# Liberty Movement > Grassroots Central >  Honest Money Constitutional Amendment

## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Honest Money Constitutional Amendment

**Fiat monetary system and paper money inflation being some of the greatest enemies of liberty and prosperity of the people, legal tender laws are strictly forbidden.* 

*Since no individual can rightfully force his neighbor to transact or not to transact in certain medium of exchange, he cannot delegate such authority to his government. Also, free competition in currencies, by the force of Free Market, prevents the government from plundering the people through legalized counterfeiting and debasing of the currency.*

*Therefore: the government shall make no law establishing an exclusive form of currency that the people are forced to use in private transactions, neither shall it prevent operation of private currencies, mints, or free competition in currencies among private citizens, nor charge capital gain, sales, or any other taxes, duties or fees on the medium of exchange. The right of the people to transact among themselves in any currency they choose shall not be abridged.*

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Brief explanation of the benefits of this amendment:
Fiat (unbacked) "money" is the single greatest instrument of plunder ever invented by the mind of man. *
Free Competition in currencies kills fiat*, because fiat cannot exist without aggressive violence of government forced monopoly, which aggressive violence is the definition of evil, and is the opposite of justice and of Free Market. 

Again, fiat (unbacked) currency is nothing but an instrument of plunder of the people by the government, via legalized counterfeiting and inflation; therefore, Free Market, absent government coercion, will reject such a fraudulent currency, for the simple reason that no one likes being plundered!

So, *Free Competition in currencies slays fiat*, and with it welfare state and warfare state, because it makes it impossible for the government to rob and plunder the people, and steal their wealth through legalized counterfeiting and inflation. 

Thus, Free Competition in currencies binds the government down with the chains of sound money, making impossible government plunder via legalized counterfeiting, and therefore, making possible liberty and prosperity of the people.

Explanation:

Money rules the world, and he who rules the money rules the world. No law gives government more power than legal tender law, for it creates a government forced monopoly on counterfeiting; allowing politicians and the bankers who bought them to confiscate people's property through the most insidious and deceitful tax of all -- legalized counterfeiting and inflation.

This one amendment, if implemented, would end government fiat, because it cannot exist without coercion. And government fiat will be rejected in a free market of currencies in favor of a more honest and stable one, such as a 100% commodity based, interest free currency. As the result it would effectively end war-state and welfare state, for it would make it IMPOSSIBLE for the government to fund all these unconstitutional ventures through the evil and insidious robbery known as legalized counterfeiting and inflation.

This amendment does not force anyone to do anything, but on the contrary, frees people up, to allow competition in currencies, so the good money can crowd out the bad. Imagine, for instance gold or silver money, competing side by side with Federal Reserve Notes. People will soon notice that the purchasing power of their gold money is constantly increasing, while the purchasing power of unbacked paper money is constantly going down. It will have the appearance of prices going up when expressed in Federal Reserve Notes, and at the same time the prices on the same items expressed in gold or silver money going down! Which money do you think people will prefer to get paid in? That money which preserves and increases their purchasing power of course! When this happens people will begin rejecting Federal Reserve Notes in favor of a more sound 100% commodity based currency! Thus once government force is removed from the realm of money and free competition in currencies is allowed, fiat debt based money will end, because they will be rejected by the free market! You do not need legal tender laws to force people to accept good and honest money, but only bad and dishonest ones. The dirty little secret is that you only need legal tender laws if you are going into government forced counterfeiting business. That is the only reason for such laws.

The problems in our monetary system were created by introduction of improper government force into the realm of money, creating a government forced counterfeiting monopoly known as fiat; therefore the solution is to remove that improper government force, which would kill fiat, and allow Free Competition in Currencies, which will result in establishing of the most stable and honest monetary system known to man by the force of Free Market (most likely 100% commodity based monetary system like gold or silver), because no one likes being plundered. 

Money is just another product that is used as a medium of exchange.  And free market can perfect that product just as much as it can perfect a car, an iPod or a light bulb, much better than the government ever can. And if people are truly free, they should be able to choose any medium of exchange they wish, as long as they commit no fraud. 

To criticism that it would produce chaos:

Any manner of chaos is better than the forced, orderly plunder and confiscation of people's property through legalized counterfeiting and paper money inflation, that is the only alternative to this amendment. Of course, if gold and silver were the only tender used by the government (as Constitution demands) this problem would be largely alleviated, but the problem I see is that the government could (unconstitutionally) make government issued paper receipts for gold or silver to be legal tender, and then inflate the receipts. (This has actually happened in the early 1900's.) If a private bank did this and there was a run on the bank it would go bankrupt, but in case of government they will put taxpayers on the hook for this. (Hence was Roosevelt's forced confiscation of people's gold in 1930's to remedy such a run on banks, so people could not demand their gold anymore.) So it's better explicitly put government out of legal tender business all together. The free market can decide perfectly well what the medium of exchange should be.

To criticism that these provisions are already implied in the existing Constitution, we say true, (the authority to establish a legal tender,--an exclusive monopoly on the means of exchange,--is not granted in the Constitution, therefore it is denied under the 10th Amendment), but it was already subverted and ignored by the Congress for over a century, so we are adding stronger language in the form of an explicit amendment, so that the Congress may not easily subvert and overturn it again. It's all about persuasion in the end: the more clear, persuasive and explicit the law is, the more likely the people will uphold and obey it to preserve their liberty (the need amply demonstrated by the last 100 years).

Plus, allowing free competition in currencies is the most harmonious and the least disruptive way to restore an honest and sound monetary system. Let free market decide, or in other words, let the people decide. And then the most efficient and most stable monetary system will naturally emerge, which historically always has been gold and silver. Freedom and prosperity will win out in the end.

If these six words, "legal tender laws are strictly forbidden" were part of the Constitution, we would've had a very different country now!

Remember: Government forced Paper = Tyranny; Gold + Silver + Righteousness = Liberty.

This is the key of power right here. Paper money fraud is what empowers the government to step out of its Constitutional bounds and become a tyrant through counterfeiting and theft; and Gold makes all this for the government impossible, and binds this fraud down, keeping people free and prosperous.

The best way to restore such honest and stable, 100% commodity based monetary system, is to allow free competition in currencies which is the goal of this amendment.


Again:Paper = Tyranny
Gold + Silver + Righteousness = Freedom!
The choice is yours!


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This amendment is a part of 5 amendments that were designed to bring the Constitution into harmony with the Fundamental Principles of Liberty, without which Liberty cannot exist:

The Fundamental Law Constitutional AmendmentHonest Money Constitutional Amendment
Constitutional Amendment Abolishing Taxation
Nullification Constitutional Amendment
Constitutional Amendment: Abolishing Copyrights and Patents

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## DamianTV

As much as I really want to support this, I have to look at the actual definition of "Honest Money System", which yes, I have in my sig even, but I dont really have a clear statement of what it is.  What I do is to try to understand what an Honest Money System is not.

Reading through this, I dont believe that enough people would support the explanation.  The people that would not support it would be the same people that intend on abusing the current system to their own benefit, whether their actions contribute to the downfall of all of mankind, or just that person and their neighbor.  The scope and scale of the idea is beyond most self serving peoples ability to commit to.  The people that would vote against it are people that we are trying to free, because they are so "helplessly dependant on the system" that they cant imagine a world without the Matrix.  At the top of the list would be the anyone that is in a position to better themselves by manipulating the nature of money.  It starts off with big banks, and ends up with people that barely survive on Social Security.  But in the middle, you find Average Joe Schmoe that wants to buy a used car, but needs to take out a loan to acquire that car.  Unfortunately for Joe, he is probably so short sighted that he doesnt get that if the value of his money has not dropped by 95%, he could afford to buy a new car without a loan to begin with.  From Joe's perspective, he is trying to hold on to what little he has left, without turning the situation around.

So lets look at the statement really quick and break it down.  

Honest.  Pretty self explanitory.  I dont screw you over, and you dont screw me over.  I dont lie to you, you dont lie to me.  Neither of us tries to make an exchange where one ends up with more value than the exchange is made for, IE, we make an exchange of two things not of equal value.  For apples to apples, I sell you one shiny apple for one shiny apple, not one shiny apple for 1.5 apples, plus interest accrued.

Money.  Money is a representation of value, and that value comes from the Trust that people put into it.  The phrase may make more sense if we called it an "Honest Trust System".  Since money currently represents Debt, and not Value, we could call our broken system an "Honest Debt System, which we know it isnt, but an "Honest Value System" could also be used interchangably with the statement.  The thing that is important here is Debt vs Value.  Debt can be unlimited, and is a fictional concept, but Value is limited, and the money that represents that value needs to be limited proportionally.  Since Debt is unlimited, the value of the representation of that trust can be devauled infinitely.  So I do the intention of a Standard, be it Gold, Silver, or Pop Tarts.  But lets move on.

System.  A standard by which all methods can interact with all other methods.  Yeah, that isnt a very good definition, so I'll just kind of skip it because I am a retard and ride the short bus.

I think that as a long term goal, Honest Money System is an excellent idea, but we need to attack what makes our current system so broken.  To me, the most influential part of what makes our current system completely broken is Interest.  Even if we were on a Gold or Silver or Pop Tarts standard, the exchange of any form of currency plus interest causes the creation of more debt.  At least in a Debt based system.  Interest creates a constant need for more and more currency to be produced, and the banks will ALWAYS come out on top.

If we are to make the entire system honest, the entire practice of chaging interest should be prohibited.  Likewise, the idea that a person can accrue interest for putting money into a bank should also be forbidden.  Its how the banks got started to begin with.  If banks are to make money, they may charge a fee, but not interest.  I borrow a hundred dollars, and the fee is a flat rate.  Say 10%.  Not 10% per year, just a flat 10%.  I pay off said debt tomorrow, I owe $110 bucks.  I pay it off in 35 million years when Dinosaurs roam the earth again and eat candy called People Eggs, I still owe $110 bucks.  No interest.  But a flat fee should be the only point at which a bank is allowed profitability.

Next up, Fractional Reserve banking.  I go to a bank, they cant loan out money they dont have.  Period.  

After that, The US Treasury needs to be charged with the creation of the currency, and as the same with banks, it MUST be loan free.  Really, a clause in there expressly forbidding the charge or issuance of interest on the creation of that money, and it may not ever be handled by anyone else but the US Treasury Department.  Effectively get rid of the Federal Reserve, and make it 1000% compulsory that the Treasury is the only one that can generate currency.  And again, have that currency represent value, Gold, Silver, Pop Tarts, Platinum, etc.  

Actually, to take it a step further, I think Banking should be flat out prohibited, completely.  Banking should be the responsibility of a trustworthy government, as a Government Bank could operate without the need to generate a profit.  Fees could cover their operating costs, and not be intended to give any group of people a disproportionately larger ammt of influence over other people.  People have a need for banks, to have what represents the value of their earnings protected.  A governments greatest creative responsiblity is that of its currency, and to protect that currency and its value.  The result of that statement to me says that Banks should be operated solely by the government.

I also dont care for the clause about the competing currency, as it is too easy to create a form of fiat currency from competition.  Right now, I sure as hell wouldnt trust our government to handle any form of banking of any of my money, but that is because our current system is completely corrupt, and all our debt based currency is generated by a private bank.  

If I recall, Australia tried something like this, where they did kind of what I suggested, but I dont know that much about it.

All and all, I like what we are trying to do, but cant say my idea is perfect, but this one isnt perfect either, so lets refine it, until we make it as perfect as possible.  And even then, continue to try to be more perfect.  So Im not trying to totally knock the idea, but we need to look at what works and what doesnt.

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## Dr.3D

Seems it's already in the Constitution, it's just that they decided to violate it.




> *Constitution for the United States of America*
> *Article. I.*
> Section. 10. No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; *make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts*; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.


They just need to go back to following the Constitution.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> ... we need to look at what works and what doesnt.


DamianTV, thank you for your thoughtful reply.

The difference between your solution and mine is fundamental, and perhaps also philosophical.

You want to use government force. I want to use Freedom.

Let me explain:

Your solution violates a fundamental principle of liberty which I call “The Benson Principle” (Please see: http://ldsfreedomforum.com/viewtopic...9c3a5f5c541ba4)

The idea here, briefly summarized is that the government derives ALL of its legitimate authority from the governed by delegation. As the consequence, with regard to private property, the government cannot rightly do anything, but what you and I, as private individuals can do, and delegated to it. And we cannot delegate an authority we do not have. 

An example of this principle is: If I have no moral right to point a gun at my neighbor and force him to give money to “charity,” I cannot ask my government to do it for me, because the only authority it has is what I delegated to it, and I cannot delegate an authority I do not have.

In the realm of money: If I have no moral right to FORCE my neighbor to use or not to use something as a medium of exchange for goods and services, I cannot delegate that authority to my government, because I cannot delegate an authority I do not have.

This “Benson Principle” is one of the most fundamental principles of liberty, which solves many difficult problems in the philosophy of liberty; and liberty CANNOT exist without it; In fact if this principle is persisted in being violated, liberty must unavoidably perish!

The problem with money we now have came to be precisely through the violation of the Benson Principle. The problem was created by the introduction of government FORCE where it had no moral right of being. Then the solution is to remove this illegitimate government force!

My amendment does precisely that. It forbids government force where it has no legitimate right to be. This allows the operation of a truly free market in currencies. (If we have free market in cars or computers, why not currencies? After all, honest money is just another commodity that is used as the medium of exchange!)

Now watch this. You are concerned with interest attached to money creation. Well, Free Market in currencies slays both monsters: fiat, and interest attached to money creation. Why? Because government forced fiat CANNOT exist without government coercion (as Jefferson put it: “It is error that needs the support of government. Truth can stand alone.”) Also given freedom to freely transact in whatever the people choose (remember the Benson Principle), a most stable and honest monetary system will naturally arise (an honest monetary system is the one that best preserves one’s purchasing power over time), and that will be 100% commodity based, interest free monetary system, the most honest and the most stable monetary system known to man. Why interest free? Because that will be the choice of a truly free market (who likes being plundered anyway?) For instance, this mint is offering silver money for goods and services without any interest; and that mint is offering silver money for goods and services but WITH interest. Which do you think the people will choose? Exactly! Since money is just another good, like milk, concrete, or computers, competition and free market will perfect it just as well as any other product, if you remove government force where it has no moral right of being in the first place (remember the Benson Principle)!

So as you can see, Freedom works! In fact, it is the only thing that DOES work, nothing else ever will!

Did I convince you?

Let me know.

Thanks.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Seems it's already in the Constitution, it's just that they decided to violate it.
> 
> They just need to go back to following the Constitution.


Good point Dr.3D.

The only problem, it didnt work. So you will say: If they ignored the Constitution before, what makes you think they will not ignore your amendment even if you succeed in passing it?

Good question. The law is only as strong as the people who enforce it. The history taught us plainly, that it is the people who must defend the Constitution, because the government will not. The people cannot defend the Constitution if they do not understand it, or the reasons behind its various provisions. (In fact, I believe this is the greatest problem with the original Constitution, because it gave us certain procedures and rules without clearly explaining WHY they are important. And without the WHY the people are disempowered to defend it.) We are solving this problem by putting the WHY right into the Constitution itself, so it will be so much the harder to hide it from the people again. In the end, it is all about persuasion: The more clear, precise, explicit and persuasive the law is, the easier it is for the people to uphold and preserve it, to preserve their liberty.

I believe this amendment accomplishes that. (If it can be made better please show me, I will be glad to improve it).

Thanks. 

Also, the very debate and effort that goes into trying to pass it, will awake a lot of people to the truths and principles it contains! We win either way! Such is the nature of truth and liberty; they always triumph in the end, to tyrants eternal misery and shame!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Thanks to DamianTV and Dr.3D input, I added another paragraph to the amendment.

See if it can be made better still.

Thanks!

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## Zippyjuan

> Seems it's already in the Constitution, it's just that they decided to violate it.
> 
> 
> 
> They just need to go back to following the Constitution.


Some would point out (I guess I am) that that paragraph discusses states, not the national government. 



> Article. I.
> Section. 10. *No State shall* enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; *coin Money*; emit Bills of Credit; *make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts*; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.


The congressional portion is Section 8:



> Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
> 
> To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
> 
> To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
> 
> To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
> 
> *To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin*, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
> ...


To coin can mean simply the production of or it can refer to a metalic unit of currency. 
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coining



> 2coinvt 
> Definition of COIN
> 1a : to make (a coin) especially by stamping : mint b : to convert (metal) into coins 
> 2: create, invent <coin a phrase> 
> — coin·er\ˈkȯi-nər\ noun 
> — coin money 
> : to get rich quickly 
> Examples of COIN
> The coach coined the phrase “refuse to lose.”
> ...

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Some would point out (I guess I am) that that paragraph discusses states, not the national government. 
> 
> The congressional portion is Section 8:
> 
> To coin can mean simply the production of or it can refer to a metalic unit of currency. 
> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coining


The Constitution clearly forbids the States to use anything but gold and silver coin as money, and it lays the duty to coin money on the Congress (Article 1, Sections 8 and 10). What is the value of Congress creating money the states CANNOT use? Therefore gold and silver coin is the explicit requirement for the States, and implicit requirement for the Federal government.

As for word “coin”, I assure you that the word “print” was also found in the Founder’s dictionary, but was NOT used in the Constitution. They used the word “coin” because the States a forbidden to use anything but gold and silver coin.

That much is plainly obvious!

Furthermore, nowhere in the Constitution is the power granted to establish “legal tender” i.e. exclusive form of currency all are forced to accept in payment of debts. And under the 10th Amendment (which Jefferson called the key-stone of the Constitution) a power not expressly granted is FORBIDDEN to the Federal government!

Summary:Under US Constitution:

1)	States can use only gold and silver coin as money.
2)	Congress is charged with responsibility to coin gold and silver.
3)	Establishing “legal tender” i.e. exclusive form of currency all are forced to accept, is FORBIDDEN to the Federal government under the 10th Amendment.

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## DamianTV

I want to read your earlier post, but when I get more time to give it the attention it deserves.

The whole thing sounds like you want the gold standard, but briefly, gold can represent the same thing as paper fiat currency, depending on how it is used.  For example, here is a brick.  As long as you have this brick, you owe me half of your crops each and every season.  The brick itself doesnt multiply, it does get multiplied by the consumption of things of value, thus the brick can represent indefinite debt.  Returning to the gold standard itself is only Part of the Whole equation to return to an Honest Money System.  The other two legs of the tripod have to be Abolish The Federal Reserve and Prohibit Fractional Reserve Lending.  As a tripod, its pretty strong, but take out one of the legs and the whole thing falls.  The legs need to be protected.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> The whole thing sounds like you want the gold standard, but briefly, gold can represent the same thing as paper fiat currency, depending on how it is used. ... Returning to the gold standard itself is only Part of the Whole equation to return to an Honest Money System.  The other two legs of the tripod have to be Abolish The Federal Reserve and Prohibit Fractional Reserve Lending.  As a tripod, its pretty strong, but take out one of the legs and the whole thing falls.  The legs need to be protected.


I agree with you. 
a) I am for the gold standard.
b) I do want to abolish the Fed.
c) I deplore fractional reserve banking for the fraud it is.The only place where we differ is HOW we want to accomplish this. You want to use government force. I want to use Freedom. It was government force that cause the problems; and it will be the removal of that force, as per this amendment, that will solve it.

Both fiat, and interest attached to money creation will die by the hand of Free Market, because both will be rejected in favor of a 100% commodity based, interest free, monetary system,--the most honest and the most stable monetary system known to man! It will simply be the preference of a truly free market, (because who likes being plundered anyway?)

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## DamianTV

I dont want Govt Force, I want the Govt to be FORCED to do what it is expected to do, as was originally in the Constitution.  The Govt derives its power from the people, not the other way around, especially not today.  I dont know if we did things right from the very beginning, that things would not have turned out the same way.

One point I will debate with you on is the different or competing currencies.  This part I dont really intend to apply to the people, but to the states.  "...make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts"  So, my difference is more of a question.  Debts to WHOM?  The people?  Other States?  Other Countries?  Government Contrators?  Wal Mart?  Is there any exclusivity in here or is this equally applied to absolutely everyone?  How about foreign markets?  

Next problem is this: "To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin"  So an ounce of gold in the day was worth $20 bucks, or by today's standard and with gold now breaking $1300, would it be fair to say that the value of $20 bucks back in the day is now equal to the purchasing power of $1300+ today?  Introducing a competing currency is potentially a security hole, where if the decision was made by our government to set the value of a Foreign Currency to an unfair ammt, it creates a method by which the currency can be manipulated, and abused.  Lets just make some $#@! up.  An Apple is worth a Dollar.  In the Euro zone, an Apple is worth one Euro.  Then we get some greedy $#@! in office and he wants to exploit the "exchange rate" or the Value of Foreign Currency to be that One Dollar is worth 20 Euros.

Now I get that is where the Free Market comes into play, but the thing is, as most of us lean toward Libertarian ideals, we also pursue these ideas somewhat blindly and a certain degree of naivety, that people will actually be honest.  The thing is, they aren't.  Not always intentional, but there is too much trust in the Free Market not abusing the money system itself.  

Change of pace for two seconds.  We know that people are not honest.  You lock your car (lets just say, in case you dont) but locking your car does NOT keep thieves out.  It keeps Honest people Honest.  A thief is going to force what he wants out of you, one way or another.  You lock your car, he will break your window, you get an alarm, he finds a way to disable your alarm then will break your window, you get LowJack, he just takes your life to steal your car.  It ends up in a war of escalation.  The honest person, should they see that your window is completely rolled down and there is a hundred dollar bill MAY take just the money out of your car as it is an opportunity.  Its the same way as I get $#@!ed over by grandma and grandpa every day by them taking money out of my pocket for their Social Security, a system which I doubt anyone believes will still be around 30 years from now.  And for the most part, grandma and grandpa are honest people, but taking from me is theft via opportunity.

The Free Market can NOT be trusted.  The Government can NOT be trusted.  And both sides will look to exploit the Language of the Law to benefit themselves.  This is the same way the 4th Amendment has been abused, by exploiting the Language of the Law.  And it works both ways.  The 4th Amendment is referred to as our "Privacy" Amendment, although not explicitly stated, it is implied, but still the effect of being implied is an Explotation of the Language of the Law.  This worked to our advantage for many years, but now, everything has shifted, to be implied that we have "no reasonable expectation of privacy", which isnt just limited to the internet, but everything.  And I'm sorry but conducting lawful business, does not follow either the Letter or the Spirit of the Law, to imply that I should not have any reasonable expectation of privacy.  You want to know my name and I am not committing a crime?  Get a $#@!ing warrant.

The abuses of the 4th Amendment would be no different than from this Amendment.  Free Market would take my earlier example of the unfair exchange rate of $20 Euros to $1 Dollar, even though their values are equal, in terms of Apples, the "Free" Market would take One Dollar, go exchange it for $20 Euros, go purchase 20 Apples, come back and sell those Apples for $1 Dollar, and profit by $19 Dollars, an abuse of the exchange rate.  It doesnt matter who "Regulates the Value", either Govt, or Free Market, this would always be exploited by said party.

The entire thing needs to be $#@!ing Bullet Proof.  I mean Iron Clad, Non Repealable, Non Amendable, And have clauses in it that define attempts to make changes to the Amendment as Treason, a High Crime, but not a Misdemeanor.  As those two terms were not explicitly defined in the doctrines, the clause also needs to include the literal phrase " but not limited to..." to state that other crimes can be defined as Treason or a High Crime.  Yeah, its another tangent, but it needs to be looked at from the point of view of "how can I exploit this law" and you will see that what we have currently is not perfect, my ideas definitely arent perfect, so I do need peoples feedback to even get a basic rough idea, and no offense to say yours isnt perfect, so lets keep working and refine it to be Bullet Proof.

One of the things that we did get right was to separate the Branches of Government.  For an Honest Money System, we wouldnt need a 4th Branch, but the 3 Tier system created a stable balanced system.  The Honest Money System needs a Neutral Arbitrator.  "To Regulate the Value Of..." is a fist fight between the Government and Free Market.  A Balance might be achievable if Congress (which we know is so corrupt that I wont even bother to come up with a long winded euphamism to describe just exactly how corrupt it is) shouldnt be allowed solely to Regulate the Value.  To Regulate the Value of, I think the system needs to always contain the Neutral Arbitrator.  I dont know if this would work or not, but say Congress could set the value, which had to be approved by the Executive Branch, and Free Market Value is determined to be Fair and Just or not by the Judicial Branch.  Again just tossing around the idea so no clue if it would work, an adjustment of the value of the currency MUST BE UNANIMOUS.  The Judicial Branch is would be critical because our current politicans are the spend thrift Democrats, and we have a President that wants Congress to spend and spend without consequences of who is going to pay for it.  The Judicial Branch would not stand to gain or lose anything by a Yay or Nay ruling that an adjustment to "The Value Of" is Fair and Legal.  The 3 Tier System works OK (not great, just OK) for balance, I think it might work better than what we have, or maybe even had originally.  Then again, I also dont know of any instances in history where Congress attempted to change the value of the dollar until the introduction by any of the 3 Central Banks (The Federal Reserve was only one of Three) that we have had.  Then when we finally implemented the Federal Reserve, we just gave them the power to regulate the power of our money, which they have obviously done a bang up job at maintaining.

I do understand the concept that you want the power to be held by "We The People", but you have to understand our history better than what either of us probably currently perceive.  We do NOT have a Democracy.  We are NOT a Democracy.  We are a Republic, with traces of Democracy.  The founding fathers did everything they could to prevent us from having a Democracy.  When Benjamin Franklin was walking out from the Constitutional Congress, a woman asked him, "Sir, what have you given us?" to which he replied "A Republic Ma'am, if you can keep it."  The Federalist Papers state "... Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."  Thus, the Free Market and "We The People" can not be trusted with the valuation of the currency itself.

There is a reason that I believe you want the Free Market, ... oh screw it, PEOPLE to have the ability to have more control over their currency, but I digress that the end result will be exactly the same and what Jefferson had feared, "The Banks and Corporations that grow up around us will deprive the people of their prosperity until our children wake up homeless on the continent that their Forefathers conquered." and that reason is a method of recourse against government abuses.  I can not recall any time recently where when the people have requested a redress of their grievances, that the government has not acknowledged.  My current suggestion, which might just fall flat on its face, I dont know, provides for Government Accountability within the Government itself, but not to the people.  The people need a specific course of action against the Goverment for the Redress of their Grievances.

This is something I think Britain has that we dont.  A "Vote of No Confidence".  I believe that giving the ability this recourse, it should be applicable to both specific actions of the government, or against specific individuals.

Im actually getting pretty tired writing this and my thought process is definitely going south.  Have to wrap up quickly and leave this open ended.  Im not taking any offense to the Govt Force statement, but I do strongly believe it is their responsibility to maintain an Honest Money System, and will fight you tooth and nail to keep the money creation process out of the hands of the people, and thus, The BANKS.  Government is the servant of its people, and like fire, it is an unruly servant, and a fearful master.  Government cant be trusted either, and I have to keep tossing ideas around until we can solidify how to "not $#@! up the nature of money", then protect the hell out of it.

Trust no one, and write your laws like you are paranoid of both sides trying to leverage absolute control over your system, because you should be paranoid of both sides.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> The Free Market can NOT be trusted.


This clearly indicates that you do not understand what Free Market is. Free Market is a system where an individual is free to keep what he owns, and to trade and do with his property as he chooses, as long as he does not violate the property of others. It is the expression of individual liberty in a group setting. As Jefferson put it: "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others."  So, as you can see, truly Free Market cannot exist without protecting the rights of individual from force and fraud. And this is precisely the proper role of government!




> The Federalist Papers state "...  Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." Thus, the Free Market and "We The People" can not be trusted with the valuation of the currency itself.


Free Market is NOT a democracy! Free Market is a constitutional republic. In a democracy 51% of the population can rob and slaughter 49% percent. In a truly Free Market 99% cannot deprive one of his rights and property! Key difference. Do not confuse Democracy and Free Market! They are rather opposites of each-other!




> I .. will fight you tooth and nail to keep the money creation process out of the hands of the people, and thus, The BANKS.


Again, your understanding is the reverse of the reality (please, don’t take offence, I simply point out the error). It was nothing but the GOVERNMENT FORCE that handed the money creation monopoly into thee hands of the banksters! This monopoly CANNOT exist without the force of government. It happened because the banksters gained the control of government, and thus granted themselves the monopoly. Money is just a commodity used as a medium of exchange. To return the money creation into the hands of the people is to break government forced monopoly of money creation (counterfeiting) out of hands of the banksters. 

Again, honest money is just another commodity, just like milk, concrete, or computers. If you can issue milk, concrete, lumber, computers, gold, silver, or aluminum, you can issue money! Because money is just another commodity that is used as a medium of exchange.

The question at hand is that of individual liberty. If you believe in individual liberty, you must believe in Free Market, because it is nothing but the expression of individual liberty in the economy.

It was Free Market that perfected the car, computer, iPod and cheese cake, NOT the government. All that makes life wonderful and worth living comes from the free creative action of the individual, not from the government. So if Free Market worked so well in perfecting all the goods and services we enjoy, why can it not perfect the medium of exchange, which is just another commodity?

God gave man liberty, and truly Free Market is the expression of that liberty in economical setting.

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## DamianTV

Bump

Just because I havent posted means I disagree with your thoughts, or was offended or anything, its all good.  Just havent had a lot of time to think furter on the subject.  Working a $#@!ty schedule and Im totally sleep deprived.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Bump
> 
> Just because I havent posted means I disagree with your thoughts, or was offended or anything, its all good.  Just havent had a lot of time to think furter on the subject.  Working a *** schedule and Im totally sleep deprived.


Thanks, my friend, get some rest  What's life if you cannot enjoy it?

----------


## Seraphim

> I agree with you. 
> a) I am for the gold standard.
> b) I do want to abolish the Fed.
> c) I deplore fractional reserve banking for the fraud it is.The only place where we differ is HOW we want to accomplish this. You want to use government force. I want to use Freedom. It was government force that cause the problems; and it will be the removal of that force, as per this amendment, that will solve it.
> 
> Both fiat, and interest attached to money creation will die by the hand of Free Market, because both will be rejected in favor of a 100% commodity based, interest free, monetary system,--the most honest and the most stable monetary system known to man! It will simply be the preference of a truly free market, (because who likes being plundered anyway?)


I agree BUT point A)  is flawed:

The gold standard, while better then fiat standard..is still a legal tender standard dictated by GOVT and subject to the whims of a ruling elite.

Point A) in my opinion, should read FREE MARKET MONEY, definining money as a floating value commodity by which the market place at any time or another views as the most efficient means of exchange.

Do I believe that the market place will inevitably move towards precious metals as the basic foundation for monetary exchange?
YES. But enforcing it through legal tender laws is only a minute step forward from fiat legal tender. 

Additionally, GOVT should be forced to deal with gold, silver...but they should NOT have legal tender laws forcing them as the use of debt payment. That should be left to the contractual agreements signed by the private parties involved.

I'm sure I am leaving out potential problems etc...but I am just adding what I see to be essential tid bits if we are to move into an honest money system. To me, legal tender laws are counter productive if honest money is to be acheived.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I agree BUT point A)  is flawed:
> 
> The gold standard, while better then fiat standard..is still a legal tender standard dictated by GOVT and subject to the whims of a ruling elite.
> 
> Point A) in my opinion, should read FREE MARKET MONEY, definining money as a floating value commodity by which the market place at any time or another views as the most efficient means of exchange.
> 
> Do I believe that the market place will inevitably move towards precious metals as the basic foundation for monetary exchange?
> YES. But enforcing it through legal tender laws is only a minute step forward from fiat legal tender. 
> 
> ...


I completely agree with you! When I said I am for gold standard I meant that the government should be forced to deal in gold and silver only, not the people. So we agree completely.

Thanks for your post.

----------


## DamianTV

Kind of off the point but I stumbled on our old Quotable Quotes thread, and came across something of relevance:




> “We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin and issue money is a function of Government. We believe it. Those who are opposed to it tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank, and that the Government ought to get out of the banking business. I tell them that the issue of money is a function of Government, and that the banks ought to get out of the Government business... When we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, but until this is done, there is no other reform that can be accomplished.”
> 
> - William Jennings Bryan


I do not trust the Free Market with the creation nor valuation of Currency.

---

Still too tired to wrap my head around this whole thing again tho.

----------


## Seraphim

> Kind of off the point but I stumbled on our old Quotable Quotes thread, and came across something of relevance:
> 
> 
> 
> I do not trust the Free Market with the creation nor valuation of Currency.
> 
> ---
> 
> Still too tired to wrap my head around this whole thing again tho.


The market, which in reality always pushes towards freedom and subjective valuation already does this to the degree that it is "allowed".

Money is a commodity. Gold, oil, cotton etc are ALWAYS changing in value in relation to one another (supply/demand). The difference now is that the widely used median of exchange, also floating in value in relation to these commodities is a fascist paper empire designed to perpetually keep nations in debt. 

By removing the FORCEABLE implementation of this exchange median which distorts the value of other commodities and their utility (for example, gold) the market would be MUCH more efficient. Leaving money to "the free market" would make global trade EASIER and more efficient.

I surmise that removal of the fiat standard and subsequent legal tender laws worldwide would DRAMATICALLY reduce the number of medians of exchange. If history is an accurate yard stick in addition to the emerging  global trading trends, gold would still reign supreme.

Gold and silver emerged as the money for MILLENIA because of their incredible monetary utility. Without the liability of it being someone elses debt plus interest, markets such at 19th century USA and 16th century England who, through REVOLUTION, EARNED their free markets and reaped the (at the time) unparalled wealth explosion BECAUSE money was free market. The efficiency of trade and market adaptation were at levels hardly ever acheived for the population- the result being a freed productive capacity unlike anything before.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Brilliant Seraphim! Thank you.

As I said, honest money is just another commodity, so as government should not get into milk business, so it should not get into money business. It has no moral right to FORCE people to deal or not to deal in a medium of exchange, nor to punish or tax a medium of exchange that the people freely choose.

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## DamianTV

If you give people the choice between what is Easy and what is Right, the majority will choose what is Easy.

So uh, what happened in England after the 16th century that turned their monetary base into a fiat currency system?




> Brilliant Seraphim! Thank you.
> 
> As I said, honest money is just another commodity, so as government should not get into milk business, so it should not get into money business. It has no moral right to FORCE people to deal or not to deal in a medium of exchange, nor to punish or tax a medium of exchange that the people freely choose.


Based on that last quote I just had I dont think that Banks should be sticking their noses in Government Business, and the money creation process is the business of government, not banks.  Banks will always inevitably want to run out the money supply by over printing.  Thing is tho, that I definitely do not trust our current set of government croneys with the creation of money either, they'd print out the fiat currency as fast as the presses would allow it.  

Really, the more I think about it, I think we are just completely $#@!ed.  Its too far gone and I'm damn near at the end of my rope.  Hold on, the rope just got foreclosed on...

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> If you give people the choice between what is Easy and what is Right, the majority will choose what is Easy.


It is not “easy” to have your purchasing power stolen by the printing press.



> So uh, what happened in England after the 16th century that turned their monetary base into a fiat currency system?


Banksters got government forced monopoly on counterfeiting, and thus bankrupted England in under 100 years. After that they’ve done the same in US.  



> Based on that last quote I just had I dont think that Banks should be sticking their noses in Government Business,


True.



> and the money creation process is the business of government,


Wrong. I think it was a flaw in the original Constitution where the government was allowed to coin money. Anyhow, the Constitution never gave power to the government to FORCE people to transact or not to transact in a certain medium of exchange among themselves.
Again, money is nothing, but another commodity that people happened to use as a medium of exchange. Anyone who can issue aluminum, copper, sugar, milk, gold, silver or timber, should be able to issue money, because money is but another commodity!

----------


## DamianTV

When I had a bit if extra money (yeah, i know its really debt, but...) I used to play this online game called Ever Crack.  This game has its own economy, all digital, all fiat, but hey it was a game.  I tried to earn money by completing quests and found that it took way too long to ever be able to afford what any of the other players were demanding for their wares.  (Sell only system, no bidding or anything)  So I tried to follow suit, and hoped to be able to make some in game money by selling the stuff I got on doing quests at their retarded levels.  No one bought my wares, even though they were priced cheaper than anyone else on the Broker at the time.  The people I was trying to undercut then undercut their prices, and so did everyone else.  Eventually, the price of these not so high demand items were available by the thousands, and the price completely bottomed out.  Then I got this idea, since they were so cheap at the time, I could just buy out everyone who's price was less than what I would want to sell that item for.  Being that the items for sale had a price that couldnt go any lower, and although I didnt have a lot of in game currency, I could easily afford to buy everyone out.  And I did.  I turned right back around and jacked up the price by about a hundred times as cheap as it would go.  By comparison, in real world economics, I jacked up the price of my wares from one penny a pop, to a dollar, and the sweet spot was that since I had bought everyone out, I had no competition.  I couldnt set the price too high because people wouldnt buy, cant sell it too low, I wouldnt make any money.  And wow did it sell.  Selling at this new price with no competition, people were being forced to buy from me.  I was making money hand over fist.

After a while, I had enough money that I could afford to start getting into higher priced items.  Originally, the prices that I manipulated were on extremely common items that anyone that didnt want to pay my price could go outside their city, and spend ten minutes of work collecting for themselves.  With more money available now, I started getting into the price manipulation of less common items, that charged more.  They didnt sell quite as often, but when they did sell, it compensated for the time it took to sell.  It was quite easy.  All I had to do was to make sure I didnt have any competition anywhere in my price range by buying everyone out that was a competitor, and jack up the prices.  The more money I made, the higher priced stuff I was going after.  I made so much in game cash that I didnt know what to do with myself.  And all I was doing was logging in for about fifteen minutes a day, buying out my competitors, and jacking up the prices and cashing in.  I made more money than most people made in their entire character history by manipulating the system to work for me.

As one of the richest characters in my rather large guild, and at the time, no interest in selling what I was making to other players for real world money, I just threw in game cash at people who I thought could use it.  New players, guild members, etc.  I was bored with the game, but still logged in frequently enough for logging in every two or three days to result in nothing short of a couple of platinum pieces per day.

But those days were short lived.  When I got laid off, I had to cut back on all my unnecessary expenditures and had to cancel my account.  So that money is still in my characters account, it is just unavailable until I give sony more money to have access to it.  Not that it is actually worth anything.

If the way the Free Market is supposed to determine the value of currency and money in the real world, then I want absolutely nothing to do with it.  It is too easy for people in the right positions to manipulate.

----------


## Seraphim

> When I had a bit if extra money (yeah, i know its really debt, but...) I used to play this online game called Ever Crack.  This game has its own economy, all digital, all fiat, but hey it was a game.  I tried to earn money by completing quests and found that it took way too long to ever be able to afford what any of the other players were demanding for their wares.  (Sell only system, no bidding or anything)  So I tried to follow suit, and hoped to be able to make some in game money by selling the stuff I got on doing quests at their retarded levels.  No one bought my wares, even though they were priced cheaper than anyone else on the Broker at the time.  The people I was trying to undercut then undercut their prices, and so did everyone else.  Eventually, the price of these not so high demand items were available by the thousands, and the price completely bottomed out.  Then I got this idea, since they were so cheap at the time, I could just buy out everyone who's price was less than what I would want to sell that item for.  Being that the items for sale had a price that couldnt go any lower, and although I didnt have a lot of in game currency, I could easily afford to buy everyone out.  And I did.  I turned right back around and jacked up the price by about a hundred times as cheap as it would go.  By comparison, in real world economics, I jacked up the price of my wares from one penny a pop, to a dollar, and the sweet spot was that since I had bought everyone out, I had no competition.  I couldnt set the price too high because people wouldnt buy, cant sell it too low, I wouldnt make any money.  And wow did it sell.  Selling at this new price with no competition, people were being forced to buy from me.  I was making money hand over fist.
> 
> After a while, I had enough money that I could afford to start getting into higher priced items.  Originally, the prices that I manipulated were on extremely common items that anyone that didnt want to pay my price could go outside their city, and spend ten minutes of work collecting for themselves.  With more money available now, I started getting into the price manipulation of less common items, that charged more.  They didnt sell quite as often, but when they did sell, it compensated for the time it took to sell.  It was quite easy.  All I had to do was to make sure I didnt have any competition anywhere in my price range by buying everyone out that was a competitor, and jack up the prices.  The more money I made, the higher priced stuff I was going after.  I made so much in game cash that I didnt know what to do with myself.  And all I was doing was logging in for about fifteen minutes a day, buying out my competitors, and jacking up the prices and cashing in.  I made more money than most people made in their entire character history by manipulating the system to work for me.
> 
> As one of the richest characters in my rather large guild, and at the time, no interest in selling what I was making to other players for real world money, I just threw in game cash at people who I thought could use it.  New players, guild members, etc.  I was bored with the game, but still logged in frequently enough for logging in every two or three days to result in nothing short of a couple of platinum pieces per day.
> 
> But those days were short lived.  When I got laid off, I had to cut back on all my unnecessary expenditures and had to cancel my account.  So that money is still in my characters account, it is just unavailable until I give sony more money to have access to it.  Not that it is actually worth anything.
> 
> If the way the Free Market is supposed to determine the value of currency and money in the real world, then I want absolutely nothing to do with it.  It is too easy for people in the right positions to manipulate.



So you'd rather have say 1000 people dictate the value of money for the world (6.5 billion people) than 6.5 billion finding a market value?


Also...when you did this on the game...Did no one have access to other armour, weapons? Did you starve the economy of everything? Could people still function?

If you noticed that a certain commodity was undervalued and you bought up huge sums of it and made huge profits, what is wrong with that?

Life is not fair, it never will be. All we can do is set up the societal conditions that allow people to, through merit, hard work and intelligence make strides according to the demand of the market place. Some will start with a rich daddy, some a poor daddy. Boo hoo. If the market is free, it is exponentially more likely that the poor kid become rich through merit, then if the market is regulated and controlled...The regulators and controllers will always rig the game in their favor.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> If the way the Free Market is supposed to determine the value of currency and money in the real world, then I want absolutely nothing to do with it.  It is too easy for people in the right positions to manipulate.


If you remove government force, then if there is a shortage of an item, the price will go up and give people incentive to produce it more. Your rants against free market make no sense at all!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> So you'd rather have say 1000 people dictate the value of money for the world (6.5 billion people) than 6.5 billion finding a market value?
> 
> 
> Also...when you did this on the game...Did no one have access to other armour, weapons? Did you starve the economy of everything? Could people still function?
> 
> If you noticed that a certain commodity was undervalued and you bought up huge sums of it and made huge profits, what is wrong with that?
> 
> Life is not fair, it never will be. All we can do is set up the societal conditions that allow people to, through merit, hard work and intelligence make strides according to the demand of the market place. Some will start with a rich daddy, some a poor daddy. Boo hoo. If the market is free, it is exponentially more likely that the poor kid become rich through merit, then if the market is regulated and controlled...The regulators and controllers will always rig the game in their favor.


Exactly. Removing government force, from where it has no moral right of being, wrests the power and control from the scheming regulators, and gives it into the hands of the people via mechanism of free market where it belongs!

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## Seraphim

> If you remove government force, *then if there is a shortage of an item, the price will go up and give people incentive to produce it more.* Your rants against free market make no sense at all!


I must have had a brain dead moment. I forgot entirely about that point. Thank you. Yes, if something goes into short supply and prices skyrocket, smart money invests into producing that service/product to capitilize on the market shortage. The market wins because it gets more of what it needs, the entrepeneur wins because he is rewarded for providing what is needed.

----------


## wizardwatson

> As much as I really want to support this, I have to look at the actual definition of "Honest Money System", which yes, I have in my sig even, but I dont really have a clear statement of what it is.


People, including most in this movement, have very little idea what an "honest money system" is or means or how to participate in one.

If they did, they would simply start one.  A gold backed decentralized currency system could be implemented by people on this forum in days.  But no one is really interested in doing it because they want to see it working before they do it themselves.

Chicken/Egg problem.

People also don't seem to grasp around here why a tax on property is much more preferable to all parties involved than transaction based taxation (this is one thing I'd like to take Ron Paul on with, I'm curious about his position on the idea).

People around here seem to be overly anxious to talk theory but no one is talking how to put these theories to work.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I must have had a brain dead moment. I forgot entirely about that point. Thank you. Yes, if something goes into short supply and prices skyrocket, smart money invests into producing that service/product to capitilize on the market shortage. The market wins because it gets more of what it needs, the entrepeneur wins because he is rewarded for providing what is needed.


Exactly! Thanks.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> If they did, they would simply start one. A gold backed decentralized currency system could be implemented by people on this forum in days. But no one is really interested in doing it because they want to see it working before they do it themselves.


There are government laws that would charge you capital gain and sales taxes on gold every time it changes hands, which discourages people from using it. My amendment repeals this.




> People also don't seem to grasp around here why a tax on property is much more preferable to all parties involved than transaction based taxation


I believe property taxation is immoral as it violates some of the fundamental principles of liberty. Please see (*Taxation Constitutional Amendment* http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=252192)

----------


## Seraphim

> People, including most in this movement, have very little idea what an "honest money system" is or means or how to participate in one.
> 
> If they did, they would simply start one.  A gold backed decentralized currency system could be implemented by people on this forum in days.  But no one is really interested in doing it because they want to see it working before they do it themselves.
> 
> Chicken/Egg problem.
> 
> People also don't seem to grasp around here why a tax on property is much more preferable to all parties involved than transaction based taxation (this is one thing I'd like to take Ron Paul on with, I'm curious about his position on the idea).
> 
> People around here seem to be overly anxious to talk theory but no one is talking how to put these theories to work.


Don't be so sure of that, friend.



I for one do my very best to walk the walk.

I am gearing up for precisely what you just said. Perhaps my young age allows me to easier let go of the world that once was and grasp what is coming. But I will do my best to lead those that want to follow towards something of honesty and prosperity.

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## wizardwatson

> There are government laws that would charge you capital gain and sales taxes on gold every time it changes hands, which discourages people from using it. My amendment repeals this.


Just use www.ripplepay.com

Let's start the money system and worry about the laws later.  We don't need gold, we can use any real property.




> I believe property taxation is immoral as it violates some of the fundamental principles of liberty. Please see (*Taxation Constitutional Amendment* http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=252192)


So the fruits of my labor aren't property?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Just use www.ripplepay.com
> 
> Let's start the money system and worry about the laws later.  We don't need gold, we can use any real property.


Good point!




> So the fruits of my labor aren't property?


Of course they are! If you read the link, you would see that, income, sales and property taxes are immoral as they violate the Benson Principle. (Taxation Constitutional Amendment http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=252192)

----------


## wizardwatson

> Good point!
> 
> Of course they are! If you read the link, you would see that, income, sales and property taxes are immoral as they violate the Benson Principle. (Taxation Constitutional Amendment http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=252192)


Ok, read some of the thread.  I too think voluntary contributions should be the standard.  But how do we decide what to give?  Public property I assumed would be purchased from private people with money "volunteered".

A great idea, but how do we implement it?  How does each person decide what is "fair" or proper for him to give?  If we could solve this riddle, RPF'ers could model that "giving system" and start our own "pseudo government" for the advancement of liberty.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Ok, read some of the thread.  I too think voluntary contributions should be the standard.  But how do we decide what to give?  Public property I assumed would be purchased from private people with money "volunteered".


Some public property like highways, parks, the sea, do not need to be purchase from private people. They are already public. 




> A great idea, but how do we implement it?  How does each person decide what is "fair" or proper for him to give?  If we could solve this riddle, RPF'ers could model that "giving system" and start our own "pseudo government" for the advancement of liberty.


If you use the services of the court, it being public property, part of the expense could be paid by the offending party.

National Defense? That could be paid from public property user fees, and of course with voluntary contributions, especially in the times of war. People that are not willing to voluntary pay for their national defense deserve to be conquered!

What is "fair" in public property user fees can be decided by the voice of the people, as long as the law applies to all people equally, respecting their unalienable rights.

----------


## Seraphim

> Some public property like highways, parks, the sea, do not need to be purchase from private people. They are already public. 
> 
> If you use the services of the court, it being public property, part of the expense could be paid by the offending party.
> 
> *National Defense? That could be paid from public property user fees, and of course with voluntary contributions, especially in the times of war. People that are not willing to voluntary pay for their national defense deserve to be conquered*!


Perhaps, but a culture with ingrained gun rights and locally co-ordinated militias can certainly defend themselves...

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Perhaps, but a culture with ingrained gun rights and locally co-ordinated militias can certainly defend themselves...


Good point!

----------


## DamianTV

> People, including most in this movement, have very little idea what an "honest money system" is or means or how to participate in one.
> 
> If they did, they would simply start one.  A gold backed decentralized currency system could be implemented by people on this forum in days.  But no one is really interested in doing it because they want to see it working before they do it themselves.
> 
> Chicken/Egg problem.
> 
> People also don't seem to grasp around here why a tax on property is much more preferable to all parties involved than transaction based taxation (this is one thing I'd like to take Ron Paul on with, I'm curious about his position on the idea).
> 
> People around here seem to be overly anxious to talk theory but no one is talking how to put these theories to work.


/agree

One of the biggest reasons I want this so badly is that everything else is completely controlled or heavily influenced by money.  The concept of an Honest Money System is, in my book, absolutely #1 most important thing we can do to fix it.  No need for me to go into my limited knowledge of details of what we have currently and the fact that it doesnt work or why.

How about this.  Romans initially outlawed Interest on debt.  That wasn't in the Constitution.  Did the Romans have the right idea, or is prohibiting interest period not a part of an Honest Money System?

---

I'm not an economist, and I can't really come up with any good arguments for why the free market shouldn't be allowed to control the value of money, but that by no means says that I concede the debate, just that I know I am gonna get my ass kicked.

Why shouldnt the Free Market be allowed to determine the value of money?  I dont know.  Ask Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Washington, so on and so forth.  

And ya know what else?  When the free market didn't have control, and Congress did its job and stayed mostly within the limits of the Constitution in the powers granted to it, the stability of money while government was coining and issuing and regulating the value of, well that worked out pretty well for a hundred years.  Give it to the Free Market and you might just as well set up the charter for the next Central Bank yourself.  The value of the currency for about a hundred years (not counting the two other Central Banks we had and let their Charters expire) was the Foundation, and the Free Market based and regulated its value between everything else except the value of money and it worked out pretty well.  Everything went to hell when money manipulators did their magic of manipulating the money and calling other banks insolvent, hence a run on the banks, and that wouldnt have been a problem if the safekeeping of money itself was also a function of government.

I know you'll shoot that down in like two seconds, but I'll take a potshot at my own statement there as well.  The $#@!ers we have in office (I dont have a better word to describe them, all they want to do is $#@! everyone so I think the term used to describe them is perfect) would bend us over ten ways from Sunday, and bring some lubricant.  I dont trust maybe but a handful of people in office right now, and I sure as $#@! wouldnt trust them with their constitutionally appointed job functions.

My next massive dilema is the Transition.  How do we transition from what we have now to what would be agreed is an Honest Money System?

----------


## Seraphim

> /agree
> 
> One of the biggest reasons I want this so badly is that everything else is completely controlled or heavily influenced by money.  The concept of an Honest Money System is, in my book, absolutely #1 most important thing we can do to fix it.  No need for me to go into my limited knowledge of details of what we have currently and the fact that it doesnt work or why.
> 
> How about this.  Romans initially outlawed Interest on debt.  That wasn't in the Constitution.  Did the Romans have the right idea, or is prohibiting interest period not a part of an Honest Money System?
> 
> ---
> 
> I'm not an economist, and I can't really come up with any good arguments for why the free market shouldn't be allowed to control the value of money, but that by no means says that I concede the debate, just that I know I am gonna get my ass kicked.
> ...


I've thought this as well. But if GOVT is not the one granting the private monopoly on currency (as right now) this is largely not an issue. In the fre market, fiat debt based currency would likely exist. There is very little reason to outlaw it. It's quite simple, as a general rule of thumb, which will garner more support?...a silver 1 OZ coin which is not someone else's liability or a fiat note that is a debt instrument and subject to be paid to someone else at any time if they call the debt?

Additionally, I agree that as in th Constitution, GOVT should only deal with tangible money (Gold, silver for example) that is issued interest free. If a private bank (subject to the reward AND wrath of the free market) decided to issue notes or money as debt plus interest, so be it...they will not be that successful in the long run compared to tanglible debt free money.

As for the transition...pay your debts and BUY COMMODITIES.

For the first time since the Great Depression M3 money supply is CONTRACTING. This is, short term BAD. But if changing currency from debt based to money that is commoditiy based and free market, the system must be starved out.

This contraction in M3 is either going to lead to a world defining awakening/revolution or will allow the PTB to extract more wealth from the people and come back and convince the masses that we need socialism and GOVT run everything to save us all from "the greedy capitalist". 

This is an opportunity to be seized. As this get's worse and worse those of us with the knowledge to concisely explain WHY this is all happening will open a lot of people to the concept that our money is dishonest, fascist and the CORE of why this economic model is syphoning the wealth of the middle class back into the hands of the ruling class, keeping the poor down and reverting the economy back to serfdom on a mass scale.

If you pay your debts and put your remaining money into commodities you will be able to retain your hard earned money and be a driving engine of the transition.

----------


## Travlyr

> *Honest Money Constitutional Amendment*
> *Fiat monetary system and paper money inflation being some of the greatest enemies of liberty and prosperity of the people, legal tender laws are strictly forbidden. 
> 
> Since no individual can rightfully force his neighbor to transact or not to transact in certain medium of exchange, he cannot delegate such authority to his government. 
> 
> Therefore, the government shall make no law establishing an exclusive form of currency that the people are forced to use in private transactions, neither shall it prevent free competition in currencies among private citizens, nor charge capital gain and sales taxes on the medium of exchange. The right of the people to transact among themselves in any currency they choose shall not be abridged.
> *
> 
> 
> ...


Is this being officially proposed?  It is an excellent and thorough proposal and explanation. 

If implemented, then the economic prosperity created by the free markets would be as prosperous, and fun, as the Internet is today.  The Internet is awesome because it is "_caveat emptor._"  Hopefully, someday enough people will wake up to the beauty of laissez-faire free markets for all.  An amendment like this could do it.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Is this being officially proposed?  It is an excellent and thorough proposal and explanation. 
> 
> If implemented, then the economic prosperity created by the free markets would be as prosperous, and fun, as the Internet is today.  The Internet is awesome because it is "_caveat emptor._"  Hopefully, someday enough people will wake up to the beauty of laissez-faire free markets for all.  An amendment like this could do it.


Thank you! I wholeheartedly agree with you! Would you like to officially propose it?

Thanks again!

----------


## Travlyr

> Would you like to officially propose it?


I would be interested in seeing how much support we could get from the people here on RPF.  Maybe we could set-up a poll, get a idea of the amount of support we might get, and acquire feedback?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I would be interested in seeing how much support we could get from the people here on RPF.  Maybe we could set-up a poll, get a idea of the amount of support we might get, and acquire feedback?


That is awesome! Do you know how to do it?

Thank you!

----------


## DamianTV

> I've thought this as well. But if GOVT is not the one granting the private monopoly on currency (as right now) this is largely not an issue. In the fre market, fiat debt based currency would likely exist. There is very little reason to outlaw it. It's quite simple, as a general rule of thumb, which will garner more support?...a silver 1 OZ coin which is not someone else's liability or a fiat note that is a debt instrument and subject to be paid to someone else at any time if they call the debt?
> 
> Additionally, I agree that as in th Constitution, GOVT should only deal with tangible money (Gold, silver for example) that is issued interest free. If a private bank (subject to the reward AND wrath of the free market) decided to issue notes or money as debt plus interest, so be it...they will not be that successful in the long run compared to tanglible debt free money.
> 
> As for the transition...pay your debts and BUY COMMODITIES.
> 
> For the first time since the Great Depression M3 money supply is CONTRACTING. This is, short term BAD. But if changing currency from debt based to money that is commoditiy based and free market, the system must be starved out.
> 
> This contraction in M3 is either going to lead to a world defining awakening/revolution or will allow the PTB to extract more wealth from the people and come back and convince the masses that we need socialism and GOVT run everything to save us all from "the greedy capitalist". 
> ...


If the Free Market were to issue nothing BUT fiat based debt currency, that system would collapse under its own weight faster than the one we have right now, that seriously should be a no brainer.  

That is the exact thing I do not want to have is for the people to have the power to regulate the power of whatever currency they decide to use.  The people should have the ability to use whatever the $#@! they want as a form of currency, but the Govt should be restricted, just as it was before, to issuing no bills of credit (*cough* California IOU's) and only certain forms of payment.  Gold, Silver, or cheezeburgers, it doesnt matter to me, as long as it is not an issuance of debt.

If you give the people the power to control the issue of the currency, they will either get manipulated to the same end that we are now experiencing, or they will TRY to vote themselves to increase the value of the money for their own personal gain at the expense of everyone else, and run the public coffers dry.

Issuance of money and regulating its value does not belong in the hands of either the banks, or the people, via setting its value in the Free Market.  It needs to be issued by the only entity that can issue currency without interest and without the hidden tax of inflation, and that power must belong to the Government.  The value of the currency must be the foundation for all other values to be based on.  If the value of the currency is shaky, then we will quickly find that two people trading apples to apples will disagree on how much each apple is worth in exchange for another apple.  Money needs to have a rock solid foundation, and to put the power to regulate its value in the hands of the people will rock the boat until it capsizes.

If we want to start a poll, that would be a good one.  Now, even though its all over my sig and I spam the forums on occasion, just so people read "Honest Money System" somewhere, I do not claim it is my idea, I am just a big supporter, and really, honestly believe, that every forum member should make this the first priority and the first step towards restoring the republic.  Honest Money System should be the hottest topic among forum members.  So, /tangent, I'll let someone else start that poll.

Should the people have the power to regulate the value of currency as a commodity in a Free Market?  Yes / No

----------


## Travlyr

> If you give the people the power to control the issue of the currency, they will either get manipulated to the same end that we are now experiencing, or they will TRY to vote themselves to increase the value of the money for their own personal gain at the expense of everyone else, and run the public coffers dry.


I don't see what you mean here.  If the people have the power to control the issue of the currency, then that would be in the form of gold, silver, copper, paper IOU, contracts, coffee, wheat, automobile or whatever else they value.  I could raise peppers in my back yard and sell them for whatever currency I wanted at that moment.  How can this be manipulation?  How would I be able to vote a different value for my money?




> Issuance of money and regulating its value does not belong in the hands of either the banks, or the people, via setting its value in the Free Market.  It needs to be issued by the only entity that can issue currency without interest and without the hidden tax of inflation, and *that power must belong to the Government*.  The value of the currency must be the foundation for all other values to be based on.  If the value of the currency is shaky, then we will quickly find that two people trading apples to apples will disagree on how much each apple is worth in exchange for another apple.  Money needs to have a rock solid foundation, and to put the power to regulate its value in the hands of the people will rock the boat until it capsizes.


The government only operates through force.  You are advocating that someone put a gun to your head to force you to accept whatever currency the government determines is best.  How is that better than what we now have?




> If we want to start a poll, that would be a good one.  Now, even though its all over my sig and I spam the forums on occasion, just so people read "Honest Money System" somewhere, I do not claim it is my idea, I am just a big supporter, and really, honestly believe, that every forum member should make this the first priority and the first step towards restoring the republic.  Honest Money System should be the hottest topic among forum members.  So, /tangent, I'll let someone else start that poll.
> 
> Should the people have the power to regulate the value of currency as a commodity in a Free Market?  Yes / No


The question should read: Should currency be allowed to operate under free market conditions?  Yes/No

----------


## Seraphim

Damian:

Yes if all currency were fiat issued as debt it would collapse. That is exactly why that is not what would occur.

I think you are mistakenly believing that free market money would be very unstable. I would argue that it would be MUCH more stable.

You want the GOVT to regulate the value of money? Have you not looked at GOVT money throughout the last 300 years...? In USA for the last 100 years...?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> If the Free Market were to issue nothing BUT fiat based debt currency, that system would collapse under its own weight faster than the one we have right now, that seriously should be a no brainer.


If all Free Market car manufacturers started building paper cars the whole transportation system would collapse! O wait, why are they not making paper cars? O, right, because they are not as good as metal cars.

This is the whole point, truly free market will not issue fiat, debt based currency because people will reject it in favor of much more stable and honest currency, currency which would preserve their purchasing power! Who likes being plundered anyway?

You seriously misunderstand what free market is and how it operates!



> That is the exact thing I do not want to have is for the people to have the power to regulate the power of whatever currency they decide to use. The people should have the ability to use whatever the *** they want as a form of currency,


You contradict yourself, my friend, If people are free to use anything they wish as currency free from persecution and taxation of the medium of exchange by the government, then Free Market, or in other words the People will determine the value of the medium of exchange. 
Just like the value of cars, cell phones, or any other commodity is determined by the Free Market, absent of government force. Money is just another commodity; it is that simple! If you do not want the government to bring “stability”(=force) into iPod, or cucumbers market, because it will destroy that market, as demonstrated by many years of socialism say in Russia, you do not want the government to bring “stability”(=force and coercions) into the currency market, because currency is EXACTLY just like any other commodity, except it happened to be used as a medium of exchange.



> but the Govt should be restricted, just as it was before, to issuing no bills of credit (*cough* California IOU's) and only certain forms of payment. Gold, Silver, or cheezeburgers, it doesnt matter to me, as long as it is not an issuance of debt.


There I would agree with you. But honestly I’d prefer the government would get out of money business all together, except perhaps ONCE decree that a “dollar” is x ounces of gold. That’s it.
But if government permitted to COIN money, as under the Constitution, it must be only gold and silver.
But free market can coin money better than government can! And they should be free to do so to check the machinations of the government by the competition provided by unfettered Free Market.



> If you give the people the power to control the issue of the currency, they will either get manipulated to the same end that we are now experiencing, or they will TRY to vote themselves to increase the value of the money for their own personal gain at the expense of everyone else, and run the public coffers dry.


Can the people manipulate the value of cars, iPods, and vegetables? Only inasmuch as Free Market demand will allow. And that is just. If you can arbitrary change the value of your car just by you saying so, then you should be worried about people arbitrary changing the value of Free Market money! It’s just another commodity! That’s all!
When you say they will VOTE themselves to increase the value of the money, you are talking about government FORCE, which this amendment FORBIDS. As people cannot vote on private property, and as they cannot vote the price of turnips or of cars or of iPods, so they cannot vote the value of money, which is simply a commodity that is used as the medium of exchange. 



> Issuance of money and regulating its value does not belong in the hands of either the banks, or the people, via setting its value in the Free Market. It needs to be issued by the only entity that can issue currency without interest and without the hidden tax of inflation, and that power must belong to the Government.


You still do not understand what money is. If you did, you would see the utter ridiculousness of your statement, for it would be equivalent to saying: “Making cars and regulating their value does not belong in the hands of either car dealers or the people, via setting its value in the Free Market. Cars need to be made by the only entity that can make cars without interest of without hidden tax of overproducing them, and that power belongs to the Government.” Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? But that is what in reality you are saying, because money is just another commodity; that’s all; and you do not understand that.



> If the value of the currency is shaky, then we will quickly find that two people trading apples to apples will disagree on how much each apple is worth in exchange for another apple.


People have resolve trading apples to apples, or even apples to oranges quite successfully for thousands of years, and that without government force. In fact the freely fluctuating price system of a truly free market is the very thing that makes Free Market work. Because fluctuating price tells the producers when to produce more, or when to produce less, and what products are needed by the consumers. It is the fluctuating price that is the incentive to improve and maintain the quality of the product as well. Freely fluctuating price, free of government force, is not the problem, it is the solution!




> Money needs to have a rock solid foundation, and to put the power to regulate its value in the hands of the people will rock the boat until it capsizes.


Putting this power in the hands of the People via the mechanism of Free Market is much safer place than the governments. If anything, history teaches that with a voice of thunder. What government issued currency is there whose value has not been run into the ground by the government who issued it through legalized counterfeiting and inflation? None! Have you seen gold or silver or any other widely used commodity lose 97% of its value? No! 

Free Market can perfect the medium of exchange much better than the government. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you enjoy a government made iPod, it would probably weigh a ton, and a government maid electronic watch, it would probably be the size of a man-hole cover!



> Honest Money System should be the hottest topic among forum members.


I agree with you there!

----------


## DamianTV

Just so we dont get in a quote war (not taking any of this personally so no sweat), I need to point out one of the biggest reasons I "think" putting control of the value of the money in the hands of the people is because I dont "think" that is what we had before.

What was wrong with anything prior to 1913?  And was that a Free Market controlled currency?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Just so we dont get in a quote war (not taking any of this personally so no sweat), I need to point out one of the biggest reasons I "think" putting control of the value of the money in the hands of the people is because I dont "think" that is what we had before.
> 
> What was wrong with anything prior to 1913?  And was that a Free Market controlled currency?


Prior to 1913 we had more of a free market in currencies, but fractional reserve fraud was rampant in some banks, causing some panics. If the rule of law was allowed to take its course the conniving banksters would have gone to jail,  and a more honest 100% commodity backed monetary system would have prevailed. But the banksters got control of the government and interfered with free market by using government force to institute a legal tender and later to confiscate people's gold.

The amendment I am proposing will explicitly and permanently remove government force from the realm of money, because honest monetary system does not need government force to hoist it upon the people, but only a dishonest one.

----------


## DamianTV

/off topic

You know what is really getting me right now?  Why there aren't more people posting at all in this thread...

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Here is the Poll on the subject:

*Free Competition in Currencies Poll*
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=264840

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Tweaked it again to add "any other taxes" to the prohibition. You know how they like inventing new taxes, this makes it air-tight.

----------


## Seraphim

This thread goes well with BUY AN OUNCE OF SILVER AND CRASH JP MORGAN.

We must realize that in order to crash the central planned GOVT endowed oligopolies we MUST be the free market we strive for. We CAN crash them through educated and systematic behaviour.

_People do not forget,_ fiat currency is dependant on CONFIDENCE. Ruin the CONFIDENCE and the game folds like the paper empire it is. 

Be the free market money you want.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> This thread goes well with BUY AN OUNCE OF SILVER AND CRASH JP MORGAN.
> 
> We must realize that in order to crash the central planned GOVT endowed oligopolies we MUST be the free market we strive for. We CAN crash them through educated and systematic behaviour.
> 
> _People do not forget,_ fiat currency is dependant on CONFIDENCE. Ruin the CONFIDENCE and the game folds like the paper empire it is. 
> 
> Be the free market money you want.


I am pretty sure JPM will crash on its own. The Fed will self-destruct through its destruction of the dollar. 

When this happens, actually, before this happens, we need to present to the people true, sound money alternatives.

The value in debating and passing amendments such as this, is to educate the people of the true economic principles of liberty and prosperity.

----------


## Seraphim

> I am pretty sure JPM will crash on its own. The Fed will self-destruct through its destruction of the dollar. 
> 
> When this happens, actually, before this happens, we need to present to the people true, sound money alternatives.
> 
> The value in debating and passing amendments such as this, is to educate the people of the true economic principles of liberty and prosperity.


Agreed. The problem is that when the USD crashes it will be used to usher in a one world currency that is...FIAT.

The Federal Reserve will become The Global Reserve.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Agreed. The problem is that when the USD crashes it will be used to usher in a one world currency that is...FIAT.
> 
> The Federal Reserve will become The Global Reserve.


True. Hence the urgent need to educate ourselves and our neighbors!

----------


## Travlyr

> Agreed. The problem is that when the USD crashes it will be used to usher in a one world currency that is...FIAT.
> 
> The Federal Reserve will become The Global Reserve.


I'm opting out of The Global Reserve's Bancor unless it is 100% backed by something of value.  Opting out, I'm telling ya... OPTING OUT!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

I added a poll at the top of this thread. Please vote!

Thanks.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul Competing Currencies Can 'End the Fed' Softly

----------


## Travlyr

This is the single most important battle we must win to enjoy liberty. Honest Sound Money. Honest dealings shouldn't be so hard to do.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> This is the single most important battle we must win to enjoy liberty. Honest Sound Money. Honest dealings shouldn't be so hard to do.


Amen. Next to the righteousness of the people, this is the most important issue pertaining to Liberty!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

I just made the wording stronger by adding this phrase:
*"neither shall it prevent operation of private currencies, mints, or free competition in currencies among private citizens,"*

Please see it at the top of this thread.

Thanks.

----------


## Travlyr

Would it be possible to get this amendment passed? It would solve most of societies ills.




> *Article. V.*
> 
>     The  Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall  propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the  Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for  proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and  Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of  three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths  thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the  Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made  prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner  affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article;  _and that no State, without its Consent, shall be  deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate_ [Possibly abrogated by Amendment XVII].

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Would it be possible to get this amendment passed? It would solve most of societies ills.


Are you talking about "Honest Money Constitutional Amendment"? If yes, I am all for it!

----------


## Travlyr

Yes, the "Honest Money Constitutional Amendment." How would we get started?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Yes, the "Honest Money Constitutional Amendment." How would we get started?


In my view we would:
1) Educate ourselves on the benefits of such an amendment, and understand them thoroughly (including the reasons why these benefits would exist).
2) Contact our State legislatures and propose state house resolutions in the support of this amendment.
3) Begin a signature gathering initiative in the support of the amendment to be presented to State and Federal Legislative representatives.
4) Contact US Congresspersons with a grassroots campaign, and State House resolutions to support the amendment.
5) Educate our friends and neighbors as much as possible of the imperative and key benefits of such an amendment.
6) Vote and elect only the people who would commit to supporting this amendment. That would be a start.

----------


## Travlyr

Count me in.  If anyone else is interested in helping, please let us know. If there is anyone with recommended changes, please let us know.

----------


## muzzled dogg

No need for an amendment to the us constitution, ESPECIALLY via article 5 convention. Absolute must for the states tho

----------


## Travlyr

> No need for an amendment to the us constitution, ESPECIALLY via article 5 convention. Absolute must for the states tho


 Please explain.

----------


## muzzled dogg

Which part?

----------


## Travlyr

Why do you say no need to amend the U.S. Constitution using the amendment process?

----------


## muzzled dogg

The groundwork is in place for the Federal government to be using sound money.  As you know, congress has unconstitutionally delegated authority to the federal reserve to print fiat. Imo, you have a better chance repealing the federal reserve act than amending the constitution, but either is a lost cause. I think we'd have a better chance of passing legislation at the state level to phase out the frn

----------


## Travlyr

Thanks for your input.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Count me in.  If anyone else is interested in helping, please let us know. If there is anyone with recommended changes, please let us know.


Thank you, and yes, if you can improve this, I will be grateful.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> No need for an amendment to the us constitution, ESPECIALLY via article 5 convention. Absolute must for the states tho


I agree that article V Constitutional Convention is very dangerous! Please see:




However, an amendment can be passed without a convention. This is the way most of the amendments to US Constitution have been passed, by two thirds of the States ratifying an amendment.

Now, as for there being no need for an amendment, I would disagree. There is a flaw in the Constitution, even though it does lay the frame work for sound money, it fails to explain why it is important. This is the case with most of the provisions of the Constitution: the reason WHY certain things are done are missing. This is especially deadly in the case of such a key provision as sound money. The power is in the WHY. Why? Because it is the people, who must defend the Constitution, because the government will not. And if people do not know WHY certain provisions are made in the Constitution, they are dis-empowered to defend it! It is *ALL* about persuasion in the end. The more direct, explicit and persuasive the law is, the more people are empowered to defend that law to preserve their liberty. 

This amendment delivers the WHY, as well as explicitly states certain key points that were only implied previously. 

If persuasion and directness is power, which it is, then the Constitution can and must be made stronger, so the people will be more empowered to defend it.

Yes we must work on the State level, but we can also work on the Federal level as well. Let's attack this unconstitutional monster from EVERY side, and kill it! The more the merrier, I say!

Besides, think of the education and awakening, that a debate about such an excellent amendment, an amendment true to the core, fundamental principles of liberty will spark! You win either way! I see only good coming from such an effort, therefore I urge you to support it.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

In lieu of the importance of the WHY, I added another sentence:

*"Also, free competition in currencies, by the force of Free Market, checks the government from debasing a currency."*

----------


## Travlyr

Here are a couple of thoughts, a suggested change and additions to consider. 

Honest Money Constitutional Amendment

Fiat  monetary system and paper unnatural money inflation being some of the greatest  enemies of liberty and prosperity of the people, legal tender laws are  strictly forbidden. 

Since no individual can rightfully force his neighbor to transact or not  to transact in certain medium of exchange, he cannot delegate such  authority to his government. Also, free competition in currencies, by  the force of Free Market, checks the government from debasing a  currency.

Therefore: the government shall make no law establishing an exclusive  form of currency that the people are forced to use in private  transactions, neither shall it prevent operation of private currencies,  mints, or free competition in currencies among private citizens, *nor  charge capital gain, sales,* *add:[fees, duties, costs,]** or any other taxes on the medium of  exchange.* The right of the people to transact among themselves in any  currency they choose shall not be abridged.
*
*

Or perhaps rewrite the entire sentence in bold as: *nor  impose any costs whatsoever on the medium of  exchange**.*

  Also, attaching definitions of critical words is important to make the amendment timeless.*
*

----------


## muzzled dogg

@ Foundation_Of_Liberty

I suppose id need to see the specific legislation associated with your non-article V constitutional amendment but 
1) why are you going to amend a document that congress already ignores? 

1a) In trying to do so, you're probably going to fail for reasons we both know: US congress men and women stand to profit from a fiat currency they can spend to their hearts delight, etc.

1a 1) Upon failure at the federal level to ratify their new constitutional amendment, we can expect tea-ocons and new people waking up to liberty to pursue an article V convention with their state governments. You are aware of the potential perils of such a convention.

2) Let us try to pass sound money legislation at the state level adhering to the federal constitution. I've seen some great ideas on how this could work. Please read Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr. If the proper legislation is passed in a single state then I am confident it will be adopted by the rest of the states.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Here are a couple of thoughts, a suggested change and additions to consider. 
> 
> Honest Money Constitutional Amendment
> 
> Fiat  monetary system and paper unnatural money inflation being some of the greatest  enemies of liberty and prosperity of the people, legal tender laws are  strictly forbidden. 
> 
> Since no individual can rightfully force his neighbor to transact or not  to transact in certain medium of exchange, he cannot delegate such  authority to his government. Also, free competition in currencies, by  the force of Free Market, checks the government from debasing a  currency.
> 
> Therefore: the government shall make no law establishing an exclusive  form of currency that the people are forced to use in private  transactions, neither shall it prevent operation of private currencies,  mints, or free competition in currencies among private citizens, *nor  charge capital gain, sales,* *add:[fees, duties, costs,]** or any other taxes on the medium of  exchange.* The right of the people to transact among themselves in any  currency they choose shall not be abridged.
> ...


I like that "fees, duties, costs." My only concern if the sentence becomes less comprehensible:

*Therefore: the government shall make no law establishing an exclusive  form of currency that the people are forced to use in private  transactions, neither shall it prevent operation of private currencies,  mints, or free competition in currencies among private citizens, nor  charge capital gain, sales, fees, duties, costs, or any other taxes on the medium of  exchange.*

What do you think?

As for "unnatural money inflation," what does that mean?

"attaching definitions of critical words is important to make the amendment timeless" I like that! How do you do that? Suggestions? 

Thanks.

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## Travlyr

> I like that "fees, duties, costs." My only concern if the sentence becomes less comprehensible:


That is my concern as well.




> *Therefore: the government shall make no law establishing an exclusive  form of currency that the people are forced to use in private  transactions, neither shall it prevent operation of private currencies,  mints, or free competition in currencies among private citizens, nor  charge capital gain, sales, fees, duties, costs, or any other taxes on the medium of  exchange.*
> 
> What do you think?


Whatever it takes so that it is not ambiguous. 




> As for "unnatural money inflation," what does that mean?


Anything that is not natural. Finding more gold, silver, or other commodity is a natural process. While paper monetary inflation is not the same as electronic account monetary inflation and is directed by the hand of man, not nature. Just brainstorming to make it as clear as possible.




> "attaching definitions of critical words is important to make the amendment timeless" I like that! How do you do that? Suggestions? 
> 
> Thanks.


Footnotes attached?

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I suppose id need to see the specific legislation associated with your non-article V constitutional amendment but


Most of the amendments now in the Constitution were put there WITHOUT a convention. That is the route I'd like to go.




> 1) why are you going to amend a document that congress already ignores?


It is much harder to ignore a more explicit document, that provides strong reasons WHY certain provisions are made. It took Congress and banksters many generations to erode collective memory of the people as to why sound money is important. If an explicit explanation was present in the Constitution (as the one I am proposing) I don't think they would've succeeded without amending the Constitution. Again, it is the people who must defend the Constitution, because the government will not.  The more clear, explicit and persuasive the document is, the easier it is for the people to defend it. That is why this amendment  is extremely beneficial. 




> 1a) In trying to do so, you're probably going to fail for reasons we both know: US congress men and women stand to profit from a fiat currency they can spend to their hearts delight, etc.


The very effort and debate put into passing such an amendment are of tremendous value, because they educate the people about the true principles of liberty, and about the imperative, critical, life or death importance of sound money in preservation of Freedom. Liberty MUST unavoidably die under a fiat monetary system. It is inescapable. Liberty can only survive and flourish under a sound and honest monetary system. Free competition in currencies is the BEST way to accomplish this.




> 1a 1) Upon failure at the federal level to ratify their new constitutional amendment, we can expect tea-ocons and new people waking up to liberty to pursue an article V convention with their state governments. You are aware of the potential perils of such a convention.


 We must explain them the dangers of such a convention (Con Con).




> 2) Let us try to pass sound money legislation at the state level adhering to the federal constitution. I've seen some great ideas on how this could work. Please read Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr. If the proper legislation is passed in a single state then I am confident it will be adopted by the rest of the states.


I wholeheartedly agree. Our best bet is to start at State level, but why miss the fun? Lets attack it from ALL sides! The more the merrier. It is only beneficial, and one effort can strengthen the other because of added publicity.

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## Travlyr

> In my view we would:1) Educate ourselves on the benefits of such an amendment, and understand them thoroughly (including the reasons why these benefits would exist).


An Honest Money Constitutional Amendment would benefit society in many ways:

 Honest transactions would mean that purchases using real money would complete the transaction ... bought and paid for ... ownership transferred ... very few debtors. Universal health care would be a great benefit because health care would once again become affordable. Prosperity for producers.Savings using real money grows through time rather than diminishes through inflation.Taxes paid using honest money become real expenditures which would get people to become involved in the political process when politicians came knocking on the door for higher taxes.Wars and deadly force would be greatly reduced.Stricter regulations on transactions because the free market punishes bad behavior while government insiders reward criminal friends.
That's all I can come up with at the moment.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Whatever it takes so that it is not ambiguous.


Agreed. If any one can polish that sentence better, let us know!




> Anything that is not natural. Finding more gold, silver, or other commodity is a natural process. While paper monetary inflation is not the same as electronic account monetary inflation and is directed by the hand of man, not nature. Just brainstorming to make it as clear as possible.


I think "paper money inflation" conveys the meaning better. We could also say: "Fiat monetary system and inflation of unbacked currency being some of the greatest enemies of liberty and prosperity of the people, legal tender laws are strictly forbidden. " But I don't know if we are making it clearer. 




> Footnotes attached?


Footnotes are fine, but it is better to embed definitions into the language of the amendment itself. For example: This amendment says " legal tender laws are strictly forbidden." Then it is restated or defined again in the last paragraph by saying (in part) "the government shall make no law establishing an exclusive form of currency that the people are forced to use in private transactions"

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## Travlyr

> Agreed. If any one can polish that sentence better, let us know!


Any word-smiths want to help out here? 




> Footnotes are fine, but it is better to embed definitions into the language of the amendment itself. For example: This amendment says " legal tender laws are strictly forbidden." Then it is restated or defined again in the last paragraph by saying (in part) "the government shall make no law establishing an exclusive form of currency that the people are forced to use in private transactions"


Excellent!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Therefore: the government shall make no law establishing an exclusive form of currency that the people are forced to use in private transactions, neither shall it prevent operation of private currencies, mints, or free competition in currencies among private citizens, nor charge capital gain, sales, fees, duties, costs, or any other taxes on the medium of exchange.


I changed it at the top. Thanks. Anyone, If we can make it better please let us know. Thank you!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> An Honest Money Constitutional Amendment would benefit society in many ways:
> 
>  Honest transactions would mean that purchases using real money would complete the transaction ... bought and paid for ... ownership transferred ... very few debtors. Universal health care would be a great benefit because health care would once again become affordable. Prosperity for producers.Savings using real money grows through time rather than diminishes through inflation.Taxes paid using honest money become real expenditures which would get people to become involved in the political process when politicians came knocking on the door for higher taxes.Wars and deadly force would be greatly reduced.Stricter regulations on transactions because the free market punishes bad behavior while government insiders reward criminal friends.
> That's all I can come up with at the moment.


That's nice.

If I had to say what the benefits would be, I'd say:


*Free Competition in currencies kills fiat*, because fiat is nothing but an instrument of plunder via legalized counterfeiting and inflation by a government forced monopoly, therefore it cannot exist without government force. Free Market, absent government coercion, will reject such a currency because no one likes being plundered.

So, Free Competition in currencies slays fiat, and with it welfare state and war state, because it makes it impossible for the government to rob and plunder the people, and steal their wealth through legalized counterfeiting and inflation. 

Thus, Free Competition in currencies binds the government down with the chains of sound money, making possible liberty and prosperity of the people.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Since I cannot edit the top of the thread, I'll have to post updates here: 

Honest Money Constitutional Amendment

*Fiat monetary system and paper money inflation being some of the greatest enemies of liberty and prosperity of the people, legal tender laws are strictly forbidden. 

Since no individual can rightfully force his neighbor to transact or not to transact in certain medium of exchange, he cannot delegate such authority to his government. Also, free competition in currencies, by the force of Free Market, prevents the government from plundering the people through legalized counterfeiting and debasing of the currency.

Therefore: the government shall make no law establishing an exclusive form of currency that the people are forced to use in private transactions, neither shall it prevent operation of private currencies, mints, or free competition in currencies among private citizens, nor charge capital gain, sales, or any other taxes, duties or fees on the medium of exchange. The right of the people to transact among themselves in any currency they choose shall not be abridged.*


If I had to say what the benefits would be, I'd say:

*Free Competition in currencies kills fiat*, because fiat is nothing but an instrument of plunder via legalized counterfeiting and inflation by a government forced monopoly, therefore it cannot exist without government force. Free Market, absent government coercion, will reject such a currency because no one likes being plundered.

So, Free Competition in currencies slays fiat, and with it welfare state and war state, because it makes it impossible for the government to rob and plunder the people, and steal their wealth through legalized counterfeiting and inflation. 

Thus, Free Competition in currencies binds the government down with the chains of sound money, making possible liberty and prosperity of the people.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Inflation is Theft! - Ron Paul Texas Straight Talk




*Sound Money is the solution! This amendment accomplishes it best.*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*MSNBC: Fleckenstein: The Fed is Printing Money to Cover Bank Theft Leading to Food Price Inflation, and Unrest in the World*

*http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540...14080#41414080*
http://dailypaul.com/156169/fleckens...food-inflation

Sound Money is the proposed solution.

*Sound Money is the solution:* 
This Amendment is the best way to implement it.
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...onal-Amendment
http://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewt...p?f=19&t=10942

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

http://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewt...178831#p178831

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Sound money, i.e. money that cannot be conjured out of nothing is the only true solution, as per this amendment (Please see the top of this thread).

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## Dr.3D

So how to you propose to make this amendment happen?

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> So how to you propose to make this amendment happen?


1) Educate Yourself so you understand it clearly and get excited about it.
2) Educate your neighbor with a charge to do the same.
3) Elect only the people who would commit to see it passed into the law of the land.

(The 3E formula)

That's it in a nut shell.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

G. Edward Griffin on Free Markets

http://alt-market.com/articles/griffinfreemarkets

"The most direct way to break the fiat money monopoly would be to repeal the Legal Tender law. If competition were allowed in the marketplace, people could trade in units of anything they wish that has real value. Gold is an example of a tangible unit of trade, meaning that the value is contained within the item itself, but anything could be used so long as people are free to accept it or reject it, even chocolate bars or tickets to Disneyland. Mr. Griffin is a supporter of gold and gold-backed money, which are really the same thing. Gold-backed currency is not the same thing as a gold standard; a gold standard is when the government sets the value of gold instead of the free market."

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Utah starts process to legalise gold and silver as money

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Ron Paul discusses the 29,000 pages released by the Fed on Bloomberg TV*

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## Travlyr

Ron Paul ... is a brilliant man! I hope we can get honest money circulating throughout the States soon.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul speaks of Free Competition in Currencies.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty



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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul on the Colbert Report - April 25, 2011 - Talks about Sound Money!  

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-col...-2011/ron-paul

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul takes Bloomberg to School on the Fed; (they compare him with Romney and others). Ron hits it out of the park!

Sound money and Freedom! Yahoo!!!

http://bloom.bg/hTA7Ag#ooid=lvMDNmMj...D29bUzbN4Lsoq_

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*I like this article because it give Free Competition in Currencies as the true solution to restoring and maintaining a sound and honest monetary system.*



Courtesy of Christian Science Monitor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Th...-End.-The.-Fed.

Three words to fix our monetary system: End. The. Fed.
The Federal Reserve's easy money policies are leading to tumultuous markets. Something drastic should be done.
By Joel Bowman, Guest blogger / April 25, 2011

Choppy week in the markets, wouldnt you say? Gap down one day, gap up the next. Thats what you get when the tub is full of Fed-faked funny-money. Bigger wavesmore tumultless predictability. And a whole lotta motion sickness along the way.

Markets are always and forever in a process of price discovery, torn between demand for lower prices from buyers on one side, and the profit motive from sellers on the other. Somewhere in the middle, the two parties will come together to exchange their goods and services. In other words, they discover an agreeable price at which everyone finds value. This is what the free market does naturally. Low prices invite demanddriving prices higher. High prices invite competition (supply)driving prices lower.
Obviously, therefore, you expect a bit of movement, a bit of price fluctuation as buyers and sellers jostle for position. What you dont expect is multi-hundred point daily swings in the stock markets. You dont expect gold to jump $20, $30 or more in a 24-hour period. (Remember, before FDR confiscated all the gold in the land back in 1933, an ounce of gold was only worth $20. More correctly, a dollar was worth 1/20th an ounce of gold. Then, in one fell swoop, the original New Dealer revalued the metal to $35 an ounce, thereby devaluing the dollar to 1/35th an ounce of gold.)
The point is, a $20 or $30 movement in the price of gold back then would have been unthinkable (but for political strong-arming). Today, with the dollar having been beaten, bludgeoned and fisticuffed down to less than 1/1,500th an ounce of gold, twenty bucks here or there is hardly worth mentioning, such is the woeful state of the worlds leading fiat money.
Of course, markets dont demand fiat currencies. Free individuals dont wake up one day and say to themselves, Gee Wouldnt it be nice if we had an unquestionable, unaccountable, centrally controlled monopoly on counterfeiting to help debase our medium of exchange, saddle the populace with that most insidious of all taxes  inflation  and to sell our kiddies future down the drain? I know, lets create a Federal Reserve!
Such institutions dont come about naturally. They require political pull and the gun-for-rent that is the government. They take cover behind rooking legalese, as is found in The Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and the absurd prevarications of its dual mandate, which is, at present, sold to the terminally credulous public under the noble-sounding, though entirely erroneous mission statement of price stability and maximum employment.
Anyone with a basic, non-Ivy League-approved understanding of economics knows this to be a ridiculous goal in the first place. For one, gold takes care of price stability itself. Has done for thousands of years. Price instability is the direct result of fiat monies and manipulation of the money supply by self-serving central banking cartels. From tulipmania to techmania, one can find, at the rotten heart of every inflationary crisis, a central banker with an equally rotten brain and/or heart.

As for the fetish of full employment, as Henry Hazlitt so eloquently explains in his classic,Economics in One Lesson: 
The progress of civilization has meant the reduction of employment, not its increase. It is because we have become increasingly wealthy as a nation that we have been able virtually to eliminate child labor, to remove the necessity of work for many of the aged and to make it [financially] unnecessary for millions of women to take jobs.
The real question, continued Hazlitt, writing in 1946, is not how many millions of jobs there will be in America ten years from now, but how much shall we produce, and what, in consequence, will be our standard of living?
The Fed is the work of Woodrowa creature of Congress. As George F. Will, writing in The Post, once put it, mission creep is part of the metabolic urge of government agencies. The Fed is no different. It is an Ouroboros running out of tail on which to feed. Theres nothing free market about this beast, Fellow Reckonerand nothing free market about the economy that stands on its sunken shoulders.
Without space for competing currencies, the invisible hand is bound and cuffed, unable to feel around in the dark, to set reliable prices. Value is distorted, malinvestment promoted.
In the end, you get unpredictable stock market volatility and a dollar shaved to within 1/1,500th of its life. Exactly what youd expect, in other words.
The solution? Here, a modest suggestion:
EndTheFed.
Instead, allow competing banks to issue competing currencies. Allow the fundamental underpinning of an economy  its medium of exchange  to discover its own fair value. Witness competition weed out banks that lend imprudently and that rip off customers, to the favor of those operating with prudence and fiscal integrity. Watch institutions that choose to issue baseless, paper money go bust without federal bailout funds and those that adhere  freely, without let or hindrance  to a gold standard garner the public trust their thrift and judiciousness earns them.
Wishful thinking, you say? Well, until such a time comes to pass, heres another suggestion, courtesy of our Reckoner-in-Chief, Bill Bonner:
Buy gold. Be happy.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Forbes: Ben Bernanke’s Lone Positive Legacy: A Return To The Gold Standard

http://blogs.forbes.com/billfrezza/2...gold-standard/

The best way to return to gold standard is to allow free competition in currencies:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...onal-Amendment

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Silver Shines as an Economic Solution

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Gold is Money explained.

*VIDEO: Jim Turk explains that gold is money, not an investment. Investments are used to create wealth by producing products or services. Money doesn't create anything. Its role merely is to maintain purchasing power while waiting to spend it. When people hold national currencies as money and those currencies lose purchasing power, they lose their wealth. When they hold gold as money, they maintain their wealth. GoldMoney 2011 Jun* 7




from http://www.realityzone.com/currentperiod.html

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## Zippyjuan

Maybe you should combine your three threads (or four I just saw another) or more into one since you post the exact same thing in each of them. Or just keep reposting on one.


Duplicate count is now up to six.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul plan: Forgive U.S. debt to Fed
by Mary Stegmeir | Des Moines Register

"The lawmaker advocates returning to the gold standard, a system where paper money is backed by units of precious metals."

http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.co...s-debt-to-fed/

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 7/11/11: Restore Sound, Constitutional Money

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul to Bernanke: "Is gold money?"
Financial Services Committee Hearing 7/13/2011

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul on CNBC's Kudlow Report ~7/13/11
"I think you have to have something better than pieces of paper that Federal Reserve Prints at will."

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Thomas Woods interviews Ron Paul on Peter Schiff Show 4/20/11

Explains Competing Currencies. @ 4:40

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## Travlyr

> Thomas Woods interviews Ron Paul on Peter Schiff Show 4/20/11
> 
> Explains Competing Currencies. @ 4:40


Fantastic interview! This needs its own thread if it is not already made.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Murray N. Rothbard said:

...
"The power to counterfeit is the power to abuse. It is not enough to urge the government to use it more moderately. The power must be taken away. Counterfeiting is fraud, and no one should have the right to counterfeit, least of all the government, whose record of counterfeiting throughout history is black indeed. Money and banking must be separated from the State, just as Church and State are separated in the American tradition, just as the economy and the State should be separated.

Vital to this necessary reform is the return to a money which is a useful product produced by the free market itself. In every society, people on the market voluntarily arrive at one or two commodities which are the most useful to use as money. For thousands of years, gold has been selected by countless societies as that money. The only alternative to a market commodity-money is what we unfortunately have now: paper tickets issued by the government and called "money." Since the paper tickets – dollars, francs, pounds sterling, or what have you – are issued by the government, the government can issue any amount it arbitrarily chooses. Counterfeiting is built into the system, and hence so is inflation and eventual destruction of the currency.

The only genuine solution to the evil of inflation, then, is to separate money from the State, to make money once again a market commodity instead of a fiat ticket issued by the central government. The dollar must once again be what it was originally until it was, in effect, nationalized. The dollar must once again be simply a name for a unit of weight of gold coin. Only this kind of fundamental reform will cure the ravages of inflation. ... Ron Paul is one of the few men in public life who truly understands the problem and is willing to fight to cure it..."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard187.html
Rothbard rocks!!!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Greenspan: US Can Pay Any Debt It Has Because It Can Print Money To Pay It

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post3446255

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*A Conspiracy of Counterfeiters
**by Patrick J. Buchanan*

http://lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan183.html

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## S.Shorland

What do you think about the constitutionality of Ron's competing currencies bill? A Huffpost blogger says it is unconstitutional because congress alone is allowed to coin money and nobody else. Ron's bill as I read it mentioned repealing other items and I assume this is where the blogger's objection lay? I didn't know where to find these items in your code to see exactly what his objection was.Has anybody looked at Ron's bill and have an opinion?

  EDIT: Just looking on Youtube it seems to be his introduction of private mints?However,the constitution does recognise the existence of foreign money just as it allows congress to set the value thereof.So obviously US money is specifically that coined by the congress but other money is admitted to exist.The difference is in the symbols stamped into the gold/silver.I don't see any prohibition on private minting of tokens from bullion,only on such tokens being described as 'US money'.Therefore there is no prohibition on trade in such tokens as long as there is no misrepresentation of their nature.

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## DamianTV

The Constitution says a couple of things.  One of them is that the States will pay no bills or issue certificates of credit in NOTHING BUT Gold and Silver, or something like that.  It does also say Congress has the power to Coin and Regulate the Value Of ... Currency.  What it doesnt say is what the People will be required to use as Currency.  Thats where Legal Tender laws rear their ugly heads, and essencially Legalize Counterfeitting and Prohibit Competing Currencies.  The Huffpo Blogger isnt thinking like a founding father.  So, lets think like a founding father.  A founding father would grant the Federal Government very specific powers, and every other power is completely prohibited.  The founding fathers also wrote the Constitution to protect the People from the Government, so they wouldnt have written in clauses that would have enslaved us to the bank knowingly or willingly.  Our current congress either purposefully misinterprets the Constitution to suit its own dark purposes, or they just ignore the parts they dont like.  Much like a cop that feels like running red lights on their coffee breaks.

To answer your other question, I havent read Ron's bill.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Thank you for your question.




> What do you think about the constitutionality of Ron's competing currencies bill? A Huffpost blogger says it is unconstitutional because congress alone is allowed to coin money and nobody else. Ron's bill as I read it mentioned repealing other items and I assume this is where the blogger's objection lay? I didn't know where to find these items in your code to see exactly what his objection was.


Competing currencies are perfectly constitutional because the restrictions in the Constitution on coinage apply only to State and Federal governments, not to private citizens. 




> EDIT: Just looking on Youtube it seems to be his introduction of private mints?However,the constitution does recognise the existence of foreign money just as it allows congress to set the value thereof.So obviously US money is specifically that coined by the congress but other money is admitted to exist.The difference is in the symbols stamped into the gold/silver.I don't see any prohibition on private minting of tokens from bullion,only on such tokens being described as 'US money'.Therefore there is no prohibition on trade in such tokens as long as there is no misrepresentation of their nature.


The prohibition is in the tax code. Current law imposes capital gain and sales taxes upon any bullion or barter transaction. This prevents alternative monetary systems from arising. It is like going to the bank to change a $5 bill into quarters and paying sales tax on the transaction.

My amendment forbids the government taxing the medium of exchange and removes this (immoral) road block to competing currencies.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Sign a petition for Ron Paul's 

"Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011"!!!

http://www.votervoice.net/core.aspx?aid=972&issueid=26226

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty



----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul's pick of Federal Reserve Chair

http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/26/ro...uzkYnFb_dcwG-j

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul: Federal Reserve is Like Drug Addiction

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/...drug-addiction

"Paul also favors allowing private entities to issue gold and silver coins and wants to prevent federal and state governments from taxing those precious metals."

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The REAL reason we invaded Libya.

http://thenewamerican.com/economy/ma...astated-dollar

From http://www.realityzone.com/currentperiod.html

"Libya: Gadhafi planned to switch to gold in place of the US dollar for oil purchases. This would have further devastated the dollar and might have caused it to be dumped as the world's reserve currency. [Surely, this had nothing to do with the fact that the US backed Libya's rebellion and demanded 'regime change'. Right?] New American Posted 2011 Nov 12"

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Freedom Watch: On Money: Ron Paul, And The Federal Reserve





Paul is right! Kucinich'e idea is a disaster!

----------


## Steven Douglas

The difference between Paul and Kucinich, and their reasons for wanting to abolish the Fed, underscores what has been the ugly truth about the Fed system since its inception. The Fed is now propped up by support from two sides:

1) Government can deficit spend (siphon value directly from the currency by direct inflationary dilution) without bothering to raise taxes. 
    (this equates to bipartisan appeal for different reasons, making an A-Frame of two flanked support for the Fed)
2) Banks can practice fractional reserve lending (siphon value directly from the currency by direct inflationary dilution) to lend to the credit-worthy. 
   (fractional reserve lending appeals to bankers, and also downstream to businesses, which have readily available capital to combine and leverage with their own at the expense of the currency)

The Fed facilitates both sides, both of which are inflationary. 

Deficit spending proponents in government exist in great numbers on both the far left and the far right, since both the war machine and the welfare machine that would otherwise be funded from tax revenues can be expanded at will without reprisal from tax payers by simply funding it through inflationary borrowing - a hidden tax on the currency itself. 

Kucinich does not want to "end" the Fed. He wants to Federalize it, and place it directly under the Treasury Department.  Why? Because Kucinich very much LIKES the idea of government deficit spending! He HATES the idea that money is being "borrowed" out thin air, rather than directly printed out of thin air directly by the government, with no intermediary.  Kucinich also HATES the idea of commerce competing in the inflationary process, as the currency supply is even further debased and diluted through fractional reserve lending.  

The far left and far right BOTH generally support the idea of inflationary practices for their own reasons. Their only real disagreement, primarily, is on who should be entitled to debauch the currency, and for what reasons - as one sibling wants to slap the other sibling off the teet that neither should have suckled in the first place (given that they are not infants, but vampires, and it is not a pair of teets, but bite marks over the jugular of the American economy)

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## Travlyr

> The difference between Paul and Kucinich, and their reasons for wanting to abolish the Fed, underscores what has been the ugly truth about the Fed system since its inception. The Fed is now propped up by support from two sides:
> 
> 1) Government can deficit spend (siphon value directly from the currency by direct inflationary dilution) without bothering to raise taxes. 
>     (this equates to bipartisan appeal for different reasons, making an A-Frame of two flanked support for the Fed)
> 2) Banks can practice fractional reserve lending (siphon value directly from the currency by direct inflationary dilution) to lend to the credit-worthy. 
>    (fractional reserve lending appeals to bankers, and also downstream to businesses, which have readily available capital to combine and leverage with their own at the expense of the currency)
> 
> The Fed facilitates both sides, both of which are inflationary. 
> 
> ...


Absolutely. This is exactly why I want to be in control of our money supply. If you let me have it, I will treat you guys fairly... I promise.

----------


## Travlyr

Cross my fingers and hope to die... promise fellows. Just give me the power! You'll see. I'll be "fair". I promise.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> The difference between Paul and Kucinich, and their reasons for wanting to abolish the Fed, underscores what has been the ugly truth about the Fed system since its inception. The Fed is now propped up by support from two sides:
> 
> 1) Government can deficit spend (siphon value directly from the currency by direct inflationary dilution) without bothering to raise taxes. 
>     (this equates to bipartisan appeal for different reasons, making an A-Frame of two flanked support for the Fed)
> 2) Banks can practice fractional reserve lending (siphon value directly from the currency by direct inflationary dilution) to lend to the credit-worthy. 
>    (fractional reserve lending appeals to bankers, and also downstream to businesses, which have readily available capital to combine and leverage with their own at the expense of the currency)
> 
> The Fed facilitates both sides, both of which are inflationary. 
> 
> ...


Steven, you are brilliant! And instead of calling this thing "inflationary dilution" (which is correct by the way), I would call it LEGALIZED PLUNDER via legalized and monopolized counterfeiting.

If people are free to transact in any currency they please, (as under this amendment), fiat (unbacked "money") will die, and a 100% commodity based currency will overwhelmingly prevail, because it is the most honest and the most stable monetary system known to man, and needs no government coercion to operate, -- it is the monetary system of a truly free people!

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Steven, you are brilliant! And instead of calling this thing "inflationary dilution" (which is correct by the way), I would call it LEGALIZED PLUNDER via legalized and monopolized counterfeiting.


I think it is VERY important to refer to it in terms of a mechanism that is both accurate and self-explanatory.  It's why I hate the term "printing out thin air!", because there is no indication of the coupling force that automatically occurs - which leaves room for a logical disconnect, and even the question, "So? So they're counterfeiting, so what? At least I got mine, they can't touch that!"

Likewise, "inflation" alone is conflated to mean "rising prices", wherease "inflationary dilution", or "inflationary dilution of the money supply" leaves no ambiguity for waffling on what exactly is meant thereby - that you are, in fact, referring to a specific forcing, without regard to the effects. 

Likewise, LEGALIZED PLUNDER is completely accurate, I agree, but it does not describe the mechanism by which such plunder actually takes place.  So it can dismissed as an ad hominem attack, and, worse yet, everyone is left to fill in the blanks (with 99%+ _inaccuracy_) as to why or exactly how that might be true.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Thanks Steven! You are right, "inflationary dilution" emphasizes the fact that the purchasing power is being STOLEN from everyone who is holding "dollars", and transferred to the one who used newly counterfeited money first.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Thanks Steven! You are right, "inflationary dilution" emphasizes the fact that the purchasing power is being STOLEN from everyone who is holding "dollars", and transferred to the one who used newly counterfeited money first.


Yeah, it's just a bartender watering down drinks, a drug dealer that cuts their drugs with worthless powder. 

I am looking for all the other ways to say it, using the same criteria.  When you say "inflationary dilution" it leaves no argument open for dispute - or at the very least, one you will win every time, given that is precisely and irrefutably what happens.  Intelligent, but otherwise Keynesian/pro-fiat money/mainstream economists and others will not dispute this.  Their entire M.O. and the reason they prefer the more nebulous "effects-based" definitions, is to get past that "little technicality" as quickly as possible, so that we can then become mired into meaningless discussions about all the complexities that occur after the fact, including all the wonderful reasons why such dilutions are somehow good or necessary for "the economy". 

Remember the movie Cocoon? The swimming pool was infused with potent life-giving energy from the alien cocoons. A few old men swimming in the water weakened the water a bit, but not too much. It didn't matter all that much, so those few were given permission. Then word got out that the pool was indeed a source of rejuvenation, and everyone jumped into the water -- until the cocoons were sapped of all their energy, and some of the cocoons died. 

The cocoons were our original wealth until they were thrown into a collective "wealth pool" of America, one that was interconnected but _never collectivized_ to begin with.  It was an enormous, but not infinite, source of wealth. The government created the Fed, which in turn gave permission to both government and the banks and commercial interests to jump into the Cocoon filled wealth pool of America at will...and every time they did, they weakened it - sucked vital energy from it.  With a seemingly boundless, endless, "free" source of wealth,  the only problem is how to get those who contribute to the cocoons to rejuvenate the water faster, because Libya and many others, it turns out, have since been given permission to jump into the pool, and there's always a possibility we're going to have let the EU jump in as well - because they're not doing so well either, doncha know.

----------


## Travlyr

> Thanks Steven! You are right, "inflationary dilution" emphasizes the fact that the purchasing power is being STOLEN from everyone who is holding "dollars", and transferred to the one who used newly counterfeited money first.


I am surprised that more people are not really pissed off at their banker. He is a thief. The entire industry is nothing but a theft ring. People would be mad as hell if someone stole their computer, their car, or broke into their home every night and stole food & wine out of the cellar, but let a banker dress up in a nice Armani suit, sit down at church with them, face them across the desk while begging for loan, and the thief seems like a really nice guy. It is amazing.

Not one man in a million can detect it, and nearly that same proportion of people will not believe it when it is pointed out. Yet, the thieves tell everybody what they are doing, but since they seem like such nice guys... clean shaven and all... they show up to work on time... they are really rich so they must be hard working fellows... and people allow the really nice banker to pick their pocket every day with a smile.



> "By this means government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft." - Lord John Maynard Keynes, "Economic Consequences of Peace"





> "If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched." - George H.W. Bush to White House reporter Sarah McClendon, 1992





> "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. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights." - Alan Greenspan, Gold and Economic Freedom


As each day passes ... everybody but the insiders are getting poorer and poorer. It is amazing. When will it end?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Yeah, in a word, fiat, unbacked monetary system is the single greatest instrument of plunder ever conceived by the mind of man, and Free Competition in currencies kills that monster faster than you can say "I don't want your worthless paper!" Hence the need for this amendment, or at least the need for the principles spelled out in it to be put into practice. Freedom IS the solution.

----------


## Travlyr

> Yeah, in a word, fiat, unbacked monetary system is the single greatest instrument of plunder ever conceived by the mind of man, and Free Competition in currencies kills that monster faster than you can say "I don't want your worthless paper!" Hence the need for this amendment, or at least the need for the principles spelled out in it to be put into practice. Freedom IS the solution.


Stopping the plunder this afternoon or tomorrow wouldn't be too soon for me.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Amen.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> As each day passes ... everybody but the insiders are getting poorer and poorer. It is amazing. When will it end?


It might never end.  That's the sad reality, because it is founded on Majority Addiction and Majority Ignorance, and greases too many hands in the process.  That makes it prone to thrive under any political regime - _especially a democracy_ - a tyranny of the very majority it enslaves. But since it "seems" to gain in the short term (*amphetamines really do unleash more energy, that is not an illusion*), it gets passes off for another day, down the road - partly from fairy tale ignorance, partly from greed, but mostly from _pain avoidance_.  Hell, even a stone-cold, hardcore addicted junkie doesn't die right away. How do we know he doesn't owe his very life to the drugs he is taking? He would rather continue with the addiction than face _the very real pain_ of withdrawals. That is the yang that comes with that yin, the very natural piper forces that comes calling, demanding to be paid.  

Only here we are not talking about a single junkie, or even a generation of junkies. Humans are a renewable resource.  The old junkies die, the new junkies have both youth and a "useful lifespan", regardless of how long it might last.  And if they have babies at younger ages, that just keeps the productivity well alive. Damaged, yes, but alive nonetheless.  

That a flagrantly criminal Ponzi scheme of this magnitude has lasted a hundred years is a testament to its longevity and the efficacy of its deception.  If we do enter into a new phase with a Super Euro-Dollar (which China may be wise enough to have NOTHING to do with), it would not surprise me if its methods were honed such that it lasted, conceivably, for a thousand years. Why? Because those who are enslaved by such a system really will always continue to produce. _They must as a matter of survival._  It is that need, that drive to survive which is leveraged and tapped into most of all.  The need to survive is the driving fuel, and theoretically, you really can shear sheep indefinitely - so long as you are careful not to cut too deeply.  But you still want more wool. The response to that little limitation - more sheep.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Fiat unbacked money is socialism (i.e. plunder). Plain and simple. It is collectivism. Such a society must unavoidably self-destruct, because it eviscerates all productive forces of the society. The only sure foundation to build upon are the true principles of liberty (which demand this amendment).

----------


## Travlyr

I wish people could see how prosperous they would be if they stopped the thieves from plundering. Flying cars would be the order of the day. Many of our clothes, products, and fuel would be made from renewable resources. A free world would be happy healthy world. People could comfortably enjoy the world in peace instead of working until they die. 

It may be tough for me to ever see it in reality, but I can continue to spread the message of truth with the hope that my children and grandchildren may achieve some semblance of liberty, peace, and prosperity some day.

_"Let It Not Be Said That We Did Nothing"_ -- Ron Paul

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Fiat unbacked money is socialism. Plain and simple. It is collectivism. Such a society must unavoidably self-destruct, because it eviscerates all productive forces of the society. The only sure foundation to build upon are the true principles of liberty (which demand this amendment).


Let's clear that one up as well. It is collectivism, and of the most insidious kind, but it is NOT socialism.  Socialism is a DREAM compared to what this is, because at the very least socialism just redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor - or so it intends. That is not what this system does (although it pretends to do that as well).  This system SIPHONS wealth and redistributes it to the poor and the unproductive from the left, but MOSTLY to the hyper-rich on the right.  Who is left out?  COMPLETELY?  The middle class.  

What this system really does is DIVIDE the rich from the poor, and with an ever-widening gap. DELIBERATELY. 

I used to hate the old mantra, "Yeah, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer", just about as much as I still HATE the mantra about "the wealthiest 1%" (and any other blithering way you want to put it) - because, once again, THESE MORONS are pointing to effects, not causal factors.  Pointing at the effects leaves us batting against leaves and fruits, bickering and whining about things like "greed" and ulterior motives, while leaving the root "causes", which mechanisms take place without regard to motives, COMPLETELY UNEXAMINED.  

There is no such thing as socialism - not here OR in China. China is neither communist nor is it socialist. Socialism is nothing more than a sentiment - a statement of intent. China is now nothing more than oligarchical control of a now capital driven economy with "socialist ideals". One fundamental difference is that _it actually encourages and rewards savings!_ 

And what the HELL ARE WE? Don't say democracy, or even Democratic Republic, as if that meant anything at all - that is a shell game of the highest order, and absolutely meaningless. And don't say land of the free and home of the brave either. We are, at the core, a BANKER'S economy, which has deliberately pit one ideological faction against the other, by facilitating "FREE MARKET" competition between corporatist AND socialist ideals - all of it collectivist, as they all slop from the same collective debt trough.  

So you could say "follow the money", but to do that you must realize that the actual money trail is divided into two extremely compromised branches _which now very much depend upon one another, and the system as devised, for survival_.

Oh, and I don't look a commercial bankers as anything but branches of evil. NOT the roots. So I ignore them, and none of my anger is directed toward them, because it really is a needless distraction.  They don't make the rules - they only profit from them.  Otherwise, by extension, anybody who has ever had credit is culpable - they're the twigs and leaves hanging from those branches.  That leaves only those who are not allowed to participate (the non-credit worthy) with clean hands - but the poorest of these flank the other side - the socialist side of the equation.  If fractional reserve lending was criminalized, that branch which causes the greatest amount of inflation to the money supply would wither and die.  Likewise, if there were no legal tender laws, and hard specie was not taxed, we would not all be force-channeled artificially into DEBT as the only means for economic activity.  Savings would mean something, and privately accumulated capital would compete head-to-head, and ultimately STOMP debt-based capital into its natural proper place.   

So I focus on the root cause only - not those who profit therefrom.


Ron Paul is unique because he is one of the very, VERY few who actually champions the middle class in all of this. The rest fall primarily on whichever side of the Ponzi scheme is most effectual for the advancement of their Macroeconomic Causes - without regard to the scores of millions of casualties in the middle.

----------


## Steven Douglas

Has anybody here seen the Saw series of movies? I hate the movies myself, but watched two of them, just as I hate all so-called "no win" thought experiments - like the popular "Would you rather..." thought games - which are somehow fun as well as revealing (NOT).  

The Saw series forces people into unnatural situations, which in turn forces them to make macabre choices - which are supposedly tests of their humanity and character. 

Jigsaw, the demented psychotic genius/bastard responsible for the machines and bizarre machinations, is dismissed up front as "Yeah, well, we know he's bad - but anyway, what about these other people, and all the juicy stuff that Jigsaw set into motion? Isn't that heart-pounding stuff?!"  

I stop the tape/film right there.   What do I care how these people respond to any of this?  The only real evil in the film is Jigsaw himself. The rest are just flawed humans that Jigsaw has judged and wants to "teach" lessons to ("I want to play a game.").  And he's just a psychotic killer who is going to die anyway, whose identity is camouflaged such that he's immune.  So let's just get past that and focus on the story at hand, shall we? After all, the people involved are the "real story".  

No they aren't.  They shouldn't be in that position in the first place, and I don't have a single judgment for any of them. Their cowardice or heroics are meaningless to me.  So what's the point of the film, when I already know the solution, and the bigger moral to the story without even watching it?

The Fed is Jigsaw.  Legal tender laws, fractional reserve lending and deficit spending are the unnatural causes which bring about two competing forces for the survival of the only two classes which matter - "the rich" and "the poor" - as if that described the current whole, rather than the end game.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I wish people could see how prosperous they would be if they stopped the thieves from plundering. Flying cars would be the order of the day. Many of our clothes, products, and fuel would be made from renewable resources. A free world would be happy healthy world. People could comfortably enjoy the world in peace instead of working until they die. 
> 
> It may be tough for me to ever see it in reality, but I can continue to spread the message of truth with the hope that my children and grandchildren may achieve some semblance of liberty, peace, and prosperity some day.
> 
> _"Let It Not Be Said That We Did Nothing"_ -- Ron Paul


You are so right!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Thanks Steven. So do you agree, that if the improper government FORCE was removed from the realm of money, via a law like this amendment, that it would strike at the root of the problem, and pretty much cut the throat of the beast?

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Thanks Steven. So do you agree, that if the improper government FORCE was removed from the realm of money, via a law like this amendment, that it would strike at the root of the problem, and pretty much cut the throat of the beast?


Yes, and quite naturally.  The beauty of it:  Not everyone knows the nature of the beast, and in fact most believe in it. That alone prevents the catastrophic collapse that WOULD occur (the one that will eventually occur anyway) if you simply killed one beast and replaced it with another all at once.  

Remember the adage - "panic" does not apply to those who simply and quietly walked out of the theater early. (or words to that effect - how does it really go?)

At first it would just be a bunch of "gold and silver bugs" doing their kooky "hoarding" thing, which gets derided by uninformed idiots who have no understanding of money or value...along with some not-so-vocal but equally intelligent people who do the same thing, because they actually do get the fundamentals involved.  And a bunch of politicians will wring their hands about how this is just a tax evasion scheme that is unfairly punishing hard working Americans by placing "a greater _we're-all-supposed-to-be-in-the-ponzi-scheme-together-or-it-won't-work_ burden". 

The rest, however, will take a wait and see attitude.  And - they will likely be rewarded in the short term, as steps are taken to artificially prop up the dollar (with even more debt).  However, the wait-and-seers won't have to wait long, because with every market scare - every blip, every bump, every hint of a drop - more and more people will flock to safer havens...which in turn sets Thiers law spiraling into motion as everyone sells their "debt-money" in droves...until finally there are no buyers of the fiat currency at any low price.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

As I said, Steven, you are brilliant! And "a greater _we're-all-supposed-to-be-in-the-ponzi-scheme-together-or-it-won't-work_ burden" is just too funny!

Thanks!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul Grills Ben Bernanke On Competing Currencies




Freedom is the solution! Free Competition in Currencies KILLS fiat, debt based, interest bearing system! And together with fiat it kills welfare state and warfare state!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Jim Grant: Sound Money and Why the Fed is dead wrong

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that putting money on the gold standard would handicap the government's ability to address economic conditions.* [He is right, which is one of the advantages of the gold standard. It is not the government's role to address economic conditions. Doing so is the primary reason the economy now is in a tailspin. The free market is the only force that can create a robust economy. Bernanke works for a banking cartel that derives great profits from fiat money. Those profits would be drastically reduced under the gold standard because banks could not collect interest on money they create out of nothing. They would need real deposits from their customers. Imagine that!] Reuters 2012 Mar 20 


From http://www.realityzone.com/currentperiod.html

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

GEG'S REPLY:
Richard, the simplest formula is no formula. Formulas are designed to be manipulated. That's why they are created. Therefore, monetary formulas, even those based on population, always will be manipulated by clowns -- or scholars. Money based on anything that requires human effort to produce (and which is not manipulated by clowns and scholars in accordance with a formula of their liking) automatically keeps pace with the size of the population. It requires no management by authority. It happens because, when prices start to rise, the value of money increases and, as the value of money increases, free men will turn to the production of whatever it is that people have chosen to accept as money. As that happens, the supply of money increases also, and its value drops back to that equilibrium point where it was in the beginning. That's the nature of supply-and-demand, and it is why monetary systems based on gold or silver historically have had incredibly stable purchasing power over hundreds of years, even during periods of increasing population. Inflation, the great destroyer of prosperous nations, is impossible when money is based on its own measurable composition, such as weight and purity, and is not burdened by any other formula.

Hard-wired is a great goal, but achievable only in the sense of establishing a definition for the nation's unit of monetary value; in other words, to set its weight and measure. Gold and silver once were hard wired into the Constitution -- until clowns and scholars cut the wires. The only way to prevent clowns and scholars from destroying a nation's money is, not to decide which of them will be given power to write (and alter) the formulas that determine the money supply, but to deny such power to all of them. 

Constitutional weights and measures (pounds, inches, dollars, etc.) serve no beneficial purpose if they are constantly adjusted to accommodate expanding populations or agricultural seasons or employment quotas or economic cycles. Their function is to establish a reliable standard that is constant through all such changes. Once a monetary standard is set (for example, $1 = 1 oz of .999 silver), then we should step back, get our intellectual egos out of the way, and just let the miracle of a free market happen. Three-hundred and twelve-million people, each making scores of decisions every day, interactively effecting supply and demand for all goods and services, will produce a far more equitable and beneficial outcome than any committee of wise men -- or crooks posing as wise men -- ever could. That's not only the simplest formula but, in my view, it's the only one that will work.


--G. Edward Griffin
http://www.realityzone.com/currentperiod.html

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Here is an amazing graphical representation of derivative exposure of 9 biggest banks. Only fiat fraud makes this possible.

Click to see:


Be carefull, however, the article speaks of the dangers of "unregulated" markets. The only regulations you truly need are those imposed by Free Markets,-- the most stringent regulations,-- and MUCH stricter than bought out government regulators who actually allow the fraud. The regulations of Free Market are bankruptcy, and fraud prosecution. These are the only regulations one needs if justice is to prevail!

Note, that these astronomical derivatives do NOT become weapons of mass financial destruction unless a government bailout takes place. Then this mountain of debt is transferred upon the shoulders of everybody else via inflation. But if no bailout is allowed, then the offending bank goes bankrupt; its good assets are transferred to other banks, and devastation is localized only to the offending party. That's the way Free Market works, and its regulations are MUCH stricter then those of government regulators who actually allow fraud!

*Also take a look at the cost of war, also made possible by fiat money!*

*http://demonocracy.info/infographics...st_of_war.html*

 (Fiat = war) is the formula first derived by Rothschilds. It is a true one. None of the world wars would have been possible without fiat money fraud! 

Thus Free Competition in Currencies, which necessarily kills fiat (which cannot exist without a government forced monopoly), ends most wars as well as welfare state, and brings to forefront Sound, 100% commodity based currency, which is the most stable, and the most honest monetary system known to man.

*http://demonocracy.info/infographics...t/us_debt.html*
*http://demonocracy.info/infographics/eu/debt_greek/debt_greek.html
**http://demonocracy.info/infographics...orld_debt.html*
"Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave 
them the power to create money and control credit, and 
with a flick of a pen they will create enough to buy it back." 
-Sir Josiah Stamp, former President, Bank of England

*Thus, Free Competition in Currencies 
is a great protector of Liberty!*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman on Bloomberg TV




The debate! Ron Paul says inflation is THEFT! Krugman says theft is good! Ata boy! His name should have been Crookman!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The illustrated history of you being robbed by the Fed




The thing to notice is the difference between productivity and wages as the money supply increases more rapidly.


Solution:
Free Competition in Currencies. It kills fiat, a.k.a. legalized counterfeiting, (which cannot exist without a government granted monopoly, and coercion), and brings forward a sound, 100% commodity based currency, like gold and silver, etc., as the PREFERENCE, of a truly Free Market.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 5/14/12: 
The Dangers of the Fed and the Importance of Sound Money

*Free Competition in Currencies is the Solution! Ron Paul is right!*


http://youtu.be/LjOEUQkv2KI

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Peter Schiff Owning Everyone on C-SPAN

Ending with a bang: the explanation why the price of gasoline is going up. Enjoy!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ben Swann Gets Reality Checked:
Turns out he is right . Gold is money.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

One last time! Ron Paul vs. Bernanke!




Part II




Part III

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul on Fox Business with Gerri Willis 7/24/12




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qSYh...ature=youtu.be

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul: We Must Have Parallel Currencies

_Before the United States House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy, Hearing on Sound Money: Parallel Currencies and the Roadmap to Monetary Freedom, August 2, 2012
_
One of the most pressing issues of our time is the push for monetary freedom. The only sound monetary system is one which protects sound money and allows consumers, businesses, and investors the freedom to transact in the currency of their choice. The importance of sound money is summed up nicely by Ludwig von Mises: "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." It is no wonder that governments fight tooth and nail against sound money, as sound money protects the well-being of the middle class and the poor while preventing the expansion of government.

Read the rest: http://paul.house.gov/index.php?opti...id=16:speeches

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Quantitative Easing Explained in 2.5 min 




I could explain it in 1.8 seconds:
"Quantitative Easing" is THEFT.


I could also explain it in 6.4 seconds:
"Quantitative Easing" is legalized plunder via legalized and monopolized counterfeiting of currency.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Epic Congressional Testimony: A Man calls congressmen who support the Fed THIEVES! 


"Your are irrelevant!"

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Legalized and monopolized counterfeiting of money is the very throat of the beast. Free Competition in Currencies slays that monster. 

This Honest Money Constitutional Amendment is the key to liberty, as far as worldly power is concerned.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 8/13/12: 
Legalize Competing Currencies!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Lord Rothschild Betting On Euro Collapse


Of'course. He caused it.







Jacob Rothschild, John Paulson And George Soros Are All Betting That Financial Disaster Is Coming


Honest Money is the Solution

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul talks about Gold
on CNBC 8/24/12






It's right in line with this *Honest Money Constitutional Amendment!*


Right on, Dr. Paul!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The Real Reason US is planning to overthrow Iran:
*
Ron Paul TX Straight Talk 9/3/12: The Doomed Dollar & the Case For a Stable Currency*




Mind you, Iraq and Libya did EXACTLY the same thing as Iran is doing now,-- priced their oil in currency OTHER than dollar,-- before their governments were overthrown by the west. 

This is THE reason for all three invasions, because dollar is "backed" by, or forced upon the world, via dollar-oil trade monopoly, and its status as the world's "reserve currency" would be undermined were that trade monopoly to be removed.

Needless to say, all government forced monopolies are nothing more than legalized plunder. They violate private property and consequently the laws of justice, and thus are IMMORAL.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Judge Napolitano on Fox and Friends:* 
The Fed is ‘Not Federal, Not A Reserve,’ And Designed To ‘Make Pres. Look Good’

http://www.dailypaul.com/255279/judg...pres-look-good

I might add that fed is a legalized PLUNDER outfit via legalized and monopolized counterfeiting of currency. Remove that government forced monopoly and this plunder ends. That is the purpose of this amendment.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

QE - Infinity (aka THEFT - Infinity)




Free Competition in Currencies is THE Solution. Free Competition in Currencies KILLS fiat (unbacked) money, because unbacked money cannot exist without government granted MONOPOLY. And with it, Free Competition in currencies kills welfare state and warfare state, because neither is possible without legalized and monopolized counterfeiting of money. Thus Free Competition in Currencies automatically solves most of the political and economic problems facing the country. It is quite profound actually! FREEDOM (as defined by Fundamental Principles of Liberty) is THE Solution!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 10/1/12: 
Gold is Good Money, Your Fiat Currency is Not

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Tom Woods Answers Myths About Sound Money



Smashing Myths and Restoring Sound Money 
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Fiat = *War!*
The Federal Reserve: Free Evil Since 1913!

Another interesting look at the Fed. 




A speech by Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio.

Brilliant!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Time is running out


http://www.successcouncil.com/live_p...=5060004578e52
http://www.successcouncil.com/live_p..._thank_you.php

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## CT4Liberty

> Time is running out
> 
> 
> http://www.successcouncil.com/live_p...=5060004578e52
> http://www.successcouncil.com/live_p..._thank_you.php


Thanks F_O_L ... I signed up for tomorrow - Im usually pretty skeptical of these type of free webinars, I'll report back after I go through it to let others know if its worth it.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Thanks F_O_L ... I signed up for tomorrow - Im usually pretty skeptical of these type of free webinars, I'll report back after I go through it to let others know if its worth it.


Thanks!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*"Legalized Plunder of the American People"*
- G. Edward Griffin

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## CT4Liberty

> Thanks!


Just finished - nothing this group wouldnt already know. The dangers of inflation, how gold/silver can hedge against that and be used to take advantage in the downturn and eventual collapse of fiat currency.

As I suspected, it was a whole lot of "here is the doom and gloom...but you can be saved for only $25/month access to our private members area"....

Overall - nothing I would spend money on, I can just come here and hear the same advice from the folks here...maybe we should be charging $20/month for access to the forums and undercut success council? Free Markets at work

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## Travlyr

> Fiat = *War!*
> The Federal Reserve: Free Evil Since 1913!
> 
> Another interesting look at the Fed. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A speech by Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio.
> ...


That is a good speech. I am glad to learn that Stefan is focusing on the real issues.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Just finished - nothing this group wouldnt already know. The dangers of inflation, how gold/silver can hedge against that and be used to take advantage in the downturn and eventual collapse of fiat currency.
> 
> As I suspected, it was a whole lot of "here is the doom and gloom...but you can be saved for only $25/month access to our private members area"....
> 
> Overall - nothing I would spend money on, I can just come here and hear the same advice from the folks here...maybe we should be charging $20/month for access to the forums and undercut success council? Free Markets at work


My opinion too. I was interested in specific signals they promised to share, but never did in the Free part. They require membership for that. I didn't subscribe. However their Free presentation was excellent. If you didn't know the stuff, it is VERY valuable. I even seen some details in the Free part, that I didn't realize the magnitude of. So it was good.

Cheers.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Lindsey Williams: The dollar to lose much of its purchasing power by the end of December 2012, and to go into hyperinflation by April or June of 2013. 

Get out of all paper assets, because you WILL lose them. Buy food-storage now (it will be too expensive in December); buy durable goods now, and if anything is left after that buy silver and gold. You have been warned. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."



If You Enjoyed This Presentation From _Lindsey Williams_
Please Buy “2102 The Beginning of the End” 3 DVD Set From Prophecy Club

*Be warned:*
Now the "elites" are going to "back" SDR's initially with gold and silver, to sucker people in, just like they did with Federal Reserve Notes, which initially were "backed" by gold, but that backing was gradually and quietly removed, until you end up with 100% UNBACKED currency, so they can plunder the peoples of the world at will by pressing a few keys on a computer to create trillions out of nothing. This is the same fraud in progress. This is how SDR's will start, and that is how they will end.

The only REAL solution is to allow *Free Competition in Currencies*, that Freedom demands. Thus Free Market will end fiat fraud, because unbacked fiat is ONLY possible via a government FORCED MONOPOLY, and speedily dies when *Free Competition in Currencies* is present. *THAT is the TRUE Solution.* _Everything else are different shades of a lie._ Demand *Free Competition in Currencies*, as advocated by this amendment, and demand PHYSICAL delivery of gold and silver. That is the *ONLY* way to restore an honest monetary system and to ensurer LIBERTY and Prosperity of the people. There is NO OTHER WAY.

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## Steven Douglas

While I think the dollar is already in the beginning stages of irreversible hyperinflation, I don't think it will lose most of its purchasing power by December. In fact, what I see is a continued drop in prices of many finished goods, giving the illusion of deflation to many.  It's a false illusion because demand really is down.  There's more currency flooding into the market, but not in the hands that truly count.  Meanwhile, there will be concomitant continued and rapidly escalating increase of raw commodity prices.  

The April/June end game is the same, however, because commodities affect equity in finished goods. With that equity rapidly eroding, and no increase in demand of finished goods despite some stable or even falling prices, a lot of companies that are hanging on by the skin of their teeth are going to go belly-up.  It simply won't be profitable to make anything.  Eventually there will be more consolidation, as big fish feed on the littler fish corpse assets at pennies on the dollar -- but that won't stop the rise in commodity prices, which really do reflect the rapidly failing value of the fiat currency.  

Once everyone realizes that finished goods and productivity investments are not the answer, and rent-seeking investors begin to ditch the stocks and bonds markets and jump instead onto commodities, it's OVER. _The run on commodities is the proverbial run on the bank._ Commodities will spiral further upward, wiping out incentive for productivity everywhere. And it all escalates rapidly from there, with a loss of confidence in the dollar that truly brings it out of hiding worldwide.  That's when the major players jump in, as the $2 Trillion in corporate hoarded cash that wasn't used to buy up competitor's corpses is rapidly dumped into anything of tangible value, including commodities.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

As Lindsey proves here, the dollar is ALREADY dead. It has been rejected by almost all countries ALREADY. He gave about half a dozen examples, here. So, it has been dumped. Now all these trillions will come home, here to US, that's why December large drop is VERY probable. Most people do not see how late in the game it already is. 




*Short term solution:* Buy real stuff. Get out of paper.
*Long term Solution:* The principles in this Honest Money Constitutional Amendment, that is at the top of this thread. That is the ONLY True and long term Solution. There is no other, at all.

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## Zippyjuan

Lindsey Williams also said John McCain would be president instead of Obama and the Middle East would be bankrupt and Iran would be wiped out by now. He said the Elite wanted him shut down and to stop selling his books and videos or they would kill him "like Kennedy" if he kept talking.  He is always calling for some crise he has the "inside information" on. I can't watch him anymore because he also takes forever to say anything.

How many places is the Williams video posted?

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Lindsey Williams also said John McCain would be president instead of Obama and the Middle East would be bankrupt and Iran would be wiped out by now. He said the Elite wanted him shut down and to stop selling his books and videos or they would kill him "like Kennedy" if he kept talking.  He is always calling for some crise he has the "inside information" on. I can't watch him anymore because he also takes forever to say anything.
> 
> How many places is the Williams video posted?


First of all, the guy is about 95% right, if I heard it right. I would like to see some proof from you about the three points you said he was wrong about. Don't forget to provide Lindsey's time frame for Middle East going bankrupt, and for Iran. I think you are wrong.

Secondly, the December dollar purchasing power drop have been collaborated by other sources as well. Most likely they will stage some event to blame the dollar drop on (never mind that they printed 17 or so trillions just before that). It is a classic misdirection "magic trick": look here, while we do something there.

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## Zippyjuan

I don't have the time or patience to dig through his videos (he takes so darn long to get to the point he tries to make) but this is a summary of his 2008 video:
http://tobefree.wordpress.com/2008/0...whats-to-come/



> Basically, Mr. Williams was told that over the next twelve months, from mid-2008 to mid-2009, 
> (1) news of super giant oil fields, ready to produce, would be announced for two locations, in the Northern Slopes of Russia and in Indonesia, which oil fields would together contain more oil reserves than the entire Middle East; 
> (2) that this news would drive oil prices down to $50/barrel; 
> (3) that OPEC countries, especially in the Middle East, would be bankrupted by this price decrease; 
> (4) that this would cause the financing of our foreign trade and current account deficits through purchases of treasury paper by foreign nations with their surplus oil profits to collapse, leading to the collapse of the dollar; 
> (5) that the collapse of the dollar would cause unprecedented financial strife and turmoil in the US, and that it would take many years for the US to recover from this financial debacle; 
> (6) that they (big oil) support John McCain for President; and 
> (7) that US domestic oil reserves would never be tapped, and that any legislation which might allow domestic reserves to be tapped would not be allowed to pass, leaving the US dependent on foreign oil forever.


1)There were no new major oil fields in Russia or Indonesia (let alone enough to be more than the total reserves of Saudi Arabia).  
2) Yes, the price of oil did briefly go to $50 a barrel (the fall was due to the collapse in global demand for oil due to the economic crisis) but 
3) it did not bankrupt the Middle East.  
4) the dollar did not collapse and the current account deficit shrank- not grew http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/inte...nual09_fax.pdf
5) There was not "unprecidented financial strife and turmoil" (the worse of the financial crisis had alread happened- it did not get worse in 2008- 2009)
6) John McCain was not made president. ("John McCain is their man. They will do whatever it takes to make sure he gets elected" is what he said.  
7)  Oil leases were not banned but instead more leases were sold. http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/new...1_10_2012.html

I don't see "95% correct predictions".

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I don't have the time or patience to dig through his videos (he takes so darn long to get to the point he tries to make) but this is a summary of his 2008 video:
> http://tobefree.wordpress.com/2008/0...whats-to-come/
> 
> 
> 1)There were no new major oil fields in Russia or Indonesia (let alone enough to be more than the total reserves of Saudi Arabia).  
> 2) Yes, the price of oil did briefly go to $50 a barrel (the fall was due to the collapse in global demand for oil due to the economic crisis) but 
> 3) it did not bankrupt the Middle East.  
> 4) the dollar did not collapse and the current account deficit shrank- not grew http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/inte...nual09_fax.pdf
> 5) There was not "unprecidented financial strife and turmoil" (the worse of the financial crisis had alread happened- it did not get worse in 2008- 2009)
> ...


The timing of the dollar demise was not consigned to 2009. It will happen (visibly for every one) in Dec 2012, when dollar sharply will lose much of its purchasing power (it will probably be blamed on some staged event, instead of the fact that they printed ~$17 trillion just before), resulting in a full blown hyperinflation by the summer of 2013.

So, his information was mostly correct.

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## Zippyjuan

What is going to happen in the next two months (December 2012 is six weeks away) to destroy the dollar? (not sure where the $17 trillion figure comes from either- the Fed has not "printed" $17 trillion.)

And he is still wrong on six of seven predictions for 2008- 2009.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> What is going to happen in the next two months (December 2012 is six weeks away) to destroy the dollar? (not sure where the $17 trillion figure comes from either- the Fed has not "printed" $17 trillion.)
> 
> And he is still wrong on six of seven predictions for 2008- 2009.


Wrong again:

*The Fed's $16 Trillion Bailouts Under-reported
Russia discovers massive East Siberian oil field
Pertamina finds new oil and gas reserves in Indonesia*

In addition the prediction of price swing from $150 to $50 per barrel was correct. I think Lindsay Williams proved his point: the world economy is being manipulated.

*Lindsay Williams : The Timeline*

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## Zippyjuan

1) The $16 trillion figure includes massive double counting.  Banks had to give the Fed collateral to take out loans (which were paid back) so it wasn't exactly "printing" since they were in exchange for a comparable value in assets  and the terms of the loans were overnight.  If they kept it out for more than one day, it was counted as a new loan- thus a $10 billion loan kept out for 30 days was counted as $300 billion in loans- even though they did not acutally have more than $10 billion out.  Discounting that and the loan total drops to $1.2 trillion. 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/have-yo...-to-fail-banks




> According to the limited GAO audit of the Federal Reserve that was mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the grand total of all the secret bailouts conducted by the Federal Reserve during the last financial crisis comes to a whopping $16.1 trillion.
> 
> That is an astonishing amount of money.
> 
> Keep in mind that the GDP of the United States for the entire year of 2010 was only 14.58 trillion dollars.
> 
> The total U.S. national debt is only a bit above 15 trillion dollars right now.
> 
> So 16 trillion dollars is an almost inconceivable amount of money.
> ...



2) Russian East Serbian Oil find- the find has an estimated 1.1 billion barrels according to the link.  Williams said that the Indonesian and Russian finds would be bigger than all of the Saudi Reserves which are about 250 billion barrels. For comparison, the US consumes 7 billion barrels a year. Haven't found numbers for the Indonesian discovery but it is expected to yield 3,500 barrels a day (a small yield). The Deepwater Horizon well which exploded would have been four billion barrels total (three times the Russian find) and was LEAKING over 50,000 barrels a day- more than ten times the Indonesian find at its expected peak production. Those were *not* significant discoveries announced.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*World's Biggest Oil Reserves 
In S Dakota, E Montana*




> U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World! Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006
> 
> Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?
> 
> They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.
> 
> Here are the official estimates:
> 
> - 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
> ...

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## Zippyjuan

Was this a Lindsay Williams prediction?   The Bakkans is nothing new- it has been undergoing boom and bust development as oil prices change since the 1960's and was first discovered in the 1950's. 

The problem with the Bakken oil reserves is that much of the oil is tied up in rocks. The estimates of the oil which is recoverable given current technology and oil prices range from 3 billion to 24 billion barrels (again, note Saudi Arabia with about 250 billion recoverable and our consumption of about 7 billion barrels a year).   The rest is litterally rocks with oil within them and to get that out you have to extract the rocks, crush them, heat them to high temperature and use lots of water and chemicals to separate the oil from the rocks.  That requires about the equivelent of one barrel of oil to extract two barrels of oil. Water is also a limited supply item in the area.  Fracking has been getting some of the "looser" oil in the area out but that is nowhere near Saudi Arabia.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_formation



> The Bakken formation /ˈbɑːkən/ is a rock unit from the Late Devonian to Early Mississippian age occupying about 200,000 square miles (520,000 km2) of the subsurface of the Williston Basin, underlying parts of Montana, North Dakota, and Saskatchewan. The formation was initially described by geologist J.W. Nordquist in 1953.[2] The formation is entirely in the subsurface, and has no surface outcrop. It is named after Henry Bakken, a farmer in Williston, North Dakota who owned the land where the formation was initially discovered.[3]
> 
> Besides being a widespread prolific source rock for oil when thermally mature, there are also significant producible reserves of oil within the Bakken formation itself.[4] Oil was first discovered within the Bakken in 1951, but efforts to produce it have reached difficulties historically. *An April 2008 USGS report estimated the amount of technically recoverable oil using technology readily available at the end of 2007 within the Bakken Formation at 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels (680,000,000 m3), with a mean of 3.65 billion.[5] The state of North Dakota also released a report that month which estimated that there are 2.1 billion barrels (330,000,000 m3) of technically recoverable oil in the Bakken.[6] Various other estimates place the total reserves, recoverable and non-recoverable with today's technology, at up to 24 billion barrels. The most recent estimate places the figure at 18 billion barrels*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Was this a Lindsay Williams prediction?   The Bakkans is nothing new- it has been undergoing boom and bust development as oil prices change since the 1960's and was first discovered in the 1950's. 
> 
> The problem with the Bakken oil reserves is that much of the oil is tied up in rocks. The estimates of the oil which is recoverable given current technology and oil prices range from 3 billion to 24 billion barrels (again, note Saudi Arabia with about 250 billion recoverable and our consumption of about 7 billion barrels a year).   The rest is litterally rocks with oil within them and to get that out you have to extract the rocks, crush them, heat them to high temperature and use lots of water and chemicals to separate the oil from the rocks.  That requires about the equivelent of one barrel of oil to extract two barrels of oil. Water is also a limited supply item in the area.  Fracking has been getting some of the "looser" oil in the area out but that is nowhere near Saudi Arabia.  
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_formation


That contradicts the article which says



> However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves.... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels.


Also, Williams was told that Prudhoe Bay Oil Field was the largest known in the world, but after it was suppressed, they now lie about its size. Nothing new here. 

Also you forgot the 2 TRILLION barrel oil field under the Rocky Mountains.




> Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?
> 
> They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.


The bottom line US always had MORE THAN ENOUGH of its OWN oil. This has been known for decades or more. The ONLY reason we were made dependent on foreign oil was a CONSPIRACY to rob Americans and to create enemies for them, so that they might be eventually enslaved. Look up Hegelian Dialectic, or Problem-Reaction-Solution. This is the standard operating procedure for Luciferians who rule the elite.

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## Steven Douglas

> The bottom line US always had MORE THAN ENOUGH of its OWN oil. This has been known for decades or more. The ONLY reason we were made dependent on foreign oil was a CONSPIRACY to rob Americans and to create enemies for them, so that they might be eventually enslaved. Look up Hegelian Dialectic, or Problem-Reaction-Solution. This is the standard operating procedure for Luciferians who rule the elite.






1:34 "If you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw (there it is, that's a straw, you see...watch it)...my straw reaches across the room, and starts to drink your milkshake. I...drink...your...MILKSHAKE!"

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Translation please?

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## Steven Douglas

> Translation please?


Isn't it obvious? If there are reserves on both sides of the Earth, and we use (and cause others to use) primarily the reserves in other parts of the Earth, what happens when those reserves are depleted?

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## Zippyjuan

> Also, Williams was told that Prudhoe Bay Oil Field was the largest known in the world, but after it was suppressed, they now lie about its size. Nothing new here.


Any supporting evidence beyond William's claim?  Actually he said Gull Island which is within Prudhoe Bay had as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Gull Island is less than one mile in size. The largest oil field in Saudi Arabia is hundreds of miles long.  Here is a picture of the island:


http://photography.nationalgeographi...nd-alaska.html

Prudhoe Bay oil production has been declining since the 1970's and now the amounts being produced are so low they are concerned that there is enough passing through the Alaskan pipeline (which brings that oil down to the lower 48) to be able to keep the pipeline flowing. 

He also claimed that the North Slope of Alaska had as much oil as Saudi Arabia. 




> Also you forgot the 2 TRILLION barrel oil field under the Rocky Mountains.


It is there- but incredibly difficult and expensive to get at, as I pointed out earlier.  This is oil shale with the oil tied up in solid rocks.  Think tar sands of Canada only hardened. This is not stuff you can simply drill down to and pump it out. 
http://dailyreckoning.com/oil-shale-reserves/




> Estimated U.S. oil shale reserves total an astonishing 1.5 trillion barrels of oil – or more than five times the
> stated reserves of Saudi Arabia. This energy bounty is simply too large to ignore any longer, assuming that the reserves are economically viable. And yet, oil shale lies far from the radar screen of most investors.





> Extracting oil from the shale is no simple task. The earliest attempts to extract the oil utilized an environmentally unfriendly process known as “retorting.” Stated simply, retorting required mining the shale, hauling it to a processing facility that crushed the rock into small chunks, then extracted a petroleum substance called kerogen, then upgraded the kerogen through a process of hydrogenation (which requires lots of water) and refined it into gasoline or jet fuel.
> 
> But the difficulties of retorting do not end there, as my colleague, Byron King explains:
> 
> “After you retort the rock to derive the kerogen (not oil), the heating process has desiccated the shale (OK, that means that it is dried out).  Sad to say, the volume of desiccated shale that you have to dispose of is now greater than that of the hole from which you dug and mined it in the first place.  Any takers for trainloads of dried, dusty, gunky shale residue, rife with low levels of heavy metal residue and other toxic, but now chemically-activated crap?  (Well, it makes for enough crap that when it rains, the toxic stuff will leach out and contaminate all of the water supplies to which gravity can reach, which is essentially all of ‘em.  Yeah, right.  I sure want that stuff blowin’ in my wind.)  Add up all of the capital investment to build the retorting mechanisms, cost of energy required, cost of water, costs of transport, costs of environmental compliance, costs of refining, and you have some relatively costly end-product.”


Plus it will require millions of gallons of water which is a scarce resource in the arid West.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Actually he said Gull Island which is within Prudhoe Bay had as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Gull Island is less than one mile in size. The largest oil field in Saudi Arabia is hundreds of miles long. Here is a picture of the island:


The size of the island is irrelevant. Don't you know you can drill in the sea, with no island at all?




> It is there- but incredibly difficult and expensive to get at, as I pointed out earlier. This is oil shale with the oil tied up in solid rocks. Think tar sands of Canada only hardened. This is not stuff you can simply drill down to and pump it out.


After all the lies we have been told, I would not be surprised if Exxon failed on purpose by choosing a rocky spot to begin with. 

I believe Williams. The evidence is in his favor.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Being Anti-Fed Isn't Enough*
You have to understand money. Article by Tom Woods:




> As I noted not long ago, I find myself in serious disagreement with a portion of the end-the-Fed movement. This is the segment of the movement whose complaints are that the Federal Reserve is “privately owned,” that the Fed does not inflate enough, that interest payments are unjust or inherently unpayable all at once, etc.
> 
> This is not nit-picking. I am not interested in replacing the Fed with something as bad or worse. The problem with the Fed is not that it isn’t socialistic enough. The problem with the Fed is that it is a creation of Congress and operates with special privileges granted by the government. *If only the Fed* *were truly private, with no government-granted privileges. Then it could do no damage whatever.*



Right on, Tom! Remove government forced monopoly, (i.e. allow Free Competition in Currencies), and unbacked fiat ends by the hand of Free Market, together with welfare state and warfare state! That is the purpose of this amendment!

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## Zippyjuan

> The size of the island is irrelevant. Don't you know you can drill in the sea, with no island at all?
> 
> After all the lies we have been told, I would not be surprised if Exxon failed on purpose by choosing a rocky spot to begin with. 
> 
> I believe Williams. *The evidence is in his favor.*


Sure you can drill in the ocean. Happens all of the time.  The problem is one of space.  You can't physically hide 250 billion barrels of oil in an area that small. It is WITHIN Prudhoe Bay which itself had an estimated 13 billion barrels of recoverable oil. http://www.alaskapipelinejobinfo.com...yoilfield.html



> When first discovered, the Prudhoe Bay oilfield was thought to contain 9.6 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil. Advances in technology have upped that estimate to 13 billion barrels. The field also contains a significant amount of natural gas with the latest estimate at more than 26 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas. To access these resources, more than 1,114 wells have been drilled (as of the summer of 2006). The field itself is 213,543 acres in size.
> 
> Development of the field began in 1969 and oil first made its way down the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) on June 20th 1977. 
> 
> When it came online, Prudhoe Bay averaged over 1.5 million barrels of oil & gas liquids per day for more than a decade. Output started to decline in 1988 and as of 2005, the average daily production is approximately 450,000 barrels. This amount equals 5% of total U.S. production.


BP is one of the companies with rights to Prudhoe Bay.  If the Bay had that much oil, why would they spend over half a billion dollars to drill seven miles down in the Gulf of Mexico for the Deepwater Horizon rig?   Why not keep pumping in Alaska if it has that much oil in a place they already have rigs? No- it doesn't add up. 

Perhaps you can share evidence of his being right about 250 billion barrels of oil at Gull Island or the North Slope of Alaska. And McCain being president.  And the massive oil fields announced in Northern Russia.  And Indonesia- both totaling over 250 billion barrels extractable oil combined for 2008/ 2009.  (Indonesia is a net oil importer- they could use the revenues!)  And the Middle East being bankrupt. He throws a lot of stuff out there and gets lucky once in a while.  He is no expert.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Sure you can drill in the ocean. Happens all of the time.  The problem is one of space.  You can't physically hide 250 billion barrels of oil in an area that small. It is WITHIN Prudhoe Bay which itself had an estimated 13 billion barrels of recoverable oil. http://www.alaskapipelinejobinfo.com...yoilfield.html


The ocean floor is 2/3 of the earth's surface. It is NOT a small area. If you have an exit point in Prudhoe Bay, it does not mean that the underground field must be limited to the size of the island or the bay. As I said before, you don't even have to have an island, nor a bay for that matter.




> BP is one of the companies with rights to Prudhoe Bay.  If the Bay had that much oil, why would they spend over half a billion dollars to drill seven miles down in the Gulf of Mexico for the Deepwater Horizon rig?   Why not keep pumping in Alaska if it has that much oil in a place they already have rigs? No- it doesn't add up.


It is called CONSPIRACY. You might have heard of the word. Look it up. It has been the moving engine of a wicked world for a few thousand years.




> Perhaps you can share evidence of his being right about 250 billion barrels of oil at Gull Island or the North Slope of Alaska. And McCain being president.  And the massive oil fields announced in Northern Russia.  And Indonesia- both totaling over 250 billion barrels extractable oil combined for 2008/ 2009.  (Indonesia is a net oil importer- they could use the revenues!)  And the Middle East being bankrupt. He throws a lot of stuff out there and gets lucky once in a while.  He is no expert.


Northern Russia has massive estimates. The announcements might have been canceled after the disclosure. However the precise price swing from $150 to $50 per barrel was spot on. Was that a coincident too? "Coincident" is the excuse of fools and liars. There is no such thing.

Middle East is in the process of going bankrupt. He is no expert, neither does he claim to be one. He simply repeats what he was told.

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## Zippyjuan

> The ocean floor is 2/3 of the earth's surface. It is NOT a small area. If you have an exit point in Prudhoe Bay, it does not mean that the underground field must be limited to the size of the island or the bay. As I said before, you don't even have to have an island, nor a bay for that matter.


Let me try again.  Ocean big. Prudhoe Bay not big.  Gull Island inside Prudhoe Bay. Very small.  Prudhoe Bay has 13 billion barrels of recoverable oil.  Saudi Arabia has 250 billion barrels of oil and their biggest field is over 200 miles long.  It is impossible for this place inside Prudhoe Bay to have more oil than a 200 mile long reserve.  250 billion barrels hiding in Bay with only 13 billion barrels? Not possible. 
Google Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&qs...ed=0CCsQ8gEwAA (the little "7" shape in the middle of the bay is Gull Island).




> The evidence is in his favor.


Let's see the evidence.




> He is no expert, neither does he claim to be one. He simply repeats what he was told.


"Buy my DVD and find out all about it!" (or his book- he said "they would do to me what they did to JFK" if he kept trying to sell his book.) He also said "they" forced him to shut down his website.  He is still selling.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul: "If you had sound money, you would not have deficits, because you cannot print money." 

This is the key, politically and economically speaking. Everything else is fluff and different degrees of a lie.  

http://www.prisonplanet.com/ron-paul...-far-gone.html

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

'Fool's                Gold' Standards

IMF is planning to produce "gold backed" SDR's as a new global currency. It is a fraud in the making. Just like the original Federal Reserve Act of 1913 called for gold backing of the dollar, only to quietly remove and outlaw such backing later, so is the plan of the banksters regarding SDR's. It may initially be backed by "gold" to sucker people in, but because of the monopoly, it will soon become NOT redeemable in gold, to perpetuate the fiat fraud on global scale. The true solution is to kill the immoral monopoly by legalizing Free Competition in Currencies, as demanded by Free Market, which is the purpose of this amendment (please see the top post).




> Ron Paul,                  in "Why                  Monetary Freedom Matters," reinforces Salerno's caution                  on true reform, a market determined money, versus reforms, that                  while perhaps better than a "false trust in fiat money" will leave                  too many opportunities for monetary mischief. Paul states, "As                  far back as the Gold Commission (1982), I've made the case for                  gold." But he wouldn't close down the central bank: he would legalize                  competition in currencies, repeal legal-tender laws, and eliminate                  all taxes on silver or gold purchases, and allow private mints.                  In essence, his proposal is similar                    to what F. A. Hayek (1976, 1978) had talked about. Why don't                    we denationalize money, legalize competition, allow free markets                    to work, and allow free-market banking to work?
> 
> http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/cochran-j1.1.1.html

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## Steven Douglas

> 'Fool's                Gold' Standards
> 
> IMF is planning to produce "gold backed" SDR's as a new global currency. It is a fraud in the making. Just like the original Federal Reserve Act of 1913 called for gold backing of the dollar, only to quietly remove and outlaw such backing later, so is the plan of the banksters regarding SDR's. It may initially be backed by "gold" to sucker people in, but because of the monopoly, it will soon become NOT redeemable in gold...


I would be utterly shocked if it was EVER redeemable in gold, even from the onset.  It will only be said to be "backed by gold" to instill CON-fidence, with nobody--not government or individuals--ever having the ability to say, "OK, here's my bill, where's my gold?"

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I would be utterly shocked if it was EVER redeemable in gold, even from the onset.  It will only be said to be "backed by gold" to instill CON-fidence, with nobody--not government or individuals--ever having the ability to say, "OK, here's my bill, where's my gold?"


Spot on! Good point! CON-fidence, is the key word here! Any solution that involves a government forced monopoly, i.e. immoral use of violence, is a false one. Free Competition in Currencies is the ONLY TRUE SOLUTION here, because it is the only solution that does not violate the laws of JUSTICE. 

A JUST society is a VOLUNTARY one. JUSTICE and Liberty are intrinsically linked. You cannot have Liberty without justice, and you cannot have JUSTICE without Liberty! They are the two sides of the same coin, which coin is Freedom, Peace and Prosperity.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Money and Banking Quiz*




> We are a sufficient number of generations                into our virtual currency system, and the majority of people accept                it without any question. It is inconceivable to most that it could                contain a fatal flaw which might eventually lead to its demise –                or our loss of personal liberty. 
> 
> Our system                of fractional reserve banking and fiat money is one of the greatest                cons ever devised by man. It hides in plain sight by virtue of a                deception that is just subtle enough to elude the grasp of almost                all who encounter it. Sometimes such an idea cannot be fully communicated                through simple explanation. Rather, it must be discovered by each                individual in his own way.
> 
> The following                is not so much a quiz, but possible questions that could be used                to lead someone to their own discovery. 
> 
> http://lewrockwell.com/spl4/money-and-banking-quiz.html

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

When Money Dies | Daniel Sanchez

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

12 Year Old Girl Tells The SHEEPLE the Truth about CORRUPT BANKERS









The only thing she is wrong about is the solution.

The solution is not to give the counterfeiting power into the hands of trustworthy politicians, but to outlaw legalized and monopolized counterfeiting all together, by legalizing Free Competition in Currencies as in this amendment. 

Also, there is no such thing as "fair taxes," as there is no such thing as "fair robbery."

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty



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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ditching Before the Fiscal Cliff
by Peter Schiff



Read more: http://lewrockwell.com/schiff/schiff190.html

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Can We Live Without the Fed?*
 [Can we live without plunder?]

Don't make Tom Woods laugh.
*by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.*

_Recently by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: Why the Greenbackers Are Wrong_

 

_This was published on January 2, 2013, in Ron Paul’s Monetary Policy Anthology: Materials From the Chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, US House of Representatives, 112th Congress._ 

We have heard the objection a thousand times: why, before we had a Federal Reserve System the American economy endured a regular series of financial panics. Abolishing the Fed is an unthinkable, absurd suggestion, for without the wise custodianship of our central bankers we would be thrown back into a horrific financial maelstrom, deliverance from which should have made us grateful, not uppity.

The argument is superficially plausible, to be sure, but it is wrong in every particular. We heard it quite a bit in the financial press ever since the announcement that Congressman Ron Paul, a well-known opponent of the Fed, would chair the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy. Fed apologists were beside themselves – a man who rejects the cartoon version of the history of the Fed will hold such an influential position? He must be made into an object of derision and ridicule.

The conventional wisdom runs something like this: without a central bank or its lesser cousin, a national bank, we had frequent episodes of boom and bust, but since the creation of the Federal Reserve System the economy has been far more stable. People who believe in a free market in banking, as opposed to these cartel arrangements, are evidently so uninformed or so blinded by ideology that they have never heard or internalized this one-sentence encapsulation of 19th- and 20th-century monetary history.

Modern scholarship has not been kind to this thesis. Mainstream economists have begun to acknowledge that the alleged instability of the period before the Federal Reserve has been exaggerated, as the posited stability of the post-Fed period. Christina Romer, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under Barack Obama, finds that the numbers and dating used by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER, the largest economics research foundation in the U.S., founded in 1920) exaggerate both the number and the length of economic downturns prior to the creation of the Fed. In so doing, the NBER likewise overestimates the Fed’s contribution to economic stability. Recessions were in fact not more frequent in the pre-Fed than the post-Fed period.

Suppose we compare only the post-World War II period to the pre-Fed period, thereby excluding the Great Depression from the Fed’s record. In that case, we do find economic contractions to be somewhat more frequent in the period before the Fed, but as economist George Selgin explains, "They were also three months _shorter_ on average, and no more severe." Thus recoveries were faster in the pre-Fed period, with the average time peak to bottom taking only 7.7 months as opposed to the 10.6 months of the post-World War II period. Extending our pre-Fed period to include 1796 to 1915, economist Joseph Davis finds no appreciable difference between the frequency and duration of recessions as compared to the period of the Fed.

But perhaps the Fed has helped to stabilize real output (the total amount of goods and services an economy produces in a given period of time, adjusted to remove the effects of inflation), thereby decreasing economic volatility. Not so. Some recent research finds the two periods (pre- and post-Fed) to be approximately equal in volatility, and some finds the post-Fed period in fact to be _more_ volatile, once faulty data are corrected for. The ups and downs in output that did exist before the creation of the Fed were not attributable to the lack of a central bank. Output volatility before the Fed was caused almost entirely by supply shocks that tend to affect an agricultural society (harvest failures and such), while output volatility after the Fed is to a much greater extent the fault of the monetary system. (For citations on this point and for the previous paragraphs, see the paper by George Selgin, William D. Lastrapes, and Lawrence H. White, "Has the Fed Been a Failure?" available online.)

The 19th-century boom-bust cycles that are supposed to discredit the idea of a free market in money and banking are in fact consistently attributable to artificial credit expansion, a practice given artificial stimulus by means of the various government privileges granted to the banking industry. According to Richard Timberlake, a well-known economist and historian of American monetary and banking history, "As monetary histories confirm...*most of the monetary turbulence – bank panics and suspensions in the nineteenth century – resulted from excessive issues of legal-tender paper money, and they were abated by the working gold standards of the times.*" It is the old story of the faults of interventionism being blamed on the free market.

Contemporaries by and large attributed the Panic of 1819, for example, to the inflationary and then rapidly contractionary policies of the Second Bank of the United States. As often happens when the country is flooded with money created out of thin air, speculation of all kinds grew intense, as eyewitness testimony abundantly records.

During the years when the U.S. had no central bank (the period from 1811, when the charter of the first Bank of the United States expired, and 1817), government had granted private banks the privilege of expanding credit while refusing to pay depositors demanding their funds. In other words, when people came to demand their money from the banks, the banks were allowed to tell them they didn’t have the money, and depositors would simply have to wait a couple years – and at the same time, the bank was allowed to continue in operation. By early 1817 the Madison administration finally required the banks to meet depositor demands, but at the same time chartered the Second Bank of the United States, which would itself be inflationary. The Bank subsequently presided over an inflationary boom, which came to grief in 1819.

The lesson of that sorry episode – namely, that the economy gets taken on a wild and unhealthy ride when the money supply is arbitrarily increased and then suddenly reduced – was so obvious that even the political class managed to figure it out. Numerous American statesmen were confirmed in their hard-money views by the Panic. Thomas Jefferson asked a friend in the Virginia legislature to introduce his "Plan for Reducing the Circulating Medium," which the Sage of Monticello had drawn up in response to the Panic. The plan sought to withdraw all paper money in excess of specie over a five-year period, then redeem the rest in specie and have precious-metal coins circulate exclusively from that moment on. Jefferson and John Adams were especially fond of Destutt de Tracy’s hard-money _Treatise on the Will_ (1815), with Adams calling it the best book on economics ever written (its chapter on money, said Adams, defends "the sentiments that I have entertained all my lifetime") and Jefferson writing the preface to the English-language edition.

While the Panic of 1819 confirmed some political figures in the hard-money views they already held, it also converted others to that position. Condy Raguet had been an outspoken inflationist until 1819. After observing the distortions and instability caused by paper-money inflation, he promptly embraced hard money, and went on to write _A Treatise on Currency and Banking_ (1839), one of the great money and banking treatises of the nineteenth century. Davy Crockett, future president William Henry Harrison, and John Quincy Adams (at least at that time) were likewise opposed to inflationist banks; in contrast to the inflationary Second Bank of the United States, Adams cited the hard-money Bank of Amsterdam as a model to emulate. Daniel Raymond, disciple of Alexander Hamilton and author of the first treatise on economics published in America (_Thoughts on Political Economy_, 1820), expressly broke with Hamilton in advocating a hard-money, 100 percent specie-backed currency.

Popular references to the Panic of 1837 today urge us to blame President Andrew Jackson for having dissolved the Second Bank of the United States. The most common argument is this: without a national bank to discipline the state banks, the state banks that received the federal deposits after the closure of the Second Bank went on an inflationary binge that culminated in the Panic of 1837 and another downturn in 1839. This standard diagnosis is partly Austrian, surprisingly, in that it blames artificial credit expansion for giving rise to unsustainable booms that end in busts. But the alleged solution to this problem, according to modern commentators, is a robust central bank with implicit regulatory powers over smaller institutions.

Senator William Wells, a hard-money Federalist from Delaware, had been unconvinced from the start that the best way to encourage sound practices among smaller unsound banks was to establish a giant unsound bank. "This bill," he said in 1816,

came out of the hands of the administration ostensibly for the purpose of curtailing the over-issue of Bank paper: and yet it came prepared to inflict on us the same evil, being itself nothing more than a simple paper making machine; and constituting, in this respect, a scheme of policy about as wise, in point of precaution, as the contrivance of one of Rabelais’s heroes, who hid himself in the water for fear of the rain. The disease, it is said, is the Banking fever of the States; and this is to be cured by giving them the Banking fever of the United States.

Another hard-money U.S. senator, New York’s Samuel Tilden, likewise wondered, "How could a large bank, constituted on essentially the same principles, be expected to regulate beneficially the lesser banks? Has enlarged power been found to be less liable to abuse than limited power? Has concentrated power been found less liable to abuse than distributed power?"

A much better solution recommended by hard-money advocates at the time is what became known as the "Independent Treasury," in which the federal deposits, instead of being distributed to privileged state banks and used as the basis for additional rounds of credit creation there, were retained by the Treasury and kept out of the banking system entirely. Hard-money supporters believed that the federal government was propping up (and lending artificial legitimacy to) an unsound system of fractional-reserve state banks by (1) distributing the federal deposits to them, (2) accepting their paper money in payment of taxes and (3) paying it back out again. As William Gouge put it,

If the operations of Government could be _completely_ separated from those of the Banks, the system would be shorn of half its evils. If Government would neither deposit the public funds in the Banks, nor borrow money from the Banks; and if it would in no case either receive Bank notes or pay away Bank notes, the Banks would become mere commercial institutions, and their credit and their power be brought nearer to a level with those of private merchants.

Contemporary opponents of the Bank have sometimes been portrayed as antimarket, antiproperty populists. "Last time we had a central bank," wrote a critic of Congressman Paul in 2010, "its advocates were conservative, hard-money businessmen, and its opponents were subprime borrowers and lenders who convinced President Jackson the bank was holding back the nation." That is as wrong as wrong can be, as we’ll see in a moment. But our critic proceeds from this error to the false conclusion that supporters of the market economy then as now should be supporters of the central bank.

To be sure, opponents of the Second Bank of the United States were no monolith, and even today the central bank is criticized both by those who condemn its money creation as well as by those who criticize its alleged stinginess. On balance, though, the fight against the Second Bank was a free-market, hard-money campaign against a government-privileged paper-money producer. "The attack on the Bank," concluded Professor Jeff Hummel in his review of the literature, "wasa fully rational and highly enlightened step toward the achievement of a _laissez-faire_metallic monetary system." 

In fact, the most important monetary theorist of the entire period, William Gouge, was a champion of hard money who opposed the Bank; he considered these two positions logically coordinate, indeed inseparable. "Why should ingenuity exert itself in devising new modifications of paper Banking?" Gouge asked. "The economy which prefers fictitious money to real, is, at best, like that which prefers a leaky ship to a sound one." He assured Americans that "the sun would shine, the streams would flow, and the earth would yield her increase, if the Bank of the United States was not in existence." The conservative _Bankers’ Magazine_, upon Gouge’s death, said that his hard-money book _A Short History of Paper Money and Banking_ was "a very able and clear exposition of the principles of banking and of the mistakes made by our American banking institutions."

Another important hard-money opponent of the national bank was William Leggett, the influential Jacksonian editorial writer in New York who memorably called for "separation of bank and state." Economist Larry White, who compiled many of Leggett’s most important writings, calls him "the intellectual leader of the _laissez-faire_ wing of Jacksonian democracy." He denounced the Bank for its repeated expansions and contractions, and for the economic turmoil that such manipulation left in its wake.

The Panic of 1819 had likewise been due to such behavior on the part of the Bank, said Leggett during the 1830s. "For the two or three years preceding the extensive and heavy calamities of 1819, the United States Bank, instead of regulating the currency, poured out its issues at such a lavish rate that trade and speculation were excited in a preternatural manner." Leggett continues,

But not to dwell upon events the recollection of which time may have begun to efface from many minds, let us but cast a glance at the manner in which the United States Bank _regulated the currency_ in 1830, when, in the short period of a twelve-month it extended its _accommodations_ from forty to seventy millions of dollars. This enormous expansion, entirely uncalled for by any peculiar circumstance in the business condition of the country, was followed by the invariable consequences of an inflation of the currency. Goods and stocks rose, speculation was excited, a great number of extensive enterprises were undertaken, canals were laid out, rail-roads projected, and the whole business of the country was stimulated into unnatural and unsalutary activity.



As in later crises, banks were allowed to suspend specie payment (a fancy way of saying that the law permitted them to refuse to hand over their depositors’ money when their customers came looking for it) while permitting them to carry on their operations. The knowledge that government could be counted on to bail out the banks in this way created a lingering problem of moral hazard that would affect banks’ behavior in the future.
 Leggett blamed artificial credit creation for the Panic of 1837:

What has been, what ever must be, the consequence of such a sudden and prodigious inflation of the currency? Business stimulated to the most unhealthy activity; a vast amount of over production in the mechanick arts; a vast amount of speculation in property of every kind and name, at fictitious values; and finally, a vast and terrifick crash, when the treacherous and unsubstantial basis crumbles beneath the stupendous fabrick of credit, and the structure falls to the ground, burying in its ruins thousands who exulted in the fancied security of their elevation. Men, now-a-days, go to bed deeming themselves rich, and wake in the morning to find themselves stripped of even the little they really had. They count, deluded creatures! on the continued liberality of the banks, whose persuasive entreaties seduced them into the slippery paths of speculation. But they have now to learn that the banks cannot help them if they would, and would not if they could. They were free enough to lend their aid when assistance was not needed; but now, when it is indispensable to carry out the projects which would not have been undertaken but for the temptations they held forth, no further resources can be supplied.

Toward the end of 1837, he added:

Any person who has soberly observed the course of events for the last three years must have foreseen the very state of things which now exists.... He will see that the banks...have been striving with all their might, each emulating the other, to force their issues into circulation and flood the land. He will see that they have used every art of cajolery and allurement to entice men to accept their proffered aid, that in this way they gradually excited a thirst for speculation which they sedulously stimulated until it increased to a delirious fever and men in the epidemic frenzy of the hour wildly rushed upon all sorts of desperate adventures. They dug canals where no commerce asked for the means of transportation, they opened roads where no travelers desired to penetrate and they built cities where there were none to inhabit.

The Panic of 1857 was the result of a five-year boom rooted in credit expansion. The most capital-intensive industries of that decade, railroad construction and mining companies, expanded the most during the boom. States had even backed railroad bonds, promising to make good on those bonds if the railroad companies did not.

President James Buchanan engaged in no vain effort to reflate the economy. He observed in his first annual message, "It is apparent that our existing misfortunes have proceeded solely from our extravagant and vicious system of paper currency and bank credits." The economy recovered within six months, even though the money supply fell, interest rates rose, government spending was not increased, and businesses and banks were not bailed out. But Buchanan cautioned Americans that "the periodical revulsions which have existed in our past history must continue to return at intervals so long as our present unbounded system of bank credits shall prevail."

Buchanan envisioned a federal bankruptcy law for banks that, instead of giving legal sanction to their suspension of specie payments (that is, their failure to honor their depositors’ demands for withdrawal), would in fact shut them down if they failed to make good on their promises. "The instinct of self-preservation might produce a wholesome restraint upon their banking business if they knew in advance that a suspension of specie payments would inevitably produce their civil death."

Until recently it was customary to refer to the 1870s as the period of the "Long Depression" in the United States. The modern consensus holds that there was no "Long Depression" after all. Even the _New York Times_ recently observed:

Recent detailed reconstructions of nineteenth-century data by economic historians show that there was no 1870s depression: aside from a short recession in 1873, in fact, the decade saw possibly the fastest sustained growth in American history. Employment grew strongly, faster than the rate of immigration; consumption of food and other goods rose across the board. On a per capita basis, almost all output measures were up spectacularly. By the end of the decade, people were better housed, better clothed and lived on bigger farms. Department stores were popping up even in medium-sized cities. America was transforming into the world’s first mass consumer society.

Farmers, moreover, who panicked at falling prices for agricultural commodities, at first failed to note that other prices were falling still faster. The terms of trade for American farmers improved considerably during the 1870s.

As for historians, they seem to have been fooled by the statistics on consumer prices, which fell an average of 3.8 percent per year. And since the conventional wisdom holds that falling prices and depression are intimately linked – they are not – they concluded that this must have been a time of terrible depression. With the gold standard restored in 1879 after being abandoned during the Civil War, the 1880s were likewise a period of great prosperity, with real wages rising by 20 percent.

The post–Civil War panics in the United States were due in large part to the unit-banking regulations in many states that forbade branch banking of any sort. Confined to a single office, each bank was necessarily fragile and undiversified. Canada experienced none of these panics even though it did not establish a central bank, the establishment’s trusted panacea, until 1934. As Milton Friedman was fond of pointing out, when 9,000 banks failed in the U.S. during the Great Depression, not a single bank failure was taking place in Canada, where the banking system was not damaged by these regulations.

Moreover, as Charles Calomiris has noted, the bank failure rate during the pre-Fed panics was small, as were the losses depositors suffered. Depositor losses amounted to only 0.1 percent of GDP during the Panic of 1893, which was the worst of them all with respect to bank failures and depositor losses. By contrast, in just the past 30 years of the central-bank era, the world has seen 20 banking crises that led to depositor losses in excess of 10 percent of GDP. Half of those saw losses in excess of 20 percent of GDP.

Just from an empirical point of view, therefore, the case for the Fed is far weaker than its proponents admit or realize. Still, as in so many other areas, critics of the status quo are reflexively condemned as cranks, and alternatives are dismissed as unthinkable. But they are unthinkable only because we have allowed fashionable opinion to keep us from thinking them. We have been forced into a box that confines our choices to various forms of statism. The movement to end the Fed is an astonishing and most welcome first step toward clawing our way out.

_January 4, 2013_


_Thomas E. Woods, Jr. [__send him mail__; visit_ _his website__], a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is the creator of_ _Tom Woods’s Liberty Classroom__, a libertarian educational resource. He is the author of eleven books, including the_ New York Times_ bestsellers_ Meltdown_ (on the financial crisis; read Ron Paul’s_ _foreword__) and_ The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History_, and most recently_ Nullification_ and_ Rollback_._

Copyright © 2013 Thomas Woods 

*The Best of Thomas Woods*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The                Myth of Fed Independence*

*by                Murray                N. Rothbard*
   

_Excerpted                  from_ The                  Case Against The Fed 
By far the                  most secret and least accountable operation of the federal government                  is not, as one might expect, the CIA, DIA, or some other super-secret                  intelligence agency. The CIA and other intelligence operations                  are under control of the Congress. They are accountable: a Congressional                  committee supervises these operations, controls their budgets,                  and is informed of their covert activities. It is true that the                  committee hearings and activities are closed to the public; but                  at least the people’s representatives in Congress insure                  some accountability for these secret agencies.

It is little                  known, however, that there is a federal agency that tops the others                  in secrecy by a country mile. The Federal Reserve System is accountable                  to no one; it has no budget; it is subject to no audit; and no                  Congressional committee knows of, or can truly supervise, its                  operations. The Federal Reserve, virtually in total control of                  the nation's vital monetary system, is accountable to nobody –                  and this strange situation, if acknowledged at all, is invariably                  trumpeted as a virtue.

Thus, when                  the first Democratic president in over a decade was inaugurated                  in 1993, the maverick and venerable Democratic chairman of the                  House Banking Committee, Texan Henry B. Gonzalez, optimistically                  introduced some of his favorite projects for opening up the Fed                  to public scrutiny. His proposals seemed mild; he did not call                  for full-fledged Congressional control of the Fed’s budget.                  The Gonzalez Bill required full independent audits of the Fed’s                  operations; videotaping the meetings of the Fed’s policy-making                  committee; and releasing detailed minutes of the policy meetings                  within a week, rather than the Fed being allowed, as it is now,                  to issue vague summaries of its decisions six weeks later. In                  addition, the presidents of the twelve regional Federal Reserve                  Banks would be chosen by the president of the United States rather                  than, as they are now, by the commercial banks of the respective                  regions.

It was to                  be expected that Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan would strongly resist                  any such proposals. After all, it is in the nature of bureaucrats                  to resist any encroachment on their unbridled power. Seemingly                  more surprising was the rejection of the Gonzalez plan by President                  Clinton, whose power, after all, would be enhanced by the measure.                  The Gonzalez reforms, the President declared, “run the risk                  of undermining market confidence in the Fed.”

On the face                  of it, this presidential reaction, though traditional among chief                  executives, is rather puzzling. After all, doesn’t a democracy                  depend upon the right of the people to know what is going on in                  the government for which they must vote? Wouldn’t knowledge                  and full disclosure strengthen the faith of the American public                  in their monetary authorities? Why should public knowledge “undermine                  market confidence”? Why does “market confidence”                  depend on assuring far less public scrutiny than is accorded keepers                  of military secrets that might benefit foreign enemies? What is                  going on here?

The standard                  reply of the Fed and its partisans is that any such measures,                  however marginal, would encroach on the Fed’s “independence                  from politics,” which is invoked as a kind of self-evident                  absolute. The monetary system is highly important, it is claimed,                  and therefore the Fed must enjoy absolute independence.

“Independent                  of politics” has a nice, neat ring to it, and has been a                  staple of proposals for bureaucratic intervention and power ever                  since the Progressive Era. Sweeping the streets; control of seaports;                  regulation of industry; providing social security; these and many                  other functions of government are held to be “too important”                  to be subject to the vagaries of political whims. But it is one                  thing to say that private, or market, activities should be free                  of government control, and “independent of politics”                  in that sense. But these are _government_ agencies and operations                  we are talking about, and to say that _government_ should                  be “independent of politics” conveys very different                  implications. For government, unlike private industry on the market,                  is not accountable either to stockholders or consumers. Government                  can only be accountable to the public and to its representatives                  in the legislature; and if government becomes “independent                  of politics” it can only mean that that sphere of government                  becomes an absolute self-perpetuating oligarchy, accountable to                  no one and never subject to the public’s ability to change                  its personnel or to “throw the rascals out.” If no person                  or group, whether stockholders or voters, can displace a ruling                  elite, then such an elite becomes more suitable for a dictatorship                  than for an allegedly democratic country. And yet it is curious                  how many self-proclaimed champions of “democracy,” whether                  domestic or global, rush to defend the alleged ideal of the total                  independence of the Federal Reserve.

Representative                  Barney Frank (D., Mass.), a co-sponsor of the Gonzalez Bill, points                  out that “if you take the principles that people are talking                  about nowadays,” such as “reforming government and opening                  up government – the Fed violates it more than any other branch                  of government.” On what basis, then, should the vaunted “principle”                  of an independent Fed be maintained?

It is instructive                  to examine who the defenders of this alleged principle may be,                  and the tactics they are using. Presumably one political agency                  the Fed particularly wants to be independent from is the U.S.                  Treasury. And yet Frank Newman, President Clinton's Under Secretary                  of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, in rejecting the Gonzalez                  reform, states: “The Fed is independent and that’s one                  of the underlying concepts.” In addition, a revealing little                  point is made by the _New York Times_, in noting the Fed’s                  reaction to the Gonzalez Bill: “The Fed is already working                  behind the scenes to organize battalions of bankers to howl about                  efforts to politicize the central bank” (_New York Times_,                  October 12, 1993). True enough. But why should these “battalions                  of bankers” be so eager and willing to mobilize in behalf                  of the Fed’s absolute control of the monetary and banking                  system? Why should bankers be so ready to defend a federal agency                  which controls and regulates them, and virtually determines the                  operations of the banking system? Shouldn’t private banks                  want to have some sort of check, some curb, upon their lord and                  master? Why should a regulated and controlled industry be so much                  in love with the unchecked power of their own federal controller?

Let us consider                  any other private industry. Wouldn’t it be just a tad suspicious                  if, say, the insurance industry demanded unchecked power for their                  state regulators, or the trucking industry total power for the                  ICC, or the drug companies were clamoring for total and secret                  power to the Food and Drug Administration? So shouldn’t we                  be very suspicious of the oddly cozy relationship between the                  banks and the Federal Reserve? What’s going on here? Our                  task in this volume is to open up the Fed to the scrutiny it is                  unfortunately not getting in the public arena.

Absolute                  power and lack of accountability by the Fed are generally defended                  on one ground alone: that any change would weaken the Federal                  Reserve’s allegedly inflexible commitment to wage a seemingly                  permanent “fight against inflation.” This is the Johnny-one-note                  of the Fed’s defense of its unbridled power. The Gonzalez                  reforms, Fed officials warn, might be seen by financial markets                  “as weakening the Fed’s ability to fight inflation”                  (_New York Times_, October 8, 1993). In subsequent Congressional                  testimony, Chairman Alan Greenspan elaborated this point. Politicians,                  and presumably the public, are eternally tempted to expand the                  money supply and thereby aggravate (price) inflation. Thus to                  Greenspan:  
The temptation is to step on the monetary accelerator or at least                  to avoid the monetary brake until after the next election. Giving                  in to such temptations is likely to impart an inflationary bias                  to the economy and could lead to instability, recession, and economic                  stagnation.

The Fed’s                  lack of accountability, Greenspan added, is a small price to pay                  to avoid “putting the conduct of monetary policy under the                  close influence of politicians subject to short-term election                  cycle pressure” (_New York Times_, October 14, 1993).

So there                  we have it. The public, in the mythology of the Fed and its supporters,                  is a great beast, continually subject to a lust for inflating                  the money supply and therefore for subjecting the economy to inflation                  and its dire consequences. Those dreaded all-too-frequent inconveniences                  called “elections” subject politicians to these temptations,                  especially in political institutions such as the House of Representatives                  who come before the public every two years and are therefore particularly                  responsive to the public will. The Federal Reserve, on the other                  hand, guided by monetary experts independent of the public’s                  lust for inflation, stands ready at all times to promote the long-run                  public interest by manning the battlements in an eternal fight                  against the Gorgon of inflation. The public, in short, is in desperate                  need of absolute control of money by the Federal Reserve to save                  it from itself and its short-term lusts and temptations. One monetary                  economist, who spent much of the 1920s and 1930s setting up Central                  Banks throughout the Third World, was commonly referred to as                  “the money doctor.” In our current therapeutic age,                  perhaps Greenspan and his confreres would like to be considered                  as monetary “therapists,” kindly but stern taskmasters                  whom we invest with total power to save us from ourselves.

But in this                  administering of therapy, where do the private bankers fit in?                  Very neatly, according to Federal Reserve officials. The Gonzalez                  proposal to have the president instead of regional bankers appoint                  regional Fed presidents would, in the eyes of those officials,                  “make it harder for the Fed to clamp down on inflation.”                  Why? Because, the “sure way” to “minimize inflation”                  is “to have private bankers appoint the regional bank presidents.”                  And why is this private banker role such a “sure way”?                  Because, according to the Fed officials, private bankers “are                  among the world’s fiercest inflation hawks” (_New                  York Times_, October 12, 1993).

The worldview                  of the Federal Reserve and its advocates is now complete. Not                  only are the public and politicians responsive to it eternally                  subject to the temptation to inflate; but it is important for                  the Fed to have a cozy partnership with private bankers. Private                  bankers, as “the world's fiercest inflation hawks,”                  can only bolster the Fed’s eternal devotion to battling against                  inflation.

There we                  have the ideology of the Fed as reflected in its own propaganda,                  as well as respected Establishment transmission belts such as                  the _New York Times_, and in pronouncements and textbooks                  by countless economists. Even those economists who would like                  to see more inflation accept and repeat the Fed’s image of                  its own role. And yet every aspect of this mythology is the very                  reverse of the truth. We cannot think straight about money, banking,                  or the Federal Reserve until this fraudulent legend has been exposed                  and demolished.

There is,                  however, one and only one aspect of the common legend that is                  indeed correct: that the overwhelmingly dominant cause of the                  virus of chronic price inflation is inflation, or expansion, of                  the supply of money. Just as an increase in the production or                  supply of cotton will cause that crop to be cheaper on the market;                  so will the creation of more money make its unit of money, each                  franc or dollar, cheaper and worth less in purchasing power of                  goods on the market.

But let us                  consider this agreed-upon fact in the light of the above myth                  about the Federal Reserve. We supposedly have the public clamoring                  for inflation while the Federal Reserve, flanked by its allies                  the nation’s bankers, resolutely sets its face against this                  short-sighted public clamor. But how is the public supposed to                  go about achieving this inflation? How can the public create,                  i.e., “print,” more money? It would be difficult to                  do so, since only one institution in the society is legally allowed                  to print money. Anyone who tries to print money is engaged in                  the high crime of “counterfeiting,” which the federal                  government takes very seriously indeed. Whereas the government                  may take a benign view of all other torts and crimes, including                  mugging, robbery, and murder, and it may worry about the “deprived                  youth” of the criminal and treat him tenderly, there is one                  group of criminals whom no government ever coddles: the counterfeiters.                  The counterfeiter is hunted down seriously and efficiently, and                  he is salted away for a very long time; for he is committing a                  crime that the government takes very seriously: he is interfering                  with the government’s revenue: specifically, the monopoly                  power to print money enjoyed by the Federal Reserve.

“Money,”                  in our economy, is pieces of paper issued by the Federal Reserve,                  on which are engraved the following: “This Note is Legal                  Tender for all Debts, Private, and Public.” This “Federal                  Reserve Note,” and nothing else, is money, and all vendors                  and creditors must accept these notes, like it or not.

So: if the                  chronic inflation undergone by Americans, and in almost every                  other country, is caused by the continuing creation of new money,                  _and if_ in each country its governmental “Central Bank”                  (in the United States, the Federal Reserve) is the sole monopoly                  source and creator of all money, _who then_ is responsible                  for the blight of inflation? Who except the very institution that                  is solely empowered to create money, that is, the Fed (and the                  Bank of England, and the Bank of Italy, and other central banks)                  _itself_?

In                  short: even before examining the problem in detail, we should                  already get a glimmer of the truth: that the drumfire of propaganda                  that the Fed is manning the ramparts against the menace of inflation                  brought about by others is nothing less than a deceptive shell                  game. The culprit solely responsible for inflation, the Federal                  Reserve, is continually engaged in raising a hue-and-cry about                  “inflation,” for which virtually _everyone_ _else_                  in society seems to be responsible. What we are seeing is the                  old ploy by the robber who starts shouting “Stop, thief!”                  and runs down the street pointing ahead at others. We begin to                  see why it has always been important for the Fed, and for other                  Central Banks, to invest themselves with an aura of solemnity                  and mystery. For, as we shall see more fully, if the public knew                  what was going on, if it was able to rip open the curtain covering                  the inscrutable Wizard of Oz, it would soon discover that the                  Fed, far from being the indispensable solution to the problem                  of inflation, is itself the heart and cause of the problem. What                  we need is not a totally independent, all-powerful Fed; what we                  need is no Fed at all.



_Murray                  N. Rothbard__                  (1926–1995) was dean of the Austrian School, founder of modern                  libertarianism, and chief academic officer of the Mises                  Institute. He was also editor – with Lew Rockwell –                  of_ The                  Rothbard-Rockwell Report_,                  and appointed Lew as his executor. See                  Murray's books._
Copyright                © 2013 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.                Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided                full credit is given.
 

*The                Best of Murray Rothbard*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Gold & Silver Ep1: Mike Maloney - 
Hidden Secrets of Money

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## Christian Liberty

Yeah, just go back to gold or silver, or a dollar backed by one or the other or both (I voted yes.)

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Yeah, just go back to gold or silver, or a dollar backed by one or the other or both (I voted yes.)


Thanks!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Why the Greenbackers Are Wrong (AERC 2013) 

*by Tom Woods * 
One of Ron Pauls great accomplishments is that the Federal Reserve  faces more opposition today than ever before. Readers of this site will  be familiar with the arguments: the Fed enjoys special government  privileges; its interference with market interest rates gives rise to  the boom-bust business cycle; it has undermined the value of the dollar;  it creates moral hazard, since market participants know the money  producer can bail them out; and it is unnecessary to and at odds with a  free-market economy.

 Unfortunately, not all Fed critics, even among Ron Paul supporters,  approach the problem in this way. A subset of the end-the-Fed crowd  opposes the Fed for peripheral or entirely wrongheaded reasons. For this  group, the Fed is not inflating enough. (I have been told by one critic that  our problem cannot be that too much money is being created, since he  doesnt know anyone who has too many Federal Reserve Notes.) Their other  main complaints are (1) that the Fed is privately owned (the Feds  problem evidently being that it isnt socialistic enough), (2) that fiat  money is just fine as long as it is issued by the peoples trusty  representatives instead of by the Fed, and (3) that under the present  system we are burdened with what they call debt-based money; their key  monetary reform, in turn, involves moving to debt-free money. These  critics have been called Greenbackers, a reference to fiat money used  during the Civil War. (A fourth claim is that the Austrian School of economics,  which Ron Paul promotes, is composed of shills for the banking system  and the status quo; I have exploded this claim already  here, here, and here.)

 With so much to cover I dont intend to get into (1) right now, but  it should suffice to note that being created by an act of Congress,  having your boards personnel appointed by the U.S. president, and  enjoying government-granted monopoly privileges without which you would  be of no significance, are not the typical features of a private  institution. Ill address (2) and (3) throughout what follows.

 The point of this discussion is to refute the principal falsehoods  that circulate among Greenbackers: (a) that a gold standard (either 100  percent reserve or fractional reserve) or the Federal Reserves fiat  money system yields an outcome in which outstanding loans cannot all be  paid because there is not enough money to pay both the principal and  the interest; (b) that if the banks are allowed to issue loans at  interest they will eventually wind up with all the money; and that the  only alternative is debt-free fiat paper money issued by government.

 My answers will be as follows: (1) the claim that there is not  enough money to pay both principal and interest is false, regardless of  which of these monetary systems we are considering; and (2) even if  debt-free money were the solution, the best producer of such money is  the free market, not Nancy Pelosi or John McCain.

To  understand what the Greenbackers have in mind with their proposed  debt-free money, and what they mean by the phrase money as debt they  use so often, lets look at the money creation process in the kind of  fractional-reserve fiat money system we have. Suppose the Fed engages in  one of its open-market operations and purchases government securities  from one of its primary dealers. The Fed pays for this purchase by  writing a check on itself, out of thin air, and handing it to the  primary dealer. That primary dealer, in turn, deposits the check into  its bank account  at Bank A, let us say.

 Bank A doesnt just sit on this money. The current system practically  compels it to use that money as the basis for credit expansion. So if  $10,000 was deposited in the bank, some $9,000 or so will be lent out   to Borrower C. So Borrower C now has $9,000 in purchasing power conjured  out of thin air, while Person B can still write checks on his $10,000.

This is why the Greenbackers speak of money as debt. The $9,000 that  Bank A created in our example entered the economy in the form of a loan  to Person B. In our system the banks are not allowed to print cash, but  they can do what from their point of view is the next best thing: create  checking deposits out of thin air. Banks issue loans out of thin air by  opening up a checking account for the customer, whose balance is  created out of nothing, in the amount of the loan.

 The Greenbacker complaint is this: when the fractional-reserve bank  creates that $9,000 loan at (for example) ten percent interest, it  expects $900 in interest payments at the end of the loan period. But if  the bank created only the $9,000 for the loan itself and not the $900  that will eventually be owed in interest, where is that extra $900  supposed to come from?

 At first this may seem like no problem. The borrower just needs to  come up with an extra $900 by working more or consuming less. But this  is no answer at all, according to the Greenbacker. Since all money  enters the system in the form of loans to someone  recall how our  fractional-reserve bank increased the money supply, by making a loan out  of thin air  this solution merely postpones the problem. The whole  system consists of loans for which only the principal was created. And  since the banks create only the principal amounts of these loans and not  the extra money needed to pay the interest, there just isnt enough  money for everyone to pay off their debts all at once.

 And so the problem with the current system, according to them, is  that our money is debt based, entering the economy as a debt owed to a  bank. They prefer a system in which money is created debt free   i.e., printed by the government and spent directly into the economy,  rather than lent into existence via loans by the banks.

 In the comments section at my blog I have been told by a critic that  even under a 100% gold standard, with no fractional-reserve banking, the  charging of interest still involves asking borrowers to do what is  literally impossible for them all to do at once, or at the very least  will invariably lead to a situation in which the banks wind up with all  the money.

 All these claims are categorically false.

 It is not true that there is not enough money to pay the interest  under a gold standard or a purely free-market money, and it is not even  true under the kind of fractional-reserve fiat paper system we have now.  It certainly isnt true that the banks will wind up with all the  money. There are plenty of reasons to condemn the present banking  system, but this isnt one of them. The Greenbackers are focused on an  irrelevancy, rather like criticizing Barack Obama for his taste in mens  suits.

 I want to respond to this claim under both scenarios: (1) a 100% gold  standard with no fractional reserves; and (2) our present  fractional-reserve, fiat-money system.

 In order to do so, lets recall what money is and where it comes from.

 Money emerges from the primitive system of barter, in which people  exchange goods directly for one another: cheese for paper, shoes for  apples. This is an obviously clumsy system, because (among a great many  other reasons I trust readers can conjure for themselves) paper  suppliers are not necessarily in the market for cheese, and vice versa.

 A money economy, on the other hand, is one in which goods are  exchanged indirectly for each other: instead of having to be a  hat-wanting basketball owner in the possibly vain search for a  basketball-wanting hat owner, the basketball owner instead exchanges his  basketball for whatever is functioning as money  gold and silver, for  example  and then exchanges the money for the hat he wants.

 People dissatisfied with the awkward and ineffective system of barter  perceive that if they can acquire a more widely desired and more  marketable good than the one they currently possess, they are more  likely to find someone willing to exchange with them. That more  marketable good will tend to have certain characteristics: durability,  divisibility, and relatively high value per unit weight. And the more  that good begins to be used as a common medium of exchange, the more  people who have no particular desire for it in and of itself will be  eager to acquire it anyway, because they know other people will accept  it in exchange for goods. In that way, gold and silver (or whatever the  money happens to be) evolve into full-fledged media of exchange, and  eventually into money (which is defined as the most widely accepted  medium of exchange).

 Money, therefore, emerges spontaneously as a useful commodity on the  market. The fact that people desire it for the services it directly  provides contributes to its marketability, which leads people to use it  in exchange, which in turn makes it still more marketable, because now  it can be used both for direct use as well as indirectly as a medium of  exchange.

 Note that there is nothing in this process that requires government,  its police, or any form of monopoly privilege. The Greenbackers  preferred system, in which money is created by a monopoly government, is  completely foreign and extraneous to the natural evolution of money as  we have here described it.

 And make no mistake: money has to emerge the way we have described  it. It cannot emerge for the first time as government-issued fiat paper.  Whenever we think weve encountered an example in history of a pure  fiat money being imposed by the state, a closer look always turns up  some connection between that money and a pre-existing money, which is  either itself a commodity or in turn traceable to one.

 For one thing, pieces of paper with politicians faces on them are  not saleable goods. They have no use value, and therefore could not have  emerged from barter as the most marketable goods in society.

 Second, even if government did try to impose a paper money issued  from nothing on the people, it could not be used as a medium of exchange  or a tool of economic calculation because no one could know what it was  worth. Are three Toms worth one apple or seven fur coats? How could  anyone know?

 On the other hand, the money chosen by the market can be used as a  medium of exchange and a tool of economic calculation. During the  process in which it went from being just another commodity into being  the money commodity, it was being offered in barter exchange for all or  most other goods. As a result, an array of barter prices in terms of  that good came into existence. (For simplicitys sake, in this essay  well imagine gold as the commodity that the market chooses as money.)  People can recall the gold-price of clocks, the gold-price of butter,  etc., from the period of barter. The money commodity isnt some  arbitrary object to which government coerces the public into assigning  value. Ordering people to believe that worthless pieces of paper are  valuable is a difficult enough job, but then expecting them to use this  mysterious, previously unknown item to facilitate exchanges without any  pre-existing prices as a basis for economic calculation is absurd.

 Of course, fiat moneys exist all over the world today, so it seems at  first glance as if what I have just argued must be false. Evidently  governments have been able to introduce paper money out of nothing.

 This is where Murray Rothbards work comes in especially handy. In his classic little book _What Has Government Done to Our Money?_ he  builds upon the analysis of Ludwig von Mises and concisely describes  the steps by which a commodity chosen by the people through their  voluntary market exchanges is transformed into an altogether different  monetary system, based on fiat paper.

 The steps are roughly as follows. First, society adopts a commodity  money, as described above. (As I noted above, for ease of exposition  well choose gold, but it could be whatever commodity the market  selects.) Government then monopolizes the production and certification  of the gold. Paper notes issued by banks or by governments that can be  redeemed in a given weight of gold begin to circulate as a convenient  substitute for carrying gold coins. These money certificates are given  different names in different countries: dollars, pounds, francs, marks,  etc. These national names condition the public to think of the dollar  (or the pound or whatever) rather than the gold itself as the  money. Thus it is less disorienting when the final step is taken and the  government confiscates the gold to which the paper certificates entitle  their holders, leaving the people with an unbacked paper money.

 This is how unbacked paper money comes into existence. It begins as a  convertible substitute for a commodity like gold, and then the  government takes the gold away. It continues to circulate even without  the gold backing because people can recall the exchange ratios that  existed between the paper money and other goods in the past, so the  paper money is not being imposed on them out of nowhere.

 Free-market money, therefore, is commodity money. And commodity money  is not debt-based money. When a gold miner produces gold and takes  that gold to the mint to be transformed into coins, he simply spends the  money into the economy. So free-market money does not enter the economy  as a loan. It is an example of the debt-free money the Greenbackers  are supposed to favor. I strongly suspect that many of them have never  thought the problem through to quite this extent. If what they favor is  debt-free money, why do they automatically assume it must be produced  by the state? For consistencys sake, they should support all forms of  debt-free money, including money that takes the form of a good  voluntarily produced on the market and without any form of monopoly  privilege.

 The free-markets form of debt-free money also doesnt require a  government monopoly, or rely on the preposterously naive hope that the  government production of interest-free money will be carried out  without corruption or in a non-arbitrary way. (Any monetary policy  that interferes with or second-guesses the stock of money that the  voluntary array of exchanges known as the free market would produce is  arbitrary.)

 But now what of the Greenbacker claim that interest payments, of  their very nature, cannot be paid by all members of society  simultaneously?

 This is clearly not true of a society in which money production is  left to the market. The Greenbacker complaint about interest payments in  a fractional-reserve system is that the banks create a loans principal  out of thin air, and that because they dont also create the amount of  money necessary to pay the interest charges as well, the collective sum  of loan payments (principal and interest) cannot be made. Some people,  the Greenbackers concede, can pay back their loans with interest, but  not everyone.

 But this is not what happens in the situation we have been  describing, in which the money is chosen spontaneously and voluntarily  by the individuals in society, and in which government plays no role.  Money in this truly laissez-faire system is spent into the economy once  it is produced, not lent into existence out of thin air, so there is no  problem of debt-based money yielding a situation in which there is  not enough money to pay the interest. There is no debt created at any  point in the process of money production on the free market in the  first place. The free market gives us debt-free money, but the  Greenbackers do not want it.

 Suppose I, a banker, lend you ten ounces of gold, at ten percent  interest. Next year you will owe me 11 ounces: ten ounces for the  principal, and one ounce for the interest. Where do you earn the money  to pay me the interest? Either by abstaining from consumption to that  extent and saving up the money, or by earning it through providing goods  or services to others. In other words, you earn the money to pay the  interest the same way you earn the money to pay for anything else.

 (Even under the classical gold standard, in which gold backed only  some of the paper money in circulation, there is still a portion of the  money supply  namely, the money substitutes that have gold backing   that were not lent into existence, and which can therefore serve as the  source of interest payments.)

 Although the there isnt enough money to pay the interest argument  fails, I want to take up a related warning about sound money  a warning  I noted at the beginning of this essay  that I read in the comments  section of my blog: moneylending at interest by the banks will yield a  long-run outcome in which the bankers have all the money.

 The argument runs like this: if banks can lend 1000 ounces of gold  today and earn 100 ounces in interest (assuming a 10 percent rate of  interest) at the end of the loan period, then in the next period theyll  have a new total of 1100 ounces to lend out, and in turn they can earn  110 in interest on that. Then theyll have a total of 1210 ounces, and  when they lend that out theyll earn 121 ounces in interest. In the next  period theyll have 1331 (which is 1210 plus the 121 they earned in  interest in the previous period) ounces, etc. Eventually, theyll have  everything.

 This is completely wrong, although even if it were right, presumably  even bankers need to buy things at one point or another, so the money  would be recirculated into the economy in any case. The money commodity  itself rarely yields people so much utility that they will hold it at  the expense of food, water, clothing, shelter, entertainment, etc. And  when it is recirculated, the same money can be used to make interest  payments on multiple loans.

 The more important reason that red flags should be going up here is  that this warning would apply to any business, not just banking. For  example, if Apple sells us great electronic equipment, it earns profits.  Those profits allow it to invest in more efficient production  processes, which means Apple will be able to produce even more and  better computers and other devices next year. If we buy those, Apple  will have still more profits, which means theyll be able to produce  still more and better products the year after that, and before you know  it, Apple will have all our money.

 So whats left out of these scenarios? Demand. Consumers do not have  an infinite demand for electronic products. If Apple keeps producing  more iPods, it will have to sell them at lower and lower prices in order  to induce us to buy them. This is economics 101  the law of demand,  derived in turn from the law of marginal utility. The more electronics I  buy, the less utility I derive from additional units of such goods (and  thus the less eager I am to purchase more). Meanwhile, as my remaining  cash balance is depleted by these purchases, the marginal utility of my  remaining money increases (and thus the more eager I am to hold on to  that money rather than exchange it for still more consumer electronics).

 The same goes for consumer (and producer) loans. The Greenbacker  objection assumes that demand for loans is infinite. Like zombies, well  continue to demand loans no matter what the interest rate, and banks  will always be able to find more people willing to take on more credit.  But as we saw above, in order to induce us to absorb a greater supply of  Apple electronics, and/or to induce additional buyers to enter the  market, the prices of those goods had to fall.

 This principle holds true for credit as well. To induce us to accept  an increasing supply of credit, the banks will have no choice, given the  law of demand, but to lower the rate of interest. Two consequences  follow. As they earn less in interest, they will be less able to afford  to pay their customers competitive interest rates on savings accounts  and on financial products like CDs. And as those customers turn away  from the banking system in search of higher yields outside banking, the  banks will have less to lend. These twin pressures place an upper limit  on the amount of credit the banks can extend.

 So you can breathe easy. The banks wont wind up with all the money after all.

 On the free market, the production of money would occur in the same  way that the production of any other good takes place, with no money  producer being granted any monopoly privilege. The average person  doubtless has a difficult time imagining how money could exist without a  monopoly producer. Wouldnt everyone want to go into the  money-production business? After all, you get to create money. Why, Ill  just create my own money and spend it! Isnt that naturally more  lucrative than producing other goods?

 First of all, no one can expect to print pieces of paper with his  face on them and spend them into circulation. Nobody would accept them,  needless to say, and as we have seen, it is impossible for money to be  introduced ex nihilo in this way. The only kind of money that can emerge  on the free market is one that, at least at one time, had been  considered a useful commodity. Paper money can come into existence on  the free market and without coercion if it serves as a redemption claim  for the commodity money, but irredeemable paper money cannot originate  without government threats or violence.

 Again, as we saw previously, the pattern is this: a commodity is  freely chosen by market participants to serve as money, for convenience  paper receipts fully convertible into that money begin to circulate as  money substitutes, and finally the government removes the commodity  backing from the paper and only the paper circulates. That is in fact  what happened in the United States in 1933.

 So your friend Joe shouldnt expect in a free market to be able to  print up some paper notes with his face on them and be able to exchange  them for goods and services. In addition to the logical problems with  this that we examined before, hed also look crazy for even trying such a  thing.

 Also, as with every other industry, profit regulates production. The  production of money, like the production of all other goods, settles on a  normal rate of return, and is not uniquely poised to shower  participants in that industry with premium profits. As more firms enter  the industry, the rising demand for the factors of production necessary  to produce the money puts upward pressure on the prices of those  factors. Meanwhile, the increase in money production itself puts  downward pressure on the purchasing power of the money produced.

 In other words, these twin pressures of (1) the increasing costliness  of money production and (2) the decreasing value of the money thus  produced (since the more money that exists, ceteris paribus, the lower  its purchasing power) serve to regulate money production in the same way  they regulate the production of all other goods in the economy.

 Once the gold is mined, it needs to be converted into coins for  general use, and subsequently stamped with some form of reliable  certification indicating the weight and fineness of those coins. Private  firms perform such certification for a wide variety of goods on the  free market. This service is provided for newly coined money by mints.

 Banking services would exist on the free market to the extent that  people valued financial intermediation, as well as the various services,  such as check-writing and the safekeeping of money, that banks  provided.*

 The intermediation of credit consists of borrowing money from savers,  pooling those funds, and using those pooled funds to extend loans to  borrowers. Banks earn the interest-rate differential that exists between  the rates they charge to borrowers and the rates they pay to savers.  The pooling of savings and the identification of projects to which those  funds can temporarily be directed is an important service in a market  economy.

 And as with the production of all other goods and services on the  market, credit intermediation is regulated by profit. It cannot be  multiplied indefinitely, as a great many Greenbacker commentators appear  to believe. In the same way that high profits in any industry attract  newcomers to that industry and thereby dissipate those profits, a high  interest-rate differential between borrowers and savers will attract  more people into credit-intermediation services. These entrants will  need to pay higher interest rates to savers in order to acquire  additional funds to intermediate to borrowers. Conversely, in order to  attract additional borrowers they will need to lower the interest rates  charged to those borrowers. These twin pressures  higher rates paid to  savers, and lower rates earned from borrowers  dissipate bank profits  and place an upper bound on credit intermediation activities. So again,  the banks face a natural limit to their activities, and cannot earn all  our money.

 So far, we have considered the case of a gold standard or a pure free  market in money. But under a non-market system of fiat-money and  fractional-reserve banks the Greenbackers concerns are still misplaced.  There are plenty of reasons to criticize fiat money and  fractional-reserve banking, but since the case against them is undercut  by false arguments, I want to take apart this particular false argument.

 We know from our earlier analysis that money has to emerge on the  market as a useful commodity, and that the state theory of money,  whereby money has value only when and because the state declares it to  have value, is untenable.

 When Franklin Roosevelt confiscated Americans gold in 1933 and gave  them paper money in exchange, this money did not enter the system as  debt. It was a simple act of conversion of specie into paper.  (Thanks to J.P. Koning for tracking down that link.) This is how all  hard-money systems become fiat ones: the precious metal that backs the  currency is taken away, and the people are left only with paper given to  them in exchange for their metal. And since that portion of the money  stock that consists of the redemption of the peoples specie into paper  is not debt-based  the government is giving them the money, not lending  it  it becomes a permanent portion of the overall money stock from  which interest payments can be drawn. There is, therefore, always a  portion of the money stock that is unconnected to any debt, so there is  no built-in process even in a fractional-reserve fiat paper system by  which debts must be collectively unpayable.

 Under the gold standard as it existed in the United States, the banks  issued both kinds of money substitutes in the Misesian typology: money  certificates (paper that serves as a receipt for gold on deposit) and  fiduciary media (paper that, while physically indistinguishable from  money certificates, does not correspond to any gold on deposit; this is  what the banks create when they want to increase the money supply beyond  just the stock of gold). Only the fiduciary media would qualify as  being debt-based money, because only the fiduciary media enters the  system as new loans. The money substitutes that correspond to gold in  the banks reserves are not debt-based. They do not enter the economy in  the form of a loan. They enter the economy as receipts for gold on  deposit with the banks. This portion of the money stock, too, becomes a  permanent fund, even after the transition to a fiat money system, from  which interest payments can be drawn.

 Remember, once again, that when people pay banks interest on their  loans, these interest payments themselves will in large measure be spent  into the economy by employees of the bank. The same unit of money can  thus be used to pay principal or interest on multiple loans as it  circulates again and again. There is no reason that bankers or anyone  else would want to earn profits and never spend or invest them, unless  someone happens to be a fetishist deriving pleasure from literally  rolling in the money itself. This is unusual.

 Far and away the best defenses and descriptions of a pure free market in money are Jörg Guido Hülsmanns book _The Ethics of Money Production_ and Jeffrey Herbeners astonishing 2012 congressional testimony before Ron Pauls monetary policy subcommittee. I strongly urge you to read at least the Herbener testimony.  It is beautifully written and its logic practically compels the  readers assent. (While youre at it, watch this video in which  Professor Herbener explains why he became an Austrian mid-career, even though he stood to gain nothing professionally by doing so.)

 In short, there is no need to replace the Fed with another government  creation. There is no good reason to replace the Feds monopoly with a  more directly exercised government monopoly. All we need for a sound  money system are the ordinary laws of commerce and contract.

 Lets oppose the Fed for the right reasons, and lets oppose it root  and branch: not because it doesnt create enough money out of thin air  (is this really a fundamental critique of the Fed, after all?) but  because the causes of freedom, social peace, and economic prosperity are  at odds with any coercively imposed monopoly, and because the naive  confidence in the American political class that the Greenbacker  alternative demands is beneath the dignity of a free people.

 (Thanks to Robert Murphy for his comments on this essay.)

 *There is a tradition within the Austrian School, particularly among  Rothbardians, of separating these functions of banks. Banks can act as  money warehouses or as credit intermediaries, or as both. These are not  the same thing. It is possible to imagine banks that offer one service  or the other, as well as to conceive of banks that offer both services  but distinguish sharply between them. Checking deposits, for instance,  would be available to customers on demand, and so in that case the bank  would be operating as a money warehouse, while savings accounts, CDs,  etc., would be considered a loan to the bank, with which the bank could  engage in intermediation activities.

*Subscribe to the free Tom Woods Letter by clicking here.*

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## presence

No need to change the constitution.
Honest money cannot be stopped now.

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## muh_roads

^^ LOL

Exactly.

$#@! asking the fiat lords if we can "pretty please" have a competing currency.  We're just going to do it without their loving blessing.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> No need to change the constitution.
> Honest money cannot be stopped now.


That is not actually correct. The Constitution allows taxation of gold and silver, which is preventing people from freely using it as money. Constitution must be amended to abolish all forms of taxation (theft) or the country will perish.

Simple as that.

Thanks.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

* What If?*

*by                Larry LaBorde*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

How Our Monetary System Works And Fails

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Why Are Your Children  Buying Houses for Ben Bernanke?*

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE · Aug 6th, 2013                  




Every  now and then I like to look at government numbers and see what they  really mean. I ran into this batch several months ago but hadnt had  time to play with them till now. What I found shocked me so badly that I  ran them three times on a calculator and once using exponents. As youll see below, these are Oh my God numbers.

 Here are facts:

 The average US house sells for about $300,000, and the Federal  Reserve is buying $40 Billion dollars worth of mortgages per month. (If  that sounds like a bunch of numerical gobbledegook to you, please hang  on for just a moment.)

The Fed has been very public about this,  by the way. They explain that they are purchasing mortgage-backed  securities (for your safety, of course), and they surround the  discussion in financial-speak. But, in the end, they are buying houses,  plain and simple. Its all there, for those who wish to check.

 Now, here are those numbers:

*$40,000,000,000 per month, divided by $300,000 per house = 133,333 houses per month.*

 Lets round that down to 130,000 to account for the various financing fees and transfer taxes.

 So, _Ben Bernanke is buying 130,000 houses per month_. Kind of shocking, no?

 That means that since this program began in September of 2012, the Fed has bought 1.43 _million_ houses.

 And, by the way, there is no end in sight.

*In Fairness to Ben*



 Now, to be fair, I should clarify that your kids are not really  buying all those houses for Ben Bernanke personally  theyre buying  them for his bosses  the owners of the Federal Reserve.

You didnt think the Fed was owned by the government, did you?

 Oh, no. It is owned by the big banks. Id tell you exactly who,  except that no one knows exactly who. We know that people own shares of  the Fed banks (there are twelve of them in all), but the US government  is keeping the details secret.

 Think Im making that up to be flamboyant? Please, check it out for  yourself! They admit that the big banks own the Fed, but they never  say which ones. A list did circulate in the 1930s, but that was the last  time.

*How Your Children Are Forced to Pay*



 You may have heard this before, but if not, hang on to something:

 The Fed uses dollars to buy bonds from the US Treasury. These dollars, however, do NOT come from their savings.  Instead, they come as a check that is drawn upon itself. (That quote  is from the Feds own documents, by the way  a paper called _Modern Money Mechanics_.)

 In other words, the Fed just makes up the money. They are buying all  those houses with money they just make up! (But its surrounded with  very intricate accounting, of course.)

 But it also means that _your children have to pay off the bonds!_

 The Fed sells all those bonds to investors  who will, of course, want their money back, with interest.

 So, where will the money for paying off those bonds come from? From taxes, of course.

 When a government sells a bond, they are selling a right to their tax  receipts. And that means your kids will be taxed to pay it all off.

 The Fed will keep the houses, of course, but hidden behind paragraphs of confusing financial and accounting terminology.

*Bye Bye Home Ownership*



Home ownership in America is falling off a cliff, as you can see in this graph:


 So, Mr. and Ms. America, get ready to meet your new landlords: Benny and the Banks.

 Paul Rosenberg

FreemansPerspective.com

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Modified the Brief Explanation section thus:




> Fiat (unbacked) "money" is the single greatest instrument of plunder ever invented by the mind of man. *
> Free Competition in currencies kills fiat*, because  fiat  cannot exist without aggressive violence of government forced  monopoly,  which aggressive violence is the definition of evil, and is  the  opposite of justice and of Free Market. 
> 
> Again, fiat (unbacked) currency is nothing but an instrument of plunder   of the people by the government, via legalized counterfeiting and   inflation; therefore, Free Market, absent government coercion, will   reject such a fraudulent currency, for the simple reason that no one   likes being plundered!
> 
> So, *Free Competition in currencies slays fiat*,  and with  it welfare state and warfare state, because it makes it  impossible for  the government to rob and plunder the people, and steal  their wealth  through legalized counterfeiting and inflation. 
> 
> Thus, *Free Competition in currencies* binds the government down   with the chains of sound money, making impossible government plunder via   legalized counterfeiting, and therefore, making possible liberty and   prosperity of the people.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Bankers Tell It Like it is 
Top 10 Quotes that Reveal their Crimes*

...

The history of banking in the modern era (since the  establishment of  the Bank of England in the late 17th century), has been  nothing but an  ugly cavalcade of theft of sovereign national treasuries  too vast to  calculate. From the beginning, these large private central  banks (the  Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan,  etc.), were  intentionally designed to operate freely above the rule of  law in their  respective nations. They have been the financiers of most  of the  conflicts and wars in the last two centuries and are continuing  to do  so unabated to the present. Countless millions have died in these   bankers’ wars in service to the unbridled greed of these financiers.

 Through the massive inflation of each nation’s currency they  dominate,  the bankers have robbed the citizens of the purchasing power  of their  money and with it, their life savings. Since the establishment  of the  Federal Reserve in 1913, for example, the purchasing power of the  US  dollar has been eroded to nearly 1/100th of its original value. This   has not been accidental. This was planned from the beginning. Private   fractional reserve central banking is the greatest criminal conspiracy   that continues to this day to hide in plain sight.

 But please, don’t just think this is only our opinion. Fascinatingly,   the bankers themselves have throughout the decades, clearly revealed   their purpose and intent. At this juncture, we would like to offer some   quotes for you by the highest ranking members of the banking elite,  past  and present.


*“The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.”*William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England in 1694

*“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”*Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the House of Rothschild.

*“If my sons did not want wars, there would be none.”*Gutle Schnaper, wife of Mayer Amschel Rothschild and mother of his five sons

*“The few who understand the system will either be so  interested  in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that  there will be  no opposition from that class, while on the other hand,  the great body  of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the  tremendous advantage  that capital derives from the system, will bear  its burdens without  complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that  the system is  inimical to their interests.”* The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863

* “Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin.  The  Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the  power  to create deposits, and with the flick of a pen they will create  enough  deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them,  and all  the fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to  disappear, for  this world would be a happier and better  world to live  in. But if you wish to remain slaves of the Bankers and  pay for the  cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create  deposits.”*Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920s, the second richest man in Britain

*“When you or I write a check, there must be sufficient  funds in  our account to cover the check; but when the Federal Reserve  writes a  check, there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn.  When the  Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money.”*From the Boston Federal Reserve Bank pamphlet, “Putting it Simply.”

*“Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as  commodities.  Intrinsically, a ‘dollar’ bill is just a piece of paper.  Deposits are  merely book entries.”*“Modern Money Mechanics Workbook” – Federal Reserve of Chicago, 1975

* “I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told   that the banks can and do create money. And they who control the  credit  of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the  hollow of  their hand the destiny of the people.”*Reginald McKenna, as Chairman of the Midland Bank, addressing stockholders in 1924

*“I am just a banker doing God’s work.”*Lloyd Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs, 2009

*“Banks do not have an obligation to promote the public good.”*Alexander Dielius, CEO, Germany, Austrian, Eastern Europe Goldman Sachs, 2010

 So there it is in their own words. The arrogance, elitism, and   condescension of bankers towards the common citizen are starkly   revealed. These brilliant criminals have created the Ponzi scheme of all   Ponzi schemes and so far, protected it from any form of criminal   prosecution. However, that might be about to change. Awareness of their   criminality is growing throughout the world at a rapid pace but never   doubt that this group will fight tenaciously and be willing to go to any   extremes to protect their centuries’ old scam. We predict there will   undoubtedly be more strange banker deaths ahead of us in the ensuing   weeks, months, and years.

 The next time you walk into your local bank, please ask yourself this   question, “Do I really want to entrust my hard earned wages and savings   to a centuries’ old criminal scheme?” If you don’t, please consider   gold and silver for protection of your wealth.”

_Read full article: http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/n...it-like-it-is/_

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Biggest Secret About Banking Has Just Gone Mainstream*

                                               Posted on April 28, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog 

*Banks Create Money Out of Thin Air … Conferring Enormous Windfall Profits At the Expense of the People*

 We’ve pointed out for 4 1/2 years that banks create money out of thin air.
 Specifically, it has now been conclusively proven that loans come first … and then deposits FOLLOW.
 This is the most important secret about modern banking … because it debunks one of the biggest myths preventing a strong economy, challenges one of the main pork barrel profit centers for big banks … and opens up incredible opportunities for a prosperous economy.

This odd and counter-intuitive – but crucially important – truth has now gone mainstream …
 Specifically, the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf – one of the world’s most influential mainstream financial writers -  says   that, since banks create money out of thin air, they should be  stripped  of this power, and limited to normal depository functions.  Wolf  indicates the centrality and importance of the issue with his  subtitle:
The giant hole at the heart of our market economies needs to be plugged.And Business Insider – the world’s most popular financial news blog – is currently running this as its top two front page stories:



(Read the Business Insider stories here and here.)
 If we reclaimed the power to create credit from the too big to fail banks, we would all be _much_ _wealthier_ …

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## MichaelDavis

Wow, way to make the poll options as biased as possible.

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## 56ktarget

In other words, lets ignore 3000 years of history and adopt a radical-pseudo-anarchist position just because we don't want to pay a penny more in taxes.

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## kcchiefs6465

> In other words, lets ignore 3000 years of history and adopt a radical-pseudo-anarchist position just *because we don't want to pay a penny more in taxes.*


Now this may come as a shock, but I don't think you quite get it.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Wow, way to make the poll options as biased as possible.


The poll options are the exact logical opposites of each other, and thus are fair.

Many people simply do not understand that these are the only two possible choices.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> In other words, lets ignore 3000 years of history and adopt a radical-pseudo-anarchist position just because we don't want to pay a penny more in taxes.


Gold and silver will become the de facto currency of a truly free market, because it is the most convenient for the purpose.

And yes, we don't want to pay a penny more in taxes, because all public taxation of private property is theft.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Ron Paul on 'End the Fed'*
By Noureddine Krichene 

Ron Paul, a former   Congressman, was a medical doctor; yet, his  writings treated true economics in   an ocean of falsehood. It is a  miracle to have a non-economist write about the   true economic science  when this science has become totally corrupted by   demagogues. It has  become a science of government intervention and disorder. 

Most disquieting, some Nobel Prize winners are staunch advocates of   anti-market forces and preach total money destruction by the government.   Practically, there is  no university that teaches the true nature of money,   banking, and  markets as displayed in Ron Paul's writings. You feel sorry for    students who spend US$60,000 a year at elite universities and learn  anti-market   Stalinism. 

                                                                    For Ron Paul, money is a market commodity, like a car,    produced at a real cost in labor and capital, and is exchanged against  other   real commodities. A bit of paper has zero-cost in labor and  capital, it can   never be money. It is so by state coercion. The state  outlaws gold, which it   cannot print, in favor of paper, which it can  print with no limit. It has   therefore no check on its spending and  despotism. 

                                                                    For Ron Paul, paper is   the money of war, noting that  the United States, with unlimited paper money, has   become the first  warrior of the world, unhesitantly waging wars in every corner   of the  world. 

                                                                    Among Paul's writings is his excellent book _End the   Fed_  (2009) where he held it as of utmost vital interest of the United  States   to end the Federal Reserve (Fed). He contended that the Fed has  been   destabilizing the US economy, inflicting recurrent catastrophes  ever since it   was created. 

                                                                    Did the United States need a central bank? For Ron  Paul,   the answer was positively no. The US economy was growing by  leaps and bounds   before 1914, making discoveries in communications,  cars, radios, photography,   airplanes, heavy machinery, with no central  bank. 

                                                                    A central bank would   be a fifth wheel in a coach. The  US Treasury emitted notes against gold prior to   1913, and therefore  had no need for a central bank for circulating money. It was    vested-interest financial groups that forced the Fed on government for  bailout   purposes; under the guise that it was necessary for the US  economy, this was a   poisoned gift. 

                                                                    For Ron Paul, financial crises, an inherent feature of    fractional banking, were brief and self-liquidating prior to 1913. A  crisis on   the scale of the Great Depression had never occurred and  would never have   occurred had it not been for the Fed. The stock index  could not have gone up   threefold from 1926 to 1929 without very low  interest rates and unending   liquidity from the Fed. It was the very  design of the authors of the Fed to   provide an infinitely elastic  money supply, as much money as speculators and   debtors wished to have.  

                                                                    Likewise, stock prices could never increase by   25%  per year, as they did during 2009-2014, without the Fed's money floods. 

                                                                    Speculative prices became interminably inflated by the  Fed, allowing an   amazing free real wealth to speculators. The Fed has  turned the stock market   into a true casino; it is no longer an  investment vehicle. 

                                                                    For Ron Paul,   the Fed should have ended promptly in  1929 with the stock crash. Confronted with   a grandiose disaster,  politicians of the time should have realized that nothing   good would  come out of the Fed, or more generally, from a central bank, a truth    discovered long ago by France, which promptly abolished John Law's bank  in 1720   when stocks crashed dramatically, then by Thomas Jefferson  (1811), Andrew   Jackson (1832), Charles Holt Carroll (1850s), and Amasa  Walker (1873). 

                                                                    In 1933, a group of economic professors at the  University of Chicago   elaborated the "Chicago Plan", urging two-tier  banking: (i) 100% reserve banking   that strictly emits no money; and  (ii) investment banking that strictly receives   no deposits; it only  buys and sells bonds and equities. 

                                                                    This Plan wanted   to end central banking, establish a  banking system fully immune to crises with   no unemployment (except  frictional), and end government inflation of the stock   markets. The  conviction of ending central banking was shared by Ludwig von   Mises,  Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Maurice Allais. 

                                                                    Yet,   instead of abolishing the Fed, politicians  confiscated all the gold of the   citizens in 1934 and further empowered  the Fed, adding to government despotism. 

                                                                    Ron Paul considered "the creation of the Fed the most  tragic blunder   ever committed by Congress. The day [the existence of  the Federal Reserve] it   was passed [into law], old America died and a  new era began. A new institution   was born that was to cause the  unprecedented economic instability in the decades   to come. The longer  we delay a conversion to sound money and away from central   banking,  the worse our crises will grow and the more the government will expand    at the expense of our liberties. Our wealth is drained, our  productivity is   sharply diminished. Our freedoms are eroded. 

                                                                    "We have been through   nearly a hundred years of this  same repeating pattern, so it is time to wise up   and learn something.  When the printing presses are available to the government   and the  banking cartel, they will use them rather than do the right thing.    Manipulating interest rates is an immoral act. It is economically  destructive. A   central bank setting interest rates is price-fixing and  is a form of central   economic planning. Price-fixing is a tool of  socialism and destroys production.   Artificially low rates of interest  orchestrated by the Fed induced investors,   savers, borrowers, and  consumers to misjudge what was going on. Multiple   mistakes are made.  Prosperity can never be achieved by cheap credit. If that   were so, no  one would have to work for a living." 

                                                                    Ron Paul stated that   the Fed should be abolished  because it is an immoral, unconstitutional, and   unpractical  interest-group institution; it promotes bad economics and undermines    liberty. Its destructive nature makes it a tool of tyrannical  government.   Nothing good can come from the Fed. Diluting the value of  the dollar by   increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the  poor and the middle   class. The Fed's monetary policy has brought us to  where we are today. The   evidence is abundant that the Fed is at fault  and should be abolished. 

                                                                    Ron Paul considered that the entire operation of the  Fed was based on an   immoral principle. Transferring wealth is limited  when taxes and borrowing are   the only tools the politicians can use.  The cooperation of the politicians and   the counterfeiters at the Fed  is based on the immorality of fraud and deceit.   Morality of money is  related to morality in politics. The system is morally   corrupt. Few  understand or decry the immorality of the redistribution of wealth    through government force. 

                                                                    Prodded by the politicians, vested-financial    interest, and academics, the Fed went on its worst money rampage during    2009-2014, creating seven times the amount of money it created during  1913-2008. 

                                                                    Poverty is spreading and money chaos has never been as  pervasive as now.   A sheer plundering is under way: debt is pushed on  the top of already   intoxicated debt at near-zero interest rates. The  Fed's elite believe that their   mandate is full-employment and economic  prosperity. This mandate was never   thought of in the 1913 Fed Act;  not by omission, but simply because   mass-unemployment never existed in  the United States before 1929. 

                                                                    The   irony is that the Fed causes structural  mass-unemployment, and at the same it   believes that it can restore  full-employment. There can be no delusion greater   than this one. The  Fed is a roadblock to employment; if removed, employment will   be  restored naturally. 

                                                                    Generations had to suffer from the    anti-constitutional scheme in 1913 that repealed the Constitution's  fundamental   money law. 

                                                                    No government in any country should bail out any bank  or any   company. A just government protects no vested-interest group,  be it unions,   farmers, or bankers. More specifically, a bank should  never be bailed out,   simply because it emits fictitious debt which it  requires to be paid in real   capital. 

                                                                    Assume a bank has a reserve of $100 in gold; eager to  earn   interest and commissions, it issues fictitious loans for $1,000  in gold.   Evidently, $100 in gold cannot pay a fictitious amount of  $1,000 in gold. The   government would never bail out the bank with $900  in gold. The bank sinks. With   paper money, the government prints $900  and bails out the bank. This is the   essence of a central bank as a  bailout institution with paper money. Workers and   poor people should  suffer a $900 loss in real capital (food, clothing, energy)   to pay the  bank or its debtors for a fictitious capital the bank had emitted at    the stroke of the pen. 

                                                                    Ron Paul's message was never understood.   Politicians  and "experts" on money do not understand even the basic principles   of  money. Former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke did know what the dollar was;    however, he maintained that the relation of zero-interest, printing  money, and   full-employment was as accurate as the law of gravity. 

                                                                    The ideology of   abolishing unemployment and restoring  prosperity by printing trillions of   dollars and forcing zero interest  rates is stronger now than ever. Debt is being   forced at near  zero-interest rates regardless of creditworthiness. Huge capital   is  being destroyed and people's agony deepens. 

                                                                    The Fed has charted a   course between a Scylla of  hyperinflation and a Charybdis of debt collapse as in   1933 and 2008.  The Fed is second to none in money anarchy and economic   destruction:  more debt, more speculation, more inflation, more poverty, and more    injustice. Some are made overly rich for free; others are totally  denuded. 

_Noureddine Krichene has a PhD in economics from UCLA._ 

                                                                    (Copyright 2014 Noureddine Krichene)

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Establishment Pushing Cashless Society to Control Humanity*
 
"Of course, more than a few Christians have highlighted the prophetic  implications. And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the  mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name, reads  Revelation 13:17, one of the Bible verses frequently cited by critics of  the cashless plot. Other opponents of the schemes point to the  implications for privacy and security, especially in light of the NSA  scandal as well as the FATCA and GATCA global tax regimes.  In a cashless society, literally every transaction would be tracked.  If the electricity grid went down, chaos would ensue. If a government  decided to quash dissidents, it could cut them off from the economy.

 The potential for mischief or worse is literally endless. Whether  Americans and humanity will put up with it, though, remains to be seen."


Read more: http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/i...ntrol-humanity


*The solution, of course, is free competition in currencies, as described by this amendment.*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Ron Paul Predicts Inevitable and Complete Currency Collapse*

*Former U.S. Presidential candidate & 22-year Congressman explains a huge problem
few Americans know about  and how you should prepare...*




Watch it here.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*What Will Trump Do About the Central-Bank Cartel?*

*Trump could end global banking tyranny*

  Thorsten Pollet | Mises.org -   February 13, 2017 




> Of course, change for the better doesn’t come from politics. It comes from _better ideas_.  For it is ideas that determine human action. Whatever these ideas are  and wherever they come from: They make humans act. For this reason the  great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881 – 1973) advocates the  idea of the “sound money principle” –
> 
> “The sound-money principle  has two aspects. It is affirmative in approving the market’s choice of a  commonly used medium of exchange. It is negative in obstructing the  government’s propensity to meddle with the currency system.”
> 
> Mises also explains convincingly the importance of the sound money principle for each and every one of us –
> 
> “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 right.”
> 
> Mises’s sound money principle calls for  ending central banking once and for all and opening up a *free market in  money*. Having brought to a halt _political globalism_ for now,  the new US administration has now also a once in a lifetime chance to  make the world great again — simply by ending the state’s monopoly of  money production.
> ...


Full article here.

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