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The Free-Market Hasn’t Failed Us, Keynesian Economics Has With all this talk about Capitalism and Free Markets systems failing us one has to wonder if the talking heads on the financial shows truly understand basic economics or are they projecting their interpretation to sway public opinion.
The fact is the U.S. is not under a Free-Market system. Free Markets by definition is markets not interfered by the government. We have just the opposite of Free-Markets in America. If we did, we would not have government backed Reverse Mortgages, trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and the like. Nor Sarbanes-Oxley, Fanny and Freddy Mac, we wouldn’t have legislation that permitted HMO’s and PPO’s to be formed. And the biggest one of all, a Central Bank like the Federal Reserve Bank dictating the value of the dollar. A Free-Market system would let the value float and be priced by buyers and sellers. That’s called the equilibrium price, remember Econ 101? Instead the value of the dollar is managed by a handful of men at the Fed. They are independent from our Government. Neither Congress nor the people have any say or any direct control over the actions of the Fed. Whenever the chairman gets pulled in front of a Congressional committee he just sits there and gives often befuddling answers. In a Free-Market society there wouldn’t be the thousands of regulations and legislation in this country creating a market climate induced by the government favoring certain businesses. Making well connected business and government insiders wealthy at the taxpayers’ expense. This is exactly what we have today. The housing crisis was brought about by many cascading factors but the root cause is due to the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed was following a policy (based on Keynesian School of Economics)of lowering interest rates to spur economic activity. The Keynesian School of thought is by lowering interest rates you promote lending and consumption of products and services which in turn will lead to more employment and greater economic prosperity. While this does actually work in the short term and creates a “boom” this artificial lowering of the interest rates also creates a “bust”. Let me explain why. To lower interest rates the government increases the money supply. Meaning they print and circulate more “dollars”. This makes loans cheap (easy to obtain) but because money is now more widely available this now bids up prices on assets (i.e. houses. stocks). This is exactly what happened in the latest housing crisis. Due to the Fed policy people were are getting cheap loans and purchasing houses therefore prices are going up (because of artificial demand). Investors see that prices are rising sharply eager to get in on the action investors start buying up houses which accelerates prices even further. Then builders, seeing a demand start getting loans or investments to build to meet the demand. This is called misallocation of capitol. This misallocation of capitol by consumers, investors and builders will lead to money invested on this asset to be wasted. This scheme works as long as there is a never ending amount of consumers, loans and money to be spent on housing. But as soon as there is no one to keep buying up property, prices begin to level then eventually fall. Builders with excess inventory cannot sell and default on their loans. Wages lag behind inflation which is caused by the money supply expansion policies of the Federal Reserve. Prices are so high on houses they are disproportionate to wages and most people cannot afford a house without prices falling. And the people that did buy houses at the end of the cycle are now stuck with a debt greater than the value of their declining asset (home). This greatly lowered demand will have the opposite effect of the artificial demand created by the actions of the Fed. Businesses created in the “boom” phase will either go out of business completely or lay off workers due to the “new economic reality”. There will be an unwinding of economic activity creating a “bust”. This is history repeating itself. This is what happened in the Savings and Loans in the ‘80’s, .com bubble in the ‘90’s and the roaring 20’s just prior to the Great Depression. So as you can see Inflation (more specifically monetary Inflation) is directly caused by the Federal Reserve Bank. Although most people do not understand how inflation comes about they do intuitively understand that inflation is bad. Where most people make the mistake is that they feel inflation is a fact of life but it doesn’t have to be. The Federal Reserve had failed miserably to meet one of its primary directives which is to have price stability. Instead, since the creation of the Fed in 1913 the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen to 4% of its original purchasing power. The United States did very well without a Central Bank for hundreds of years. We will do well again without one. The Keynesian School has failed us we should now look towards the policies promoted by the Austrian School of Economics which have been a long time critic of the Keynesian School. Categories: Finance, Economy, Monetary Policy Tags: |
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The Bill introduced in the Senate on April 1, 2009 known as S.773 will establish the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor an arm of the executive branch that would have vast power to monitor and control Internet traffic to protect against threats to critical cyber infrastructure. News Article here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/should-obama-control-internet First they wanted the power to take over any business that they deem a threat to the economy, now they want the ability to control the Internet! This is exactly what our founders feared, a central government with too much power. They already have too much power now they want more! They Internet is the only alternative choice for media and information. We need to do what Gary Fielder said to do in his presentation The Gig is Up, fight for Internet freedom for our lives! We don't need the federal government controlling the only source of free, independent information. Their reasoning for this bill is because of quote "America's failure to protect cyberspace." Protect cyberspace? The feds can't do anything efficient! Well besides take your money. How about protect your own governments network, keep your filthy hands off the Internet and stop trying to grab more and more power because people are afraid! Franklin's famous quote works perfectly for this, "Those that would sacrifice civil liberties in exchange for a false sense of security deserve neither and will lose both!". I wanted to get this information out there since I haven't seen in anywhere else. Please do your part to stop this bill immediately!
Categories: Civil Liberties, Grassroots News, Action Item, Federal Legislation, Current Events Tags: Internet |
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I oppose government health care. Ever work in a Veterans Administration hospital? I have. So I know what the government can do with health care and I am appalled. The current system of third party payers is not serving the needs of everyone, but no system will. Get it? No system will meet everyone's needs! At least now though, here in the US you have the choice of earning health care coverage through your employer or not. You have the freedom of choosing your own doctor. You have the freedom to a second opinion. The point is that now we have freedom. The choices may come with costs but they always do. When government takes control of the system your choices will be put up or shut up. End of story. Only the elites will truly have access to quality health care in their private clinics. Senators and CEO's are never going to settle for public health care on par with criminals and libertarians. The public will be treated like cattle at best. I know there are many out there (doubt many of them read this website) who live in a fantasy world. In this fantasy the government can take care of all problems if the state is given enough control and oversight (ie. we move closer to fascism). I believe it has been tried before. Ask a survivor of the Soviet health care plan how that worked. Rather than go to the extreme of state run health care, why not find some middle ground? Insurance companies are part of the problem. Government gave them their monopolies back in the Nixon days. Government and insurance companies are in bed together. The need to get out of the health care business. Together insurance and government are leaching the lifeblood of the providers and patients like, well... LEECHES! Take insurance and government out of the picture and let doctors practice and patients make choices for themselves. Only when patients and providers can choose the best course of action unimpeded will the system ever work again. Only then will we cease to be herded like sheep. I am a pharmacist and I see everyday how the government and insurance companies drain the lifeblood out the the health care system in the US. And still it is the best health care system in the world. If you are going to get sick, where do you want to be? Beijing? Bombay? I think not. Freedom of choice, not government control. Get government and insurance companies out of health care altogether. Categories: Civil Liberties, Health Freedom, Ethics, Federal Legislation, Social Issues, Socialism, State Legislation Tags: |
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Greenspan goes straight to the matter in the first paragraph:
An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense - perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire - that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.He then goes over a short history of money, similarly found in Murray Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money? The two differ, however, on the value of fractional reserve banking. Not surprisingly Greenspan allows for fractional reserve banking believing that gold reserves would keep banks from overextending and nations from creating "easy money." Rothbard, however, says it's all a fraud. Then, after explaining the different booms and busts of the late nineteenth centure, I read:
But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing a business decline-argued economic interventionists-why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely-it was claimed-there need never be any slumps in business. He writes as if that's a bad idea. It seems like a bad idea. It is a bad idea. SO WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! He then gives a short history of the 'FED' beginning with it's creation in 1913 and it's manipulation of the money supply to protect Great Britain. The 'FED' did stop Britain's loss of her gold reserves, saving her from the embarrassment of having to raise interests rates, but:
it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market-triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. SO WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! Statists, he argues, blame gold for the Great Depression, but the real reason they hate gold is that the welfare state is impossible with a gold standard. Taxation cannot support it, therefore, the government must resort to borrowing, but gold hampers government deficit spending. By increasing the money supply, the value of the currency falls. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion. In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard. This is a wonderful essay. "Gold and economic freedom are inseparable." "Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth." SO WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ALAN GREENSPAN?!
Categories: Finance, Commodities, History, Economy, Monetary Policy Tags: Alan Greenspan, Murray Rothbard, Fed, inflation |
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I have no illusion and will not be surprised when you vote for the new scam President Obama is pushing on us. He is using fear to further increase the power and scope of the Federal Government (as Mr. Emmanuel said, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste.") Nevertheless, I want you to know that I am against the bailouts. Can you explain to me the moral and constitutional justification for doing this? Can you explain where the money will come from? There are only three sources: inflate the currency, borrow the money, or increase taxes. Can you explain how it is moral to inflate the currency, thus taxing the poorest of our citizens and robbing the people of their savings? Can you explain how is it moral to borrow more money, thus putting our children, our grandchildren, and us further in debt? Can you explain how is it moral to increase the tax burden on a nation that is already suffering, robbing the people of what little the government already allows them to keep in order to bailout incompetent corporations? You swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. How is this bailout constitutional? It is not. It is immoral and unconstitutional. Let's be honest, shall we? We are no longer a constitutional republic under the rule of law; we are a democracy under the rule of the mob. The Constitution is dead. Every vote for a bailout, every unconstitutional act of Congress, the President, and Judiciary shows the contempt the three branches have for the Constitution, making a mockery of it and your oath of office to uphold it.
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Categories: Finance, Law, Domestic Policy, US Constitution, Ethics, Federal Legislation, Current Events, Socialism, Economy, Monetary Policy, Congress Tags: bailout |
Dear Senator,Comments (6)
I'm assuming you voted for the "Stimulus" package. I am against it, but that is not the reason for this letter. I understand that the bill was not available until around midnight before the vote. It was around 1000 pages long. What I would like to know is how can you justify voting for or against a bill before you can possibly read it? Do you just trust the leadership? Do you just trust the President? Isn't that what the Republicans did under Bush with the Patriot Act and all their other odious acts weakening our civil liberties? You are sent to Washington to represent the First District of Hawai'i, but how can you represent us if you do not even have the time to read and think about the pros and cons of a certain bill? Are you there just to rubber stamp a bill for your leaders or a Democratic President or just vote against the Republicans? How can you possibly be a free and independent representative for us? I know that this is not your fault, but if you and your staff do not have the time to read, much less analyze a bill, then why are you even there? David A. Singhiser Categories: Republican Party, Democratic Party, US Constitution, Federal Legislation, Current Events, Miscellany, Voting, Economy, Congress Tags: , read the bills, Representative Abercrombie |
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Great op-ed just sent in to me. Be sure to send your H.R. 1207 op-eds to the the Honolulu Adverstiser, Honolulu Star Bulletin, MidWeek, Hawaii Tribune Herald, Honolulu Weekly and Hawaii Reporter. In the coming weeks, Congress will vote on a bill that will increase transparency of Government in the most crucial of areas, money creation. H.R. 1207, the Audit the Fed Bill, will require the Federal Reserve Bank to disclose where it distributes newly created money. Money creation by the Federal Reserve increases the prices we pay for goods by inflation. The more money created, the higher prices will go. The money supply has roughly doubled since we first embarked on bailing out different industries to avert a deeper recession. This bailout will hurt the poor and middle class most as they see prices they pay for gas, food, and clothing rise until they are nearly double what they were last year. This will not happen right away, but Economics tells us when the money supply doubles, prices will double. Unfortunately for Hawaii, only Neil Abercrombie has signed up to be a co-sponsor of H.R. 1207, please contact Mazie Hirono and ask her to support H.R. 1207. If Mazie Hirono can’t protect Hawaiians, perhaps we should replace her with someone that will. Russell McGuire Honolulu Resident
Categories: Federal Legislation, Economy, Monetary Policy Tags: Abercrombie, Hirono, hawaii, Russell McGuire |
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