Free Republic

“I draw the conclusion that, assuming no important wars and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years. This means that the economic problem is not – if we look into the future – the permanent problem of the human race.” – John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, 1930, [author’s emphasis] There have of course been some “important” wars (though in truth they were, and remain, mere installments in a Long War that is by no means over). And there has of course...

By disclosing a plan to conjure $600 billion to support the sagging economy, the Federal Reserve affirmed the interesting fact that dollars can be conjured. In the digital age, you don’t even need a printing press. This was on Nov. 3. A general uproar ensued, with the dollar exchange rate weakening and the price of gold surging. And when, last Monday, the president of the World Bank suggested, almost diffidently, that there might be a place for gold in today’s international monetary arrangements, you could hear a pin drop. Let the economists gasp: The classical gold standard, the one that...

Don't count Kanye West as an official member of the ill grill club. His new chompers are all real - and permanent. After tweeting a picture in July that showed the hip-hop artist had a mouth full of bling, West explained on the "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" Tuesday that he actually had gold and diamonds inserted to replace his bottom of row of teeth because he "just thought the diamonds were cooler." "I just like diamond teeth and I didn't feel like having to take them out all the time," West said.

On October 15, Ben Bernanke spoke at the Boston Fed's conference, "Monetary Policy in a Low-Inflation Environment." His remarks were long and ponderous and consisted mostly of "Fedspeak" along with seeming excerpts from a typical intermediate-macroeconomics textbook. He rehashed the Fed's statutory mandate of maximum employment and price stability — which comes from the Keynes-inspired Full Employment Act of 1946. He explained that the two goals compete for the Fed's attention, which means that neither goal can be pursued singlemindedly. In the short run, advancing on one front may entail retreating on the other. In the long run, the Fed...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech in Rhode Island on Monday. Bernanke warned the audience of the Annual Meeting of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council that the state of American finances is "unsustainable." Bernanke is quoted as saying: "Let me return to the issue of longer-term fiscal sustainability. As I have discussed, projections by the CBO and others show future budget deficits and debts rising indefinitely, and at increasing rates. To be sure, projections are to some degree only hypothetical exercises. Almost by definition, unsustainable trajectories of deficits and debts will never actually transpire, because creditors would...

Quotes from On ‘Demand Side’ Economics The average person works and accumulates savings over 40 years in order to retire. From the time they start to the time they finish, assuming only 2% inflation per year, prices will have risen by 221%. Keynes gets the problem of economics completely backwards. The problem of economics is unlimited demand with limited supply. The implicit argument of Keynes is that the problem of economics is limited demand with unlimited supply. Politicians want to have their money and spend it too. Of course, it makes sense for the Federal Reserve to define their purpose...

If Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned last week that our rising national debt "poses a national security threat," should President Obama or any in his administration be suggesting any economic plan that increases it in any way? At last week's Council on Foreign Relations, or CFR, meeting, Secretary of State Clinton was supposed to be espousing "a new American moment" and boosting U.S. global leadership around the world, but she ended up dropping the country further in the tank (the debt tank that is), during an off-script Q&A time after her 45-minute speech.

French economist Jacques Rueff once said "Tomorrow, to save man, we will give him a real currency." For a world that has suffered nearly 40 years of economy-retarding currency instability, that tomorrow is very near. If history is any kind of indicator, by 2013 we'll return to money defined in terms of something real. No currency in history has lasted longer than 42 years after its intrinsic backing has been abandoned, and it was 39 years ago that President Nixon severed the dollar's link to gold. Over the ensuing decades the U.S. economy alone has suffered three dollar-driven oil "shocks,"...

Bernanke’s recent Jackson Hole speech didn’t contain one reference to the key force driving the American economy right now: private sector deleveraging (here’s the previous year’s speech for comparison’s sake). The reason the US economy is not recovering from this crisis is because all sectors of American society took on too much debt during the false boom of the last two decades, and they are now busily getting themselves out of debt any way they can. Debt reduction is now the real story of the American economy, just as real story behind the apparent free lunch of the last two...

Debunks socialist myth of "wage slavery".

Peter Schiff explains unemployment

WASHINGTON (AP) - The $700 billion U.S. bailout program launched in response to the global economic meltdown had a far greater impact overseas than other countries' financial rescue plans did on the U.S., according to a new report from a congressional watchdog. Billions of dollars in U.S. rescue funds wound up in big banks in France, Germany and other nations. That was probably inevitable because of the structure of the Treasury Department's program, the Congressional Oversight Panel says in a new report issued Thursday. The U.S. program aimed to stabilize the financial system by injecting money into as many banks...

After the Fed is dead our private property will be better protected from the easy money, scarce money mortgage rip offs that private bankers have used for generations to swindle away the farms, homes, and businesses that we and our ancestors have worked so hard to acquire. With the Fed dead and gone every family will be better able to establish a hearth and home from which family stability, security, and prosperity can grow from generation to generation. With the Fed dead we can use our common money system to begin building new roads to prosperity. When individuals and families...

Ron Paul shows why gov. spending is the worst way to avoid financial crisis. He shows why America needs to end the fed and go back to gold and silver if we want to survive.

Mitt Romney's visit to New Hampshire triggers questions about his stance regarding the Federal Reserve. This is partial raw tape; more vid to follow.

If you want to know how the bureaucracy works this video is for you. We should be discussing the contents of this video. No it's not another Ron Paul video but it does bring up unknown facts about the FED.

This video provides shocking details about the future of America's economy. It's a MUST WATCH.

Ron Paul explains why we need to put our money in gold and how we can do that as America slowly drifts towards socialism. I'm fully aware I can't change any one's mind about Dr. Paul on FR but please listen to this video you might agree with some of what he says.

Inflation Fears Grow After Fed Prints $1.2 Trillion http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503983_162-4...03983.html Amendment Slipped Into Health Care Legislation Would Track, Tax Coin and Bullion Transactions http://abcnews.go.com/Business/gold-coin...d=11211611 Flashback: The Gold Confiscation Of April 5, 1933 http://www.the-privateer.com/1933-gold-c...ation.html On June 5, 1933, the United States went off the gold standard http://www.history.com/this-day-in-histo...d-standard Tracking wealth allows its confiscation, by means of taxation. Taxation is a disincentive to own property, and create wealth. Marxists create economic distress. If history provides evidence of failed solutions, repeating those solutions must be intended to bring about failure.

In today’s New York Times, Ross Douthat takes on Rand Paul and paleoconservatism on the Civil Rights Act and other issues. “Like many groups that find themselves in intellectually uncharted territory,” writes Douthat, “they have trouble distinguishing between ideas that deserve a wider hearing and ideas that are crankish or worse. (Hence Ron Paul’s obsession with the gold standard and his son’s weakness for conspiracy theories.)” Douthat is being a bit unfair here. Paleoconservatism isn’t intellectually uncharted territory; whatever its faults or merits, its acolytes built the philosophical foundations of Cold War conservatism. But I don’t want to digress into...