Potts, from the Liberty and Society conference, argued that economists these days are taught to view the economy as an engineering problem (similar to what you mentioned about economics being too mathematical).

He states that this leads to biases such as "we can fix the economy by doing A, B and C", since we can just "solve" the economy (like you can with an engineering problem).

[TrueLight]

Ron Paul 4/11/09 at Financial Services Hearing

Systemic risk of the federal reserve and the nature of money and market place

Geithner admits the cause was, too low too long interest rates

the wrong signals coming from artificial low interest rates- capital-savings

cannot have healthy economy when dollar continues to lose value- if dollar is world reserve currency

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db1p_rRKEHM



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Ron Paul on FoxBusiness Nightly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj7vUTo-5_Y

"there's always an unintended consequence that they haven't anticipated, they don't see much past their nose."
"Mises, the great Austrian economist said everytime the government has an intervention in the market place for so called good reasons it creates two new problems"

and also on cap and trade- the biggest hoax?

[TrueLight]

Confronting the Myth of Deflation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLdztSq8KrQ




also Peter Schiff on Fox Business 9/11/09

"if people 10 years ago, if someone put 10000 dollars into gold, that's probably worth 40000 dollars today" - wo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncvSRcLvYpA

[AppleXY]

Crude Oil will most likely be hitting $120/barrel soon due to the new 'peak oil' news. The dollar's decline is inveitable though, I mean its basically increasing money supply to try and combat the crisis, leading to the depreciation of the USD and sudden spike in XAUUSD.