Economic Storm Clouds Gather, but Ending the Fed Provides Hope

DamianTV

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http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archive...ouds-gather-but-ending-the-fed-provides-hope/

The Federal Reserve recently increased interest rates to 1.75 percent. This is the highest interest rates have been since 2008, but it still leaves rates at historic lows. While the Fed says economic growth justifies future rate increases, an honest examination of the economy suggests that future rate increases are unlikely.

The Fed’s claim that the economy is strong is based on misleading government statistics. For example, the official unemployment rate understates true unemployment by not counting those who have given up looking for work. According to John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, the real unemployment rate is above 20 percent. Government figures also understate the rate of inflation by pretending that you are not negatively impacted by inflation if you can still buy hamburger when you cannot afford steak. Shadow Stats estimates that the real rate of inflation is as much as four times higher than the official rate.

President Trump’s tariffs will further weaken the economy. While export-driven industries, including manufacturers that rely on imported materials, will be particularly hard-hit, the tariffs combined with the inevitable retaliation from other counties will impact all sectors of the economy. A global trade war could also lead other countries to stop buying US debt instruments, increasing pressure on the Fed to keep rates low.

Since Republicans have held control of the White House and Congress over the last year, federal spending has increased 12.9 percent. Clearly those in Congress serious about reducing government spending are few and far between. The sad fact is that both major parties are happy to increase welfare and warfare spending, although many Republicans pretend to oppose deficits when a Democrat sits in the White House. This puts tremendous pressure on the Fed to keep rates low so as not to increase the federal government’s already high interest payments.

This cannot last forever. Eventually the combination of a spendthrift Congress and a print-happy central bank will cause a major economic crisis. This crisis will herald the end of the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system that sustains it. The only question is whether the existing system will be replaced by a free market and limited constitutional government or we will complete our descent into totalitarianism.

Fortunately, more Americans are becoming aware of the freedom philosophy and demanding that government roll back the welfare-warfare state and rein in the Fed. Many are also demanding protection of their right to opt out — not just from government programs like Obamacare but also from the Federal Reserve System. For example, Wyoming recently joined Arizona in passing a law recognizing gold and silver as legal tender. Citizens of these states are now able to protect themselves from the coming dollar crisis by using what has historically been considered real money.

At the federal level, the movement to audit the Fed remains strong. As the failures of Keynesianism become more apparent, the movement to audit and end the Fed will grow in size and strength. Hopefully this movement will ensure the end of the welfare-warfare state and the fiat currency system as well as lead to a new era of liberty.

Anyone remember Stiff the Fed?

I think this may only be half of the solution that is absolutely necessary to stabilize the money system. Most people, including far too many Libertarians do not fully understand how our money system works. It is not their fault. People that do not understand are not supposed to understand. It is that very confusion that creates an opportunity to hide in secrecy, just as JFK warned us about. Lets explain this clearly so that everyone can understand how our money system works without confusion.

Whether it is accurate or not, we have all heard the term the "govt just prints money". It is a half truth because it is greatly oversimplified. To understand what really happens, the Terms need to be more easily explained for everyone.

  • Monetary Policy - Print the money (yes, oversimplified)
  • Fiscal Plicy - Destroy the money (Federal Income Tax)

In order to maintain "balance" in this type of system, the money that is "printed" must also be destroyed. If you have a bucket of water, and just continue to pour more and more water into the bucket, it will overflow and water will be wasted. What also happens is that the value of each smaller measurement of water is devalued, the purchasing power continues to go down. Inflation is an "increase in the money supply" which causes the purchasing power of each individual dollar to go down. Infinite money printing therefore is not sustainable without a measure to prevent "overflow".

Fiscal Policy is a system that is designed to reduce the total volume of money. Again, refer to the bucket of water. If you remove as much water from the bucket as you put in, you have a "balance". When you hear most people refer to Fiscal Policy, it is both expressed and thought of by most people as "Taxation" which means to "collect money". There are major problems with the way that people understand this. First, the Federal Government does NOT use Federal Income Tax to fund its expenses. What is collected by the Federal Income Tax is NOT used to fund the Federal Government. Not One Cent. Period. Second, the currency that has been collected by Federal Income Tax does NOT stay in circulation. Since the government does not use Federal Income Tax to fund any expenditures at all, that money (non tangible such as a checking acct balance) is quite literally destroyed. The next major misconception that causes confusion is that the IRS is a part of the Federal Government. It is not. The IRS is the counterpart to the Federal Reserve Bank, which, despite the confusion inferred by the name is also not a part of the Federal Government. The Federal Reserve Bank is no more Federal than Federal Express.

Both the money creation and money destruction are part of the designed system. Both the Federal Reserve Bank and the IRS were created by the 16th Amendment, and both are needed to "balance" the system. If you have too much currency in the system, the purchasing power of each individual dollar decreases by a proportional amount to the increase in the money supply. If you have a total volume of 100 dollars, and print up one new dollar, that new dollar gets its value from the existing currency, causing the value of the existing currency to go down. Thus, with a total of 101 dollars, the purchasing power of each dollar drops to 99 cents. The way to balance the system here would be to "Tax" one dollar out of circulation, reducing the total volume of money back to 100, and in theory, cause the existing currency to retain its purchasing power.

The big problem is that there are two systems in place that work together. Removing only one part of the system unbalances the entire system. Remove just the IRS and the money supply increases. Remove just the Federal Reserve Bank and the money supply decreases. Abolishing the IRS is part of the solution, but what no layman is ever taught is that they need to focus just as hard on removing and replacing the Federal Reserve Bank, and its bank notes with US Treasury bank notes.

Despite anything that Zippyjuan will say, this is what makes Central Banks more dangerous than standing armies to the long term survival of all nations. Please note that I have purposefully oversimplified the functions and have not factored in Interest at all. This is Keynesian Economics at its most simple form, and in theory, it works. Does it work in practice? You tell me. Take a look around. Tell me if this money system frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, or enslaves them? You tell me if a small business will be granted a loan, not based solely on their credit reputation, but on the intended function of the business. You tell me if a mom and pop publication would be granted a loan to print information that discredits our entire banking and money system. You tell me if JP Morgan pulled funding from Nikolai Tesla who intended to create free electricity for everyone. You tell me if a cheap cancer cure would be funded, or denied in favor of more expensive and less effective medical treatments. You tell me if the direction of our country is determined by a small group of dominant men or not, who control that direction by issue of credit and currency.

You tell me if our money system is Honest.
 
Then life will be perfect. No unemployment. No inflation. Everybody will have a high paying job (whether they want one or not) and everything will be cheap. Governments will quit spending any money or collecting taxes and there will be no more war or disease.
 
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Then life will be perfect. No unemployment. No inflation. Everybody will have a high paying job (whether they want one or not) and everything will be cheap. Governments will quit spending any money or collecting taxes and there will be no more war or disease.

Right on cue.

Your demeanor for true economic reform, which this country and the entire world sorely needs, is being directed straight at RON PAUL himself. Or did you fail to notice the source of the article?

-REP for snarking at RON PAUL

You REALLY dont belong here. You cant get any more in the red than you already are. Maybe you should think about changing your perspective to offer TRUE economic liberty that used to make this country a place people wanted to live. We are already living under your ideas. And the real shithole country is THIS one.
 
Just to poke at some of these ideas or maybe to clarify...

Suppose Water is our Money and the Bucket is the Market. The value of our money is manipulated, but in theory is the purpose of that because our market or the size of the Bucket changes? That the Fed's job is to tweak our money to sort of be in sync with the size of the market? Now I do suppose that during these tweaks if new money is created there is some favoritism on who gets that money first which is one of the complaints about how that is handled.

Or maybe the Fed's behavior inadvertently has an effect on the size of the Bucket/Market as well, so when they perform their job it or do a correction for their correction it's like they Double-Down leading to escalation instead of stabilizing?

Sorry for the bad analogies; I'm no economist.

For the sake of discussion though, I'm curious if Zippy's reply to this is skepticism at End The Fed versus perhaps Audit the Fed and even reform? Maybe it's better than being changed to the inflexible Gold Standard?
 
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Right on cue.

Your demeanor for true economic reform, which this country and the entire world sorely needs, is being directed straight at RON PAUL himself. Or did you fail to notice the source of the article?

-REP for snarking at RON PAUL

You REALLY dont belong here. You cant get any more in the red than you already are. Maybe you should think about changing your perspective to offer TRUE economic liberty that used to make this country a place people wanted to live. We are already living under your ideas. And the real $#@!hole country is THIS one.

The funny thing is that lately I'm not as irritated as I used to be with Zippy. He more or less admits that he's a liberal keynesian. The guy who really bugs me is TheCount. He's a liberal Keynesian like Zippy but he pretends he's a libertarian. It's kind of like Rachel Maddow vs Anderson Cooper. Rachel Maddow admits she's a liberal doing a liberal talk show from a liberal point of view. Anderson Cooper is dishonest, he pretends to be doing a neutral news program. The dishonesty irritates me more.
 
You REALLY dont belong here.

I'm curious as this is literally my first post. I have a question for anyone willing to answer it. If you don't agree with the consensus here, does that mean you aren't welcome? Is this forum intended to be an echo chamber for those that agree with each other, or do people invite others to challenge their ideas?

Respectfully,

E4E1
 
Suppose Water is our Money and the Bucket is the Market. The value of our money is manipulated, but in theory is the purpose of that because our market or the size of the Bucket changes? That the Fed's job is to tweak our money to sort of be in sync with the size of the market? Now I do suppose that during these tweaks if new money is created there is some favoritism on who gets that money first which is one of the complaints about how that is handled.

I'd like to offer a different perspective.

Your Money and Bucket analogy is actually quite brilliant. So is recognizing that there is a difference in spending money and what it's spend on. However, before I can explain my opinion why, I think we need to establish what value is in an economy (like the US). I apologize in advance if it seems obvious (as I won't be surprised if I'm ridiculed for asking for clarification of this term).

What do you think determines the value of money?

Or maybe the Fed's behavior inadvertently has an effect on the size of the Bucket/Market as well, so when they perform their job it or do a correction for their correction it's like they Double-Down leading to escalation instead of stabilizing?

Again, very insightful. There is a lot I'd like to address in this comment, but I'm going to hold off except to say that the Fed is one "cog" in a long chain of events.

Sorry for the bad analogies; I'm no economist.

Nor am I, though I have studied economics on my own since ~2005. Honestly, I think following mainstream thought can be a hindrance to understanding how the economy works. Some people here might agree, though I doubt we'd agree on all points as to why.

For the sake of discussion though, I'm curious if Zippy's reply to this is skepticism at End The Fed versus perhaps Audit the Fed and even reform? Maybe it's better than being changed to the inflexible Gold Standard?

I'll just say I'm not in favor of ending the Fed. I'm sure my reasons why will come out somewhere in this thread if anyone wants to discuss it with me.
 
I'm curious as this is literally my first post. I have a question for anyone willing to answer it. If you don't agree with the consensus here, does that mean you aren't welcome? Is this forum intended to be an echo chamber for those that agree with each other, or do people invite others to challenge their ideas?

Respectfully,

E4E1

Zippyjuan has a habit of spamming rather than engaging, as you may have noticed from his snarky post above. So, he gets under the skin. That said, you will note that he has been disagreeing with both the consensus and the gentleman the site is named after continually for just over a decade. Perhaps that answers your question.

I'd like to offer a different perspective.

Your Money and Bucket analogy is actually quite brilliant. So is recognizing that there is a difference in spending money and what it's spend on. However, before I can explain my opinion why, I think we need to establish what value is in an economy (like the US). I apologize in advance if it seems obvious (as I won't be surprised if I'm ridiculed for asking for clarification of this term).

What do you think determines the value of money?

Supply and demand determines the value of money, as with everything else. Increase demand, by making it illegal to use anything else for exchange within a nation, or by bombing countries who dare to sell some popular commodity (like petroleum) for any other form of payment internationally, and demand (and the value of the currency) goes up. Print just a little bit more than enough to satisfy that extra demand, and the value of the currency (and the value of a person's wages, and the value of a savings account) goes down. The people with the monopoly license to print the stuff (people who are not the federal government, despite the Fed's deceptive name) get a little richer, and the people who have to use the currency get a little poorer. Of course, if that money creation is kept below the level of demand, this devaluation does not happen. But, somehow, this devaluation always happens. The value of the "dollar" has, in fact, only gone up once since 1913, and that led FDR to confiscate large quantities of gold.

There's quite a lot of discussion on this topic already on this site. Perhaps if you'd really like to know what we know and what we think about those facts, you'd take a little time to look at the discussions that have already happened on this forum.

Again, very insightful. There is a lot I'd like to address in this comment, but I'm going to hold off except to say that the Fed is one "cog" in a long chain of events.

Do you mean events like a cabal of large bankers, led by Morgan, loaning money to speculators and creating an artificial sellers' market, then demanding immediate repayment of those loans, creating an artificial buyers' market? Thereby reaping considerable profits, and coincidentally creating a string of panics, most notably those of 1893 and 1907?

Isn't it interesting that most of those same bankers are the very people who were instrumental in creating the Federal Reserve?

Nor am I, though I have studied economics on my own since ~2005. Honestly, I think following mainstream thought can be a hindrance to understanding how the economy works. Some people here might agree, though I doubt we'd agree on all points as to why.



I'll just say I'm not in favor of ending the Fed. I'm sure my reasons why will come out somewhere in this thread if anyone wants to discuss it with me.

Many of us are not in favor of ending it either. A good many of us, however, would prefer not to invade countries when they sell oil for other currencies, and a good many of us would prefer to repeal the law that says it's illegal to use other forms of exchange within the U.S.

Do you find either of those notions objectionable?
 
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I'm curious as this is literally my first post. I have a question for anyone willing to answer it. If you don't agree with the consensus here, does that mean you aren't welcome? Is this forum intended to be an echo chamber for those that agree with each other, or do people invite others to challenge their ideas?

Respectfully,

E4E1

Personally, I enjoy the majority of Zippy's posts. Now, enjoy doesn't equate into agree with mind you. But many times I'll give his posts +Rep simply for both stating an argument to something (to be honest, I'm confident he does so simply to play devil's advocate at times as opposed to relaying a heartfelt opinion) as well as having the intestinal fortitude for doing so on this forum.

Part of the reason I thoroughly enjoy and recommend this site is due to the debates, because I've never seen full consensus even among people who are almost identical in views. It kind of goes with libertarian thought as personal interpretation and application of things like Natural Law can really vary from person to person. But this "argumentative atmosphere" allows a large majority of people in the community a forum (some who should be either working for NASA or teaching civics, economics, or law) to dissect each other's ideas in open debate. And that's just good for all of us as a whole.
 
The funny thing is that lately I'm not as irritated as I used to be with Zippy. He more or less admits that he's a liberal keynesian. The guy who really bugs me is TheCount. He's a liberal Keynesian like Zippy but he pretends he's a libertarian. It's kind of like Rachel Maddow vs Anderson Cooper. Rachel Maddow admits she's a liberal doing a liberal talk show from a liberal point of view. Anderson Cooper is dishonest, he pretends to be doing a neutral news program. The dishonesty irritates me more.

I am not going to snark because it is Ron Paul and I bite my tongue on these kinds of articles.

But do you really think the unemployment rate is 20% right now like Ron says? Ron is saying the unemployment rate is higher than the peak of the Great Depression. It isn't.
 
I am not going to snark because it is Ron Paul and I bite my tongue on these kinds of articles.

But do you really think the unemployment rate is 20% right now like Ron says? Ron is saying the unemployment rate is higher than the peak of the Great Depression. It isn't.

It has come very, very close since 2008, and the official numbers don't reflect that.
 
I am not going to snark because it is Ron Paul and I bite my tongue on these kinds of articles.

But do you really think the unemployment rate is 20% right now like Ron says? Ron is saying the unemployment rate is higher than the peak of the Great Depression. It isn't.

Depends on how you calculate unemployment.

There are a LOT of people out of the workforce who are not included because they gave up looking for a job.
 
I'm curious as this is literally my first post. I have a question for anyone willing to answer it. If you don't agree with the consensus here, does that mean you aren't welcome? Is this forum intended to be an echo chamber for those that agree with each other, or do people invite others to challenge their ideas?

Respectfully,

E4E1

Of course you are free to participate in discussion. What is the purpose of discussion? To create better understanding and to learn.

Zippy doesn't learn. You can give them the same facts 20 times over and they will come into a thread two days later and say the same thing.

They operate like they are working out of a textbook, or a government owned binder.
 
Depends on how you calculate unemployment.

There are a LOT of people out of the workforce who are not included because they gave up looking for a job.

If they aren't looking for a job do they want a job? And if they don't want a job, should we care if there is or isn't a job available for them? Williams includes people who haven't looked for work in over a year. He also counts part- time workers who say they might like a few more hours as unemployed. They may be UNDER employed, but they are not UN employed.

If you tried to use his methods on unemployment during the Great Depression, it would be well over 50% unemployed. He likes to say things are worse than the Great Depression while accepting the official figures for then while not applying the same methods of measurement so a more relative comparison can be made.
 
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I'm curious as this is literally my first post. I have a question for anyone willing to answer it. If you don't agree with the consensus here, does that mean you aren't welcome? Is this forum intended to be an echo chamber for those that agree with each other, or do people invite others to challenge their ideas?

Respectfully,

E4E1

Yes. We are here to build coalitions, not debate with liberal trolls.
 
If they aren't looking for a job do they want a job? And if they don't want a job, should we care if there is or isn't a job available for them?

Depends on why they don't want a job. If they don't want a job because it screws up their benefits. If they don't want a job because they lawyered up and finally got disability. In short, if they aren't adding measurable value to society, count them.
 
Depends on why they don't want a job. If they don't want a job because it screws up their benefits. If they don't want a job because they lawyered up and finally got disability. In short, if they aren't adding measurable value to society, count them.

So retired people on Social Security should be counted as unemployed. They are on benefits and have given up looking for a job.

If you are collecting unemployment insurance, one condition of that is that you say you are trying to find a job (yes, some people do lie about that and supply fake lists of places they have contacted looking for work). If you say you are trying to find a job, you are counted as "in the labor force and unemployed".
 
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I am not going to snark because it is Ron Paul and I bite my tongue on these kinds of articles.

But do you really think the unemployment rate is 20% right now like Ron says? Ron is saying the unemployment rate is higher than the peak of the Great Depression. It isn't.

I don't think it's nearly as high as the Great Depression, however I also think unemployment stats are highly subjective. I like more objective data like trade deficits, budget deficits, total debt, etc. Even GDP is a lot more objective than unemployment.
 
I'm curious as this is literally my first post. I have a question for anyone willing to answer it. If you don't agree with the consensus here, does that mean you aren't welcome? Is this forum intended to be an echo chamber for those that agree with each other, or do people invite others to challenge their ideas?

Respectfully,

E4E1

You just can't take it personally. People gonna disagree. Welcome to the Forum!
 
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