Category Archives: Federal Reserve Bank

Paul Financial Portfolio

Business, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Ron Paul

OF COURSE RON PAUL IS INTO METAL BIG TIME. Naturally, Austrians in economics will be gold bugs and/or general metalheads.

It should be no surprise that, “Twenty-one percent of [Ron Paul’s] $2.4 to $5.5 million was in real estate, 14 percent in cash. He owns no bonds. Only 0.1 percent is invested in stocks, and Paul bought these ‘short,’ betting the price will plunge. Every other nickel is sunk into gold and silver mining companies.”

“This portfolio,” said [financial analyst William Bernstein], “is a half step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and 9-millimeter rounds.” [Dah!]
“You can say this for Ron Paul,” conceded [the Wall Street Journal]. “In investing as in politics, (Paul) has the courage of his convictions.”

MORE.

One Nation Under Inflation

Debt, EU, Europe, Fascism, Federal Reserve Bank, Federalism, Political Philosophy, Regulation, Socialism, States' Rights

“When it grows up, the EU wants to be just like the US. That was Jose Manuel Barroso’s message to his host at the US Public Broadcasting Service.” The excerpt is is from “One Nation Under Inflation,” now on WND.COM:

“The EU Commission president, a chap called Jose Manuel Barroso, told PBS’s Jeffrey Brown, on November 28, that the European suprastate is not quite up to American statist standards.

Barroso lamented that the EU lacks America’s level of ‘convergence’: ‘We have a common currency, but not, for instance, a common treasury,’ said this slick operator. Fiscal discipline (one wonders what our commissar means by that) can only come about with more ‘pooling of sovereignty.’

The Commission’s president certainly sees the US as a model ‘fiscal union,’ with a high degree of ‘fiscal policy’ ‘integration’ throughout; and is almost envious of the fact that the US federal government possesses ‘the instruments’ that have allowed it to accumulate enormous liabilities: Evidently, America’s debt-to-GDP ratio is larger than the European Union’s.

In a nutshell: Barroso longs for Brussels to be able to do the necessary tinkering to keep the PIIGS of the Eurozone —Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain—living at the expense of their more industrious, austere neighbors to the north. (Presiding European bureaucrats like himself live-it-up no matter where they reside.) The EU, complained its Capo di tutti capi, needs to create those “instruments.”

When it comes to Newspeak, Barroso still beats Obama.

In any event, when it grows up, the EU wants to be just like the US. That was Jose Manuel Barroso’s message to his host at the US Public Broadcasting Service. So successfully has the Unites States government submerged the sovereignty of its states that a top European technocrat longs to be like us. We must be in worse shape than we imagined. …”

The complete column, The excerpt is is from “One Nation Under Inflation,” now on WND.COM. Read it.

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Barnes and Noble is always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher. Inquire about an Xmas special on bulk buys.

Save the People; Fail the EU

Economy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Iran, Political Economy, Propaganda, Trade

“The EU is our biggest trading partner. We cannot afford to let it fail. We send much of our goods and services to Europe. We share their values. We want to crush Iran with our European pals. They bomb and regulate the world with us. If the Eurozone goes down in flames; if we let them—we’ll be next.” So said President Barack Obama on November 28. Well, sort of. (Okay, I’ve ad-libbed a LOT, but I think I know my president by now.)

Obama was entertaining leaders of the European Union. He promised them that America would stand ready to do its part to help them withstand the Eurozone crisis.

The stakes are too high, you say? For whom, Mr. President? Cui Bono? Who Benefits, Barack?

Ask yourself that question each time you hear a reporter/pundit/analyst/politician insist that the EU and the Euro zone cannot be allowed to fail.

In reply to the question as to what will happen if this colossus collapses, the stakeholders above parrot a bunch of non sequiturs or circular arguments. In the tradition of “a statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it,” these reasons don’t necessarily obtain:

We can’t allow the thing to fail because the stakes are too high. Again: For whom?

David Böcking of Spiegel Online (a most intelligent newspaper; the Germans are impressive) advances the arguments against the break-up of the Eurozone. These are mostly legalistic, and are not rooted in real economic realities. The treaties, observes Böcking, don’t allow for easy disengagement. Legal disputes could arise over debt owed if the seceding country had borrowed money. And, mostly, sinecured EU official would lose sway on the world stage.

Brace for impact, if you believed these bastards, but here are the economic realities:

We flesh-and-blood Americans trade not with Barack or with Brussels, the seat of the European central government, but rather with the people of Belgium, the Netherland, Germany, France. If the financial institutions into which Europeans and Americans have been herded by bureaucrats on both sides of the Atlantic collapse, well then, individual producers and traders will find a way to make a living without these artificial, inorganic structures.

This is a failure of government, not of all the people, although some of the governed, maybe even the majority, have failed. The people who’ve failed are those who have eaten the state’s forbidden fruit.

UPDATE III: Floating on $7,770,000,000,000 Worth of Paper

Debt, Economy, Fascism, Federal Reserve Bank

$7.77 Trillion: That’s the amount of money the central bank, chaired by Ben S. Bernanke, “parceled out” during “the bailout to America’s “Big Six,” ostensibly, to rescue the financial system. This according to “Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act” by “Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.”

Inflating America’s fascistic banking system has cost “more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.” It “lasted from August 2007 through April 2010.” Officially.

Starting in August 2007, when confidence in banks began to wane, [the Fed] created a variety of ways to bolster the financial system with cash or easily traded securities. By the end of 2008, the central bank had established or expanded 11 lending facilities catering to banks, securities firms and corporations that couldn’t get short-term loans from their usual sources.

America’s economy is floating on fiat. (Did I get the number of zeroes right?)

UPDATE I (Nov. 29): Myron, about those who confine their analysis to the Obama years: Some posters on this site, no less (who have yet to read, much less review, The Cannibal), have contributed to the smart alec Mark Steyn’s best-seller status, even trying to promote Steyn’s Obama-centric, limited analysis on BAB.

Unlike our Steyn-supporting readers, one of the man’s reviewers is on to him. Writes
Marsha Dahleeng:

“At first I appreciated Mr. Steyn’s humor. I enjoyed the clever jabs and the way he mocked the left/progressives. After awhile I grew weary of that – I began to skimread past the seemingly endless smart-alecky points and search for text where the author got down to the meat of the subject. Sadly, there was precious little meat, and what little there was, was disappointingly thin.”

“Disappointingly thin,” but predictably so.

UPDATE II: Exactly right, Robert Glisson: this state of affairs has a starting point: government.

UPDATE III: (Nov. 30): George, you credit Steyn with coming out of the Republican closet with some half-decent insights, after some of us libertarains have been doing this, to the detriment of our careers, for a decade at least before warmonger Steyn awoke. To compare a man who goes with the flow to the great Hebrew prophet Jeremiah does injustice to a truly great prophet. Jeremiah spoke truth to power and to the rabble at his own peril. Jeremiah was forced to sleep in the fields, away from home, for fear of the wrath of the people and the powers that be.