New World Order, or Revolution

While many Americans and individuals worldwide are ignorantly celebrating the new Presidency and his message of “Hope”, the international elite who comprise the New World Order are celebrating the final phase of their coup de’tat over the United States and creation of a socialist world government. If there is one lesson that history has taught us, it is that hope promised by politicians is, as Langston Hughes would say, nothing more than a dream deferred. It is incredible how few people are aware of the New World Order or its agenda, even though it can now be seen virtually everywhere. Politicians from all countries, media, and heads of industry and finance are now proclaiming that this new international governance that is emerging to help solve the financial crisis is the birth of this New World Order. Gordon Brown summed it up well during his London Summit Conference speech, announcing that the New World Order is emerging as the vehicle for world economic recovery. As the elites well know, and as the general populace remains blissfully unaware of, the New World Order will be anything but true economic recovery. So then, what is the New World Order?

If we are to take the politicians’ and media’s words at face value, it is a new international order to manage the world’s economies through this current financial crisis and into the 21st Century. In reality, however, the New World Order is something much more sinister, and much more than just a new idea that was hatched in response to the current financial meltdown. In fact, every sitting president since Jimmy Carter has specifically alluded to the New World Order. It is even written on the back of the dollar bill under the Great Seal in Latin, Novus Ordo Seclorum. The New World Order conspiracy was acknowledged by Professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University, who had personal access to the papers of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Interestingly enough, he was also Bill Clinton’s professor and mentor. In his book “Tragedy and Hope”, Quigley writes that the goal of groups such as the CFR in creating a New World Order was “nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.” The testimony of former CFR member Admiral Chester Ward verifies Quigley’s thesis. After resigning his membership, Ward wrote, “The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence and submergence into an all powerful one world government.”In short, the New World Order is an attempt at nothing less than complete dictatorial control of the planet through a world government system.

World conquest has been the dream of tyrants and dictators throughout human history, and slowly but surely, these plans have been implemented by round table groups like the CFR, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group, which are comprised of the world’s central bankers, major heads of state, journalists, and Ivy League academics. Since the birth of global institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and the UN, financial warfare has been waged on hundreds of countries by making loans which could never be paid back, placing this debt on the backs of the taxpayers, and then eventually monetizing the debt through inflation of fiat currency. This formula has been repeated over and over to the point where the entire world economy now finds itself stuck in a black hole of debt, which the G-20 is only too happy to continue to feed with ‘injections of liquidity’ and ’stimulus’.

The New World Order’s financial coup over the US began with the creation of the Federal Reserve. Edward House, President Wilson’s top advisor and pioneer architect of the Federal Reserve, wrote in his book “Philip Dru, Administrator” that it was his dream to achieve socialism in the United States as dreamed of by Karl Marx. In fact, in the Communist Manifesto, the first plank for a Communist rule was centralization of the issuance of currency and credit under a single, monopolistic national bank.

Myth: The Federal Reserve is a government institution, acting in behalf of “We The People”.

Fact: The Federal Reserve is a Corporation. It is a legally sanctioned monopoly over the issuance of our nation’s currency, owned by the member banks that comprise the legally sanctioned cartel, and thus acts in their interest.

Let’s play ‘Bank’. What is the best way to generate profits as a bank? By making loans. How do you maximize profit? By making as many loans as possible, regardless of risk. But doesn’t that mean potential losses on risky loans? Yes…unless the banks are granted government sanctioned, legal tender status. Federal Reserve notes are backed by the Federal Reserve’s assets, which is nothing more than the debt of the United States government. Under these conditions, no losses are taken by the banks, they are merely transferred to the taxpayer.

This fiat currency, fractional reserve banking system allows for money to be created out of unlimited debt. Immediately following the establishment of the Fed, the money supply of the nation was increased drastically, artificially spurring the roaring 20’s, which was then followed by the inevitable bust of the Great Depression. During this period, Wall Street was able to gobble up American enterprises for pennies on the dollar, and many a great fortune were made as a result of this engineered implosion of the economy. This same banking structure was used for the establishment of the IMF and World Bank during the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. In this manner, the Fed, World Bank, IMF, and other Western central banks issued huge loans to those countries who had been devastated by World War II, and later third world countries in need of aid. This inflation, or increase in the total money supply, steals wealth from every rightful property owner who holds the currency, and transfers it to the banks and government. Ever since, the IMF has presided over more than 200 currency devaluations, an Orwellian contrast to its stated mission of promoting currency stability.

John Maynard Keynes, the economist most noted for framing the Bretton Woods conference and IMF/World Bank system, was surprisingly blunt in his 1919 work, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”, about the true nature of inflation and government intervention in monetary markets. He writes, “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens… The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” Even more telling is the system of government that Keynes recommended for this global bailout banking system: “[T]he theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under the conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.” Plain and simple, Keynes successfully advocated and implemented a totalitarian rule of law for global governance. It should be no surprise that Hitler and his economists were ardent Keynesian supporters and followers, a fact conveniently ignored by advocates of Keynesian Obamanomics.

The Federal Reserve is unconstitutional, and guilty of treason and national robbery. It circumvents the Constitutional requirements that any tender by coined from gold or silver money, establishing the Trilateral Commission’s goal of a ‘new international economic order.’ And those responsible aren’t going to be caught ill-prepared for backlash. In August the Army Times reported that, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, 20,000 troops were going to be deployed inside the United States to deal with any potential terrorism or domestic civil unrest due to economic collapse. The classic police-state grid was built under the Bush administration under the guise of national security. FEMA has established over 800 detention centers throughout the US, and under HR 645 which just recently passed the house, American citizens can be rounded up into these camps in case of a terrorist attack or social economic collapse. Illegal wiretapping, torture, and stripped due process rights have been established under the Patriot Act and the John Warner Defense Act. The recently passed GIVE Act establishes criteria for building a 7 million person civilian security force, and sets guidelines for mandated service to the state.

America is now faced with making the ultimate choice: enter into the New World Order, or like our founding fathers in 1776, precipitate Revolution against our illegitimate government. Ben Franklin declared that stripping the Bank of England of the power to issue currency was “the prime cause of the revolution.” With impeccable foresight, Jefferson warned of this power being revoked from the people once more: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

Problem, Reaction, Solution

While the global financial system does what it designed to do (collapse), Americans have taken to looking at this crisis as if it serendipitously happened out of thin air. This fascination with coincidence theory and woopsie-daisy economics is prevalent among many mainstream economists today. One need not look further than the best selling ” The Black Swan” by Nassim Talib to see how deeply the concept of random occurrence has penetrated the psyche of the American public, mainstream media and academia alike. If there is one phrase that seems to be the mantra of the collapse, its that ‘nobody saw it coming’.

The Council on Foreign Relations begs to differ. Even back in July of 2000, the CFR, a private think-tank comprised of the world’s central bankers, top policy makers, and heads of the world’s largest multinational corporations, met at their New York headquarters to discuss “The Next Financial Crisis: Warning Signs, Damage Control and Impact”. At this conference, exercises and war games were carried out based on “Our premise is that perhaps the most dangerous near-term threat to U.S. world leadership, and thus indirectly to U.S. security, would be a sharp decline in the U.S. securities markets that touched off a worldwide financial disturbance. It would likely stun the U.S. economy….” The simulated reaction of this global financial meltdown was to pump in liquidity through the Fed to keep the main markets open and ‘create the perception of confidence.’ Wow, how did they know about the Black Swan?! It’s like the financial and political elite have superpowers! Good thing they already simulated today’s financial crisis, right?

I think we can all agree that this crisis, in varying degrees, was brought about by two groups of people: bankers and politicians. So, who do we want to fix it? Bankers and politicians?!? Come on. Even a cursory look at Obama’s economic advisors reveals many of them are directly implicated in this economic warfare. Paul Volkner, Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner…former Fed chairman, former Secretary of the Treasury, and former President of the Federal Reserve NY Branch. Reads just like “Change”, doesn’t it? We’re recycling the same leadership of banksters turned political figures. Switching the Republican Keynesian statists with the Democratic Keynsian statists doesn’t work; Keynsianism is the problem. And the only solution – the free market – is being pointed to as the culprit, Republicrats alike.

Viewing current events through a different lens helps to clear the picture. New World Order researcher David Icke calls it “Problem, Reaction, Solution.” Here’s how it works: the global elite set in motion an engineered problem. Take the current financial crisis; an implosion of the markets is artificially created by spreading derivatives (economic WMD’s as Mr. Buffet says) and other forms of massively leveraged credit instruments across global markets. The people’s reaction to the engineered bust of the economy is the second step.  It is characterized by panic and fear, a favorite propaganda tool for politicians and banksters. Managing PR, spreading fear and confusion, and urging immediate action are essential to guiding public policy in favor of special interests. As Rahm Emmanuel himself said, “never let a serious crisis go to waste”. The next stage is the proposed solution to the engineered problem. Currently, we have bankers and politicians on both sides of the aisle telling us that the only solution to our economic woes is to give trillions of taxpayer dollars to them. This “global new deal” will make things better, they say. Basic economic law be damned. And screw gravity, too.

The  “Problem, Reaction, Solution” scenario was also used by the Bush administration. The attacks of September 11th were an engineered crisis, with traumatic and devastating results. Within hours, the mainstream media pegged Osama bin Laden as the criminal mastermind, and all supposed evidence led directly to him and al-Qaeda. However, this is patently false, considering that even to date FBI officials acknowledge there is zero legal evidence against bin Laden. But mainstream media, dominated by the military-industrial complex, was complicit in broadcasting the false flag drama of 9/11. Traumatized and confused, Americans were hoodwinked by this psychological attack much like Germans after the Reichstag Fire. The reaction of the public was predictable: utter fear and chaos. And the proposed solution to the chaos? For Hitler, it was the Enabling Act and the establishment of Fatherland Security. For Bush, it was the Patriot Act and the establishment of Homeland Security. What a coinky-dink. Never mind that the plans for invading Iraq and Afghanistan were drawn up in August. Or that in 2000, as part of the Project for the New American Century, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Cheney wrote that for American “total spectrum dominance” to unfold in the Middle East, nothing short of a “new Pearl Harbor” would generate enough empathy from the people to justify another Middle East invasion.

All this coincidence makes my head spin. Is it really that crazy to think that major, earth-shattering events are…conspired?

The Left-Right Paradigm and the “War on Terror”

Days after President Obama’s inauguration, the newly elected president wasted no time in making it clear that the “War on Terror”, far from ending, will only continue to escalate under his authority. Unmanned CIA aircrafts have been launching attacks in Pakistan, and one attack January 23rd killed at least 15 people. Similar types of drone attacks have been taking place in Pakistan for over a year now as part of a covert program under President Bush, and have apparently become a part of the Obama administration as well. The concept of preemptive strikes within sovereign countries seems a lot like neo-conservative policy. So where is the change? While Obama has signed executive orders to close down Guantanomo Bay, a major abuse in the war on terror, another executive order signed by the President keep intact the powers of the CIA and US Special Forces to continue detaining prisoners, but “only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.” Thanks to a combination of PR and legal maneuvering, the masses are convinced that the Left has come to save them from the Right, while the ‘war on terror’ agenda continues unabated.

America’s complacency with the neo-liberal/neo-conservative agenda, better known as the military-industrial complex or ‘New World Order’, is largely built upon the Left-Right paradigm. In essence, the two corporately-dominated political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, serve as a tag team to point the finger of blame at each other, while following the same overall agenda. Yes, Democrats and Republicans do vary on a host of smaller issues, but the broad issues that dominate American life and politics are never debated by either party (Debate ‘08? hah). Monetary policy? No, the Federal Reserve does a fine job. Bailouts? Funny how political opponents such as Bush and Obama were both major supporters of bailing out multi-billon dollar financial firms. Unconstitutional legislation in the War on Terror? As an Obama spokesperson said, “Obviously you need to preserve some tools — you still have to go after the bad guys.” Foreign policy? No word from either party about scaling back on the trillions we spend overseas or the +130  US military bases worldwide, even in the midst of financial collapse. Obama has pledged to take troops out of Iraq…to be relocated in Afghanistan. Iran and Pakistan are also in the crosshairs. Robert Gates’ reappointment as Defense Secretary should have anti-war Obama fans realizing, as Gates himself said, that American troops will be in Iraq “for years to come”. The American Empire, financed by infinitely printing money and overseen by brutal military might, remains strong with the Republicrats in the White House.

Carroll Quigley, former political science professor at Georgetown University, once wrote in his book “Tragedy and Hope”, “The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.” Professor Quigley, who taught and mentored Bill Clinton at Georgetown, perfectly outlined the elites’ stranglehold on American politics via the left-right paradigm.

Many accused Bush of dictatorial abuses of power and military-corporate dominance, and Obama campaigned for the opposite. However, an objective look at Obama reveals that these policies will continue. His chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, wrote a book called “The Plan” which outlined a system of mandatory service for all 18-25 year olds with the National Guard. While campaigning in Colorado, Obama called for a million-man civilian military that was “just as strong, just as powerful” as the military. As a Senator, Obama voted in favor of an all-out gun ban, depriving citizens of their inalienable right to protect themselves (Hitler, Mao, and Stalin would approve). Just in August, the Army Times reported that the Pentagon plans to have 20,000 troops stationed inside the United States in case of national emergency or financial collapse. This blatant violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from acting as a domestic police force, only furthers the police state forged under Bush and the Patriot Act. On the heels of this unparalleled move towards a police state, the National Emegency Centers Act (HR 645) has been introduced in the House, which seeks to establish FEMA camps in the event of a national emergency which requires relocating large urban populations.

…all in the name of fighting terror.

“All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” -Hermann Goering

A Eulogy for the American Republic

While my fellow Americans and University of Rochester students, professors, and faculty spent January 20th celebrating the triumph of democracy and the emotional fervor of “Change”, I spent my day grieving the death of the Constitutional Republic. I’m sure many readers are under the impression that America was founded as a democracy, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The words of the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, stand out in bitter opposition to democracy. “Democracy is the most vile form of government…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as violent in their deaths.” These powerful words have all but lost their meaning. A Republic, created by the Constitution, is a framework of government which protects an individual’s freedom from the tyranny of the majority. Inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property were subject to seizure under the oppressive weight of democratic governments, where 51% of a mislead public can enslave 49%. The tyranny of the majority is in full swing nowadays, as the public clamors for the Obama administration to continue with “economic stimulus”. I, for one, do not want my tax dollars spent on saving failed companies. Should I be forced to loan money to Wall Street?

This supposedly unforeseen economic crisis was in fact a predictable consequence of a fiat (paper as legal tender) currency in a fractional reserve banking system. Most people believe inflation is rising prices; but that is the symptom, not the cause. Inflation is artificially increasing the money supply, which then decreases the purchasing power of each dollar, which forces prices to rise. This steals purchasing power from every single person who is holding dollars, plain and simple. The Federal Reserve system loots the nation’s wealth, and then redistributes this wealth on a mass scale to government and corporations suckling at government’s tit, since they get to spend the money before the market can readjust to the increase in money supply. The artificial lowering of interest rates by the Fed induces banks to “lend” (create) money while only holding a 1:10 ratio of reserves to liabilities. People then misallocated capital because they could borrow money that should never have existed, and then this created money was speculated in leveraged markets (CDS, derivatives)! The economist most widely known for engineering our financial system, John Maynard Keynes, says it best: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” So far, the Fed has stolen 97% of the purchasing power of the US dollar since 1913, and now they’re here for the coup de gras: the collapse of the dollar.

However, our democratically elected leaders have democratically voted to continue propping up a failing financial system with the ever-ready printing presses. Would a Republic ever allow for this sort of wealth confiscation from the general public? Never; a currency belongs to the people, not to a private banking corporation and government regulators. The Founding Fathers were well versed in looting strategies associated with the power to issue currency. For that reason, money was legally defined in the Constitution as gold and silver coin, which curtailed the supply of money in society, thus keeping spending and monetary abuses in check. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” Thomas Jefferson’s words are an eerily accurate description of the record number of foreclosures and bankruptcies that America has faced the past few months – and will continue for years to come, thanks to the economic policy of “Change”.

And so, on January 20th I watched Americans unwittingly celebrate the destruction of our forefather’s hard-earned liberty and freedom from the clutches of corporatist oppression. Ben Franklin noted that the prime cause of the revolution was due to the fact that King George III required the colonies to use the inflationary system of the Bank of England. Much like our forefathers, the State’s and major international bankers monopoly over money has put us on the brink of disaster. Promises of hope and change are fruitless; what we need is Revolution, led by the principles of Liberty, Freedom, and the Constitution.

Arrest Bernanke and Paulson for this Illegal Bailout

Listen to this analysis of the bailout. Call your representatives. Our markets are in an emergency mode right now: the dollar is at risk of complete and total collapse.

Local Politics: Are we all losing our minds?

Column by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

Dinah Gottschalk is a volunteer in the Waynesboro Democratic Committee. She’s a committed Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, and she’s been working hard this campaign season at the local Waynesboro Dems election headquarters in Willow Oak Plaza with me and dozens of other Waynesboro and Augusta County Democrats.

She was, to say the least, a bit distraught when she showed up for a shift running the HQ late last week. A shopping cart had done some pretty extensive damage to her new car in the parking lot at Wal-Mart a few minutes earlier, and it appeared to be intentional, and aimed at the Barack Obama sticker on the back bumper.

I’m not writing this column to point the finger at Republicans for being so dastardly as to scratch up a new car because the owner dared to put a Barack Obama sticker on it. Or to get too worked up about how friends in Stuarts Draft who had put up Sam Rasoul and Mark Warner signs in their front yards months ago suddenly had those signs and their new Obama-Biden signs stolen en masse the night that they placed the new signs in their front yards. It’s, unfortunately, not just Republicans who do these kinds of things – I’ve heard reports about how an oversized GOP “I Am Voting For The Chick” sign in Fishersville was defaced by someone who strategically inserted the word Not to alter the message, and I can only guess that it wasn’t a McCain-Palin supporter that would have done that.

What I’m trying to get at is how silly this all seems to me – and how it makes me worry for the future of our democracy that it seems to have become so personal.

Case in point: A friend who is a radio producer in the Valley and who has been involved in local politics over the years was telling me how he had decided to serve as campaign manager for a friend in a recent local board of supervisors race, and in the process had people calling his advertisers to rudely suggest to them that they end their business relationships with him and in one extreme case had someone take photos of his children while they were waiting for the school bus one morning in an act that had him start fearing for the safety of his family.

I wish I could say that it hasn’t gotten that bad for me since I made my own foray into local politics earlier this year running for city council, but I had something similar pop up a couple of weeks ago when a disgruntled reader sent e-mails to advertisers on the Augusta Free Press website to demand that they drop their advertising with the AFP. This after a local campaign season that saw complete strangers posting comments in forums at newsleader.com questioning my living arrangements and one of my city-council race opponents telling voters that I had only moved into Waynesboro a few days before the election from Crozet.

(For the record, I have never lived in Crozet, and I’ve lived in or around Waynesboro all of my life, with a record of service on city-government advisory bodies only open to city residents to prove it.)

Oh, and I almost forgot about how I received a visit from a friend who works at a local newspaper where I got my start in journalism back during the summer who told me that he had received several phone calls from out-of-the-area-code numbers from people who wanted to know why I had been fired from that job. (Truth Squad: I left the News Virginian in 2000 to take a job at a newspaper in Charlottesville, and actually continued doing freelance work at the NV for several months afterward.)

And that’s not even counting the misrepresentations and blatant lies that political opponents spread about my policy positions – telling voters in door-to-door campaigning that I was going to raise their taxes when I made it clear that my first act as a council member would be to enact a property-tax decrease, and the low point coming when surrogates for one of my opponents told people at the polls on Election Day that my overriding intent for running for local office was to close down the Invista plant so that the city could take over the property to build a minor-league baseball stadium.

I have since come to realize that it doesn’t do any good to hold grudges for the things that people say or do during an election, because if I did, well, I’d have to hire a personal assistant just to keep track of all of them, honestly. I’ve reached out to, among others, the new mayor, Tim Williams, and I’m promising myself that I’m going to do the same thing come Nov. 5 with regard to some of my more vocal criticis in local Republican circles. I say this because I realize that all we’re trying to do is advocate for what we think is right, one, and two, you can’t really judge a person’s character by how they act during one of these contests, because things, to say the least, can get heated.

What has me worrying about the future of our democracy, to get back to what I was saying above, is, what happens when people like me who get involved in politics with the best of intentions say, Enough!, and decide that it’s not worth it anymore? I think this a legitimate concern, because our approach to politics has only become more jaded and cynical in recent years. It seems that we will never, ever be able to have an election where one side isn’t going on and on and on about, to borrow from our current discussions, how well Barack Obama did or didn’t know a ’60s radical, or whether or not Sarah Palin had an inappopriate extramarital relationship, or what about Jeremiah Wright or John Hagee or John McCain leaving his first wife for a million-heiress or Joe Biden’s plagiarism scandal or whatever other load of crap gets backed up in the toilet next.

Do we really need to drag each other down like this just to get our guys and gals elected? I mean, think about it. Either Barack Obama or John McCain is going to be our president three months hence. Can we escape the fact that about half our adult population is going to live their lives thinking that whoever between them ends up in the White House is a crook and thief and liar? Same for our local and state government. I’ve said in columns in the AFP that I think that the biggest mistake in my campaign was that I didn’t fight back against the smears of my opponents. Which makes me see myself as being more a part of the problem than I care to admit to being.

I don’t even know what I’m asking of you readers as an action item. And I say that because even as I’ve been writing this column to plead for the return of sanity and common sense to prevail I’ve been fighting battles on this front. It almost makes me think that too many of us can’t wait for the next juicy bit of gossip that they can e-mail to their friends or post anonymously in a web forum somewhere.

And in the meantime, our economy is in the tank, we’re fighting two foreign wars with no end in sight, and it’s almost a given at this point that our kids will be the first generation in American history to be worse off than their parents.

My view – we all just need a good shaking to get some common sense shocked back into us.

While You Watch The Debates…

The World will be watching the debates tonight with incredible intensity, as the US economy (and by default, the World economy) look as though they might come crashing down at a moment’s notice. The proposed bailout has had protests from all over the country rallying together to simply “say no to the bailout”.

As Senator Obama noted: "What I think John and I are trying to say is, we both support the American taxpayers bailing out Wall Street from their criminal activity." The mentally-impaired and economically traumatized American public, however, simply oo'ed and ahh'd about how Mr. Obama was black.

As this ridiculous sham of a Presidential debate begins to unfold, CNN’s Lou Dobbs just had a poll where 91% of those who responded say they want NO bailout. Both McCain and Obama, however, are going to be speaking tonight in favor of this bailout plan. How is it that both major candidates are both pursuing a policy that 91% of Americans don’t want? There were over 150 leading economists who petitioned the White House to stop trying to steamroll this legislation through Congress, and stop any sort of bailout for Wall Street.

Have people started to ask themselves yet… Why are opposing candidates both supporting this proposed $700 billion bailout?

But there ARE candidates who would vote against the bailout. And they will be having their OWN debate online: Chuck Baldwin (recently endorsed by Ron Paul), Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Bob Barr, Barack Obama, and John McCain will all be invited.

….who wants to see THAT debate?!?!?

What Neither McCain nor Obama Will Tell You About This Economy

The Social Imperative of Sound Money

[This talk was delivered on September 13, 2008, at the Vancouver Mises Circle.]

This past week, the government announced that it would take Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the mortgage giants, under conservatorship, which is a nice way of saying that they will be nationalized.

We don’t use the word nationalize any more. We can try an experiment and read the new term “conservatorship” back into history. In fact, we might say that Stalin and Lenin put Russia’s industries under a kind of conservatorship. Or we might say that Mao pushed a kind of land conservatorship, or that Hitler’s policy was one of national conservatorship. Marx’s little book could be retitled The Conservatorship Manifesto.

You see, the government keeps having to make up new names for these things because the old policies, which were not that different in content, failed so miserably. The old terms become discredited and new terms become necessary, in an effort to fool the public.

It’s as if a restaurant served a shrimp dish that gave all the customers food poisoning, and so now each night it serves the same shrimp but names the dish something new: crangon cocktail, prawn pasta, scampi salad, or what have you. No matter what they call it, it is still poison.

Such a restaurant would be out of business in a matter of days. People would not be fooled. But the government gets away with it mainly because we have no real choice about the matter, and because people are predisposed to believe the government far more than they should. It doesn’t help that the media are willing to echo the government line on this, adopting every new phrase as if it were the gospel.

Hence the same is true of the word bailout, which you might consider unexceptionally descriptive of this move by the government to protect Freddie and Fannie from further losses. No, that word is not allowed either. President Bush told Fox the other day, “I wouldn’t call it a bailout. I’d call it a stabilization.”

We will soon put out a new edition of Mises’s 1922 book Socialism. Maybe to keep up with the time we should call it Stabilizing Conservatorship.

What I also find striking is the way in which this move was announced. Let me read to you from the New York Times:

The Bush administration seized control of the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies on Sunday…. It could become one of the most expensive financial bailouts in American history.

Even the most sophisticated observers of our present scene had to blink their eyes in reading such words. Without debate, without votes, without anything other than an executive fiat, the White House just decided, on its own, to seize the mortgage market. Harry Truman, who seized the steel industry, would be proud. Actually, this is an action to excuse dictators the world over, past, present, and future.

This sort of thing makes a mockery of the Constitution and the very idea of freedom and the free market, to say nothing of the idea that we have a limited government. What’s more, if we can believe press reports, President Bush had very little to do with the decision. It was the work of Henry Paulson, the secretary of the Treasury and former head of Goldman Sachs, working on behalf of the nation’s most well-connected financial elites. Nobody elected this guy. Most Americans don’t even know his name.

And look at how he throws around trillions of our money. The New York Times says that this is expensive. That’s one way to put it. It makes the S&L bailout look like the warmup.

Freddie and Fannie carry about $5.3 trillion in mortgage commitments and another $2.4 trillion in financial exposure. The total cost of this operation is unknown; it could reach to $2 trillion, with untold amounts of future exposure.

These two New Deal institutions were founded to speed up the home ownership process for people that banks would otherwise consider unqualified. In time, under LBJ and Nixon, they were given legal permission to expand without limit — in the name of privatization, of all things.

The motive was a classic bipartisan effort: universal home ownership. The Left favored the redistribution. The Right favored the supposed moral virtue associated with the nuclear family and its suburban abode. Thus was born the greatest wealth transfer in American history outside Social Security and the warfare state.

In a free market with sound money, borrowing is connected with the ability to pay. At first, this is only available to the rich. As prosperity spreads, so does creditworthiness. Any government intervention designed to inject steroids in this process is going to end in what Rothbard called a cluster of errors.

It is completely disingenuous that so many people are today decrying the banking system’s failure to discriminate between those who should and should not be carrying a mortgage. The banking system in a free market handles this just fine. Ferreting out the difference between those who can handle loans and those who cannot is a main job of the competitive system. The market precisely calibrates this. If one lender fails in its assessments of borrowers, another is there to correct the problem.

If you rush the process of prosperity, and insist that everyone who wants a loan should get one, you set up a situation in which there will be problems down the line. That is precisely what the regime has done. It created Freddie and Fannie to subsidize loans. It engaged in a phony privatization that secretly socialized losses. The legal status of these privately owned, publicly traded, and government-protected agencies was always unclear, but the markets had long assumed that they would be bailed out.

There was a moral hazard at the heart of this policy. But the real point is that the free market judgment about who should get what was being overridden. Surely, that is not a problem when it comes to promoting the alleged American dream! In fact, we are paying for this mistake a half century after the policy became a national priority. As the evangelical ministers like to say, the wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind mighty fine.

There is only one problem with applying the principle to this case. There will be no justice. If justice prevailed, the losses would be borne directly by those responsible.

If we pursued a free-market policy from here on, the answer would not be complicated. The assets and liabilities of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would be auctioned today in the free market. It’s true that many loans would be defaulted on.

What level of crisis would be precipitated by such a genuine privatization policy? It’s true that the press would be screaming bloody murder, and the big players in finance would suffer. But in time, the markets would revalue the resources and an important lesson would be learned. Sound loans would be picked up by financially responsible firms and carried to term. Home values would fall and many people would have to move to cheaper homes. We would then be back on sound footing again.

From an administration that purports to favor free markets, this possible solution was not even considered. Instead, they proclaimed their regrets that they would have to spread the costs of this error over the entire population. Instead of fixing the problem, however, they only worsen it, underscoring the principle that America will not tolerate failure in business, and the bigger the failure, the more likely it is to be bailed out.

Note that this socialistic bailout and nationalization — to use two forbidden words — were enacted by a Republican administration. Isn’t it ironic that when you look back at the big upticks in government intervention over the economy, you often find Republicans at the helm.

As for McCain and Palin, they wrote in the Wall Street Journal that this bailout is “sadly necessarily” even as they promise reforms that will “require the highest standards of accounting, reporting and transparency ever demanded in government.” Well, here’s the thing: no one demands higher standards than the market itself, but you have to turn these institutions over to the market in order to elicit such standards.

Congress’s role has been and will be to yammer. Only Ron Paul of Texas will have anything sensible to say about this fiasco. In fact, it was more than five years ago that Ron said the following:

If Fannie and Freddie were not underwritten by the federal government, investors would demand Fannie and Freddie provide assurance that they follow accepted management and accounting practices…. By transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.

It’s remarkable to observe that hardly anyone dares be against this policy. On the day following the nationalization — a day that will live in infamy — the Wall Street Journal editorialized against the Democrats and their reform efforts, but didn’t actually oppose the bailout. The New York Times called it “a reasonable and reassuring move.” The Los Angeles Times wrote that the bailout was “inevitable.” Steve Forbes in his magazine wrote that “drastic action” had to be taken because a default would “have triggered the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression.”

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that all these people believe that waving the magic money wand can make reality just go away. That incredible superstition seems to be the official position of the entire US establishment. And we like to flatter ourselves into believing that we live in an age without illusions!

” The Great Depression only became the Great Depression because the government followed exactly the same policies that the Bush administration is following now…”

As for those who should know better, Greg Mankiw, author of the leading economics textbook, writes that because “it was likely to happen eventually” it is “better to get on with it.” The supposedly free-market economics blog Marginal Revolution warns that without the bailout, “most of the U.S. banking system would be insolvent,” failing to point out that a system that needs a bailout with fiat money is already insolvent. Econlog had lots of good thoughts, but didn’t actually oppose the bailout.

The Cato Institute agrees that the Treasury had to bail out the mortgage industry because it “was forced to do so,” and that Fannie and Freddie are indeed “too big to fail.” The Heritage Foundation agrees that it was a “necessary step” and a “vital move toward reform.”

Sure, these people have plenty of recommendations about what should have been done in the past, and lots of ideas about what should be done in the future. As for the present, they are ready to propagandize for the largest socialist operation in American history. In all of these latter cases, we are looking not at a problem of economic education but rather the courage to stand up to the state when it is needed most. They didn’t do so after 9/11. And now they have caved again.

Part of the problem is the belief in the great myth propagated by Milton Friedman. As good as he was on many issues, he was not correct on his specialty of American monetary history. His view was that the Depression was caused by a Fed that failed to fully bail out the banking system. Ben Bernanke and many others are pleased to accept this view of history, and they are determined not to let it happen again. In fact, the Fed did attempt to bail out the banks, and was far too successful. This is the basis of the problem.

In the end, we are talking about a price system that has rendered a verdict on the housing market. Prices don’t lie and there is nothing we can do to reverse them. Even the most powerful government in the world cannot do so. The attempt causes calamity. The Austrians understand this; it seems as if hardly anyone else does.

Pretty much alone in both predicting the calamity and actually opposing the bailout are those who have learned from the Misesian tradition, who have said plainly and clearly that this is a dreadful error, one that makes the United States more socialistic than China.

Let us address this claim that not bailing out the system, and not nationalizing the mortgage market, would lead to a financial meltdown on the level of the Great Depression. People talk as if the Depression were some sort of natural disaster that the government had to fight. In fact, it was the very fighting of the Depression that deepened it and caused it to last all the way through World War II. We have to understand that if we are to understand the real lesson of the Depression. Instead of letting prices fall and letting the bad investments wash out of the system, the government tried for years and years to keep prices high, employ people in make-work programs, and generally centrally plan the economy.

” What is regrettable is not the readjustment process, but that the process was ever made necessary by the preceding central-bank and other interventions.”

In 1920 through 1922, we had a financial meltdown just as bracing and systematic as the one in 1929. The difference was that the government didn’t do anything to try to fix it. As a result, it solved itself and it is a forgotten event. Hoover and FDR, in contrast, attempted to use their power over the economy and monetary system to try to keep prices floating high and to keep liquidity in the banking system — precisely as everyone is attempting now. The result was to forestall the inevitable readjustment process.

They believed that the low prices were the cause and not the effect of the recession. Does that error sound familiar? In other words, the Great Depression only became the Great Depression because the government followed exactly the same policies that the Bush administration is following now with regard to the mortgage market.

It makes no sense to warn that we will repeat the past if we do the same things that actually made the past as bad as it was. To avoid another Depression-sized downturn, we need to avoid the mistakes of the past, among which were the policies that attempted to keep failing firms and industries afloat in difficult economic times.

What should have happened in 1929 is precisely what should happen now. The government should completely remove itself and let the market reevaluate resource values. That means bankruptcies, yes. That means bank closures, yes. But these are part of the capitalistic system. They are part of the free-market economy. What is regrettable is not the readjustment process, but that the process was ever made necessary by the preceding central-bank and other interventions.

Let me state this very plainly: I do not believe for one second that if the government fails to nationalize Freddie and Fannie that the world as we know it will come to an end. Those who are saying that are trying to scare the population, the same as with every other major demand by the regime. It was the same with NAFTA, the WTO, the war on terror, the war on bird flu, the nationalization of airport security, and everything else.

If the government did nothing but sell off the assets of the mortgage giants, we do not know for sure what would happen, but the market has a way of finding value and readjusting. I would expect about 18 months of difficulties. Banks would fail just as many businesses in the free market fail every day. Housing prices would fall more, just as all market prices are subject to change. But the process of readjustment would be smooth and rational. And we would all stop living a lie and believing an illusion.

Contrary to what the blogging heads say, there is nothing that makes this nationalization inevitable. If we had leaders who had courage, who understood economics, who could think about the long run, we would let the market handle the entire process, come what may. I guarantee that this solution is a better one than creating another trillion or so to bail out failing enterprises.

” We need a system that would make it impossible for government to do these things even if it wants to. That system is called sound money.”

And yet this is not just another longing for courageous leaders. We can’t hope for that. We need a guarantee. We need a system that would make it impossible for government to do these things even if it wants to. That system is called sound money. Think about the preconditions that made it possible for the Bush administration to decide one evening to dump a trillion plus to guarantee three-quarters of the home mortgages in this country. It is a system that is premised on the government’s capacity to print unlimited amounts of money.

If it could not do that, no one would be talking about conservatorship. No one would be talking about guaranteeing the liabilities of the automotive industry either. War on Afghanistan, on Iraq, on Russia, and troops in another 100 plus countries, would be out of the question. These wouldn’t be issues. If government had to tax people directly for all its spending priorities, we would see Washington’s ambitions in every area scaled back dramatically. Every suggestion of a new program would be met with the demand as to how it would be funded.

Fiat money with central banking, on the other hand, tempts corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, and it also further corrupts them. It is the great occasion of sin of our public life. The tragedy is that their use of the printing press not only corrupts them; it imposes dreadful and intolerable costs on the rest of society, in the form of price inflation and business cycles.

We’ve seen the corruption grow worse over time. We are living now in the 37th year of fully fiat money with central banking. The politicians of the past were a bit reticent to use all the power they had. They are becoming ever more brazen. The sense of shame seems to be gone forever, their consciousness completely papered over by the ominous power they possess. The pundit class is following them, believing that there are no limits.

In truth, all these bills must be paid. To realize that is to realize the necessity of radical reform. It can be overwhelming to contemplate the glorious results of a full gold-standard reform. Inflation would stop eating away our purchasing power. The business cycle would be tamed. International trade would not be disrupted by wild swings in currency values. But of all the benefits, this one is the greatest: it would stop arbitrary rule, dead in its tracks. It would force the government to curb its ways. It would shore up our freedoms.

For this reason, the policy of sound money is very much linked with morality. The Hebrew scriptures, in the nineteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus, warn: “you shall have just balances, just weights…”

The twenty-fifth chapter of Deuteronomy issues a similar warning: “You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a large and a small.”

Proverbs says the same: “A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.”

Another passage says, “Diverse weights, and diverse measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD.”

$29 $25

“Stabilizing Conservatorship”

All of these relate in some degree to the need for sound money and condemn the act of fraud and monetary debasement. The consequences of monetary sin cannot be contained to the sinners only. They are spread out all over the whole of society, destroying its economic basis and corrupting its morals. They foster crazed illusions that we can magically generate wealth through the act of printing money, and the attempt to do so has catastrophic consequences. As Mises wrote, “Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism.”

I find it sickening that there are so few voices outside the Austrian School that will stand up to this policy. And I fear that the consequences of this policy will be felt for many decades into the future. There is still time to reverse course. There is nothing inevitable about despotism. We are not being forced down this road. We can embrace freedom. If we understand that freedom is inseparable from sound money, we can embrace that too. Until then, we will continue to place our trust in the political establishment to do what is right. Call me a gold bug if you will, but I trust hard money far more than our rulers. And that, ultimately, is the choice we must make.

Witness to WTC 7 Explosions Dead at 53

Key Witness to WTC 7 Explosions Dead at 53

Emergency coordinator and 9/11 witness Barry Jennings has passed away with controversy about WTC7 still hot– as the BBC hit piece and NIST report have been released to counter Jennings’ exclusive testimony of explosions inside Building 7

Aaron Dykes
Infowars.com
September 16, 2008

Barry Jennings, a key 9/11 eyewitness who was an emergency coordinator for the New York Housing Authority, has passed away at age 53 from circumstances not yet disclosed. A spokesperson for the Housing Authority has now confirmed his death, after weeks of rumors circulating online, but refused to give any further details.

This office has not yet been able to contact anyone in the Jennings family and the official cause of death is not yet known, but online comments have reported the date of death as August 19, 2008.

It is very unusual that a prominent — and controversial– 9/11 witness would die only days before the release of NIST’s report on WTC7 and shortly after a firestorm erupted over his testimony that he heard explosions inside the building prior to collapse of either tower and that there were dead bodies in the building’s blown-out lobby.

The BBC aired The Third Tower in July in attempt to debunk Barry Jennings’ account– which is both contradictory and damaging to the official 9/11 story– by making issue over whether or not he said he “saw” dead bodies in the lobby.

Yet Jennings own statement in an exclusive interview with Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas– which has not been denied– was: “The fire fighter who took us down kept saying, ‘Don’t look down.’ And I said, ‘Why.’ And we were stepping over people– you know, you can feel when you’re stepping over people.”

Now the release of Jason Bermas’ Fabled Enemies is giving further exposure to Jennings’ controversial account. The film features a full interview with Barry Jennings, as well as the statements he and Michael Hess, who was also trapped with him inside WTC7, made to news media on the day of the attacks.

Barry Jennings reiterated in the exclusive interview his confusion over the explanation for WTC7’s collapse– given that he clearly heard explosions inside the building:

“I’m just confused about one thing, and one thing only– why World Trade Center 7 went down in the first place. I’m very confused about that. I know what I heard– I heard explosions. The explanation I got was it was the fuel-oil tank. I’m an old boiler guy– if it was a fuel-oil tank, it would have been one side of the building.”

That interview was not released until June 2008 at the request of Mr. Jennings, who had received numerous threats to his job and asked that it be left out of Loose Change: Final Cut because of those threats.

Jennings statements have lit fire to questions about what really caused the sudden collapse of WTC7 just as NIST had hoped the release of their report would quash widespread beliefs that the building was brought down by controlled demolition.

News of Jennings’ death comes on the heels of losing another 9/11 hero and eyewitness– Kenny Johannemann, who reportedly committed suicide 12 days before the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Johannemann is credited with saving at least one man’s life on 9/11 and was also a witness to explosions in the towers.

NIST’s report, as well as that of the 9/11 Commission (which did not even mention WTC7), completely ignored statements from the building leaseholder Larry Silverstein as well as numerous police, fire fighters and other eyewitnesses who have testified that they were warned about the building’s collapse and told to get back. One rescue worker even heard a countdown for the building’s implosion.

Unfortunately, Barry Jennings, whose testimony was ignored by the 9/11 Commission, can no longer raise questions personally about his experience inside WTC7, but his account will remain on the record and available in-full on the Fabled Enemies DVD so that what he witnessed about 9/11 cannot be ignored.

Interview and Presentation by Richard Gage, AIA for Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Hello everyone,

This is going to eventually unfold into my news blog, where I will be hosting original interviews, news stories, and other related material for the 9/11 truth movement and the revolution that is currently sweeping the US and the world.

If you are skeptical of the possibility that 9/11 was a false-flag terrorist operation, keep these facts in mind: New global polls conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org in 17 countries show that only 9 have majorities that believe Al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks of 9/11 . Russian polls show that 84% of Russians believe the US government is hiding the truth about 9/11. Even a recent NYT article cited that it is common knowledge in the MIddle East that 9/11 was an inside job.

Check out this interview with Richard Gage, AIA, and founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a group which now has +470 members who are calling for a new, independent investigation into the collapse of the WTC 1, 2, and 7. Here Mr. Gage presents just some of the newly emerging evidence which points to a much different explanation of the events on 9/11 than has been given by our government thusfar.

Richard Gage Interviewed on “The Standard” (20 min)

Over the next few weeks and months I will be presenting this evidence offered by Mr. Gage and ae911truth to students, professors, and professionals with architecture and engineering experience. I pose this as a challenge to those, to first look at the evidence, and then consider the consequences of perpetrator after the facts have been established.

For those who are professional architects or engineers (or students), and would like to see the full Powerpoint presentation (video and powerpoint link both below):

http://www.ae911truth.net/ppt_web/slideshow.php