Posted on 12/30/2011 8:25:27 AM PST by Vintage Freeper
The ubiquitous greenery of the season has me thinking conifers and stock market crashes. There is much to be learned from the coned evergreen trees that form vast forests across the Northern Hemisphere. As the oldest trees on the planet, the mighty conifers have survived threats of catastrophic extinction since the time of the hungry herbivorous dinosaurs.
The conifer's secret to longevity lies in a paradox: Their conquest has been largely the result of episodes of massive forest destruction. When virtually all else is gone, conifers show their strength and prowess as nature's opportunists. How? They have adapted to evade ...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
All kinds of mischief are explained by the miscreants of good intentions that are the basis for the article. Under the Austrian theory of the business cycle, Schumpeter's creative destructionism function that is part and parcel of capitalism is perverted in a way to leading to booms and busts. Fractional reserve banking, the creation of credit out of thin air which in turn becomes a money-substitute created out of thin air which becomes the primary source of the perversion.
This is not the end of the story. It gets even worse through compounding. Socialism, political predators buying their own re-elections by redistributing the wealth created by producers to the non-productive, leads to progressive impoverishment of everybody, and gross misallocations of capital that ensure the problem only gets worse.
The inevitable end of this sorry story is chaos, serfdom, and another dark ages. Ronald Reagan said this in 1964, "We have come to a time for choosing; we will preserve for our children this the last best hope for man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.....history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening."
The last part of the quote is worth repeating, "..history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening." The people who frequent Free Republic do not generally subscribe to socialism, the Federal Reserve, or democracy. Jim Robinson has been trying to restore our Constitutional Republic for at least as long as 1996 when he founded Free Republic for that express purpose. So far, his efforts and those of the Freepers who regularly participate in the forum have not borne productive fruit. The reawakening of publications within the so-called main-stream-media like the WSJ with articles like this one are indicative of the coming opportunities for change that are going to be triggered by the arrival of the now overdue Kondratieff Winter. The time for Jim Robinson and Free Repulic to make a resounding difference has arrived!
Thomas Paine wrote these words in 1776, "We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again." This was the spark that spawned America's war for independence and freedom. The beginning of the End of America occurred in the 1912 election which gave us the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and moved the United States closer to being a democracy than a republic by stripping the states of the power to elect United States Senators. Thankfully, exactly one century later, the election of 2012 provides Jim Robinson, FreeRepublic, and every American another chance to get it right this time:
Happy New Year Free Republic
I hope this will be a ‘Happy New Year’, but at this point I’m not optimistic. There was a letter to the editor in our local paper about a talk given by two Vermont women. They apparently spearheaded an effort in their home state to pass some sort of statement making health care a Human Right & no doubt the lefties in this town are going to be doing the same thing. How can people be so foolish? How can anyone look at what happened in the USSR (extreme case) & what’s going on now in Europe (not so extreme, but socialism all the same) & not understand that this nonsense doesn’t work?!
If Obama gets re-elected I’m seriously thinking of going ex-pat. I just can’t stand to watch as my country dies. Of course, I’m going to work my tail off this year working to see it doesn’t happen, but I just don’t know if it will do any good.
Happy New Year anyway...
I intend to have a Happy New Year regardless of who wins the elections. I refuse to let anyone dictate my attitude! :-)
I envy your ability to maintain a positive attitude in spite of all the insanity. I keep trying to do the Happy Warrior thing, but haven’t had a lot of success at it.
Happy New Year to you!
Well, let's start here. Isn't any and all credit really the fiat creation of wealth based upon a fractional reserve of something?
I thought so.
Can we quit pretending that all credit is evil?
And a Happy New Year to you too, VF. Thank you!
Happy New Year VF!
Thanks for the ping, and a Happy New Year to you and everyone here on Free Republic!
I believe all Americans will be blessed in the New Year with conservative control remaining in the House, gained in the Senate and voted into the White House!
Don’t give up hope. Here in Florida I have seen great gains and folks continue to turn on Obama and his gang.
My hubby and I will also be working our tails off in our Sunshine state to elect real conservatives. I hope patriots everywhere will do the same in their state and know that it takes boots on the ground action in order to help elect the very best candidates we can.
My hubby and I decided we were not going to stop so that when we finish up on election day 2012, we will be able to say we did all we could to help save America.
Can we quit pretending that all credit is evil?
In general, credit is not a bad thing when used for self-liquidating productive activities. Credit for consumption is not recommended. Credit expansions are simply economic errors.
Your questions are important and deserve proper more detailed answers, and and here.
Worthwhile, but not the end-all-be-all of the argument. Laissez-faire capitalism is an ideal Ideals break down in the real world. Not that I am not arguing against free market -- nothing could make me do that. Only that laissez-faire is an ideal -- a mirage, and in the real world, exploitable and ultimately unworkable, as is any ideal.
w/r/t to link 1, it is a nice exposition of common sense. It was summed up by the non-formally educated traders on Wall Street generations ago: Good money drives out bad.
Can I buy an "e"? S/b "NoteE that I am not..."
Very Astute!
Whose is to blame? Are these people a major part of the problem?
Are there others?
Government evolved from the need to protect life and property from predators and plunderers. Socialism is the freedom-destroying economic cancer that was developed by political predators seeking to harness government's power for their own purposes. Politicians uniformly promise more than they can tax making debt and monetary debasement the source of government's power. Politicians and bankers are natural allies and co-conspirators.
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812)
"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." Thomas Jefferson, 1809.
"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments, by controlling money and its issuance." President James Madison
Is the problem hopeless? Should we simply throw up our hands and shrug?
Or if we arm ourselves with some knowledge of the source of the problem, are there some reasonable things that could be done to improve the situation? I repeat:
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