#38 Liberty is the First Casualty of War

It is not that well known, but during and after the debates surrounding the US Constitution and this The Bill of Rights, there were opinions that were opposed to such liberties being widely held by each individual human being as inalienable rights beyond the legal scope of any government.  Those who were opposed in their day are the same who oppose these inalienable rights now, exactly the same people who might claim that no one has a Constitutional right to the food or water of their choice, etc.  These are all related back to the idea that some people regard themselves as a law unto themselves and have no respect whatsoever for the natural rights of others.

 Author: Paul A. Drockton   Source

The United States Constitution was established by a minority of Patriots that realized their revolution would be a complete and total failure without popular support. We are not talking about government checks or handouts used to bribe citizens and institutions into silence. We are talking about Liberty, in the purest sense of the word.

Now we are being threatened by that small group of Satanic Psychopaths into living under their updated version of Martial Law. These are a few of our Constitutional Rights they have trashed along the way. You may now enjoy...

1. Freedom of Religion: As long as that religion doesn't condemn sodomy or ends in -am or -ianity. Oh, or talk about corrupt politicians or politics from the pulpit. Funny how much control you can get over a Church with a simple IRS tax exemption law.

2. Freedom of Speech: As long as you glorify the absurd, peddle pornography, or attack anything ending in -am or -ianity, you are OK. Just don't say anything bad about governments, banks or big corporations. OR, read from the Bible. No Posting the 10 Commandments also applies.

3. Freedom of the Press: As long as you follow the above rules you should be OK. Stay away from the mention of a certain country that ends in -ael and don't use a certain word ending in -ocide with anything related to foreign policy.

4. Right to Due Process: Unless you are a political dissident targeted for assassination. Or can be sent to a secret CIA prison overseas without anyone knowing about it.

5. Protection Against Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Unless you protest against the war or Wall Street. Or, if you end up on the wrong end of a taser during a routine traffic stop. Secret prisons for American citizens are also exempt.

6. Right to a Jury Trial before your Peers: Unless you are labeled a military or political target, or live under martial law after a disaster or manufactured threat of the government's own choosing.

7. Right to Unreasonable Search and Seizure: Unless you are boarding an airplane or bus. Who knows what kind of bomb you might be hiding in your underwear? Just be grateful we don't have a "body cavity bomber".

8. Right to a Search Warrant, Issued by a Judge, that states what they intend to find, and the manner in which they intend to find it. Unless they stop your car for a seat belt violation, see you playing video games through your front window, or put you on some type of government list. This right is also void when boarding an airplane.

The ideals espoused in the Declaration of Independence might as well have been written on the Planet Mars:

1. Right to Life: Unless you haven't been born, live under O'Romney-care in Massachusetts, or Obama-care anywhere else. Oh, and as long as you don't belong to a certain religious group whose country is being invaded, or has been targeted for invasion.

2. Right to Liberty: Guaranteed if you are in this country illegally, thanks to Mitt Romney, Bill Marriott, the Mormon Church, Obama, or anyone else that supports illegal immigration.

3. Pursuit of Happiness: Unless your happiness is based on having a job that pays more than minimum wage, or a retirement plan that remains solvent. Factoring in for Inflation, happiness is a lot more expensive to pursue these days, thanks to TAARP and other Federal Reserve giveaways.

Pursuing happiness depends on the price of gasoline, so, unless your happiness is within walking distance you can forget about it. Unless you can reach it on a bicycle.

Now it seems the only rights we hear about is the right to remain silent, or the right to an attorney. You also have the right to apply for any government program you think you have a right to.

The first casualty of war is Freedom, especially manufactured war created by a secret cabal of Satanic Psychopaths.

Buy Silver Coins and Bullion. email pdrockton@aol.com 

David Burton's Comments

Paul's paper is presented here for it's broader application to thinking about issues common to all mankind, but specifically which began here in America with the national political experiment known as the United States. From the very beginning the forces that are in control today were at war with the champions of absolute personal liberty. They were the forces against which patriots fought and died during the American Revolution of 1775-1781 and the later War of 1812. These wars were every bit bankers' wars, as were any that would follow, or the scores that preceded them.

We do not expect that Paul Drockton has any idea of our monetary proposal, nor perhaps would he be willing to support it. Though perhaps as he finds out more, he too may change his mind. We have in the various “movements” that are underway, a wide variety of opinions concerning various subjects and their relative importance to “the cause” of liberty.

Those who would tell us that all we need do is monkey around with the law and we can come up with a better solution forget something very basic when it comes to most people's understanding of law. As Bastiat said, law is FORCE, specifically the FORCE of states exerted against their subject peoples. Common everyday people who are just going about their lives, which includes buying and selling of things or services that represent real value to them, rarely if ever consider any matters dealing with law and would prefer not to have to deal with any of it, because they know inside what the moral laws are and as I said before, most people know how to recognize what sane behaviour is both in themselves and others, and choose sanity over insanity in actions or attitudes by a large enough margin that most things that require doing get done.

We present on this blog, articles and links to the fine work of others, always giving credit and showing the sources, in order to broaden the scope of natural association among related groups and people all working toward the same goal, whether they realize it or not, that of restoring a society of individual liberty to as many as possible. There are still some out there who do not see the obvious to some, not too obvious to others, connection between the rise of banks and corporations and the demise of personal liberty or even of ladders of upward social and economic mobility without which societies and people become stagnant and die. The people who are presently above it all, do absolutely nothing but figure out how they can make the money they have “yield” more; to “steal” money from others, rather than risk making something of value themselves and offering it for sale in the marketplace, because at the moment, such schemes and games are more profitable by the hour, than what a family of four might hope to earn the hard way, by not stealing but working hard for 20 years!

We think it's time to take the initiative away from such people with all their ill gotten gain. Notice we do not say we want any of it back, or that it would even matter to those who have been most abused by the present system. The problem is not that money itself is evil, though many people really think it is and that the Bible said so. No, it said that the love of money is the root of all evil. It could have said that the love of gold was the root of all evil just as well and it actually did say this in many places in the Old Testament, as they didn't use paper back then, even though the terms of trade and who controlled it meant that the same cycles of boom and bust, of war after war, to make profits for bankers while other people's sons died, was maintained for centuries.

One reason Rome attacked and destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD is that by that time the brokers in Jerusalem had burdened Rome with a terrible trade deficit with India and other far flung countries within the bankers' financial orbit. The Romans eventually forbade usury and forced the bankers out. They remained out for a thousand years until the Vatican decided that usury under some circumstances was permissible.

Virtually all standard academic economics is based on usury and they will tell everyone that the only reason why Western civilization went into the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome was due to the lack of it. Meanwhile, during the same period as the Dark Ages in the West, there were two very great civilizations that flourished without usury; Byzantium which coined money for over 900 years and was a going society for almost a thousand years and Classical Islam, which flourished for several hundred years until it in turn was taken down by invaders from the East who ironically spread Islam by taking it back home with them after laying waste the cities of Mesopotamia.

We are standing not just on the shoulders of giants, like E. C. Riegel, but we are also standing upon the slag heap of many outdated and wrong ideas that have cost many hundreds of millions of lives down through history. It was not money that was an evil invention, but who issued it that was the problem. It was not that money was issued by fiat as paper notes that was the problem at all, but that in ALL cases, such money was issued by a government who thereby became the largest buyer in society and hence was able to manipulate markets by FORCE. Scarcity of money is not beneficial to trade at all, but is inevitable under a system where all of it is a loan at interest from some private central bank.

Those who want to sidestep any issues concerning money in its well known and often used forms, want to see us return to a commodities based trading system. But who controls the mines and who has the most gold and silver? Who controls the markets and their rigging? People usually think inflation is simply too much money in circulation, but it is not just that but when all that money is driven into the market to buy things as it is perceived to be losing value by the month, week or day. When that happens, you have Weimar Germany, when the operating principles become “spending money as fast as possible” rather than “saving for a rainy day,” when something of greater cost, but essential value, normally requires savings.

E. C. Riegel said that inflation was caused by government spending all by itself. Under a debt based fiat system, the real damage can be hidden for longer periods by secreting vast sums into corporations, which themselves may be of questionable value, but for which most see no alternative except for commodities. And what are commodities really worth? Are they receiving what the market will bear or what they are really worth compared with alternatives should they exist? We can't tell and wont know because these matters are also under someone's tight control, either to eliminate competition or preserve privileges, which amounts to the same thing.

Again, and consistently, our message is “come out of her, my people,” not let's have some more compromises with those who have destroyed us. You will not see much of a future for yourselves, your children, your grandchildren, your people or your nation, or for that matter the planet itself, until the present order caves in upon itself and takes all those who have sided with it along with it. That time will certainly come. We seriously recommend that anyone currently working for the most hated corporations out there, you know who you are, should consider the effects of others knowing who you worked for before the present system comes to an end. What will you do then? Hunker down with your guns and ammo and try and preserve your food stores from gangs of marauders that may or may not be on some government's payroll, even if by then their money is worthless, or otherwise hopped up on some drug or other as were the death squads in Russia after 1917? I think this represents a lot of childish bravado rather than sound thinking. “Come out of her, my people” so that you will not share in her sins. Do so while there remains time as history has shown that the present system shall not endure. We are about constructing one that will.

#0 Gerald Celente w/ Jeff Rense ~ One Of Our Trends Is "The Great Awakening"

Gerald Celente w/ Jeff Rense ~ One Of Our Trends Is "The Great Awakening"
 

We do not know how long anything will remain up so more can listen, but this interview from January, 2013, contained many issues with which we want people everywhere to consider for themselves and understand how the underlying money power is responsible for everything else. Included is a tremendous series of remarks concerning our present situation from Bill Cosby and Rense and Celente on the present conditions.

#37 The Compound Interest Paradox – A Conversation

Reference: The Compound Interest Paradox - a Simpler Explanation

When doing the research for the piece on Compound Interest, I came across this article written by FSK and posted on his blog on Wednesday, May 21, 2008. FSK referred to himself as follows, 

“I want to do useful work and get paid, without having to report it for taxation, confiscation, and regulation.” 

This is a VERY widespread attitude, especially among the young. On his newer website, REALFREEMARKET.ORG, FSK further has this to say,  

I blog Anonymously, under the pseudonym “FSK”. I am very critical of financial industry corruption. I also work writing financial software. I blog Anonymously, because I don’t want potential employers refusing to hire me based on my blog. I live in NYC. I am currently unemployed.

(They may have decided to do so anyway as they have ways of knowing things)  This article will appear in blue, my comments in black, per usual.

The Compound Interest Paradox - a Simpler Explanation

A lot of people have asked for a short and simple explanation of the Compound Interest Paradox. I'm planning an updated version my Compound Interest Paradox post, scheduled to be posted in a few weeks. (Now that Blogger offers "scheduled posting", I'm queuing up posts ahead of time. I have 3 months' worth of nearly finished drafts queued up, and I schedule posts a week in advance now.)

I didn't see this, so this article will be the basis for our discussion.

There's a fundamental structural flaw in debt-based money. Money is only created when someone takes out a loan. However, only the principal is created and not the interest payments. For example, suppose a bank borrows $1B from the Federal Reserve at 5% interest for 1 year, either directly at the Discount Rate or via the Federal Reserve "monetizing the debt". In a year, the bank must repay $1.05B. The $50M required interest was never created or put into circulation. Therefore, there's a permanent money supply shortfall. Everyone is enslaved under a crushing debt burden.

You see, others are noticing the essential mathematical flaw underlying usury and debt based currencies.  [2/5/15: Correction: After reviewing Arthur Kitson's work, beginning here we are convinced that all money represents debt so the idea that any money can be said to be free of debt is an illusion. The “gold bugs” will immediate jump to the conclusion that their “money” (gold or silver coins) is debt free, which is also an illusion, since, unless one is of the opinion that gold is just wealth in terms of mere “stuff”; commodities and not our stricter definition which says that true wealth is only that capable of earning a living, then one buys gold (or silver) with the intention of eventually spending it as money for what one really wants or needs. If they are gold or silver hoarders, then that's another trap. See what you have in purchasing power after the “masters of the universe” in far away cities reduce your hoards to next to nothing through speculation, and we haven't even considered that fake commodity out there, bitcoin. Basically, if it's money, it's purchasing power and it's all debt, representing unsettled transactions for things that can only settle transactions in terms of barter; real useful goods and services. So money is not a matter of debt per se, because all of it represents debt, but debt to whom.]  Our solution of course is that money can only be issued by the poor who have none and all others must trade for it with whatever they have to offer.  [2/5/15: Correction: This too is modified by the insertion of Labour Contracts into the proposal. Labour is a way of issuing money into the system.]  In a very short time this would bring to an end all collectivist or state socialist solutions to dealing with “the masses” and their poverty, which of course the rich tend to blame on the poor, as if being poor was their own fault. If you have some of their debt based money and wish to get Value Units, you will have to trade that money for gold or silver bullion first, since no Independent Exchange within the VEN will want to hold either these currencies or anything valued in them. [2/5/15: Correction: All IE's will take care of this for any who want to buy with currencies, but not through swipe cards which leave a trail which we cannot be part of.]   Your exchange will be determined by how the brokers have manipulated the prices of gold and silver and more importantly what the real bid price for physical possession of gold or silver bullion would be compared with these prices at the inception of the Value Unit on 2 November, 2011, an easy to remember date.

The key step in the money creation process is when banks borrow from the Federal Reserve to create new reserves. Only the Federal Reserve can create new money, and all the money it creates has debt strings are attached. For each $1 the Federal Reserve creates, the financial industry can create $9 more via fractional reserve banking. 

They create far more than this so they don't even follow the norms of their own fraudulent business model.

This new money is recycled. The interest payments on the extra $9 are recycled as bank profits and expenses. Banks always are "loaned up" to the full reserve ratio allowed by law. Surplus bank reserves are loaned to other banks, or (rarely) back to the Federal Reserve via reverse repurchase agreements. However, the interest payments on the $1 created by the Federal Reserve are *PERMANENTLY* destroyed as the loan is repaid. Total debt is always greater than total money.

I hope you all got this. If not, take your time and read it over again. There are some out there in thrall to the Austrians who still believe, erroneously, that scarcity of money is a good thing in that it counteracts the inflation caused by government spending. Elsewhere we've shown this “school” of economics to be liars, clever at it, but liars just the same. Please do not allow yourself to be hooked on either horn of the bankster's dilemma. To them, their dialectic consists of the either of Keynesian economics and the or of Austrian economics. They do not want you to think outside their box.

When the Federal Reserve creates new money, the Compound Interest Paradox operates with the full force of law. The general public does not have the financial industry's money-printing power, and their access to money is always limited by the Compound Interest Paradox. Banks don't need to collude to cause economic booms and busts, because Fed Funds Rate changes force them to collude. Before the Federal Reserve was created, large banks colluded to create economic booms and busts. The usual "Problem! Reaction! Solution!" scam led to the creation of the Federal Reserve. It was State regulation of banking in the first place that allowed large banks to collude to cause economic cycles, which then allowed them to lobby for the creation of the Federal Reserve.

State regulation of ANYTHING is direct evidence of collusion and corruption by special interests pleading with the government to protect their monopolies and privileges against the onslaught of competition. Those who foolishly assume that the government should or must regulate business affairs, or anything else for that matter, are either in sympathy with the fascist corporatist oligarchy (the technical definition of the political order under which most of us now live) or they are just plain stupid for trusting those who have long proved they are unworthy of such trust.

Consider a quantum mechanics analogy. In quantum mechanics, a proton and anti-proton can be simultaneously created. They later collide and are destroyed, for no net effect. Similarly, dollars and anti-dollars (debt) are always created in matching pairs. However, the anti-dollars multiply via interest, whereas the dollars do not. Therefore, when the dollars and anti-dollars collide and cancel, there always are surplus anti-dollars left over.

This is a good analogy.

In the USA, monopolies are openly discussed as immoral. 

We're supposed to laugh cynically, because this is plainly not how TPTB operate.

The Federal Reserve is the biggest monopoly of all. The Federal Reserve's monetary monopoly is more valuable than the monopoly of the State itself. By delegating its money-printing power to the Federal Reserve, the State has delegated most of its power to the Federal Reserve.

This too is correct, but perhaps FSK has never heard that allowing ANY government the right to issue money can never result in anything good, because unlike the rest of us, the government has nothing to offer anyone that anyone would willingly want to buy with which to extinguish the money it issues. True, it has the power to tax, to take by FORCE what it wants to preserve the illusion that a balance between spending and taxation can eliminate inflation, but this is a round about and expensive means to run either a government (that should at least live within its own basic charter, in the case of the US that means the original Constitution) or a diverse economy.

There are a lot of consequences of the Compound Interest Paradox.

Boom/bust cycles are not an economic law of nature. They are a consequence of an unfair monetary system. The people who control large corporations love this arrangement, because their smaller competitors are bankrupted during the bust phase; large corporations can withstand the cycle.

Correct. The VEN will officially and forever forbid absentee ownership (stocks) and limited liability, the chief features of corporate capitalism as presently experienced. If a business can make it and remain profitable it will without the government's help and if it can't it will fold, without the government's interference because somebody involved was “special,” etc.

Boom / bust cycles encourage consolidation of industries. Large corporations are the most common business, because they can most effectively withstand boom/bust cycles and lobby the State for favours.

Keep this point in mind because there is something else FSK mentions later that is also part of the problem.

Real interest rates must be negative, to ensure any money is in circulation at all. Negative real interest rates provide a massive subsidy to the financial industry and large corporations, paid by everyone else as inflation. Banks and hedge funds can borrow the cheapest, followed by large corporations. Individuals cannot borrow on favourable terms, or cannot borrow at all.

This is the other point; corporations who have members of the bank on their boards of directors, etc. are favoured customers of these banks because of their size, which means that the interest paid back to banks on loans of tremendous amounts of money, sometimes over periods as short as a day, are worth the bankers' time and expense. They do not care at all about you. They want more control over you, like the control they claim over their clients. They imagine they'll get it through their control of governments as their perpetual debtors. They do not need or want independent “black operators” out there doing great things in their local communities or smaller countries. A “black operator” in VEN parlance is a member that runs in the black, free of debt, etc. [2/5/15: Correction: A "black operator" would be someone who accepted payment in Valuns and had no additional Valuns awaiting him from Credit Contracts within the VEN.  People who sell items for money and expect a no return policy are "black operators" as operating in a "black" market where all sales are final.]

Without a gold standard (sound money), individual savings are stolen by inflation.

Ah, I see FSK has been listening to the Austrians. Heads up FSK: gold and silver prices are manipulated by brokers in far away cities who are part of the bankers' dialectic. These people also control all the mines. In the past they were manned by slaves acquired through war. The argument that “sound money” is based on gold or silver bullion is a flat out LIE! Our solution is much better in that it relegates precious metals to function as a means of exchange between our money and theirs. This does NOT mean that when you trade your dollars for gold (or silver) and then trade your gold for Value Units, that these new pieces of paper and coins (which we may officially call weights instead) are receipts for precious metals that are still your property that you may redeem for them at some future point in time. NO, you would be buying a real international standard for value measurement, which would stand alone as unaffected by that which gave it original meaning; an ounce of gold at the chosen bid price on 2 November, 2011. An individual's savings in Value Units will be assured not to loose its ability to measure value because their issuance will not be affected by government spending or the Compound Interest Paradox. This is real “sound money.”  [2/5/15: Correction: This was written a while ago and since then, we accept that laws regarding such things prohibit any coins and only those paper instances of money that bear more purchasing power than a dollar.  Some individual states have laws prohibiting any other than the national currencies from being used.  Also, all money represents unsettled transactions, so are instances of debt.  That is not the issue, but rather it is to whom the debt is rendered.  When Riegel and others regarded money as the means to split barter, they did not imply that barter itself was ever cancelled.  Money is the go between, the substitute, but barter still rules all exchange transactions.]
 

Income taxes and regulations prevent people from boycotting the Federal Reserve and using sound money instead.

We sincerely hope FSK gives our proposal a good look as it represents the only solution to having sound money. The Austrians and “gold bugs” are inherently misled or outright liars. Fiat currencies always fail, and the present ones out there are no exception, because they are all government issued, period! That they are issued by fiat has nothing to do with it. It's a deliberate misrepresentation to get you to keep to their dialectic.

If you develop an on-the-books alternate monetary system based on real money (gold or silver), the taxes and regulations make it impractical. Whenever someone works, Federal Reserve Points must be paid as taxes/tribute.

Well, more people will try because trade is like life itself, it will find a way.

Negative real interest rates mean that the cheapest way to finance a business is via the financial industry/State. With fair market-determined rates, growing a business via reinvested earnings is comparable/preferable to borrowing. This places individuals on an equal footing with large corporations.

We think he means that where interest rates are set by a central banking authority rather than determined by free competition, they can be set low enough to favour the biggest partners (owners) of the central bank. But the issue is a little more complicated than that because most banks will no longer lend to individuals wanting to start up or even maintain their own businesses, because there is no money in it for them; they'd rather deal with the corporations, where they have a share in the oversight if not the management.

Individuals cannot easily accumulate capital to form their own businesses. Their savings are eroded by inflation. The stock market doesn't earn a positive inflation-adjusted return. Politically connected insiders can start businesses, because their connections allow them to get funding from the financial industry. In a communist society like the USA, connections are more important than talent.

We are in agreement with this; communism and capitalism are both creations of the same people to be used as a socio-economic dialectic against everyone else. Free enterprise is NOT capitalism. I'll repeat: free enterprise is NOT capitalism. Anyone not with the fascist corporatist oligarchic programme (both capitalist and communist) are JEERED off the stage. Here's a good place to reiterate something about JEERING.

When someone doesn't value you, they jeer you, jeer your ideas, jeer anything about you, to destroy your public reputation, absolutely anything at all to move the crowd of sheeple away from paying any attention to you. Their first attempt might be a mildly condescending apology for you not knowing what they presume to know, etc. Your first defence is to recognize the jeer for what it is and identify it to those jeering you in plain and clear language. Do not try to reason with them or win them over.  You're usually wasting your time.  Try to remain cool and calm and do not raise your voice. Since their next move, if you don't get the hint, is violence, you prepare yourself for their next move. Eventually, nature will take its course. We caution however against anyone instigating violence against anyone. Let them make the first move. Try and establish yourself somewhere else if you can get away from their jeers. But power does not accommodate to any criticism, it is by its very nature conceited. We are suggesting that the seeds of their destruction are associated with their conceits. Walk away from them if you can. If you can't then you may jolly well have to fight. Always bear in mind though that they do not deserve your respect, allegiance, support or business.

Individuals cannot profitably loan each other money. If you loan money to your friends at 6%, that isn't keeping up with inflation. If you make a gold-denominated loan, that has an implied interest rate of 20%-30%; it would be cheaper to borrow from a bank.

Well, FSK is making some suppositions here because nobody really knows how anything would work outside their system. A free market rather than an artificially free one might see interest rates soar, especially if we revert to a “gold standard.” Think things are bad now?  At the bottom of the Great Depression we were on a gold standard and supposedly had "honest" money.  As I said elsewhere, since gold and silver are commodities, people tend to hold them when they think their market value (purchasing power) is going up and they unload them if they think their market value is on the way down, as many people seem to think right now.

We see it this way; buy gold and silver whenever you can and right now is as good a time as any, because you will have to get off this merry-go-round economy sooner or later, including dealing in any of its public currencies, or you may be one of the unlucky ones who find themselves without a chair in the musical chairs economy they have been running for centuries. Yes, the music does occasionally stop and they plan it that way. People tend to look backward in time and nostalgically wish we could get back to what they believe to be a better world. But those times had their own problems which led inexorably to these times. Why don't we learn from our past rather than stupidly repeating it? But without inflation, individual people could lend to each other and the terms could be reasonable.

Individuals don't have the magic money-printing power that banks have. This means that they will always be slaves of the bankers.

That is their intention.

The financial industry has a unique perk. They get to print the money that everyone else uses to trade. This guarantees that the financial industry will *ALWAYS* be about 10% of the economy.

In most developed countries their financial industry make up far more of the business than would be normative since making money with money has nothing to do with productivity or adding anything of value to the marketplace of values.  Much of it is in fact destructive of value or deliberately structured to steal value from others.

Large banks become "too big to fail". If one is forced into bankruptcy, then a bailout is *NECESSARY*, because otherwise the financial system starts to unravel. In a free market, one business' bankruptcy does not threaten the stability of its competitors, if they are prudently managed. There is no need for financial industry insiders to be concerned about negative consequences of bad decisions; there will *ALWAYS* be a Federal Reserve bailout, either directly as was the case with JP Morgan Chase and Bear Stearns, or indirectly in the form of a Fed Funds Rate cut.

Both astute and correct. This proves that insiders do control more and more of everything.

With the ability to (literally) print money, the financial industry can lobby the State for perks.

After the Supreme Court said corporations were people, they can buy government perks.

They can guarantee that reform will never occur. The insiders bought out all the TV stations and newspapers, guaranteeing their abuses will never be exposed. (The Internet is changing the equation somewhat. I predict that the Internet will enable an agorist revolution.)

Agorism, from agora, 

FSK had much to say about it here. 

The financial industry insiders bought control of schools and universities, guaranteeing that only fake economics (Keynesian economics) and fake politics ("Taxation is not theft.") will be taught in schools. The financial industry insiders arranged for everyone else to be educated / brainwashed as slaves ("good citizens / consumers"). (Most politics courses don't even ask the question "Are taxes different from stealing?" It's an undiscussed axiom that taxes are morally acceptable.)

To FSK and any others who are just trying to find their way out of the matrix, ANY economics that allows fractional reserve banking, central banking, and especially state issuance of money is fake economics. The Keynesians and the Austrians are two sides of the same dialectic. They do not want anyone to question their religion which they pump up with all kinds of fraud concealing mathematics, snowing the public with figures, believing rightly that most people are so gullible that they believe numbers don't lie. A corollary is that if someone answers a simple question with a roundabout confusing or complicated answer, that they must really know something or are smart. Alan Greenspan was particularly good at this.

With negative real interest rates [FSK already explained how debt and issuance naturally create this, but add to that near zero official interest rates and a decline in GDP making it worse], the incentive is for banks and hedge funds to maximize their use of leverage, because this maximizes their profits. Only politically connected insiders can start a hedge fund. There is no true "free market" for hedge fund managers; they are merely a group of people highly skilled at lobbying the State for favours.

Uses of financial leverage should make everyone nervous because whenever they are used it implies someone is stealing from someone else. There wont be any of this allowed in the VEN and anyone attempting it will be tossed out for at least 5 years. I remind you all that this is to be a private organization and it will set its own rules for membership no matter what anyone else says, period!

When inflation occurs, wealth is stolen from one group of people and transferred to another group of people, the people who print the new money and spend it first.

Well of course if they don't actually print the money there are other things they can concoct to steal real assets from people. Things like mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps come immediately to mind. The first thing they do is sell them as quickly as they can because they know they will decrease in value soon enough as the fraud they enclose is discovered. Over the past several years they have even been discovered to have deliberately placed bets to take advantage of the fall in value of these “creations” that were sold to their customers. Talk about people who no longer deserve any trust!

Most new money is created by the financial industry, rather than by Federal deficit spending.

Maybe. But when an economy turns south, the government may spend money like mad to keep it afloat just a while more. When all else fails, the bankers attempt to deflect public attention away from themselves by starting a war.  Government spending as a percentage of GDP goes up as an economy dies.

Therefore, the primary beneficiary of money supply inflation is the financial industry insiders and not the government.

It may ultimately bring the government down entirely. Maybe this is their intention.

If this explanation is still too complicated, let me know. Once you understand the Compound Interest Paradox, a lot of economic problems are easier to understand. The Compound Interest Paradox is a key concept, and I agree that it should be my #1 most popular post by a wide margin.

I try to answer any serious reader questions. Pro-State trolls get annoying after awhile. Fortunately, most pro-State trolls get disgusted and leave. I'm continuing my policy of pointing out and ridiculing pro-State trolls.

A jeering contest is NOT an advisable course of action. Were I ever to run into a pro-State troll, I haven't yet except in reference to other non-financial matters, my response is to clearly state my objections and thereafter ignore them, turn your back on them, as it is your right.

David Burton

dpbmss@mail.com

#36 What The Founding Fathers Thought About Corporations

Author: Stephen D. Foster Jr.  Source

Citizens United. This is the 2010 Supreme Court case that shocked America, influenced an election, and reversed over 100 years of campaign finance laws. In this case, corporations were declared as people and as such declared to have the same rights as people do. It also opened the doors for corporations to pour unprecedented amounts of campaign donations into elections, and what’s more, these donations can be totally secret. Corporations can now literally and legally buy elections and shape the government like never before in our nation’s history.

The economic world we live in today is dominated by corporations. Huge corporations that boast massive profits and span continents. But corporations also wield political power and are lobbying heavily to be free from any and all government regulations that would make them responsible and liable. Republicans have been defending corporations since the late 1800′s and have literally gone on a history revising crusade to show that even the founding fathers supported corporations. But is this the case? What did the founders really think about corporations?

The origin of modern corporations can be traced all the way back to 17th century England when Queen Elizabeth I created the East India Trading Company. At first, corporations were small, quasi government institutions that were chartered by the crown for a specific purpose. If corporations stepped out of line, the crown did not hesitate to revoke their charters. Corporations generated so much revenue that they even began taking on increased political power. Corporations were also organized to finance large projects such as exploration, which leads us to the American colonies.

To say that the founding fathers supported corporations is very absurd. Its quite the opposite in fact. Corporations like the East India Trading Company were despised by the founders and they were just one reason why they chose to revolt against England. Corporations represented the moneyed interests much like they do today and they often wielded political power, sometimes to the point of governing a colony all by themselves like the Massachusetts Bay Company did.

But there is more evidence that the Revolutionary generation despised corporations. The East India Company was the largest corporation of its day and its dominance of trade angered the colonists so much, that they dumped the tea products it had on a ship into Boston Harbor which today is universally known as the Boston Tea Party. At the time, in Britain, large corporations funded elections generously and its stock was owned by nearly everyone in parliament. The founding fathers did not think much of these corporations that had great wealth and great influence in government. And that is precisely why they put restrictions upon them after the government was organized under the Constitution.

After the nation’s founding, corporations were granted charters by the state as they are today. Unlike today, however, corporations were only permitted to exist 20 or 30 years and could only deal in one commodity, could not hold stock in other companies, and their property holdings were limited to what they needed to accomplish their business goals. And perhaps the most important facet of all this is that most states in the early days of the nation had laws on the books that made any political contribution by corporations a criminal offense. When you think about it, the regulations imposed on corporations in the early days of America were far harsher than they are now. That is hardly proof that the founders supported corporations. In fact its quite the opposite. The corporate entity was so restrictive that many of America’s corporate giants set up their entities to avoid the corporate restrictions. For example, Andrew Carnegie set up his steel company as a limited partnership and John D. Rockefeller set up his Standard Oil company as a trust which would later be rightfully busted up into smaller companies by Theodore Roosevelt.

For those who need more evidence, how about statements from the founders themselves. As we all know, big banks are also considered corporations and here is what Thomas Jefferson thought about them. In an 1802 letter to Secretary of State Albert Gallatin, Jefferson said,

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Thomas Jefferson also said this in 1816,

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Jefferson wasn’t the only founding father to make statements about corporations. John Adams also had an opinion.

“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”

These statements make it pretty clear that corporations were not trusted by the founders. The founders knew that huge corporations only preyed upon the people. But as the founding generation began to fade away, corporations began using their power to gain political favor and eventually that political favor would turn into political power. And corporations would take advantage of a war to do it. As the Civil War raged across the land, corporations made an effort to take advantage of the situation, selling products at high prices, especially to the government. Corporations even sold to both sides throughout the war. Basically, corporations proved even then that they had no allegiance to any country when great profits were at stake. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican to be President also had plenty to say about corporations…

“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.”

And in a November 21, 1864 letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Lincoln wrote,

“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood … It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”

Unfortunately, Lincoln’s suspicions were anything but groundless. They were in fact, prophetic. After the Civil War, corporations began aligning themselves with Republican politicians, who proved themselves to be up to the task of helping corporations gain more power. Corporations had free reign and total power over its workforce and could sell virtually anything they wanted even if the product was a bad one. Corporations treated workers like slaves. Wages were extremely low. Workers received no benefits, no vacation days, no health insurance, no workers compensation. President Grover Cleveland witnessed how corporations treated its labor force and had this to say in 1888,

“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear, or is trampled beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

To put it bluntly, corporations didn’t care about its workers or the people who bought their products. The only rule of the game was to make as much profit as possible, no matter what. As the 19th century ended and the 20th century began, corporations were getting bigger and bigger. Many began buying up smaller companies, becoming monopolies that controlled whole industries. This practice eliminated competition and as a result, prices had skyrocketed and no one could challenge them. That was, until Theodore Roosevelt became the President. Theodore Roosevelt did not hate corporations. He simply wanted them to treat workers how they deserved to be treated and to serve the public faithfully and honestly. He believed in honest competition and fair prices. Roosevelt believed that government had not only a duty, but a right to regulate corporations just as the founding generation had done, stating that,

“The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown.”

And in his State of The Union Address in 1902, Roosevelt stated his intentions toward corporations.

“Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism, and the effort to destroy them would be futile unless accomplished in ways that would work the utmost mischief to the entire body politic. We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to serve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.”

To that end he fought for corporate regulation, he fought for fair wages for workers, he fought for safe and healthy work environments, and he fought to protect consumers. And the people loved him for it. Roosevelt’s policies toward corporations were immensely popular. He busted up so many giant corporations that he became known as a “trust buster”. The busting up of these corporations created a lot more competition for customers and for employees, resulting in higher wages and lower prices and more jobs. And you know what? Corporate profits did just fine.

Teddy never stopped fighting for workers and consumers even after his presidency when he said this as the Progressive Party candidate for President in 1912,

“We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the businessman is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals.”

Roosevelt didn’t win the presidency in 1912, although he most certainly would have if the Republican ticket hadn’t been split. But Woodrow Wilson would continue the fight for workers and consumers [until he went along with creating the Federal Reserve]. As America entered the 1920′s, corporations began to gain political favors once again as business minded Republicans controlled the White House and Congress. Regulations were being stripped away and banks as large entities were on the rise. These banks and corporations abused the stock market which would lead to the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Corporate profits had surged throughout the decade and unfair speculation had caused economic bubbles that had to burst.

Corporate bosses also flexed their muscles over America’s legal system, spending great deals of money to get away with nearly anything. In a statement of sarcasm that speaks to this despicable practice, Senator George Norris, after an industrialist was acquitted of charges of corruption, said that “We ought to pass a law that no man worth $100,000,000 should be tried for a crime.”

The Franklin Roosevelt era would bring new calls for corporate regulation and corporate tax hikes. These new regulations once again kept corporations honest and protected consumers. Workers also benefited from these new regulations, getting fair wages, pensions, and safe working conditions. Corporations were taxed at a rate of 91% and even with all of that, corporations still made huge profits. Life changed dramatically for the middle class. People had jobs with livable wages and promise for the future. Corporations once again served a purpose as consumers were treated fairly and the economy soared. Unemployment was also very low. But these trends did not last long as corporate greed would once again fuel another grab for political power. Corporations began aligning themselves more and more with the Republican Party, and as this relationship grew, corporations found a way to make record profits. Throughout the 1980′s up to today, corporations have outsourced millions of American jobs to cheap labor overseas. As a result of this, corporate profits have broke record after record, while the unemployment rate has jumped higher and higher. Corporate tax rates began getting lower and lower, while more tax loopholes were created to help corporations evade most of them altogether. When the Republican Party took control of government in 2001, they went on a crusade on behalf of corporations (how could they refuse, they were on the payroll), to blame workers for economic downturns and outsourcing. Corporations also decided to take advantage of a national tragedy. After 9/11, there was an understandable push to go to war against terrorists hiding in Afghanistan. But corporations, as in other times of war and tragedy, began pushing for a war against Iraq. And they got their wish. Corporations have since made billions in war profits off of the War in Iraq and have proven once again that profit is far more important than the lives of soldiers. Lincoln was right. This is yet another reason why corporations need to be put in their place. As Henry Ford once said, “Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist and you will sweep war from the earth.”

Republicans are now on the verge of stripping away all corporate regulations and worker’s rights. But it was the 2010 Citizens United decision that really made corporations into political powers. Not only were corporations declared to be people but corporations also now have the power to buy elections at will. The problem with this Supreme Court decision is that it goes against everything the founding fathers believed in. In the Constitution, it says “We the people…”, not “We the corporations…”.

The founding fathers never addressed corporations in the Constitution because it never occurred to them that corporations would be perceived as people. And why would they have? Corporations don’t eat, they don’t breathe, they don’t vote, they don’t fight battles in wars. Remember all the limitations the founders placed on corporations mentioned earlier? In the Constitution, the founders speak only of the people. The founders did not limit lifetimes of people, nor did they outlaw a persons right to donate to political campaigns. They also did not limit people to specific life goals like they did with corporations. This should make it absolutely clear that the founders never intended for corporations to be people. The decision by the clearly activist, conservative majority of the court is an abomination that can never be Constitutionally justified. Now it is our duty to call on Congress to bring forward a Constitutional Amendment that bans corporate personhood and bans corporations from interfering with government and legal elections that only real people have the right to donate to and vote in. Because whatever these greedy, arrogant CEO’s and Republicans think, its the opinion of the founding generation that matters most. Corporations are not people. People are people.

David Burton's Comments:

This article provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of the world we live in. After reading this, you should have no hesitation in agreeing with us that corporations, representing as they do both absentee ownership and limited liability, will be considered as illegitimate business entities within the Value Exchange Network (VEN).

1. It's clear that Mr. Foster sees the connection between the Republican Party (the GOP) and corporations. Before the Civil War the Republicans were connected with the “American System” summarized by Henry Clay. If you don't know anything about it, read Thomas Di Lorenzo's works and you'll get the scoop. Abe Lincoln was Clay's protégé and a corporate lawyer (railroads) before entering politics.

2. After the Civil War, it was easier for corporations to buy politicians and the Republicans were easier to take over than the Democrats because the GOP was a Northern party so at conventions all the seats that would have been filled by Southern delegates were filled by mere stooges for their bosses up North. But Mr. Foster does not seem to get that by the time Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, became president, that both parties were under the same corporate control.

3. We applaud Mr. Foster's suggestion that the solution is a Constitutional Amendment that denies personhood and its rights to corporations, but realistically the corporations have won and the bankers behind them as well, the government is theirs not ours, its money is theirs not ours, so this otherwise sensible solution is frankly an impossibility. Our solution, which we wish Mr. Foster would join, is to operate a complementary monetary system alongside the present one until such time as the present order implodes, as it will, and then ours will be the means to take the world back from the globalists and deliver it back to the people to whom it belongs.

#0 All Wars Are Bankers Wars

All Wars Are Bankers' Wars - FULL version

Michael Rivero may be the Walter Cronkite of our time, or at least one of them, but the solution offered is mistaken, misinformed and can not serve the people, because the money would not originate with the people. As this blog sees it, ALL government issued money is illegitimate, whether backed by gold or GDP or anything else. “Backing” is just another instance of deliberate misleading of the public by lying economists and bankers. We do not want governments competing with private businesses in the economy because governments have nothing which we want to buy and rely on taxes, takes, to extinguish the money they issue. Another issue, that Michael didn't address but probably knows about, is that your income taxes do not go toward covering government spending or paying down the national debt, but to pay the bankers their interest on their money. Since they have no intention of taxing all the money back, as that would probably cause revolution, all the money they spend above the taxes they take in causes inflation.

It only seems right that I should comment on the proposed solution, which is for governments to switch from central bank issued money to government issued money, with or without the various hair-brained schemes concocted by Bill Still and others to make sure that the people you gave the power to create your money for you will actually spend it “in the public interest” and to control inflation. This is a ridiculous solution because you cannot entrust anyone else with the power to buy into an economy and then complain that they didn't buy what you wanted. Well why did you give your government this power in the first place? Because you believe in your government, like an idealistic fairy tale, like Santa Claus, like believing that society is only kept sane and civilized because some government goon or thug could make those who misbehave tow the line. That's not a free society, and it doesn't promote anything like a genuinely free market. It also absolves you of any responsibility for your own life. Like being a slave? Many do, unfortunately.

No, our solution, an independent international standard measure of value, issued only by the poor by fiat and interest free, accessible and useable by all others through exchange and trade, is the only solution guaranteed to bring governments back under control of the people, to remove them from debt slavery to central bankers, etc. and to provide a stable standard for value measurement that will last for generations bringing poverty, war and inflation all to an end.

Monetary reform is THE issue of the age, upon which all other issues rest. We remain steadfastly convinced that our solution is the only acceptable one.