From Jekyll Island to Hyde Park

The Federal Reserve cartelizes the banking industry, allowing individual banks to inflate together, earning them and the government enormous profits, while making sure that they are never held accountable for their fraudulent practices. (Origins of the Fed – Ron Paul)

We elect politicians who don’t know what they are doing. They are naifs in the financial arena, and so they are easily fooled, hoodwinked and cowed into sitting down, shutting up and doing the bidding of the bankers. Just as Satan will use someone’s strengths against himself, Wall Street swindlers especially love ensnaring intelligent politicians who have an overinflated self-esteem and dragooning them into the latest banker bunko scheme. Who’s smarter than Barney Frank? And who knows more about finance than the former Democrat Senator from Countrywide, Chris Dodd?

At least George Bush just read his script with his typical deer in the headlights look and spared us the charade of pretending to understand the economic tsunami engulfing his presidency. Mercifully, he confined his remarks to killing capitalism in order to save it because too many credit stink bombs had clogged the banking toilets, or whatever he said at the time. He should have grabbed a plunger and beat Dirty Hank Paulson and his coven of cronies with it, and kept the treasury shut tight.

Ron Paul is perhaps the only politician alive who knows what he’s talking about when it comes to our money and our banking system.

There is one reason why we have a Federal Reserve System today, and it has nothing to do with what the Fed's publications say. The Federal Reserve exists to give a special privilege to the banking industry. And they have profited greatly from it. But at what expense? The banksters have diluted the value of the 1914 dollar to about eight cents. And its value is still shrinking.

As the Federal Reserve expands the money supply, it reduces the value of all existing dollars. The process happens, though, unevenly because not all prices rise at the same time. The first party to get the new money can spend it at its old purchasing power. Only after filtering through the economy does the money bid up prices for goods. (Origins of the Fed – Ron Paul)

The economic emperors have no clothes, and they have destroyed our currency, which is delayed from a final crash only by the Euro’s even greater peril.

See also:
Ron Paul – The Case for Gold

Ron Paul is Right for America

OK, I hate the way Dr Paul talks about foreign policy, although I largely agree with him, and it disturbs me that he attracts so many neo-nazis and 9/11 troofers.  It's true that the scariest thing about Ron Paul are his followers.

What continues to attract me is his domestic policy.  He has the most comprehensive and fact-based plan of all the candidates.  Romney's may be more detailed, and Gingrich may have bigger ideas with more facets than a rare gem, but Ron Paul focuses in on big government and its big spending ways.  It is a personal freedom and economic liberty agenda.

Cut Spending...

$ Cut $1 trillion in spending during the first year
$ Eliminate five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education)
$ End airport rape and grope operations by abolishing Thousands Standing Around
$ Abolish corporate subsidies
$ Abolish foreign aid
$ End foreign wars
$ Return most other spending to 2006 levels

Regulation...

* Repeal ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, and Sarbanes-Oxley
* Thorough congressional review and authorization before implementing any new regulations issued by bureaucrats
* President Paul will also cancel all onerous regulations previously issued by Executive Order.

Oh, and Ron Paul was right about the Federal Reserve...

No, it's not an evil Zionist cabal, but the GAO audit did uncover a fetid nest of crony crapitalism.  The GAO report is dry and stuffed with diplomatic language like "...opportunities exist to strengthen its conflict policies."  

No kidding. The place is a virtual revolving door of special interests, and it hands its friends the newly printed cash, so they can use it to maximum leverage before it pollutes the larger marketplace, diluting its value. The Washington Examiner reports...

The most troublesome revelation in the GAO audit is the extent to which insiders benefited from their positions and access during the crisis. The GAO found 18 instances in which current and former members of the Fed affiliated with banks and other companies received emergency loans from the board, including General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and JP Morgan Chase. In the case of General Electric, its CEO Jeffrey Immelt served on the New York Fed, which loaned his corporation $16 billion in emergency funding during the crisis.

One of Goldman Sachs' directors, Stephen Friedman, was chairman of the board of the New York Fed. Friedman also owned substantial stock in Goldman Sachs during the same period in 2008 when the New York Fed voted to allow Goldman to operate as a commercial bank as well as an investment bank. That approval meant Goldman got access to loans from the Fed at highly favorable rates. Fed ethics guidelines prohibit a Fed governor from owning stock in a firm being considered for commercial status, but Friedman received a waiver and continued buying Goldman stock.

As for JP Morgan Chase, its chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, was on the New York Fed board when the company got $29 billion in emergency loans. In addition, Dimon was able to secure approval from the New York Fed for an 18-month exemption...   (Washington Examiner)

President Obama is chummy with these crony crapitalists and he's OK with them using taxpayer money as their personal stash.  President Paul would put a stop to it.

Welcome to the Third World, America

We're focused on rotten statist regimes in the Middle East, while ignoring the one that is growing right here in the land of the free and the home of the brave

I have lived in the third world (I know, it’s a politically incorrect term, so sue me), and this land that I love is starting to resemble it. It started before Obama, but he is hastening the downward swirl.

Our central bank, The Federal Reserve, handed out almost $100 Billion to Foreign Banks

We are too reliant on foreign bankers, as evidenced by the Fed handing out hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to them in the name of bailouts, economic stability, unclogging the system or whatever the latest alibi is.

Meanwhile, US owned mainstreet banks who weren’t big enough to earn a place at the DC-NY hog trough were left to die. Thank George Bush and Dirty Hank Paulson for that one. International fractional reserve banking is a shell game, and when the jig is up, the taxpayer bails out the cartels, who turn around and give the politicians their cut.

Government Grows, Private Sector Shrinks

Third world regimes are famous for a one-party state.  If you don't belong to the state-approved political party you get no job, no goodies, no nothing.  The more sophisticated regimes form a couple of parties to maintain the facade of choice, but the aim is the same:  Expand the power of the state by handing out government jobs and government assistance.

“Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things.” ( WSJ – We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers)

This is a favorite game of rotten statist regimes:   Put 'em on the dole and put 'em on the public payroll!  Tax credits, legal exemptions, food stamps, welfare.  This builds a reliable voting block eager to pull the lever for more and bigger government.  It's a reliable scheme until the axles on the gravy train snap.

Crony Crapitalism is Another Hallmark of Third-World Statist Regimes

The GM bailout actually cost the taxpayer over $80 billion... 

"a March 16 Congressional Oversight report [...] estimates taxpayers will be out of $25 billion. Additionally, the report points out that “full repayment will not be possible unless the government is able to sell its remaining shares at a far higher price.”

That's only the beginning. Both the White House and the Congressional Oversight report omit the fact that during its bankruptcy, GM got a $45 billion tax break, courtesy of the American people.

Over one year after the promises President Obama and his administration made about the auto bailout, a February piece on AutoBlog also confirms that GM will also get a $14 billion dollar domestic tax break.  (Washington Times – Losing $84 Billion is Big Success)

With over $80 billion of taxpayer money sucked into GM’s corrupt, mismanaged maw, the state-sponsored Chevy Volt has become our version of the Communist East German Trabant.  Heavy government subsidies + anemic sales = Third-World Government Failure.  And the much ballyhooed GM bailout payback was a scam.

Government rewards failure with million dollar bonuses
Government pet projects Fannie and Freddie gave their executives tens of millions of dollars in bonuses while we were bailing them out to the tune of hundreds of billions...

The top six executives at the companies received $35.4 million over the two years. Since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over in September 2008, the companies’ mounting mortgage losses have required a $153 billion infusion from taxpayers. Total losses may reach $363 billion through 2013, according to government estimates. (MSNBC-Fannie and Freddie Bonuses)

At what point does venal and incompetent cross the line and become criminal?