Archive for February 3rd, 2010
This is so fuckin’ crazy!
03
02 2010
The Fed as Giant Counterfeiter
By Robert Murphy
San Jose State economics professor Jeffrey Rogers Hummel tells all his students that the easiest way to understand the Federal Reserve is to think of it as a giant, legalized counterfeiter. I had always known that the Fed and other central banks were likecounterfeiters, but I still thought that the actual mechanics of open-market operations and so forth actually provided some important distinctions.
In large part because of my frequent email exchanges with Hummel, I now realize that I was being naïve. Once you understand the details of modern central banking, you are able to step back and see that it truly is a way for the government to use the printing press to pay its bills. All of the complicated process of targeting interest rates through buying Treasuries simply hides this essential point — and perhaps deliberately so.
An Old-Fashioned Monarch With a Printing Press
Before we examine Fed operations, let’s start with something simpler. Suppose there is a powerful monarch reigning over a large, industrialized country. The monarch has managed to wean his subjects off commodity money such as gold or silver, and instead they use fiat notes, rectangular slips of paper featuring the king’s portrait. The king has a printing press at his disposal, which gives him unlimited ability to create more slips of paper with which he can buy goods throughout his kingdom.
At first, one might think that our hypothetical king has infinite wealth. But upon reflection, we see that there are actually pragmatic limits on how much new money he will print up each year. It’s true that there are no legal constraints on how many notes he can create, but the more monetary inflation he sows, the greater the price inflation he will reap.
At some point, the monarch would actually make himself poorer in the long run by running the printing press too heavily in the present. For example, if he doubled the stock of money in one year, the resulting price inflation would destabilize his economy and cause much needless capital consumption. His subjects would be less willing to invest in their businesses and retirement portfolios, knowing that he might effectively confiscate their savings again through massive creation of new money. Foreign investors too would be wary of exposing themselves to his country if he made his fiat currency too volatile.
Because of these considerations, the monarch would no doubt run off new money every year from his printing press, but he wouldn’t overdo it. He would aim for a moderate level of constant price inflation, with the purchasing power of his fiat currency slowly falling over time in a predictable manner. Each year, the new influx of money into the economy would represent a transfer of wealth from all other currency holders into the king’s possession.
Now what if our monarch is really profligate? What if he wants to spend more money than the income and tribute he earns in his position as monarch, even including the amount of new money he dares to create each year with his printing press, can support? In this case, the monarch can still resort to old-fashioned borrowing. Therefore in any given year, the monarch can only spend what he collects in tribute (taxes), debt financing, and inflation.
03
02 2010
“Why You’ve Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920″
As President Obama continues to try to sell the country on the necessity of government intervention, this Mises Institute video from April 2009 looks at what happened when a president made the rare choice to restrain government action in an economic crisis.
03
02 2010
Bankers: The Real Terrorists?
03
02 2010
U.S. Intervention In The Middle East
“Why do people in the Middle East hate the United States,” people are asking, in the wake of the events of September 11.
This partial chronology of U.S. intervention in the Middle East illustrates the lengths to which the U.S. power structure has gone to gain and maintain U.S. domination of the Middle East–a region considered key to the U.S.’s standing as an imperialist world power. This is not a complete list of the invasions, bombings, assassinations, coups and other interventions by the U.S. government, its allies, or its client states, nor does it fully document the U.S.’s economic domination and exploitation of the region’s people and resources.
1918-1945:
BREAKING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST:
THE FIGHT FOR INFLUENCE & OIL
1920-28: U.S. pressures Britain, then the dominant Middle East power, into signing a “Red Line Agreement” providing that Middle Eastern oil will not be developed by any single power without the participation of the others. Standard Oil and Mobil obtain shares of the Iraq Petroleum Company.
1932-34: Oil is discovered in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and U.S. oil companies obtain concessions.
1944: U.S. State Department memo refers to Middle Eastern oil as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” During U.S.-British negotiations over the control of Middle Eastern oil, President Roosevelt sketches out a map of the Middle East and tells the British Ambassador, “Persian oil is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it’s ours.” On August 8, 1944, the Anglo-American Petroleum Agreement is signed, splitting Middle Eastern oil between the U.S. and Britain.
Between 1948 and 1960, Western capital earns $12.8 billion in profits from the production, refining and sale of Middle Eastern oil, on fixed investments totaling $1.3 billion.
1945-1955:
REPLACING RIVALS AND WAGING WAR
ON NATIONAL LIBERATION
1946: President Harry Truman threatens to drop a “super-bomb” on the Soviet Union if it does not withdraw from Kurdestan and Azerbaijan in northern Iran.
November 1947: The U.S. helps push through a UN resolution partitioning Palestine into a Zionist state and an Arab state, giving the Zionist authorities control of 54% of the land. At that time Jewish settlers were about 1/3 of the population.
May 14, 1948: War breaks out between newly proclaimed state of Israel, and Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria, who had moved troops into Palestine to oppose the partition of Palestine. Israeli attacks force some 800,000 Palestinians–two-thirds of the population–to flee into exile in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank. Israel seizes 77 percent of historic Palestine. The U.S. quickly recognizes Israel.
March 29, 1949: CIA backs a military coup overthrowing the elected government of Syria and establishes a military dictatorship under Colonel Za’im.
1952: U.S.-led military alliance expands into the Middle East with Turkey’s admission to NATO.
1953: The CIA organizes a coup overthrowing the Mossadeq government of Iran after Mossadeq nationalizes British holdings in Iran’s huge oilfields. The Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, is put on the throne, ruling as an absolute monarch for the next 25 years–torturing, killing and imprisoning his political opponents.
1955: U.S. installs powerful radar system in Turkey to spy on the Soviet Union.
1956-1958:
UPHEAVAL AND INTRIGUE IN EGYPT,
IRAQ, JORDAN, SYRIA & LEBANON
July 1956: After Egypt’s nationalist leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser, receives arms from the Soviet Union, the U.S. withdraws promised funding for Aswan Dam, Egypt’s main development project. A week later Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal to fund the project. In October Britain, France and Israel invade Egypt to retake the Suez Canal. President Eisenhower threatens to use nuclear weapons if the Soviet Union intervenes on Egypt’s side; and at the same time, the U.S. asserts its regional dominance by forcing Britain, France and Israel to withdraw from Egypt.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6308.htm
03
02 2010
Sr. US Treasury Official openly serves on council of Rothschild-founded “Earth” bank
Infowars.com
February 3, 2010
Senior US Treasury Dept. Official William Pizer, the current Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Energy is simultaneously a sitting council member on the Global Environment Facility (www.thegef.org), one of the largest funders of projects to “improve the global environment” (i.e. push through fraud-based carbon cap-and-trade programs).
This ‘Facility’, while not claiming to be a bank, at the same time calls it itself “An independent financial organization” (see http://www.thegef.org/interior_right.aspx?id=50#GEF%20History).
Isn’t it illegal (or at the very least unethical) for a senior member of the Treasury Department to openly sit as a member of a huge foreign bank (oops – “facility”)?
This is only one of dozens of questions that should be asked about this organization, but we as tax-paying Americans should find someone who can answer this question, because it seems to me that either:
1) We need a law passed to stop such a high official holding two such posts and potentially using their influence and position in the US Treasury to move untold millions into the coffers of what is effectively a foreign bank or . . .
2) There is a law and someone needs to file a federal lawsuit
Pizer’s name/contact info. appear on the GEF website here (just scroll down a bit):
http://www.thegef.org/interior.aspx?id=21670#PIZER
This is no small matter: I found this organization while researching information given by George Hunt on an Alex Jones Show interview last January (see http://www.infowars.com/the-inner-workings-of-a-one-world-new-age-government-alex-interviews-george-hunt/), and George Hunt claims this organzation was founded by Edmond de Rothschild and Maurice Strong (originally to be named the “World Conservation Bank”), and its purpose is to engulf all other banks.
In the interview, George played numerous audio clips proving Edmond De Rothschild, Maurice Strong, as well as former Treas. Sec. James A Baker III, and the then heads of the IMF and World Bank were involved in promoting this new bank at the Fourth World Wilderness Congress in 1987 in Colorado.
The very fact that you can’t find any information on who actually started this bank is suspicious in itself, given its size and massive UN backing: the Wikipedia entry on this organization merely parrots that which is on the “thegef.org” website, and also does not explain its origin:
The Wikipedia entry states “The Global Environment Facility was established in October 1991 as a $1 billion pilot program in the World Bank to assist in the protection of the global environment and to promote environmental sustainable development”.
Established by who?
The GEF’s verbose and acronymn-laden 2008 annual report brags of the millions of dollars ostensibly transferred from 1st world nations to poorer nations to help clean up their environment, but it offers zero details on where the money came from other than simple pie charts showing broad categories such as “government”, “NGO”, etc.:
http://www.gefweb.org/interior_right.aspx?id=26610
Everyone should contact their US senator or congressman, as well as the US Attorney General and demand an investigation into this obvious appearance of impropriety on the part of the US Treasury Department
03
02 2010
IRS Acquiring Shotguns
03
02 2010
Time Magazine Pushes Draconian Internet Licensing Plan
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Time Magazine has enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon to back Microsoft executive Craig Mundie’s call for Internet licensing, as authorities push for a system even more stifling than in Communist China, where only people with government permission would be allowed to express free speech.
As we reported earlier this week, during a recent conference at the Davos Economic Forum, Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.
His proposal was almost instantly advocated by Time Magazine, who published an article by Barbara Kiviat - one of Mundie’s fellow attendees at the elitist confab. It’s sadistically ironic that Kiviat’s columns run under the moniker “The Curious Capitalist,” since the ideas expressed in her piece go further than even the free-speech hating Communist Chinese have dared venture in terms of Internet censorship.
“Now, there are, of course, a number of obstacles to making such a scheme be reality,” writes Kiviat. “Even here in the mountains of Switzerland I can hear the worldwide scream go up: “But we’re entitled to anonymity on the Internet!” Really? Are you? Why do you think that?”
Kiviat ludicrously compares the necessity to show identification when entering a bank vault to the apparent need for authorities to know who you are when you set up a website to take credit card payments.
“The truth of the matter is, the Internet is still in its Wild West phase. To a large extent, the law hasn’t yet shown up. Yet as more and more people move to town, that lawlessness is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. As human societies grow over time they develop more rigid standards for themselves in order to handle their increased size. There is no reason to think the Internet shouldn’t follow the same pattern,” she writes.
“The people in charge—as much as anyone can be in charge when it comes to the Internet—are thinking about it,” Kiviat barks in her conclusion, seemingly comfortable with the notion that shadowy individuals and not the Constitution itself are “in charge” of deciding who is allowed free speech.
Despite Kiviat’s mealy-mouthed authoritarianism and feigned reasonableness in advocating such a system, Mundie’s proposal is little different to a similar system already considered by officials in Communist China to force bloggers to register their identities before they could post. At the time the idea was attacked by human rights advocates as an obvious ploy “by which the government could control information” and crack down on dissent.
Indeed, the proposal was deemed too severe and the Chinese government eventually backed down. So a system considered too authoritarian and too much of a threat to freedom in Communist China is seemingly just fine and dandy in the “land of the free,” according to Kiviat and her ilk.
Unfortunately for her, Kiviat was immediately reminded about what makes the Internet such a threat to the ruling elite for whom she is a well-trained apologist – almost every comment below her article disagreed with her.
“No. A thousand times no. This benefits no one but “the people in charge,” wrote one respondent.
“Drivers’ licenses ensure a basic level of driving competency, so that 13-year-olds don’t get drunk and drive into a schoolbus. That kind of stupidity doesn’t happen on the Internet. Enough security theater! Focus on actual security. Truly awful idea, Barbara.”
“I, for one, welcome our new internet overlords. It will be a comforting time when “the law” comes along to protect people from themselves on the net, because gosh darn it, freedom is dangerous,” quips another. “Not to mention, standards only ever come about through coercive government action, and never through private parties responding to their own incentives.”
I think bloggers ought to be fingerprinted, DNA tested for abnormalities and have the information safely stored in a government vault. That way when some authoritarian ruler of pit, decides you have broken his self made tyrannic law he can prosecute you,” jokes another respondent. “For being a journalist you sure are s—-d, anonymity protects the right of free speech especially when the scary internet is most dangerous in a nation that prosecutes freedom of speech and opinion. The biggest thugs and criminals you mentioned are corrupt governments. I bet you love China’s safe internet measures huh? But there are worse than China.”
“The internet is the only thing preventing total tyranny right now, and they are trying everything they can to chill free speech. There is NO grass roots movement anywhere calling for government intervention in the internet. It is not broken. It works too well, that is a problem for tyrants,” points out another.
Shortly after Time Magazine started peddling the proposal, the New York Times soon followed suit with a blog this morning entitled Driver’s Licenses for the Internet? which merely parrots Kiviat’s talking points.
Of course there’s a very good reason for Time Magazine and the New York Times to be pushing for measures that would undoubtedly lead to a chilling effect on free speech which would in turn eviscerate the blogosphere.
Like the rest of the mainstream print dinosaurs, physical sales of Time Magazine have been plummeting, partly as a result of more people getting their news for free on the web from independent sources that don’t feed at the trough of the military-industrial complex. Ad sales for the New York Timessunk by no less than 28 per cent last year with subscriptions and street sales also falling.
“The Internet, where newspapers are generally free, has siphoned off circulation and advertising,” conceded an October 2009 NY Times article, which is precisely why establishment publications like the Old Gray Lady and Time are pushing proposals that would strangle the blogosphere and in turn eliminate their competition – while devastating free speech all in one foul swoop.
http://www.infowars.com/time-magazine-pushes-draconian-internet-licensing-plan/
03
02 2010
Beyoncé’s Police State Performance at the Grammy Awards
“Maybe there is some connection with the NWO using propaganda in hip-hop like Jay-Z or other shitty-ass music like his wife’s chalkboard scratching. Soulless music that vomits hyperspace sized chunks of banalities are what reach the most people. Via Americas corporately run network of dildo ear hammering radio stations. I didn’t really buy the idea that hip-hop acts were courting with the NWO when I first heard about it. I pay very little attention to mainstream rap, but who knows, maybe the evil ultra-white-elite circles are using Jay-Z as a useful idiot… to reach more useful idiots. It’s propaganda! They don’t give a shit what sucker gets behind Satan for them… as long as sneaks it’s way into many-o mush minds.”
-Fred Face 2/3/09
Acclimating the civilians to men in black uniforms?
