Money

Last week, in the name of protecting the little guy from Wall Street, the House passed HR 4173 to increase the little guy’s false sense of security in the financial system. This mammoth piece of legislation would massively increase government regulation and oversight in the banking industry under the misguided reasoning that more government could have stopped faulty lending practices, when in actuality it caused them. This bill would also greatly increase the powers of the Federal Reserve, which too many in Congress still see as savior rather than perpetrator in this mess.

Madame Speaker, I rise to introduce the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2009. Currency, or money, is what allows civilization to flourish. In the absence of money, barter is the name of the game; if the farmer needs shoes, he must trade his eggs and milk to the cobbler and hope that the cobbler needs eggs and milk. Money makes the transaction process far easier. Rather than having to search for someone with reciprocal wants, the farmer can exchange his milk and eggs for an agreed-upon medium of exchange with which he can then purchase shoes.

Socialism has been proven a failure. It has been soundly refuted in theory by Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. It has been proven a failure in practice all around the world, in Russia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and it is even being abandoned by China. Why would we want to try it here in the United States? This is sheer insanity.

"Pension trustees and insurance company portfolio managers look away now. Your increased commitment to government bond holdings in recent times is about to blow up spectacularly.

"“If you are in Treasuries, you will need to be watchful and nimble to time your escape.”

"Unfortunately, cashing out will not protect the value of investments, he insists, because “fiat” currencies will all decline over the coming years as measures to try to haul the world economy out of recession fail. “The current stimulus measures are making things a lot worse,” says Mr Paul.

"Going 62 in a 50-mph zone, a Jeep barreled west on a slippery, snow-
covered Airport Expressway on Valentine's Day and blew past an Allen
County sheriff's squad car. One traffic stop later, two men inside the
Jeep were outside being patted down by officers. They acted nervous,
according to a police report. At one point they looked as if they
wanted to fight; at another they looked as if they wanted to flee. In
the Jeep's back seat, police found more than $26,000 in cash wrapped
in a stocking cap. Though officers held the two men for a short time

With reports of businessmen planning to reduce their taxable income, hypocritical outrage among politicians about bonus pay, and unbelievable earmark spending, this country is soon to see capital on strike, if it isn't already hitting. Show us some confidence in us. Stop the government interventions. End the breaking of promises. Stop the reckless spending. It is time to read a different book. Put away that book by Keynes, Mr. President.

Because I’m blessed with an unusually high level of disdain for bureaucracy and government in general, it’s extremely rare for me to experience jaw-dropping shock when confronted with the empire’s mouthpieces and their paid pontifications, which are excreted with dreadful regularity in the mainstream media. Then I came across this...

Is he really just a one-trick pony? What does he do but grind out speeches? What meat-grinder is running behind him, fed with lists of great words, lists of lofty leftist platitudes? His fans swoon, hearing only heavenly hope, nothing but the sweetest swill. Let me rethink this: “O” could be a two-trick pony: great-sounding public speaking and destroying the economy. Maybe Obama should just stick to making speeches. Let the citizens of this once great country take back their responsibilities and regain their rights.

Obama's quest for a quick recovery is wrong-headed. We must learn from history or we are doomed to repeat it. Was it not excessive spending and too much credit that got us into this mess? Why does anyone think that curing this mess requires massive credit to get people spending? Rather than that, what will keep a Recession from turning into a horrible inflationary Depression is to turn to capitalism. For once, let us try capitalism!

It has been said, and all too often ignored, if you live beyond your means, you will be forced to live beneath your means.

Living and consuming on borrowed money always end. Lenders, even in an age of inflation, have their limits.

When living extravagantly, it seems the good times will continue forever. But when the bills come due and the debt, with interest, needs to be repaid, the good times end. The fiction that the appreciating prices of houses, stocks and other assets serve as savings is always self-limited and ends with pain.

Our money is being deflated, equated with debt, wrecking our financial futures and making it clear we are not saving so as to invest. We need to become activists, working to create an objective monetary system, where gold is money, and certificates used as money substitutes stand for real assets (gold). And lastly, we should return banking to an objective system, where banks lend out only out of equity, out of what they own free and clear – without fractional reserves. Put an end to the Federal Reserve!

Which makes me wonder where this will all end- if taxpayers continue to bail out any and all industries that are having cash-flow problems, who might we see trying to stick their hand in our pockets? After all, both Wal-Mart and Target have come out with financial reports of lower quarterly earnings; how dreadful would it be if Americans were not able to buy cheap Chinese crap this holiday season?

The Founders declared Individualism and Individual Rights as the starting point. Our presidential candidates have replaced these with “country first” and “public service.” Rather than enabling us to produce and trade, they want to redistribute our wealth. If they persist in their madness we will soon have no economy, no life of our own. We will have no Liberty and our own Happiness will be almost impossible to pursue. What kind of Life is that?

In the midst of highly unpopular bailouts of Wall Street, many justifications have been given about why Washington feels the need to act. Some claim that capitalism and the free market are to blame, but we have not had capitalism. If you compare our financial capital to our aggregate debt, this would be obvious. In the same way, we have not had a truly free market. The monetary manipulations of the Federal Reserve, a complex tax code, the many “oversight” agencies and their mountains of regulations show that we are far removed from a free market economy.

Another unsatisfying argument is that certain entities have to be bailed out because of their economic importance. Supposedly, some entities can be so big, so important, that no matter what they do, citizens must perpetually sustain them.

It has been long understood that our federal government is going deeper into debt, consistently raising the debt ceiling and demonstrating no fiscal restraint. In recent years, debt ceiling increases have been placed in “must pass” legislation as a means to guarantee that Republicans as well as Democrats would vote for them when Congress was under Republican control.

We also know our nation’s “negative savings rate” reflects the habits of private citizens, showing those habits to be not tremendously different than the habits of the public sector. Yet, the signs of decline are becoming ever more apparent. So apparent, in fact, that it seems unlikely that bailouts or other gimmicks will have even short term success. More inflation, and creating moral hazard by bailing out egregious offenders, is a recipe for disaster. These activities can seem to provide some short term relief, but it seems we are now at a significant crisis point, where monetary policy gimmicks don’t provide the band-aids they did in the past.