I keep seeing conservatives saying Ron Paul is “nuts”. He may be. I haven’t met him; nor have I studied all of his ideas in detail. What is clear, though, is that he understands economics, and that he wants to focus on IMMEDIATE American national security interests, and not those which could become a problem 10 years from now.
To my mind, it is insanity to tolerate the Federal Reserve’s existence: an unregulated entity owned entirely by massive banks which has the SOLE power to create money, and which exercises that right with complete independence. Why would the banks NOT take care of themselves, at the expense of the rest of us? Why have we shifted from a manufacturing economy to a finance economy? Inflation. They create inflation. What else do you need to know?
I studied martial arts for some time. A basic principle for some throws is putting all a person’s weight and balance on one foot, then kicking that foot out, while directing their direction. Being in the air, they are less well positioned to do so. Some older throws drop people on the back of their necks from the height of the thrower’s waist.
This is what is seemingly planned for us. As I see it, the Bretton Woods agreement in effect converted the dollar into gold, as the international reserve currency. For some decades, it was nominally backed by gold, then that, too, was eradicated.
The plan would be simple: put all the weight of the worlds finances on the dollar, then kick the dollar. I think this was tried in the 1970’s, unsuccessfully. Inflation alone was not sufficient to destroy us.
The alternative is simply undermining the integrity of the American State outright through debt, which is well in progress. Where will people run, when the dollar collapses? There is nowhere to go, no currency vast enough to hold the world’s wealth. Gold (or other specie) is the only option, and self evidently a lot of people, besides Glenn Beck listeners, are accumulating it. This would include many central banks.
Gold is a terrible investment in conditions of growth. As Thomas Sowell points out in his excellent Basic Economics. A dollar of gold bought in 1800 (if memory serves) would now be worth only 75 cents or so. Bonds would be worth some 10x as much, and stocks 100x. What you buy depends on the context. Buying gold is in effect shorting the dollar. That many large banks are seemingly doing this is bad.
I want to be clear: I don’t know if Dr. Paul is a “truther”–that he believes that Bush wants America to become a totalitarian nation ensconced within a global hegemony run by a small group of oligarchs–but he certainly attracts them.
What is insane, in my view, is believing that Tower 7 collapsed spontaneously as a result of the combustion of “office furnishings”, particularly when it is not even clear how the fires started. I have dealt with this in some detail.
In my view it is ludicrous to believe that Bush wants anything but continued success for America. It is NOT ludicrous to believe that there are rich internationalists who would be willing to cooperate with the Russians in attacking American preeminence. I would be shocked if there weren’t. Why wouldn’t there be? Start the list with the Rockefellers and George Soros, who are in effect just fronts for people whose names could be known, but who did not get rich through stupidity.
Paul exists in this world. He gets it. He has no charisma or charm, but what we need are people with ideas and principles, and I believe he has them.
Again, I have not studied him much. I have not even read his books. But the fact that he wrote a book on “Ending the Fed” gives him credibility in my book.
I want to be clear on something else, as well: over time, the role of the Fed in sucking dollars out of the average Americans wallet is so ENORMOUS that it is literally stupid to talk about an economic recovery that is sustainable without addressing it.
As I have said before, I think Americans should be able to work 5 hours a week–admittedly without many of the fancy gadgets we have now–and pay cash for EVERYTHING. Education, housing, food, unemployment, medical care: none of these should be problems.
I will add, too, that there are parts of my plan that look scary. What would happen, for example, if ALL the money now held by Federal Reserve member banks were suddenly liberated for the reuse of the American people, from whom it was taken? The inflation would be MASSIVE.
Think of it this way, though: the rates of OWNERSHIP would also skyrocket. People would no longer have mortgages, and would own their homes outright. They would no longer have credit card debt. They would own their cars. There is no way to predict how exactly the initial way will play out, but the point is this: it will PASS. There will be an end.
Most of the time, inflation happens in secret. It is done gradually so the people being hurt by it don’t take to the streets and hang the government officials doing it. For its part the government of course wants to talk about inflation as a disease of some sort, rather than the deliberate affliction it is, that benefits a few at the expense of the many.
But the logic of slow inflation and what I suppose I might call “Flash Inflation” is the same. With the latter, you can democratize–generalize–the benefits, and largely contain the detriment of being unable to plan for the future. Inflation that would be hugely damaging over years could be contained if conducted over weeks.
Hell: I think this plan is brilliant, but I have had “brilliant” ideas before that turned out to be Other Than Brilliant (my preferred euphemism). That’s why I keep trying to get feedback. I think it’s just so different from what people have seen before, that when combined with my (relative) anonymity and lack of official endorsement they just pass over in silence. I’m a UFO. What do you say?
For convenience, here it is again. I collated everything in a piece for the OWS and ahs, and with an exercise of will made the introductory page non-inflammatory.