Arvind Damarla

Withholding Consent from the Khan -Paper money in Mongol times

2012-02-06T17:56:00.000Z

Withholding Consent from the Khan - Peter C. Earle - Mises Daily

A fantastic account of the collapse of a paper money standard imposed by Mongols in Afghanistan in the 13th Centuary.

Gravity: faster than light?

2012-01-10T03:28:00.001Z

The celebrated lecturer Richard Feynman noted, “If the sun is exploding ‘right now’, it takes eight minutes before we know about it, and it cannot possibly affect us before then.” His reason for this is the doctrine that the fastest “message” that travels between the Sun and the Earth does so at 3x 10^8 (three hundred million) meters per second, the speed of light through space. At that light speed the Sun viewed from the Earth appears to be where it actually was some eight minutes ago, and not where it actually is when it is being viewed. However, if the Sun by its gravitational pull is causing the Earth to maintain an orbit around it, the pull of the Sun on the Earth has to be from almost exactly where it is, and not from where it was eight minutes beforehand. If the pull of the Sun upon the Earth came from an eight minutes back position behind the Sun, the Earth (as well as all the other planets) would be slung out of orbit in short order and no solar system of planets could be maintained. It follows that there is a much faster messenger than light, namely gravity, that travels between the Sun and the Earth at a speed that makes the transmission of light seem like a dawdle.

We don’t need any experiment with neutrinos, therefore, to tell us that something can travel faster than light. We just have to take into account all the observations from which we infer that the Earth and the other planets have been moving round the Sun in a stable orbit for an extended period of time. This requires the gravitational “message” to be sent from the Sun and received by the Earth, as well as other planets, almost instantaneously. Therefore Einstein’s special theory of relativity should have been repealed long ago, even aborted.

Democracy never lasts

2012-01-07T00:55:00.004Z

Alexander Tytler observed in 1775 during the Revolutionary War:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loss of fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world's great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. These nations have progressed in this sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance; {INDIA, CHINA}
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependency; {G7}
from dependency back again to bondage."

Alf Field and the Moses Principle

2011-12-08T11:33:00.001Z

The Moses Principle is an irreverent theory based on the question of why Moses spent 40 years traversing the Sinai desert before leading the Israelites to the “promised land”.

A total generational change had taken place so that the survivors had no knowledge of anything other than the desert. There was nobody who could remember what Egypt was like. The Moses Principle recognizes the fact that over any 40 year period, a generational change takes place.

What has this got to do with gold? Recently we passed the 40th anniversary of 15 August 1971, the date when the last link between currencies and gold was ended by President Nixon. This launched an era of floating “I owe you nothing” currencies. Money was what any government deemed it to be, generally something that the government could create in unlimited quantities. That system, plus the fractional reserve banking system, launched an era of ever increasing debt and credit. It was an era where debt was desirable and money lost its purchasing power.

Everyone has spent their adult lives living under this system. Most have had no exposure to monetary history or what money really is. The new “Moses” generation will have to re-learn the lessons of monetary history before the world can enter a new era of sound money and stable economic growth.

How Totalitarianism Arose in the 20th Century - Gary North

2011-11-16T22:42:00.001Z

In 1953, Robert Nisbet's book, The Quest for Community, was published by Oxford University Press. It received some attention, mostly favorable, but it was hardly a bestseller. He asked these questions: "Why was it that the modern world had turned to totalitarianism in the middle of the 20th century? What had taken place in the societies that gave birth to totalitarianism?"

He concluded that it had to do with the breakdown of social order.

Those institutions to which men had given allegiance throughout history, such as the family, the church, the guild, the fraternal order, and similar voluntary institutions, had faded in importance in the twentieth century. This left only the isolated individual and the modern nation-state. Men gained a sense of belonging through their participation in mass-movement politics. Totalitarian leaders began to attract individuals who were isolated, even though they were living in large cities. These leaders were able to offer a sense of brotherhood to millions of people who felt alone in the midst of cities. The modern totalitarian state functioned as a substitute for the family, church, and voluntary associations that for millennia had given people a sense of purpose and participation. So, totalitarianism was born out of radical individualism, institutionally speaking, even though as a philosophy, totalitarianism is completely opposed to individualism.

Pater Tanenbrarum debunks commonly held myths

2011-11-16T10:04:00.001Z

PaterTanenbrarum debunks some commonly held myths in The Euro Area – False Dilemmas andFalse Choices

Myth#1: Deflation is Bad

Free Markets cause Deflation. Deflation is GOOD foreveryone (well – except over-extended banks)

Capitalaccumulation and increased productivity naturally result in fallingprices for goods and services in a free market economy. This is held to be'bad' because it threatens the concerted credit expansions of the modern-daybanking systems. From the point of view of real income gains on a society-widebasis, the gold standard was far superior to the 'flexible' managed currenciesof today.

Itis also important to realize that a deflation of the money stock orprices does not alter the state of the stock of physical capital, i.e.,all the things that are actually relevant for economic activity. Not a singlefactory building is going to crumble to dust if more debt is repaid than takenout and the banking system's collective balance sheet shrinks commensurately.What the retrenchment following on the heels of a major inflationary boom tendsto do is that it shifts the ownership of many assets from thosewho overextended themselves to those who were prudent. This process that has sofar been substantially hindered by the combination of bailouts and moneyprinting that has become the hallmark of the reaction of Western governments tothe bust.

Thereis absolutely no good reason why all the European welfare state leviathansshould be as big as they are, play such an extensive role in the economy andcarry such huge debt burdens. Let them shrink. In addition, there are now morethan 7,000 banks in the euro area. If some of them were to go under, the worldwould surely keep turning.

Myth#2: Europe needs a Fiscal Union to survive a single currency

Sorry Angela, a Fiscal Union won’t help. Lack offiscal union was never the problem in the first place.

Theeuro-area's troubleshave nothing whatsoever to do with the lack of a 'Fiscal Union' (FU is anirresistible acronym…), they are the result of an artificial boom egged onby the creation of copious amounts of money and credit by the commercialbanking system in concert with the very same central bank that is nowsupposed to throw even more money and credit on the burning pile. Inaddition, the existence of a supra-national central bank that is statute-boundto refrain from government debt monetization has merely revealed what anyone inhis right mind knows to be true anyway: the modern-day welfare statesare financially unsustainable in the long run – their debts can never berepaid. The curious Teutonic arrangement of the ECB's affairs has only had theeffect of cutting this 'long run' a little shorter.

Amajor error of the Krugmans and Roubinis of this world (and for that matter thefollowers of the neo-Keynesian 'MMT' sect) is that they think just because themarkets are giving certain governments a lot more rope to hang themselves with,they have 'proof' that all it takes to keep an over-indebted welfare/warfarestate afloat is to make ample use of the printing press.

Asto this argument, one only needs to keep in mind Ludwig von Mises famous dictumabout the choices available to end a boom. As he wrote in 'Human Action':

“The boom can last only as long as the credit expansionprogresses at an ever-accelerated pace. The boom comes to an end as soon asadditional quantities of fiduciary media are no longer thrown upon the loanmarket. But it could not last forever even if inflation and credit expansionwere to go on endlessly. It would then encounter the barriers which prevent theboundless expansion of circulation credit. It would lead to the crack-up boomand the breakdown of the whole monetary system.”

Ofcourse Germany has already witnessed such a breakdown of the whole monetarysystem, hence the reluctance of German policymakers to adopt the financing ofgovernment debt by means of central bank credit from thin air.

Myth # 3: The GoldStandard caused the Great Depression

It was fixing the price of Gold against the reservecurrencies that caused the contraction, not using Gold in the first place

Itis important to realize that a gold standard cannot protect an economy fromboom-bust cycles if it is run in parallel with a central-bank-ledfractionally reserved banking system. The only reason why there ever was adeflation in the early 1930's was that the system had created massive amountsof fiduciary media, i.e., deposit money against which it did not hold acommensurate amount in the form of specie. Once the economic crisis struck,depositors tried to convert their claims into what was then moneyproper, namely gold, and found out to their chagrin that the banksdidn't have it. To be sure, the same has happened in past economic boomswithout a central bank helping the system to pyramid monetary claims, but thebiggest booms and busts in e.g. the US in the 19^th century tookplace when the fore-runner organizations (the first and second bank of the US)of today's Fed were active. Clearly a central-bank led banking cartel has atendency to produce far bigger boom-bust sequences than a free bankingsystem. It must be noted here that the booms and busts of the 19^thcentury were by and large fairly small and the gold standard, in spite of theoccasional hiccups, worked exceedingly well for a century. This all changedwith the advent of World War I, which prompted governments to abandon gold sothey could finance their war expenditures by means of inflation.

Thedeflation that struck the UK after the war before it abandoned the goldstandard for a second time can be traced back to the decision to go backto gold at the pre-WW I parity, in spite of the fact that massive inflation hadtaken place in the interim. Returning to gold at the old parity requireda deflation of all wages and prices, something the government actually didn'twant to happen. As Rothbard notes on this in 'What Has Government Done to OurMoney':

“The British pound, for example, had beentraditionally defined at a weight which made it equal to $4.86. But by the endof World War I, the inflation in Britain had brought the pound down toapproximately $3.50 on the free foreign exchange market. Other currencies weresimilarly depreciated. The sensible policy would have been for Britain toreturn to gold at approximately $3.50, and for the other inflated countries todo the same. Phase I [the old gold standard, ed.] could have beensmoothly and rapidly restored. Instead, the British made the fateful decisionto return to gold at the old par of $4.86. It did so for reasons of Britishnational “prestige,” and in a vain attempt to reestablish London as the “hardmoney” financial center of the world. To succeed at this piece of heroicfolly, Britain would have had to deflate severely its money supply and itsprice levels, for at a $4.86 pound British export prices were far too high tobe competitive in the world markets. But deflation was now politically out ofthe question, for the growth of trade unions, buttressed by a nationwide systemof unemployment insurance, had made wage rates rigid downward; in order todeflate, the British government would have had to reverse the growth of itswelfare state. In fact, the British wished to continue to inflate money andprices. As a result of combining inflation with a return to anovervalued par, British exports were depressed all during the 1920s andunemployment was severe all during the period when most of the world wasexperiencing an economic boom.”

The UK not only returned to gold at too high a parity, but by introducing the 'gold exchange standard' in 1922, it forced other nations to do likewise. Since the gold exchange standard was not a proper gold standard, but allowed for the major currencies – the US dollar and the British pound – to be used as reserve currencies that were ostensibly 'backed by gold', both the US and the UK, as well as other nations – as long as they did not attempt to actually redeem their paper reserves – could inflate far more than was previously possible under the genuine pre-war gold standard. It was the lengthy period of inflation that ensued that eventually blew the world economy up, not the 'gold standard'.

Germany: Preserving the Euro

2011-11-13T12:13:00.001Z

German opposition to the ECB financing government deficits remains resolute. As long as this remains the case, the value of the Euro will remain preserved. In addition to the EMU prohibitions on financing government deficits, the German Constitutional Court too has stipulated that this remains a key condition for Germany to remain in the Eurozone.

For irresponsible governments and over-levereaged banks, this is a big headache. However, for the common savers, industrialists and the people of Europe, a stable currency is an unmitigated blessing. It is something they have not seen for many centuries. Kings and governments have always used currency debasement and printing to finance their grandiose ambitions and bloody wars.

European Central Bank council member Jens Weidmann said the ECB cannot bail out governments by printing money. 'One of the severest forms of monetary policy being roped in for fiscal purposes is monetary financing, in colloquial terms also known as the financing of public debt via the money printing press,' Weidmann, who heads Germany's Bundesbank, said in a speech... The prohibition of monetary financing in the euro area 'is one of the most important achievements in central banking' and 'specifically for Germany, it is also a key lesson from the experience of hyperinflation after World War I,' he said... Such a course 'undermines the incentives for sound public finances, creates appetite for ever more of that sweet poison and harms the credibility of the central bank in its quest for price stability,' Weidmann said.

Weidmann welcomed the German government's opposition to using the central bank's gold and currency reserves to bolster Europe's 440 billion euro rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility. 'I am glad that also the German government echoed our resistance to the use of German currency or gold reserves in funding financial assistance to other' euro-area members, he said. 'Proposals to involve the Eurosystem in leveraging the EFSF -- be it through a refinancing of the EFSF by the central bank or most recently via the use of currency reserves as collateral for a special purpose vehicle buying government bonds -- would be a clear violation of this prohibition' on monetary financing."

Jeremy Rifkin thinks OIL crashed the economy in 2008

2011-11-07T21:02:00.000Z

In his latest book, The Third Industrial Revolution, economist and author Jeremy Rifkin argues that the crash of the US housing market was not the proximate cause of the Great Recession, but was instead an aftershock of crude oil hitting a price of $147 per barrel oil in July 2008 – 60 days prior to the crash of the financial markets. Unbelievably interesting interview here: http://blog.sfgate.com/tmiller/2011/10/24/the-third-industrial-revolution-%E2%80%93-an-interview-with-jeremy-rifkin/

Global Warming Denial is now Scientific Heresy - Matt Ridley

2011-11-07T19:35:00.004Z

We’ve been asked to take some very painful cures. So we need to be sure the patient has a brain tumour rather than a nosebleed.

Global warming alarmists have been handed power over our lives. Britain’s unilateral Climate Change Act is officially expected to cost the hard-pressed UK economy £18.3 billion a year for the next 39 years and achieve an immeasurably small change in carbon dioxide levels.

Did you know that the collective annual budget of Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of the Earth was more than a billion dollars globally last year? People sometimes ask me what’s the incentive for scientists to exaggerate climate change. But look at the sums of money available to those who do so, from the pressure groups, from governments and from big
companies.

It was not the sceptics who hired an ex News of the World deputy editor as a spin doctor after Climategate, it was the University of East Anglia.

Everybody Hates Capitalism by Bill Bonner

2011-11-04T00:54:00.000Z

Everybody Hates Capitalism by Bill Bonner

The rich tend to be even bigger anti-capitalists than the poor. As soon as they get some wealth they try to put the brakes on. They set up tests and hurdles…designed to keep the hoi polloi off their tennis courts and out of their businesses. They use every means possible to separate themselves from the masses – language, education, dress, customs, geography. They tend to speak differently…sometimes even using a completely different language. Probably the most recent and best known example comes from Britain, where the upper classes still speak a heavily Latinized version of English, called “RP” for ‘received pronunciation,’ while the lower classes speak a more Germanic, more archaic version. A thousand years earlier, the upper classes actually spoke a different language all together – French.

In France itself, the development of “French” was itself a long process; until the 19th century the language was foreign to most people who lived in France. It, and Latin before it, was used almost exclusively by the rich, the powerful, and the well-educated.

General Theory of Zombieism:

All (or almost all) people want wealth, power and status.
They want to get it in the easiest way possible.
The easiest way to get wealth is to steal it, which is why all groups turn to the government, the only institution which gets to steal lawfully.
Over time, more and more groups are able to use the system for their own ends.
If they are poor, they implore the government to “tax the rich” and give the money to the poor.
If they are rich, they want the government to protect their wealth and status – with every means available to them.
Democratic governments generally do both. They support the poor with loud attacks on the rich combined with whimpers of money (for the poor can generally be bought – vote for vote – much cheaper than the rich).
As for the rich, their support is more subtle and underhanded. There are tax credits and loopholes for anyone who can afford them; sugar-laden contracts for the insiders and plenty of jobs for well-credentialized blowhards.

The rich complain about the poor. The poor complain about the rich. Both complain about the government. And everybody hates capitalism

Most people do not have strange ailments. They have the problems that most people have. Those are the ailments that a person with modest training could recognize and treat with simple procedures and cheap generic drugs. Aided by electronic tools…and perhaps a few good doctors in India, connected by Skype…you could probably get as good advice as you could get anywhere. Maybe better.

Why won’t that work? It’s against the law! The feds reward their protected industries with almost boundless wealth. You can’t practice medicine without a license. And you wouldn’t be re-imbursed by insurance programs…and certainly not covered by Medicare or Medicaid. And even though your clients had specifically agreed not to sue, you’d be pursued by every shyster lawyer in the country.

Health care is a protected industry…it squanders at least $2,500 per person per year. That’s the equivalent of the entire Pentagon budget…or nearly half the entire 2011 deficit. It’s spent on unnecessary and ineffective tests and treatments – not to mention a mountain of patent medicines. And these costs do not include all the indirect costs of lawyers and court time, caused by the medical malpractice industry.

On Resisting Law Enforcement to protect Right - how far?

2011-11-03T20:11:00.000Z

In the real world, however, far more injustice, violence, torture, theft, and outright murder has been committed IN THE NAME of “law enforcement,” than has been committed in spite of it. If you disagree, try watching a documentary or two about some of the atrocities committed by the regimes of Stalin, or Lenin, or Chairman Mao, or Hitler, or Pol Pot, or any number of other tyrants in history. Pause the film when the jackboots are about to herd innocent people into cattle cars, or gun them down as they stand on the edge of a ditch, and THEN ask yourself the question, “When should you shoot a cop?”

Keep in mind, the evils of those regimes were committed in the name of “law enforcement.” And as much as the statement may make people cringe, the history of the human race would have been a lot LESS gruesome if there had been a lot MORE “cop-killers” around to deal with the state mercenaries of those regimes.

Most people have a hard time viewing their OWN “country,” their OWN “government,” and their OWN “law enforcers,” in any sort of objective way. Having been trained to believe that obedience is a virtue, the idea of forcibly resisting “law enforcement” is simply unthinkable to many. And humanity has suffered horribly because of it. People want to believe that ”the system” will, sooner or later, provide justice. But history shows all too well that those who fight for freedom and justice almost always do so “illegally”–i.e., without the permission of the ruling class.

Cops have the attitude that, as long as it’s called “law,” they will enforce it, what is there to prevent complete tyranny? Not the consciences of the “law-makers” or their hired thugs, obviously. When tyrants define what counts as “law,” then by definition it is up to the “law-breakers” to combat tyranny.

If it’s wrong for cops to violate your rights, doesn’t that imply that the people have a right to RESIST such actions? If you question their right to detain you, interrogate you, search you, invade your home, and so on, you are very likely to be tasered, physically assaulted, kidnapped, put in a cage, or shot. You will usually have only two options: submit, or kill the cop. You can’t resist a cop ”just a little” and get away with it. He will always call in more of his fellow gang members, until you are subdued or dead. Politely asking fascists to not be fascists has a very poor track record.

This is what movements like Maoists in India have opted for - a rejection of the State's monopoly on power.

The Paradox of the Outraged - www.mises.org

2011-10-30T23:51:00.003Z

Outraged by Corruption

Hessel's call for "a rational economic order in which the individual interest is subordinated to the general interest" perfectly summarizes the collectivist attitude. Once this collectivist idea is accepted there is no limit to government intervention. From then on, government can force individuals to follow predetermined courses of action, which are not their own, under the pretext of serving the common good, thereby undermining freedom and progress.

Is there any reason to believe that government really cares about the common good?
Are bureaucrats and politicians not people like everyone else?
Doesn't power corrupt, and absolute power corrupt absolutely?
Is it reasonable to think that those who are in power — and therefore already corrupted — would put their own interest aside in order to serve an abstract ideal called the "common good"?

Even as Hessel denounces that lobbyists have overtaken government in "the highest spheres," he seems to believe that if government were to have more control over industries, corruption would not do its harmful work. In other words, for Hessel, if politicians and bureaucrats had more power than they currently have, the system would be less corrupt. History, however, shows that the more power there is in the hands of the rulers the more corrupt the system becomes.

The greatest failure of socialism was that it created a class system more violent and rigid than anything the Western world had ever seen.

Ideal Worlds - The tragedy of Good Intentions

What would happen if political leaders were not corruptible? Would Hessel's idea work then?

Is the purity of intentions a guarantee for the quality of the results of someone's actions? Would morally superior and powerful men know better than we do what is best for us? And more importantly, would we be willing to accept honest men forcing us to do what they think is best?

Hessel's argument rests on a falsehood: the idea that the common good or the general interest is something different from the sum of all individual interests, and that government is a separate entity that through coercion can elevate society to a higher degree of moral perfection and happiness. Few ideas in history have proved to be more appealing and at the same time more destructive than this one.

The greatest evils are usually not the result of bad men trying to harm others but of good men trying to help others they do not even know.

The Paradox of the Outraged

Honest left-wing intellectuals who encourage movements such as Occupy Wall Street are outraged to a large extent by the creature of their own thinking. The myth of the welfare state has led to an explosion of welfare transfers and an equal explosion of the people's expectations with regard to their so-called social rights. Self-reliance was progressively replaced by a mentality of rights with no duties. As a result, a gigantic disconnect arose between what people are willing to pay in taxes and what they expect in return in the form of government benefits.

Because promising welfare is the easiest way to win elections, politicians kept expanding the size of government over the decades. And because the public would not have tolerated an honest increase in taxes to finance the new welfare programs, governments started borrowing the money necessary to finance them. Now it's time to pay for the party. Inevitably, this means a dramatic reduction in our standard of living.

People do not understand that the source of the crisis was government they now go on the streets demanding even more of what caused the problem in the first place: government. That is the paradox of the outraged.

What about the Corrupt Bankers?

Our banks are incentivised to "socialise losses and privatise profits" by the central bank — a government-created agency of monetary central planning. Central banks provide private banks with liquidity, allowing them to expand the money supply in a coordinated fashion, thereby creating financial and real-estate bubbles. Banks speculate with money given at artificially low interest rates by the central bank.

The dramatic rise in the price of raw materials and agricultural commodities is basically the result of the inflation created by central banks. The most perverse consequence of this government-induced inflationary process is that it redistributes wealth from the middle class and the poor to the rich financial elites and governments, for whom inflation works as a hidden tax.

Those who declare themselves outraged by the unequal distribution of wealth should pay more attention to government-created inflation, for this is by far one of its central causes and the origin of the "money power" they condemn.

Economic Liberty is the Answer

High taxes and excessive regulation hinder productivity and destroy incentives for job creation and competition. Rich people can escape the immediate effects of taxes by taking their money and investing it abroad. The middle class and the poor have to suffer the consequences of fewer jobs, less income, and a lower quality of life.

Economic liberty includes solid property rights and freedom from taxation is thus a necessary condition for improving the very quality of life of the masses. It is no coincidence that poor people in the ten countries with more economic liberty have an average income ten times higher than the income of poor people in the ten countries with the lowest degree of economic liberty.

Inflation and the lack of economic liberty are central causes of poverty and inequality. Hessel does not know this, declaring himself outraged by inequality in general. Firstly, there is a reason to be outraged only when inequality is the result of arbitrary confiscation, fraud of any sort, or bad economic policy. Secondly, when inequality is the result of freedom, there is no reason to be outraged at all, especially when everyone has enough. Only envious people can be outraged by the wealth some have legitimately gained.

What the people who claim to seek "social justice" fail to understand is that those who have become rich by honest means have served society more than any one else.

Hessel is right when he says that outrage is necessary for action and resistance. However, it is important to understand the real reasons on which the outrage should be grounded. If people get outraged for the wrong reasons, they will inevitably demand the wrong solutions, making the problem worse.

Hessel has done his best, yet the ideology he is promoting, rooted in old collectivist attitudes, can only lead to more serious trouble. He is right to denounce a situation that is indeed outrageous and unsustainable, but he is wrong about everything else.

Adapted from: A wave of social upheaval is shaking the world. In the West, the press has called the protesters "the outraged." The name is taken from the pamphlet Time for Outrage! (Indignez-vous!) by French intellectual Stéphane Hessel. Hessel has sold millions of copies of his brief and provocative pamphlet, triggering social movements in France and Spain.

Outraged by Corruption

Is there any reason to believe that government really cares about the common good?
Are bureaucrats and politicians not people like everyone else?
Doesn't power corrupt, and absolute power corrupt absolutely?
Is it reasonable to think that those who are in power — and therefore already corrupted — would put their own interest aside in order to serve an abstract ideal called the "common good"?

The greatest failure of socialism was that it created a class system more violent and rigid than anything the Western world had ever seen.

Ideal Worlds - The tragedy of Good Intentions

What would happen if political leaders were not corruptible? Would Hessel's idea work then?

The greatest evils are usually not the result of bad men trying to harm others but of good men trying to help others they do not even know.

The Paradox of the Outraged

What about the Corrupt Bankers?

Economic Liberty is the Answer

What the people who claim to seek "social justice" fail to understand is that those who have become rich by honest means have served society more than any one else.

Adapted from: http://mises.org/daily/5762/The-Paradox-of-the-Outraged

A wave of social upheaval is shaking the world. In the West, the press has called the protesters "the outraged." The name is taken from the pamphlet Time for Outrage! (Indignez-vous!) by French intellectual Stéphane Hessel. Hessel has sold millions of copies of his brief and provocative pamphlet, triggering social movements in France and Spain. Outraged by Corruption Hessel's call for "a rational economic order in which the individual interest is subordinated to the general interest" perfectly summarizes the collectivist attitude. Once this collectivist idea is accepted there is no limit to government intervention. From then on, government can force individuals to follow predetermined courses of action, which are not their own, under the pretext of serving the common good, thereby undermining freedom and progress. • Is there any reason to believe that government really cares about the common good? • Are bureaucrats and politicians not people like everyone else? • Doesn't power corrupt, and absolute power corrupt absolutely? • Is it reasonable to think that those who are in power — and therefore already corrupted — would put their own interest aside in order to serve an abstract ideal called the "common good"? Even as Hessel denounces that lobbyists have overtaken government in "the highest spheres," he seems to believe that if government were to have more control over industries, corruption would not do its harmful work. In other words, for Hessel, if politicians and bureaucrats had more power than they currently have, the system would be less corrupt. History, however, shows that the more power there is in the hands of the rulers the more corrupt the system becomes. The greatest failure of socialism was that it created a class system more violent and rigid than anything the Western world had ever seen. Ideal Worlds - The tragedy of Good Intentions What would happen if political leaders were not corruptible? Would Hessel's idea work then? Is the purity of intentions a guarantee for the quality of the results of someone's actions? Would morally superior and powerful men know better than we do what is best for us? And more importantly, would we be willing to accept honest men forcing us to do what they think is best? Hessel's argument rests on a falsehood: the idea that the common good or the general interest is something different from the sum of all individual interests, and that government is a separate entity that through coercion can elevate society to a higher degree of moral perfection and happiness. Few ideas in history have proved to be more appealing and at the same time more destructive than this one. The greatest evils are usually not the result of bad men trying to harm others but of good men trying to help others they do not even know. The Paradox of the Outraged Honest left-wing intellectuals who encourage movements such as Occupy Wall Street are outraged to a large extent by the creature of their own thinking. The myth of the welfare state has led to an explosion of welfare transfers and an equal explosion of the people's expectations with regard to their so-called social rights. Self-reliance was progressively replaced by a mentality of rights with no duties. As a result, a gigantic disconnect arose between what people are willing to pay in taxes and what they expect in return in the form of government benefits. Because promising welfare is the easiest way to win elections, politicians kept expanding the size of government over the decades. And because the public would not have tolerated an honest increase in taxes to finance the new welfare programs, governments started borrowing the money necessary to finance them. Now it's time to pay for the party. Inevitably, this means a dramatic reduction in our standard of living. People do not understand that the source of the crisis was government they now go on the streets demanding even more of what caused the problem in the first place: government. That is the paradox of the outraged. What about the Corrupt Bankers? Our banks are incentivised to "socialise losses and privatise profits" by the central bank — a government-created agency of monetary central planning. Central banks provide private banks with liquidity, allowing them to expand the money supply in a coordinated fashion, thereby creating financial and real-estate bubbles. Banks speculate with money given at artificially low interest rates by the central bank. The dramatic rise in the price of raw materials and agricultural commodities is basically the result of the inflation created by central banks. The most perverse consequence of this government-induced inflationary process is that it redistributes wealth from the middle class and the poor to the rich financial elites and governments, for whom inflation works as a hidden tax. Those who declare themselves outraged by the unequal distribution of wealth should pay more attention to government-created inflation, for this is by far one of its central causes and the origin of the "money power" they condemn. Economic Liberty is the Answer High taxes and excessive regulation hinder productivity and destroy incentives for job creation and competition. Rich people can escape the immediate effects of taxes by taking their money and investing it abroad. The middle class and the poor have to suffer the consequences of fewer jobs, less income, and a lower quality of life. Economic liberty includes solid property rights and freedom from taxation is thus a necessary condition for improving the very quality of life of the masses. It is no coincidence that poor people in the ten countries with more economic liberty have an average income ten times higher than the income of poor people in the ten countries with the lowest degree of economic liberty. Inflation and the lack of economic liberty are central causes of poverty and inequality. Hessel does not know this, declaring himself outraged by inequality in general. Firstly, there is a reason to be outraged only when inequality is the result of arbitrary confiscation, fraud of any sort, or bad economic policy. Secondly, when inequality is the result of freedom, there is no reason to be outraged at all, especially when everyone has enough. Only envious people can be outraged by the wealth some have legitimately gained. What the people who claim to seek "social justice" fail to understand is that those who have become rich by honest means have served society more than any one else. Hessel is right when he says that outrage is necessary for action and resistance. However, it is important to understand the real reasons on which the outrage should be grounded. If people get outraged for the wrong reasons, they will inevitably demand the wrong solutions, making the problem worse. Hessel has done his best, yet the ideology he is promoting, rooted in old collectivist attitudes, can only lead to more serious trouble. He is right to denounce a situation that is indeed outrageous and unsustainable, but he is wrong about everything else. Adapted from: http://mises.org/daily/5762/The-Paradox-of-the-Outraged

The "Preciousness" of Money - Doug Noland

2011-10-30T20:12:00.002Z

Even a rudimentary understanding of Credit and Money has long escaped those in charge of our financial systems. The study of monetary history clearly shows the importance of both Money and Credit theory. Money had for centuries played such a profound role in economic cycles (and monetary fiascos). Yet this type of analysis is extinct in the mainstream.

Within the economics community, there has been decades of bickering about what monetary aggregate to use in econometric models (M1, M2 or the newer M3), along with what measure of "money" supply should be monitored and managed by the Federal Reserve.

In any case, all the financial innovation and new financial instruments, ran circles around the economics profession and the regulatory apparatus.

Centuries of monetary fiascos made it clear that money had better be backed by something of unchangeable value and of limited supply (i.e. gold) to ensure that politicians and bankers did not fall prey to the same inflationary traps that had repeatedly destroyed currencies and economies across the globe. Money creates unusual demand dynamics: essentially, economic agents always wanted more of it and this insatiable demand dynamic created a powerful proclivity to issue it in excess quantities.

Oddly, a boom financed by junk bonds will pose much less risk (its shorter lifespan will impart less structural damage) than a protracted Bubble financed by "AAA" agency securities and Treasury debt (e.g. European & US Sovereign Debt).

The Con-Men running our System

2011-10-23T12:19:00.000Z

The number one rule in running the con is to never let the mark think you need him, but rather the other way around. Never let them see you sweat or worry. The con-men running our system prey on our openness, kindness and our tendency to trust well dressed self confident men and women who appear to have ‘made it’ in what can only be described as celebrity worship. They almost universally exhibit a high energy level along with charisma and disarming charm. Above all else they are easy going and unfailingly happy (at least in public) almost as if they haven’t a worry in the world.

The justifications and excuses they use to do as they please are endless and ultimately immaterial. However, once started down this path there really is no crime too big that can’t be explained away.

"What I’m doing is peanuts compared to the stuff those bastards are pulling down."

"Everyone does it now and then so what’s the big deal?"

"I’m just taking care of my own in this dog eat dog world."

"I am only cheating the cheaters, you can’t cheat an honest man”

With just a few words they magically transformed themselves from antisocial psychopaths into slayers of evil dragons and bringers of truth and justice. Their first lie is to themselves “Well, I guess it’s OK if all I'm doing is cheating the cheaters”. It’s right about here that the brain releases natural endorphins into the blood stream which serves to reinforce their self deception by stimulating our brain’s pleasure centre. Naturally the con-man isn’t talking about you or me when he identifies the marks as cheaters because we’re honest…..for the most part.

We are all compromised by our need to live and work, not to mention maintain what we have already accumulated, within the very corrupt system we essentially allow to be perpetrated and (secretly) hope flourishes. We allow our own self interest to crowd out everything else of importance and the system encourages our own selfish behaviour, who are we to resist or even question what is “natural” or even fair.

Oh yes, a con-man will claim he really did wish to be good early on. But after being savaged by both his idealistic and sensitive nature and bloodied by the world, he bravely decides to harden his heart and jump onto the gravy train to get all he can while the getting’s good. Rather than do the really difficult work of self reflection and introspection when the world slaps you side the head, the coward’s way out is to join in the rape and pillage. It certainly makes the pain go away for some and helps the pocketbook as well.

If you ask concerned citizens if they want the corruption in Washington, on Wall Street and in corporate America to end here and now, you will receive a unanimous affirmation to stop the insanity and begin to heal our communities.

We all wish to believe there is some button to push or switch to flip that will end this insanity. Believing this allows us to remain on the sidelines and not take a stand.

However, very few hands would go up if it meant risking the very real possibility that by ending the insanity everyone’s private and government pension, government benefits such as Social Security and Medicare, 401(k), IRA’s and even individual investments might be severely diminished and possibly even completely lost.

For the last 20 or 30 years the public has been reading and hearing increasingly dire warnings about fiat currencies, unfunded Social Security, Medicare and government pensions promises, never ending wars of empire and expansion, resource exploitation, corruption and so on. While the entire picture might have been deliberately obscured, it could not have progressed to this point without the mostly silent, but most assuredly the willing, participation of you and me.

Until we the people accept that we are part of the problem, that’s the only thing we’ll be kicking down the road. The con-men will not stop on their own volition. As long as we offer ourselves up as easy and complicit marks, they will continue to rape, rob and steal. It’s time we grew up and recognised that fact.

Gary North: Occupy Liberty Street instead! (The Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

2011-10-22T11:00:00.001Z

The poor souls demonstrating in front of the New York Stock Exchange have never been told that the source of the sword that the matador wields resides at 33 Liberty Street. That is where most of the world's gold is stored. That is where the gold belonging to the United States government -- officially speaking -- is supposed to be stored. It is stored by the senior agency of the banking cartel: a privately owned facility. Congress will not audit the FED. It will not audit the gold. Yet Congress is officially sovereign, just as the government's gold at 33 Liberty Street officially belongs to the government. If you want to know how the system works, follow the money -- the real money. Find out where the gold is. Find out who owns it. Find out who can buy legally it. That is where operational sovereignty resides.

Not the best of times to be a Dictator

2011-10-21T17:21:00.000Z

Young men once dashing and bold

become "mad dogs" as they get old.

Bullying people you think is fun?

Only until one of them gets your gun

and finds you cowering in a hole!

WHO’S NEXT?

The Great Gold Argument (Fortune Magazine, 1931)

2011-10-11T18:26:00.000Z

A very good article from the archives of Fortune magazine in 1931 that describes the operation of the Gold standard at that time.

John Hussman - A reprieve from Misguided Recklessness

2011-08-30T10:43:00.000Z

Over the past three years, Wall Street and the banking system have enjoyed enormous fiscal and monetary concessions on the self-serving assertion that the global financial system will "implode" if anyone who made a bad loan might actually experience a loss. Because reversing this mantra is so difficult, policy makers are likely to continue fitful efforts to "rescue" this debt for the sake of bondholders, through mechanisms that are increasingly distasteful to the broader population. The justification for those policies will therefore have to be coupled with rhetoric that institutions holding these securities are too "systemically important" to suffer losses.

On this note, it is critical to remember that nearly all financial institutions have enough capital and obligations to their own bondholders to completely absorb restructuring losses without customers or counterparties bearing any loss at all. So keep in mind that the debate here is not about protecting customers or counterparties - it is really about whether the stockholders and bondholders of banks and other financial institutions should bear a loss. The "failure" of a bank only means that existing stockholders and bondholders are disenfranchised - the company simply takes on a new life under new ownership. Existing stockholders lose everything, unsecured bondholders typically lose something, and senior bondholders get any residual obtained as a result of the sale or transfer of the company. If the global economy is fortunate, the financial system two or three years from now will look much the same as it does today, but the ownership and capital structure will have changed almost entirely. A major restructuring of debt is the clearest path to long-term economic recovery, and the accompanying losses to those who recklessly made bad loans would be the highest realization of Schumpeter's idea of "creative destruction."

From that perspective, Warren Buffett's $5 billion investment in Bank of America preferred stock last week was essentially a defense of the old guard. Buffet observed, "It's a vote of confidence, not only in Bank of America, but also in the country."

Yes - to be specific, it's a vote of confidence that the country will bail out Bank of America in any future crisis. We should all hope that Buffett's investment is successful - provided there is no future crisis - and we should equally hope that Buffett loses the entire investment otherwise.

Schumpeter on Credit::Two One-Way Lanes on the Road to Ruin - John P Hussman

2011-08-17T13:49:00.000Z

During the 1930's, the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter captured the importance of productive investment nicely in his discussion of credit. The goal of lending activity is not the stimulation of demand per se, but rather the temporary relaxation of constraints in order to increase the stream of goods and services available to the economy:

"By credit, entrepreneurs are given access to the social stream of goods before they have acquired the normal claim to it. It temporarily substitutes, as it were, a fiction of this claim for the claim itself. Granting credit in this sense operates as an order on the economic system to accommodate itself to the purposes of the entrepreneur, as an order on the goods which he needs: it means entrusting him with productive forces. It is only thus that economic development could arise from mere circular flow in perfect equilibrium. And this function constitutes the keystone of the modern credit structure.

"The entrepreneur must not only legally repay money to his banker, but he must also economically repay commodities to the reservoir of goods - the equivalent of borrowed productive means; or, as we have expressed it, he must ultimately fulfil the condition upon which goods may normally be taken out of the social stream. The result of the borrowing enables him to fulfil this condition. After completing his business ... he has, if everything has gone according to expectations, enriched the social stream with goods whose total price is greater than the credit received and than the total price of the goods directly and indirectly used up by him.

"Loss always occurs if the entrepreneur does not succeed in producing commodities at least equal in value to the credit plus interest. Only when he succeeds in doing so has the bank done good business - then and only then however, is there also no inflation."

It is not the loan itself that creates wealth or economic benefit. It is the productivity of the loan. Though Schumpeter focused mainly on entrepreneurs, his views on credit weren't restricted to business lending. Even in the case of consumer credit (which is properly used to smooth the stream of consumption on the expectation of future income), there is an obligation that borrowers will produce future income in order to repay the debt. So even people who earn income from a paycheck are entrepreneurs in the sense that they are in the business of selling labor services. In effect, a good consumer loan still facilitates the later production of goods and services that can be made available to others.

Let's go back to the last line in Schumpeter's remark. Only when the lending ultimately results in a surplus of productive activity is the loan successful. Only then "has the bank done good business - then and only then however, is there also no inflation."

A roadmap for gold - Alf Field

2011-08-10T11:25:00.001Z

Editor's Note: With gold going through the $1600 mark, I thought it a good time to dust off this classic piece of analysis by Alf Field first published at our USAGOLD website in late 2008. This remarkable analysis was Field's last on the gold market, and for an admirable reason, which he reveals toward the end of the essay.

As this is going to be the last of these Updates, it is appropriate to review the reasons for writing this series of articles on Elliott Wave and the gold price. This will involve revealing a lot of personal detail and also unveiling an extremely high forecast for future gold prices.

The first article titled "Elliott Wave and the Gold Price" was published on 25 August, 2003. In August 2003 the gold price was in the region of $350 and there were a number of conflicting views about the future direction of the gold price. Robert Prechter, for example, was predicting a move to below $253 and possibly below $200. For a number of reasons I was of the opinion that gold was in the very early stages of a major bull market. My views were thus the opposite of Prechter's and I eventually plucked up the courage to say so.

I count Robert Prechter as a friend, so my purpose was not to disparage his views. I was more interested in setting up some parameters or guidelines that would help determine the likely outcome if the gold price exceeded those levels. I concluded that if the gold price dropped below $309, the odds would favour Prechter's view. If it pushed above $382, then my bullish view would probably be favoured.

This was more than just an academic exercise because in 2002 I had made a major change to our family investments, moving some 40% of the capital into gold and silver bullion plus a selection of gold and silver mining shares. If Prechter's view prevailed, our family finances would have taken a serious drubbing.

A roadmap for gold

Another reason for publishing the Updates was to illustrate a major advantage of the EWP, which is the ability to prepare a template forecast (or "road map") of how the market is likely to unfold in both the long and short term, including the possible terminal prices. The original article produced a template based on the rhythms that had been observed in the early stages of the bull market, based naturally on the assumption that my bullish views would prevail.

The early stages of the bull market revealed corrections of 4%, 8% and 16% at increasing orders of wave magnitude. Those numbers were used in the original template published in that 2003 article, a template that forecast that the first major move upwards could reach $630 after which a correction of the order of 25% to 33% would probably follow. In fact, if the sequence had been extended logically, the larger correction should be double 16%, or 32%, but this was shaved to 25-33%.

I thought that the $630 forecast was conservative and that this number would probably have to be adjusted upwards later once the minor waves unfolded. In 2003, with gold in the mid $300's, a forecast of $630 was both courageous and extremely daring. There was no purpose served in taking the exercise beyond that point until after the $630 target had been achieved.

In addition, the 2003 article concluded that if $382 was surpassed, then the gold price would move rapidly to $424 without a serious correction. That did indeed happen, with gold reaching $425 before the anticipated correction occurred. That success encouraged me to write an article updating the original forecast. I did not anticipate that the consequence of that first update would be the production of this Update 23 some five years later.

There was a further undisclosed reason for writing these articles and that was to eventually highlight the massive potential of the gold bull market. I was reluctant to reveal what I really believed in 2003 as it was so bullish that it would have invited the arrival of the guys with straight jackets and padded cells.

Back of the envelope calculations in 2003

As this will be the last of these Updates, I will reveal my previously unpublished "back of the envelope" calculations in 2003. They were as follows.

Major ONE - up from $256 to approximately $750 (a Fibonacci 3 times the $255 low);

Major TWO - down from $750 to $500 (a serious decline of 33%);

Major THREE - up from $500 to $2,500 (a Fibonacci 5 times the $500 low);

Major FOUR - down from $2,500 to $2,000 (another serious decline);

Major FIVE - up from $2,000 to $6,000 (also a 3 fold increase, same as ONE)

A case can be made for an 8 fold increase in Major FIVE, which would continue the Fibonacci sequence 3, 5, 8. You can do the maths if you like, but the fact is you can pick your own number for the gain in Major FIVE. Three times the low of $2,000 was actually the conservative expectation, producing a bull market peak target of $6,000.

I would not have invested 40% of the family capital into gold, silver and the corresponding mining shares based solely on my bullish EWP expectations. The following is a quote extracted from "Elliott Wave and the Gold Price" written in 2003 and referenced above:

"I am not a gung ho advocate of the EWP. I discovered not only its strengths but also its weaknesses. I prefer to have fundamentals, technicals and the EWP all in place (if possible) before committing myself to an investment."

As mentioned in this quotation, I prefer to have fundamental and technical analyses in line with the EWP before committing to a position. Obviously I was satisfied with the fundamental and technical outlook for gold when I made the dramatic change in our investment portfolio in 2002.

The technical analysis included the following:

# 1. The 21 year bear market in precious metals had ended with the multi-decade down trend line being broken on the upside.

# 2. The precious metal markets were oversold with sentiment and emotional indicators sporting extreme negative readings with bullish connotations.

# 3. In the 1970's bull market, gold increased from a low of $35 to a peak of $850, a massive 24.3 times the low price. If the current bull market was to be of the same order, then one could project an ultimate peak of over $6,221 ($256 x 24.3). This matched the $6,000 target determined under the EWP.

The fundamental analysis was the real clincher. I had become convinced that the world, and especially the USA, was heading for a major financial crisis that would be so powerful that it would overwhelm all other factors. It would become the single most important criteria impacting on investment decisions. Privately I referred to this as the "Big Kahuna" crisis.

I anticipated that the Big Kahuna would give rise to the risk of a systemic meltdown, which would result in the authorities "throwing money at problems", bailing out all the banks and large corporations that got into trouble. This would lead to the destruction of the currency. I wrote about this in more detail in "Seven D's of the developing Disaster" in April, 2005, an article that can be found at:

http://www.freebuck.com/articles/afield/050428afield.htm

The consequence of the systemic meltdown would be a vast increase in newly created money which would result in a massive rise in the gold price of the order that I was anticipating. A further consequence would be the introduction of new national and international monetary systems. Several articles followed in the next few years, culminating in "Crisis Cogitations" which was published just 2 weeks ago at:

http://news.goldseek.com/AlfField/1226560260.php

If you haven't read "Crisis Cogitations", I would urge you to do so in order to better understand the current crisis. Obviously the current financial crisis is the Big Kahuna that I had been anticipating, although I didn't expect it to take five years to emerge.

Reverting back to the situation in 2003, both the technical and fundamental underpinnings for gold seemed to be pretty solid. Consequently I felt confident that the bullish EWP forecasts, both the shorter term and the undisclosed longer term expectation, would work out. There was no purpose served in revealing the potential for the market to reach $6,000. To get there, gold had to get to the $630 target first, which was a sufficiently daring forecast in 2003.

The current situation

The chart below depicts the Comex Gold price on a weekly basis. In February 2006, in Update IV, the $630 target was increased to $768 as a result of intervening market action. A couple of months later the gold price exceeded $630 and moved to $733 in May 2006. From that point a 23% correction to $563 occurred.

Confusion reigned because a relatively minor correction had been anticipated, to be followed by a rise to $768. Thereafter the long awaited 25% to 33% correction was scheduled to occur. Instead, the decline measured 23% and the obvious conclusion was that this was the long awaited 25% to 33% correction, albeit slightly stunted. Quite possibly I was overly influenced by my previously unpublished rough target of $750 followed by a decline to $500. The actual outcome of a peak of $733 and a correction to $563 was remarkably close to my rough estimate and seemed to adequately fit the requirement for the end of Major ONE and the corrective wave Major TWO. In coming to this conclusion I glossed over the fact that the correction to $563 was an obvious triangle, and triangles are almost always 4th waves, yet I was calling it a 2nd wave, Major TWO. I also glossed over the fact that the correction was below the 25% to 33% magnitude required.

I mentioned previously that the early corrections were 4%, 8% and 16% at increasing orders of magnitude. If one were to be pedantic, one would say that the next level of correction should be 32%. Looking at the chart below, the correction from $1015 to $699 is 31%! It sticks out like a sore thumb. Surely this is exactly the 32% correction that we should have been anticipating for Major TWO?

Assuming that the $699 low on 23 October 2008 turns out to be the actual low point of the correction, and that remains to be proven, then we can conclude that we have seen the low point for Major TWO. That will allow us to update my original "back of the envelope" template to much higher levels, as follows:

Major ONE - up from $256 to $1,015 (actually 4 times the $255 low);

Major TWO - down from $1015 to $699, say $700 (a decline of 31%);

Major THREE - up from $700 to $3,500 (a Fibonacci 5 times the $500 low);

Major FOUR - down from $3,500 to $2,500 (a 29% decline);

Major FIVE - up from $2,500 to $10,000 (also a 4 fold increase, same as ONE)

Once again, you can pick your number for the gain in FIVE and multiply it by $2,500. The numbers become astronomical and can really only be possible in a runaway inflationary environment, something which many thinking people are suggesting has become a possibility as a result of the actions taken during the current crisis.

Concentrating on the $3,500 target for Major THREE, which is a five fold increase from the low point of about $700, there is a case advanced in "Crisis Cogitations" for a five fold increase in money and prices in order to arrive at a "Less Hard" economic landing. In the USA, total debt recently exceeded $50 trillion and this is unsustainable given an economy with a GDP of only $14 trillion. The suggestion is that the debt level will reduce through bankruptcies to say $35 trillion while the new money created to save the situation will push up the nominal GDP to $70 trillion. A $35 trillion debt level is manageable with a GDP of $70 trillion.

It requires a five fold increase in prices to achieve the above result. Gold has retained its purchasing power over the centuries and will no doubt continue to do so in the current environment. Consequently gold will almost certainly increase five fold (or more) if the level of prices in the USA increases five fold.

In "Crisis Cogitations" it is acknowledged that the current credit/debt deflation could get out of hand and result in a serious deflationary depression. There is debate as to how gold will react in a deflationary environment, but the fact is that in a serious depression bankruptcies will be rife and price levels will decline. This may result in cash and Government bonds performing better than gold, but this is not certain. Gold cannot go bankrupt and is thus an asset that people can hold with confidence in a deflationary depression. It is possible that demand for a "safe haven" investment may be large enough to cause the metal to perform better than cash or Government Bonds.

The odds, however, strongly favour an inflationary outcome. Given a strong will and the ability to create any amount of new money via the electronic money machine, it seems a foregone conclusion that runaway inflation will be the end result. If Mugabe could do it in Zimbabwe, there seems little doubt that Ben Bernanke and his associates in other countries will have no trouble in doing it too.

Why quit writing these reports?

I have noticed from the emails that I receive that many people are using these reports to guide their trading activities in gold. I have had no objection to this in the past, but feel that it would be foolish to trade gold in the circumstances of the Big Kahuna crisis that we are living though at the moment. It has become a question of individual financial survival in an environment where things are happening more rapidly and with increasing violence. I feel very strongly that it is time to quietly hold onto one's gold insurance and not attempt to trade it. I do not wish to provide interim levels that may cause people to be encouraged to trade their gold to skim a few extra fiat dollars or other currencies, but lose their gold as a result.

So it is Good Bye, Good Luck and God Bless,

Alf Field 25 November 2008 Comments to: ajfield@attglobal.net

This article reprinted at USAGOLD by kind permission of the author, Alf Field.

For a free subscription to our newsletters, please click here.

By Michael J. Kosares

Michael J. Kosares , founder and president

USAGOLD - Centennial Precious Metals, Denver

Crisis Cogitations - Alf Field

2011-08-10T11:23:00.000Z

The flaw in the international monetary system allows the USA to pay for its trade deficit using newly created US Dollars. This has been going on for two decades but has mushroomed in recent years. Ten years ago, the US trade deficit was of the order of $100 billion per annum. This number grew steadily until a couple of years ago it was running at $800 billion per annum. An injection of $800 billion into the world’s banking system could accommodate new loans of nine times that amount, or $7.2 trillion in a single year!

Recently the US trade deficit has been averaging $700 billion per annum, allowing new loans of the order of $6.3 trillion per annum to possibly be created. These numbers are in addition to other sources of new money which individual countries injected into their local monetary systems to stimulate their economies.

Martin Armstrong (Economic Confidence Model) Turn Dates

2011-06-21T15:22:00.000Z

Discovery of the Model: http://princetoneconomics.blogspot.com/search/label/Discovery%20of%20the%208.6%20Yr%20Pi%20Cycle

Turn dates that happened after he discovered the model:

1977.05 Start of inflation that took gold from $105 ro $875 in ....
1981.35 when the US raised interest rates trying to kill inflation.This caused huge capital flows into the US strengthening the dollar until ....
1985.65 when the G5 started manipulating the US dollar down which increased volatility into ....
1987.9 when the stock market crash ended setting the stage of the greatest stock bull market in history even as capital continued to flow into Japan blowing the Japan bubble which topped on ...
1989.95 when the Japanese bubble topped sending capital fleeing into SE asia until ...
1994.25 when the S&P bottomed and the western markets started exploding higher attracting even more capital back from SE Asia leading to the
1997 SE Asian crisis
1998.55 Russia defaulted on its debts leading to the LTCM Collapse and caused a cascade of liquidation worldwide
2000.70 09/13/00 -> Dot Com Bubble burst
2002.85 11/08/02 -> Market bottom after Dot Com Bust
2005.xx 01/02/05 -> US Property market peaked
2007.15 02/27/07 -> US Stock market peaked a month before this
2009.30 04/23/09 -> US Stock market bottomed a month before this
2011.45 06/18/11 -> That was two days ago - Greek default coming up???

America's Killjoys

2011-06-17T21:44:00.002Z

You see, 100 years ago, there was outright famine in Obwalden. With so many farmers, who often had 10 children, the available farmland was just not enough for the people. Starvation got so bad that the Swiss government offered anyone free passage to America if they would promise never to come back. Many of these emigrants settled in the Imperial Valley of California, about as far from the Alps and green meadows as you can get.

The U.S. was haven for the poor people of Obwalden, who were starving and saved by moving to America. These people are very appreciative of what America offered to their great-great-grandparents. America literally saved their lives.

"And that is why they don't understand why America is now 'destroying itself,' as one of them told me.

WW I - "I Tried to Stop the Bloody Thing"

2011-05-07T20:41:00.002Z

It was in Britain that significant numbers of war resisters first acted on their beliefs and paid the price. They did not even come close to stopping the bloodshed, but their strength of conviction remains one of the glories of a dark time. By the conflict’s end, more than 20,000 British men of military age would refuse the draft. Many, on principle, also refused the noncombatant alternative service offered to conscientious objectors, and more than 6,000 served prison terms under harsh conditions: hard labor, a bare-bones diet, and a strict “rule of silence.” This was one of the largest groups ever jailed for political reasons in a Western democracy. War opponents behind bars also included older men—and a few women—as well. If we could time-travel our way into British prisons in late 1917 and early 1918 we would meet the nation’s leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize, more than half a dozen future members of Parliament, one future cabinet minister, and a former newspaper editor who was now publishing a clandestine journal for his fellow inmates on toilet paper. It would be rare to find a more distinguished array of people ever imprisoned together.

The Futility of Fighting Government Corruption in India

2011-04-14T13:10:00.000Z

Anna Hazare and the rest of the Indian people who are celebrating in the streets today are missing the forest for the trees. They are under the Western-inspired delusion that democratic government itself is never evil – only individual leaders or specific laws are ever "corrupt" and in need of reform. Following his "victory," Hazare himself counseled the Indian people "to have faith in democratic government." This from a man who had to almost commit suicide solely in order to convince the democratic government to consider following its own laws. The depths of human naiveté sometimes boggle the mind. You really would think ordinary Indians would recognize this, because the government here does nothing that is of use to ordinary Indians. The infrastructure, if indeed it deserves the name, is a shambles. The water the government provides people to drink is literally poisoned with super-bacteria. The sanitation and sewage systems that the government is providing the people of this country are laughable to the point that it will make your eyes water – and your nose burn. What the hell do the Indian people need this fantastically corrupt government for anyway? Why try to "reform" something that is completely incompetent, corrupt, and unnecessary?

The Radical Rich - the constitution, the New Deal and now QE

2011-03-21T20:07:00.000Z

http://mises.org/daily/5031/The-Radical-Rich

The impoverished farmers did not ask Washington for hand-outs; all they wanted was relief from mortgage indebtedness, and they were getting that by way of private arrangements. Interest delinquencies were being forgiven and capital amounts were being voluntarily slashed, before 1933, and it looked as though the farmers would bale themselves out by the old-fashioned deflation of fictitious values; but this process was halted by the manna-from-heaven plan, and the bankers and insurance companies sang hosannas to the New Deal.
It was not because they could put it to their profit that the 1933 radicalism was taken up by the rich and given respectability. They embraced it because it had the glamor of the "latest thing." Maybe the yearning for novelty germinates in ennui, maybe it springs from the desire for self-expression or the hankering for leadership. At any rate, the glittering novelty of the New Deal perked up the jaded appetites of those who had time and money on their hands, and they went in for the "more abundant life" philosophy with the same enthusiasm that they put into new-fangled religions, futuristic art, and the latest dance steps. They lionized the literateurs of "social significance;" they financed research foundations and manned them with PhDs who knew in advance what they were supposed to find out; they underwrote the salaries of professors who preached New Dealism. And they subscribed heavily to the budgets of publications who criticised Mr. Roosevelt only when he was not as New Dealish as the editors wanted him to be.

The Real Meaning of Defense - mises.org

2011-03-21T19:54:00.000Z

Gaddafi himself has said that he will stop at nothing to keep his power.
To him, it is a simple matter. Government rules. The people obey. Just because some sizable swath tries to overturn that system doesn't mean that the system must be upended. Isn't that the philosophy of all government in all times and all places? If it were not, the state would not need coercion, and it would not be a state. It would be a part of society, just another association the cumulates and represents the interests of a group, like the Rotary Club, chess club, or a house of worship. It is the power to legally beat, jail, and kill dissidents that makes the state what it is.
The guns and munitions that have long been accumulated under the claim that these were necessary to protect people — of course the people themselves were long ago disarmed by being denied the freedom to possess weapons of equal or greater power — every government will turn those very weapons on its people to slaughter them when they cease to obey

Good as Gold - Alan Greenspan and his not-so-secret formula

2011-02-20T00:04:00.001Z

It seems everyone has concluded that Greenspan was either operating on some secret formula known only to himself, or on the basis of some ineffable instinct. It wasn't instinct. It was a formula. When Greenspan followed the formula, markets were stable. When he failed to follow it, markets went into crisis. The formula wasn't a secret. Greenspan talked about it openly. But it was so simple, nobody who heard it realized what he was hearing.

A extraordinarily prophetic interview with Sir James Goldsmith in 1994

2011-02-18T18:28:00.001Z

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZTzPmn-87w
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_hiEvTNV5k
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yonUgZ2Y6Qs
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW6KkF6aa_A
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDxufaKZLjc

Leo Wanta is worth $27 trillion

2011-02-03T22:43:00.000Z

Yet no one has heard of him

Jesús Huerta de Soto on Really Existing Socialism

2011-02-02T12:16:00.000Z

Jesús Huerta de Soto on Really Existing Socialism - Andy Duncan - Mises Daily

Socialism thus survives because of the free market, which constantly tries to repair the damage socialism causes through its taxations, regulations, and debt-fed inflations. The free market self-repairs, reconnects, and reorganizes itself — spontaneously — like a river in flow coping with the damming of malcontented beavers. The final triumph of socialism can thus be seen as the complete damming of the river and the obliteration of humanity, and the final triumph of the free market will be when this evil dam is finally dissolved, destroyed, and eradicated, and the river can flow freely again without obstruction.

Gold and Honey - Antal E Fekete

2011-01-12T19:06:00.000Z

Gold and Honey*: "Open letter to Thomas Hoenig, President, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
", the gold standard is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for achieving lower unemployment. A necessary and sufficient condition would assume that Adam Smith's Real Bills doctrine is also rehabilitated along with the gold standard. The bill market is the clearing house, without which the gold standard cannot survive"

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science - Magazine - The Atlantic

2010-10-16T00:54:00.000Z

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science - Magazine - The Atlantic: "Ioannidis’s career. He’s what’s known as a meta-researcher, and he’s become one of the world’s foremost experts on the credibility of medical research. He and his team have shown, again and again, and in many different ways, that much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies—conclusions that doctors keep in mind when they prescribe antibiotics or blood-pressure medication, or when they advise us to consume more fiber or less meat, or when they recommend surgery for heart disease or back pain—is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong. He charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed. His work has been widely accepted by the medical community; it has been published in the field’s top journals, where it is heavily cited; and he is a big draw at conferences. Given this exposure, and the fact that his work broadly targets everyone else’s work in medicine, as well as everything that physicians do and all the health advice we get, Ioannidis may be one of the most influential scientists alive. Yet for all his influence, he worries that the field of medical research is so pervasively flawed, and so riddled with conflicts of interest, that it might be chronically resistant to change—or even to publicly admitting that there’s a problem.

Bastiat's famous Candlestick makers' Petition

2010-10-01T14:31:00.000Z

Bastiat's famous Candlestick makers' Petition: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

The very first 911 skeptics post to hit the Internet written as events transpired

2010-09-13T00:38:00.000Z

The very first 911 skeptics post to hit the Internet written as events transpired

Gary North - Consevatives are Semi-Communists

2010-09-06T17:12:00.003Z

Three of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto (1848) are still universally accepted.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

Phelps: The Economy Needs a Bit of Ingenuity

2010-08-09T06:39:00.000Z

Market Clues: Phelps: The Economy Needs a Bit of Ingenuity:

The steps being taken by government officials to help the economy are based on a faulty premise. The diagnosis is that the economy is "constrained" by a deficiency of aggregate demand, the total demand for American goods and services. The officials' prescription is to stimulate that demand, for as long as it takes, to facilitate the recovery of an otherwise undamaged economy --- as if the task were to help an uninjured skater get up after a bad fall.

The prescription will fail because the diagnosis is wrong. There are no symptoms of deficient demand, like deflation, and no signs of anything like a huge liquidity shortage that could cause a deficiency. Rather, our economy is damaged by deep structural faults that no stimulus package will address

Can the Fed Successfully Exit? - David Howden - Mises Daily

2010-08-07T14:40:00.000Z

Can the Fed Successfully Exit? - David Howden - Mises Daily: "At the upper bound, as several commentators such as Robert Murphy have warned, is the outcome where the Fed does nothing to reign in excess reserves. In this case, the Fed will have created $1.1 trillion worth of inflation.

More importantly, we can estimate the lower bound for the Fed-created inflation. The value differential between the excess reserves in the banking system and the subprime assets held by the Fed will remain in the banking sector indefinitely. As the Fed can only purchase back from the banking system reserves of equal value to its available assets, any drop in the value of its own assets will result in excess reserves remaining in the hands of the banking sector — waiting to manifest as price inflation when finally utilized.

Why do Israelis commit massacres?

2010-08-05T21:11:00.000Z

Christopher Bollyn : "Israel used white phosphorus on the civilian population of Gaza during their assault during Christmas 2008. Israeli forces even destroyed a U.N. warehouse and an American school with white phosphorus. Despite a U.N. report that found that Israel had committed a raft of war crimes no Israeli has faced criminal charges.

How and Why The World Financial System Has to Collapse | Jeff Berwick | Safehaven.com

2010-07-20T23:51:00.000Z

How and Why The World Financial System Has to Collapse | Jeff Berwick | Safehaven.com: "Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s stated, 'Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.'

Mercantilism and Inflation - Murray N. Rothbard

2010-06-05T14:58:00.000Z

Mercantilism and Inflation - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

Thus, by the end of the 17th century, the states of western Europe, particularly England and France, had discovered a grand new route toward the aggrandizement of state power: revenue through inflationary creation of paper money, either by government or, more subtly, by a privileged, monopolistic, central bank.

In England, private banks of deposit were inspired to proliferate (especially checking accounts) under this umbrella, and the government was at last able to expand the public debt to fight its endless wars; during the French war of 1702–13, for example it was able to finance 31 percent of its budget via public debt.

How ALL Systems Can Collapse Overnight - 3rd centuary Roman collapse - Martin Armstrong

2010-04-24T18:30:00.000Z

How ALL Systems Can Collapse Overnight 7/09

The Spanish Ulcer: Napoleon, Britain, and the Siege of Cádiz

2010-04-11T01:23:00.000Z

The Spanish Ulcer: Napoleon, Britain, and the Siege of Cádiz

The Troubadours by H.J. Chaytor - Full Text Free Book (Part 1/2)

2010-01-25T01:07:00.000Z

The Troubadours by H.J. Chaytor - Full Text Free Book (Part 1/2): "Philippe Auguste was no less indifferent than the provincial lords, who actually favoured the [77] heretics in many cases; the Roman Catholic bishops also were jealous of the pope's legates and refused to support them. Not only the laity but many of the clergy had been seduced: the heretics had translated large portions of scripture (translations which still remain to us) and constantly appealed to the scriptures in opposition to the canon laws and the immorality of Rome. They had a full parochial and diocesan organisation and were in regular communication with the heretics of other countries. It was clear that the authority of Southern France was doomed, unless some vigorous steps to assert her authority were speedily
taken. 'Ita per omnes terras multiplicati sunt ut grande periculum patiatur ecclesia Dei.' [27] The efforts of St Dominic were followed by the murder of the papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau, in 1208, which created an excitement comparable with that aroused by the murder of Thomas a Becket, thirty-eight years before, and gave Innocent III. his opportunity. In the summer of 1209 a great army of crusaders assembled at Lyons, and Southern France was invaded by a horde composed partly of religious fanatics, of men who were anxious to gain the indulgences awarded to crusaders without the danger of a journey overseas, and of men who were simply bent on plunder. The last stage in the development of the crusade movement was thereby reached: originally begun to recover [78] the Holy Sepulchre, it had been extended to other countries against the avowed enemies of Christianity. Now the movement was to be turned against erring members of the Christian Church and in the terms of a metaphor much abused at that period, the Crusader was not only to destroy the wolf, but to drive the vagrant sheep back into the fold.[28] Beziers and Carcassonne were captured with massacre; Toulouse was spared upon the humiliating submission of Raimon VI., and little organised opposition was offered to the crusading forces under Simon de Montfort. The following years saw the revolt of Toulouse and the excommunication of Raimon VI. (1211), the battle of Muret in which Raimon was defeated and his supporter Pedro of Aragon, was killed (1213), the Lateran Council (1215), the siege of Toulouse and the death of Simon de Montfort (1218). The foundation of the Dominican order and of the Inquisition marked the close of the struggle."

Elephants In The Room « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism

2010-01-24T13:06:00.000Z

Elephants In The Room : "What most of this coverage of mainline and popular press fail to mention is the determined Black struggle for overthrow of slavery. Between 1789-1833, more than 20 slave rebellions occurred in the Caribbean – one every 2 years. It were these slave revolts that ‘persuaded’ the West to abolish slavery. In the USA, about 200 slave uprising and revolts occurred in the USA before the Civil War.

Another aspect which is not mentioned is the significant reason for unpopularity of slavery in the US North. The reason was the depressing effect of slavery on wages and employment. Poor (free) whites had to compete with slave labour for employment – and that was a non-starter."

Asuras and Slavery – The Indic Disconnect

2010-01-24T12:59:00.000Z

Asuras and Slavery – The Indic Disconnect: "This tale in the Mahabharata is an interesting insight on monuments and man-nature conflict. The Pandavas, having secured a favorable award from Dhritarashtra, in their inheritance dispute, decided to set up a new capital. The divine architect Maya was retained to build this city. The site chosen for the new capital city – a forest, Khandava. Overcome by their hubris, the Pandavas, burnt down the entire forest - and the animals inhabiting the forest. In place of the forest came up the gleaming new city of Indraprastha.

All the kings were called to marvel at the new city. And in her pride, Draupadi mocked at Duryodhana – a guest. To avenge this mockery, Duryodhana challenged Yudhishthira for a game of chess (instead of a war) – which Yudhishthira promptly lost. They lost their new city – and were sent into exile by Duryodhana. Lessons duly learnt, the Pandavas after the completion of their exile, asked for five villages. After winning the War Of Mahabharat, they ruled from the ancient capital of Hastinapur. No more gleaming cities for them."

What happened to Alexander’s loot from India …? « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism

2010-01-23T23:58:00.000Z

What happened to Alexander’s loot from India …? « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism: "the other two interesting that Greco-Macedonian armies took back to Europe were more cultural. First was the current Macedonain national dress - the ‘salvaria’. The entire North West Indian sub-continent, from Punjab to Afghanistan wears the salwar – which is tubular leggings.

This is a unisex garment – like the sari /dhoti also is. And popular all over India today. Unlike other parts of the world, where women were forced to conform to a male standards and prescriptions of dressing, Indian women were free and dressed like their men did (Feminists note – Indian men were forced to dress, like their women did, since you insist). Unisex clothing, saris and dhotis dominated the Indian plains, and the salwars, in the North West mountain regions of India. The Indo-Scythians used leather leggings – which were helpful in case of long marches on horse backs.

These leggings even today called the salvaria in Macedonia. The Persians at that time had the robes – and purple robes were the sign of royalty. The Greeks wore chitons - and peplos. The Greek fustanella similarly, is very much like tribal costumes worn even today by Gujarathi rabari tribals."

Burn Your Old History Books – Emerging New History

2010-01-23T23:26:00.000Z

Burn Your Old History Books – Emerging New History « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism: "West Asian reluctance to give up slavery, made Indo Aryan rulers disengage politically from West Asia and Middle East. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the three ‘desert religions’, gained their first converts from slaves, but continued with slavery till the 20th century.

The 3 ‘desert religions’ instead of reforming slave societies, just enabled the transfer of slave titles. Freedom meant old slaves became the new slave masters. Non-political Indian role in West Asia and Middle East continued to grow in terms of trade and learning. Babylon became a part of Alexander’s empire (and then the Roman Empire).

The slave revolt of Egypt by Moses, made the Indic rulers reform and distance themselves from the slave owning societies. Hence the fade out of the Indic rule from the Middle East – but the continuation of Buddhist influences, trade and peoples contact.

This slave reform and distancing of Indic rulers from slave societies was led by Indian reformers like Buddha and Mahavira. This happened not around and after 500 BC as determined by Western dating logic (which needed to fit the Aryan Invasion Theory, The ‘evolution’ of Greek and Romans) – but around 1000 BC."

Birth Of Western Music « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism

2010-01-23T23:24:00.000Z

Cultural Dacoity « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism: "

The Roma-Gypsy contribution in the growth of Western musical tradition has been blanked out from Western history. The spread of Gypsy populations across Europe by the 16th century coincides with the birth of Western music systems – a stripped down version of the 3000-years old Indian music structure.

Hungarian music was Gypsy music arrogated by the White Christian majority to itself – and resented the Gypsy music culture. Western military music came from gypsy music bands of Turkey, Austria and Hungary . Carefully hidden is Bela Bartok’s research into ‘folk’ music and ‘inspiration’, as is the source of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody – a by product of Gypsy music. Before that, Verdi wrote the Il Trovatore, in 1853, a story about the clash between the White Christian Spain and a band of Gypsies. Georges Bizet’s, Carmen, another opera about the love of a Spaniard and the Gypsy, Carmen, used Gypsy music and themes considerably – apart from the story itself.
Gypsy Music - Inspired or Plagiarised?

Roma Gypsy Music - Inspired or Plagiarised?

After WW1, when parts of Hungary folded into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bartok’s access to his ‘inspiration’, the Gypsies (and their music) was also cut off, his music compositions also declined. In the true ‘cultural dacoity’ mode, Bartok (after emigrating to USA), covered his tracks and found ingenious ways to deny the Gypsy influence. Between Bela Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly and Leos Janacek, they recorded 6000 Gypsy tunes on wax cylinders. The wax cylinders on which Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly and Leos Janacek copied Gypsy music are now sought after items.

It is the dances of the Roma Gypsies behind the European cultural icon – the Flamenco! The rumba and the tango. It is the Gypsies (along with the Arabs) who brought Indian music systems to Europe – based on which the Western music system developed over the last 300-400 years. The iconic guitar is a modified Indian musical instrument – brought to Europe by the Gypsies, which the West tries ‘passing off’ as their own. Hittites, the Indo Aryans of the Middle East, before the Gypsies had an instrument similar to the guitar. Why am I not surprised when flamenco style, Gypsy music group, Los Del Rio’s Macarena became a big hit in India. This contribution to modern and classical Western music by the Euro Gypsy remains unacknowledged – and the Western arrogation continues unmitigated.
The Gypsies In Provence

Modern day Roma Gypsies made their first mark in Europe in Provence. The richness of the Roma Gypsy music (of India) overwhelmed the people of Southern France. They whole heartedly, assimilated the Gypsies (then known as troubadours) and their culture – warmly. 500 years later, across a bleak Europe, the French poet Voltaire, the English WB Yeats, lamented and longed for Provence and the richness of the Provencal culture. Modern French cuisine, wine culture and tradition took root in this very area – and survived in spite of the best attempts by the Church to exterminate it in the Albigensian Crusade."

The Federal Reserve - Doug Gnazzo

2010-01-17T20:26:00.000Z

The Federal Reserve :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website

Federal Reserve Notes function as the ultimate wealth transference mechanism. When paper obligations of government debt are allowed to circulate as legal tender, the resulting debasement of the currency and loss of purchasing power siphons wealth away from the people who hold the debt and accept it as money, to the elite few who issue the debt as money – money they create out of thin air; money they do not have in their possession and does not even exist. It comes into existence by the very act of lending or extending credit. It is a vile and pernicious system that bleeds the unwary host.

Are Israel and apartheid South Africa really different?

2010-01-04T14:15:00.000Z

Are Israel and apartheid South Africa really different? - Haaretz - Israel News: "apartheid is 'a policy of segregation and discrimination based on race and ethnicity, which is based on a series of discriminatory practices designed to achieve the superiority of a certain race and oppress those of other races.' Indeed, systematic segregation (apartheid) and discrimination in South Africa were meant to preserve the supremacy of one race over others.

In Israel, on the other hand, institutional discrimination is meant to preserve the supremacy of a group of Jewish settlers over Palestinian Arabs. As far as discriminatory practices are concerned, it's hard to find differences between white rule in South Africa and Israeli rule in the territories; for example, separate areas and separate laws for Jews and Palestinians."

Settlers, tell us, what do you think will happen?

2010-01-04T14:05:00.000Z

Settlers, tell us, what do you think will happen? - Haaretz - Israel News: "He is convinced that he is a member of a special people, a light unto the nations, and that he, the settler, is the torch bearer at the vanguard. They preach to him on how his life is much more 'principled' than that of other Israelis, those who have the misfortune of living in the sovereign State of Israel. There, they are Hellenizing, draft-dodging traitors and hedonists. And what of the settler? Well, he's a good Jew, the best there is, the last of the Zionists. Isn't that good enough? For he is also a victim, the only victim of terrorism, the victim of all Israeli society, constantly persecuted and deprived."

India’s Money Lenders – The Colonial Stereotypes « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism

2009-12-19T11:52:00.000Z

India’s Money Lenders – The Colonial Stereotypes « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism

What Can be Done

The largest rural credit agency system, which knows Indian agriculture like the back of its hand, is available to the Indian economy. Trash the colonial propaganda – and use these money lenders.

Step 1 – Stop calling them money lenders. This term was used and has acquired pejorative connotations.

Step 2 – Bring them under SEBI – an effective organization, not reputed for corruption.

Step 3 – Increase credit supply – and interest rates will automatically fall. Allow re-finance to these ‘banias’ – based on their loan books.

Step 4 – Create credit enhancement tools – by use of traditional adhatiyas, other money lenders, property collateral of the end user, etc.

Step 5 – Induce competition by simplifying registration and inducing initial success for existing and new comers.

These credit experts can become low cost credit delivery mechanisms – which will revolutionize Indian agriculture. Will Indian planners grow out of their colonial moulds? Will Indian legislation go native? Sooner the better.

What Can The Money Lenders Do?

Under generations of persecution, extortion and discrimination has blunted the organizational capability of the ‘native money lender.’ He needs to look at himself afresh – and exploit business opportunities and use his knowledge of the Indian financial ‘consumer.’

A simple outline of an action plan for the money lenders to reclaim their position can be as follows: -

1. Incorporate a holding company.

2. Contribute one lakh rupees capital per member – with 34,000 members.

3. Create a paid up promoter capital of Rs.340 crores – and an IPO for 660 crores.

4. Obtain RBI licence for a rural bank with this paid up capital of 1000 crores.

5. Enrol all money lender members as DSAs.

6. Refinance money lender portfolio – and create further liquidity.

7. Use the money lender network to raise deposits, sell insurance, obtain refinance mortgage for housing, etc.

Even a conservative estimate of Rs.1.00 crore lending, guaranteed by these money lenders can inject Rs.34,000 crores of investment in the agricultural economy in India. SEBI can be co-opted to create appropriate supervisory and oversight measures.

Rise and Fall in Dubai: An Austrian Perspective - Fernando Ulrich

2009-12-18T08:04:00.000Z

Rise and Fall in Dubai: An Austrian Perspective - Fernando Ulrich - Mises Institute

Inflation and the Savior State: What Is Money?, Part 16 by Gary North

2009-11-25T08:33:00.000Z

What Is Money?, Part 16 by Gary North:
"Every regime has court prophets. These are paid hirelings who praise the state as the source of deliverance in history.

The difference between court prophets in the ancient world and those of today is simple to understand. The older court prophets ritually sanctioned the state and its rulers in the name of god, who stood above the state, yet was somehow incarnate in the state. Today's court prophets are more like a Greek chorus than a school of the prophets. They affirm the autonomy of the state from anything outside the creation. They deny that any higher court of appeal exists. Four centuries ago, this was called the divine right of kings. Today, it is the right of the state to divinity by default.

The modern court has many prophets. They come from every academic discipline. They are employed by tax-funded universities. They are also hired directly through government grants. The state buys its prophets, as it always has. Ahab had lots of them. He wanted them to persuade the king of Judah of the success of his recommended war against his enemies."

Indian Gold Reserves. Forgotten History! New Opportunity?

2009-11-24T10:07:00.000Z

Indian Gold Reserves. Forgotten History! New Opportunity? « 2ndlook – View From A Square Prism

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of 'SixthSense' technology-TV-Economic Times

2009-11-17T22:30:00.000Z

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of 'SixthSense' technology-TV-Economic Times: "Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper 'laptop'.

In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all."

SHEER GENIUS. No other word to describe this.

The Next goldman Bubble: Carbon Credits

2009-11-14T18:22:00.000Z

Inside The Great American Bubble Machine : Rolling Stone: "instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an 'environmental plan,' called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance."

Martin Armstrong: GOLD $5000+ 11/11/09

2009-11-14T17:30:00.000Z

GOLD $5000+ 11/11/09

The Gold Standard is no more the answer to our economic problems that Karl Marx's insane idea of taking all private assets away from the people and handing them over to the politicians. The GOLD STANDARD is a wonderful idea of utopia. However, it is no more practical than communism.

The presumption behind the ideas of both Marxism and the Gold standard is that in some mysterious way, our politicians are honest men who will always look afte s as a father or mother cares about their child. Keep in mind that some parents abuse their children and so the likelihood of us ever finding honest politicians is like expecting Justice for All. These are the words for school children to pledge in school. They mean nothing to those in power.

MONEY (Wealth) is not gold. It is the full and complete productive capacity of the people that constitute the nation. GOLD is a free HEDGE against the mismanagement of the state. It is NOT a hedge against inflation.

Summary of all the MIT Introduction to Algorithms lectures - good coders code, great reuse

2009-11-11T21:37:00.000Z

Summary of all the MIT Introduction to Algorithms lectures - good coders code, great reuse

The Zero Discount Value of Gold and Dethroning the Dollar by Michael S. Rozeff

2009-10-20T22:35:00.000Z

The Zero Discount Value of Gold and Dethroning the Dollar by Michael S. Rozeff

Soaking the Poor for the Benefit of the Rich

2009-10-10T17:54:00.000Z

Soaking the Poor for the Benifit of the Rich - Martin Armstrong
Well worth a read!

Conspiracy Theories Cloaking Reality 10/5/09

2009-10-08T21:51:00.000Z

Conspiracy Theories Cloaking Reality 10/5/09 - Martin Armstrong

America Attacked During Obama Health Care Debate by British NHS Army

2009-08-16T16:55:00.001Z

America Attacked During Obama Health Care Debate by British NHS Army :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website

The mantra of "Free at the Point of Delivery" implies that the NHS is FREE, it is not, the NHS will cost the tax payer £120 billion this year, but what free at the point of delivery does impact upon is in the way patients are treated. The difference between an NHS GP consultation and the private consultation is the difference between the Sun and the Moon, for instance as soon as a patient walks through the door of a NHS GP, they are swiped in as though they are an ATM card earning the practice the requisite fee associated with the consultation and now the GP wants you out ASAP so that the next patient can be swiped in and out, hence why it can take between 5 and 10 visits before a patient receives a proper accurate diagnoses. Many a time the patient can be made to feel that they are wasting the GP's time, until perhaps after the 10th visit when the patient is finally referred to a consultant that makes the diagnoses for better or worse that should have occurred months earlier.

Whereas a private GP in recognition of the fact that the patient is directly PAYING for the consultation ensures that both sides seek value for money. The private GP gives far more time to the patient and actually listens to what the patient is saying. The patient is fully prepared to ensure that they receive value for money so under no circumstances would be brushed off with a 2 minute diagnoses as NHS patients can be. Nor is there any question of the patient made to feel that they are wasting the GP's time for the patient has PAID for the consultation and therefore BOUGHT the GP's time.

Let's talk about tasers - Glenn Greenwald

2009-08-12T14:58:00.000Z

Let's talk about tasers - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: "As awful as the possibility of death is, tasers would be a blight on any free people even if they weren't so often deadly. Tasers were sold to the public as a tool for law enforcement to be used in lieu of deadly force. Presumably, this means situations in which officers would have previously had to use their firearms.

But that's not what's happening. Tasers are routinely used by police to torture innocent people who have not broken any law and whose only crime is being disrespectful toward their authority or failing to understand their 'orders' (even when they are not legally required to) ... It is becoming a barbaric tool of authoritarian, social control."

Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

2009-08-12T13:46:00.001Z

Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin -- Printout -- TIME: "So why does the belief persist that exercise leads to weight loss, given all the scientific evidence to the contrary?"

The End of Western Civilisation

2009-08-12T13:45:00.001Z

The End of Western Civilisation :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website: "The Platonic image of 'philosopher kings' sitting atop pyramids of power and directing the lives of hundreds of millions of people to ill-defined ends, is increasingly questioned by those who produce the genuine order in society. Contrary to the basic tenets of all forms of statism, it is the spontaneous order generated by the individual pursuit of self-interests in a marketplace that accounts for both our liberty and material well-being. But in the marbled halls of state, as well as the sycophantic media and academic institutions that are well-paid to propagate a continuing faith in the cult of centralized power, the mantra is still heard, with only the content of the litanies modified to fit new situations. 'Save the planet' now substitutes for 'save democracy,' but the premise of state power structures remains intact."

Female sexual abuse: The untold story of society's last taboo

2009-08-12T13:44:00.000Z

Female sexual abuse: The untold story of society's last taboo - Taboos & Tolerance, Love & Sex - The Independent

FINANCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE 1788 BC

2009-08-07T09:17:00.001Z

FINANCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE 1788 BC « Culture of Life News 2

Forget the Great Depression for a minute. Canadian academics Karl Moore and David Lewis argue that you can get a better perspective on the Great Crash of 2008 AD by contrasting it with the Great Crash of 1788 BC - a market meltdown that befell the ancient world’s most dynamic financial centre almost 4,000 years earlier.

Banks and Brokers Ply Their Trade

2009-08-07T09:15:00.000Z

Banks and Brokers Ply Their Trade: "

Alan Greenspan wrote the following back in 1967,

'In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold......The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirade against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as the protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.'

Obviously, with this eloquent explanation on how gold protects the property of the common man it is certain that Greenspan clearly understood BEFORE he took his job at the Fed that there was no longer anything that kept the privately owned Fed from confiscating the wealth of the American people. So he knowingly took a job that he understood beforehand was confiscating the wealth of the American people and for 20 years this man moved rates for the privately owned Fed to the advantage of the many banks worldwide that own a stake in the Fed that subcontracts monetary policy for our country. It would not be hard to convict this man as he has provided his own evidence. The only thing lacking is enough intelligent individuals to cause a big enough ruckus to bring this man to justice, and of course, the bigger task of overcoming his grateful friends in high places. It is imperative if you are against many of the things this article mentions to let your representatives know. There is a constant shift of attitude more and more toward the Government feeling that it is in charge of us rather than them serving us. Most people either don't know or don't care so if you see what has been going on speak up loud and clear.

As Thomas Jefferson said,

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.'"

How Silicon Chips are made

2009-08-07T09:14:00.002Z

How Silicon Chips Are Made | PC Plus

Mass radiation poisoning of nearly all Sephardi youths in Israel

2009-08-07T09:14:00.001Z

Ringworm and Radiation: "the ugliest secret of Israel's Labor party founders: the deliberate mass radiation poisoning of nearly all Sephardi (ethnically Arabic) youths of a generation."

They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year. The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today.

Nature of Dog/Human Evolution

2009-08-07T09:12:00.000Z

The Nature Of Dog/Human Evolution « Culture of Life News

The grotesque nature of dog breeding

The Great Tax Con Job

2009-07-22T13:24:00.000Z

The Great Tax Con Job - Democratic Underground: "High top marginal tax rates (generally well above 60%) on rich people actually stabilize the economy, prevent economic bubbles from forming, prevent economic crashes, and lead to steady and sustained economic growth (and steady and sustained wage growth for working people)."

CHOMSKY: "Little difference" between Obama, Bush in substance

2009-07-07T10:15:00.000Z

"Little difference" between Obama, Bush in substance:

"In substance, there is little difference. Obama has reiterated Bush's positions, in virtually the same words."

Women are their own harshest body critcs

2009-06-23T17:01:00.000Z

We are our own harshest body critcs - Times Online

SIGTARP Investigator Sacked After Fight With Geithner

2009-06-23T13:36:00.000Z

SIGTARP Investigator Sacked After Fight With Geithner

Khan Academy

2009-06-05T12:28:00.000Z

Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.

We have 700+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, and finance which have been recorded by Salman Khan. He has also developed a free, adaptive math program available here.

To keep abreast of new videos as we add them, subscribe to the Khan Academy channel on YouTube.

The entire video library is shown below. Just click on a category or video title to start learning from the Khan Academy!

Financial Markets and Economic Crash, the Next Leg Down Will be Worse :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website

2009-06-01T00:11:00.000Z

Financial Markets and Economic Crash, the Next Leg Down Will be Worse :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website: "In an environment where businesses and consumers are rebuilding their balance sheets and paying off debt, there's only one option; inflation. Bernanke will keep interest rates will stay low while increasing monetary and fiscal stimulus. The ocean of red ink will continue to rise. Still, the systemwide contraction will persist despite the Fed's multi-trillion dollar lending programs, quantitative easing (QE) and Treasury buybacks. The 'Great Unwind' is irreversible; the era of limitless credit expansion is over."

Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress - Benjamin Franklin

2009-04-29T08:22:00.000Z

Bibliomania: Free Online Literature and Study Guides

in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones

HUMANS ARE NOT PERSONS ACCORDING TO US COURT

2009-04-27T09:50:00.000Z

HUMANS ARE NOT PERSONS ACCORDING TO US COURT

he recent ruling by a black female judge that the prisoners we hold without trial and which we torture, are NOT ‘persons’ but are SUBHUMANS with VIRTUALLY NO HUMAN RIGHTS WHATSOEVER. This ridiculous ruling by the daughter of sharecroppers is just too astonishing. And we have to figure out who a ‘person’ is. There actually is no set definition. It includes organizations, cities and of course some entire nations but not ‘humans’ as a definition!

The Tower of BIS Basel

2009-04-26T23:31:00.000Z

The Tower of BIS Basel:
Among other collateral damage produced by the Basel Accords was a spate of suicides among Indian farmers unable to get loans. The BIS capital adequacy standards required loans to private borrowers to be “risk-weighted,” with the degree of risk determined by private rating agencies; and farmers and small business owners could not afford the agencies’ fees. Banks therefore assigned 100 percent risk to the loans, and then resisted extending credit to these “high-risk” borrowers because more capital was required to cover the loans. When the conscience of the nation was aroused by the Indian suicides, the government, lamenting the neglect of farmers by commercial banks, established a policy of ending the “financial exclusion” of the weak; but this step had little real effect on lending practices, due largely to the strictures imposed by the BIS from abroad.

"Why did the BIS not retract or at least modify Basel II after seeing the devastation it had caused? Why did it sit idly by as the global economy came crashing down? Was the goal to create so much economic havoc that the world would rush with relief into the waiting arms of the BIS with its privately-created global currency? The plot thickens . . . ."

Bear Market Rally update

2009-04-20T22:30:00.002Z

The orange count is almost surely invalid. Focus on the blue (running flat) or brown (first wave complete) counts

The Rise of the Underground - WSJ.com

2009-04-17T14:00:00.000Z

The Rise of the Underground - WSJ.com

FEATURE-Christian housing faces Israeli encirclement | Reuters

2009-04-15T12:21:00.000Z

FEATURE-Christian housing faces Israeli encirclement | Reuters: "'It's not their property and they take it against your will,' said Yassar Qumsieh, a 30-year-old Website administrator, who moved with his wife to their Beit Sahour flat in 2006.

'I don't know how to describe this feeling. To call it injustice seems stupid because it's not a big enough word.'"

Our Air is Dirtier Than We Thought

2009-04-15T12:13:00.000Z

New Pollution Monitoring: Our Air is Dirtier Than We Thought: "One of my pet peeves is the focus we have on global warming. While global climate change is important, it continues to provide a red herring of sorts, taking attention away the public health concern that is air pollution. Recent developments in pollution tracking may change things. With help from satellites, scientists are beginning to understand just how dirty our air is becoming."

Banks and Brokers Ply Their Trade

2009-04-14T16:25:00.000Z

Alan Greenspan wrote the following back in 1967,

'In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold......The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirade against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as the protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.'

Obviously, with this eloquent explanation on how gold protects the property of the common man it is certain that Greenspan clearly understood BEFORE he took his job at the Fed that there was no longer anything that kept the privately owned Fed from confiscating the wealth of the American people. So he knowingly took a job that he understood beforehand was confiscating the wealth of the American people and for 20 years this man moved rates for the privately owned Fed to the advantage of the many banks worldwide that own a stake in the Fed that subcontracts monetary policy for our country. It would not be hard to convict this man as he has provided his own evidence. The only thing lacking is enough intelligent individuals to cause a big enough ruckus to bring this man to justice, and of course, the bigger task of overcoming his grateful friends in high places. It is imperative if you are against many of the things this article mentions to let your representatives know. There is a constant shift of attitude more and more toward the Government feeling that it is in charge of us rather than them serving us. Most people either don't know or don't care so if you see what has been going on speak up loud and clear.

As Thomas Jefferson said,

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.'"

Geithner's Gift To Pimco

2009-04-02T10:38:00.000Z

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Geithner's Gift To Pimco
“The Geithner plan works only if and when the taxpayer loses big time,” Stiglitz wrote in the New York Times this week. “With the government absorbing the losses, the market doesn’t care if the banks are ‘cheating’ them by selling their lousiest assets, because the government bears the cost.”

Krugman wrote in the Times last month that “Obama is squandering his credibility” with the plan.

The mysterious power of attraction - Attraction, Love & Sex

2009-03-28T18:01:00.000Z

The mysterious power of attraction - Attraction, Love & Sex - The Independent: "The inability to 'individuate' was for Jung the reason why people sometimes found themselves trapped in a romantic groundhog day, choosing again and again similarly unsuitable or abusive partners, and falling into unreasoning obsessions ending in hurt and tears. Again, such an analysis is not always entirely welcome, and it does indeed seem like rather a con the idea that the 'unlucky in love' ought to sign up with a Jungian analyst and work on getting to know and understand their hidden sexual archetype. Yet like many of Jung's ideas and many of Freud's it is hard to dismiss completely."

A Beatles' Guide to the Bear Market

2009-03-19T14:41:00.000Z

A Beatles' Guide to the Bear Market-Minyanville

That Accursed Propensity to Save - Antal E. Fekete. FSO Editorial 03/09/2009

2009-03-11T11:20:00.000Z

"That Accursed Propensity to Save" by Antal E. Fekete. FSO Editorial 03/09/2009: "Keynesians, through half a century of hard work, ably assisted by their Friedmanite comrades, have developed a highly efficient system to embezzle, unobserved, superfluous savings in an antiseptic way. Their sophisticated contra-saving devices through currency debasement anesthetize those bastard savers so that they can be pilfered and plundered without touching a raw nerve. It is a clean job, causing a minimum of commotion.

Unfortunately, these methods do not work on those who do their vicious anti-social saving in the form of gold. These guys will have to be taken care of by other means, such as threats of central bank gold sales, bubble-bursting and price-busting techniques in the paper gold markets, and other similar tactics. If everything else fails, the guillotine could be reactivated as an instrument of monetary policy, last used in this way during the French Revolution. At that time, if you were found in possession of undocumented gold, your head would be chopped off in summary justice."

Are bad sleeping habits driving us mad? - health New Scientist

2009-02-25T13:48:00.001Z

Are bad sleeping habits driving us mad?

Hayek advocates a free market choice for money

2009-01-30T13:33:00.001Z

I think it is very urgent that it become rapidly understood that there is no justification in history for the existing position of a government monopoly of issuing money. It has never been proposed on the ground that government will give us better money than anybody else could. It has always, since the privilege of issuing money was first explicitly represented as a Royal prerogative, been advocated because the power to issue money was essential for the finance of the government not in order to give us good money, but in order to give to government access to the tap where it can draw the money it needs by manufacturing it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is not a method by which we can hope ever to get good money. To put it into the hands of an institution which is protected against competition, which can force us to accept the money, which is subject to incessant political pressure, such an authority will not ever again give us good money.

The public will have to learn to select among a variety of monies, and to choose those which are good. If we start on this soon we may indeed achieve a position in which at last capitalism is in a position to provide itself with the money it needs in order to function properly,a thing which it has always been denied. Ever since the development of capitalism it has never been allowed to produce for itself the money it needs; and if I had more time I could show you how the whole crazy structure we have as a result, this monopoly originally only of issuing gold money, is very largely the cause of the great fluctuations in credit, of the great fluctuations in economic
activity, and ultimately of the recurring depressions. I think if the capitalists had been allowed to provide themselves with the money which they need, the competitive system would have long overcome the major fluctuations in economic activity and the prolonged periods of depression. At the present moment we have of course been led by official monetary policy into a situation where it has produced so much misdirection of resources that you must not hope for a quick escape from our present difficulties, even if we adopted a new monetary system.

Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?

2009-01-26T14:25:00.000Z

Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?: "Despite the army tearing down a structure, the settlers began rebuilding it on the same day. 'We will have the upper hand,' Weiss vowed.

'But the army will tear it down again,' Simon pointed out.

'And we will rebuild it,' Weiss said. 'The experience shows that the world belongs to those who are stubborn, and we are very stubborn.'

Stubborn, she says, because they were ordered to populate this land by no less an authority than God. 'This is the mission of our generation and I want to emphasis the most important point is to this,' Weiss said, picking up some soil, 'to hold strong to the soil of the Holy Land.'"

What Do Women Want? - Discovering What Ignites Female Desire - NYTimes.com

2009-01-24T17:56:00.000Z

What Do Women Want? - Discovering What Ignites Female Desire - NYTimes.com: "The generally accepted therapeutic notion that, for women, incubating intimacy leads to better sex is, Meana told me, often misguided. “Really,” she said, “women’s desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic” — it is dominated by the yearnings of “self-love,” by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need. Still on the subject of narcissism, she talked about research indicating that, in comparison with men, women’s erotic fantasies center less on giving pleasure and more on getting it. “When it comes to desire,” she added, “women may be far less relational than men.”"

Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

2009-01-21T22:48:00.000Z

Jonathan Cook: Israel's Doctrine of Destruction: "The commanding officer in Israel’s south, Yoav Galant, echoed those sentiments on the Gaza offensive’s first day: the aim, he said, was to “send Gaza decades into the past”."

Gaza: 'I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls' - The Independent

2009-01-21T11:48:00.000Z

Gaza: 'I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls' - The Independent: "'We are not Hamas. My children were not Hamas. And if they were going to shoot anyone it should have been me.' He added: 'I want the international community and the International Red Cross to ask Israel why it has done this to us. They talk about democracy but is it democracy to kill children? What did the kids do to them? What did my house do to them? They destroyed my life?"

IDF: INTO THE ABYSS

2009-01-19T19:19:00.000Z

IDF: INTO THE ABYSS « Culture of Life News 2: "The core of this matter is simple: the Jews from Europe and America use an old religious book to lay claim to ALL of the lands mentioned in this book. Despite the book making it very clear, at no point in time had the Jews total occupation of these lands. Far from it. The Bible admits that there were ALWAYS a great mixture of peoples in the Holy Lands. But the Jews have selectively read this as permission to ethnically cleanse this area so they and only they, can occupy it."

How Palestine became Israel

2009-01-19T13:25:00.000Z

The Catastrophe - Al Nakba: "Over the coming decades Zionist leaders used various strategies to accomplish their goal of taking over Palestine:

1. Encouraging Jewish immigration to Palestine, partly through the invention of such deceptive slogans as 'a land without a people for a people without a land,' when, in fact, the land was already inhabited. Since the majority of Jews were not Zionists until after WWII, Zionists used an array of misleading strategies, including secret collaboration with the Nazis, to push immigration.

2. Convincing a “Great Power” to back this process. By turn, Zionists approached the Ottomans, the British, and the U.S. to further their cause. While the Ottomans turned them down, the British (being promised that American Zionists would push the U.S. to enter World War I on the side of England) eventually acceded, as did the U.S. (due to concerns of politicians like Harry Truman that they would lose elections otherwise).

3. Buying up the land (sometimes through subterfuges), proclaiming it Jewish for all eternity, and refusing to allow non-Jews to live or work on the purchased land. This was called 'redeeming' the land and was financed by a variety of means, including by such wealthy banking families as the Rothschilds.

4. Violence, if such financial dispossession should fail or prove too slow – as it did."

Israeli officials' own words

2009-01-19T13:18:00.000Z

Mondoweiss: The Palestinians, in Israeli officials' own words: "Israel is engaged in a long war of annihilation against Palestinian society. The objective is to destroy the Palestinian nation and drive it back into pre-modern groupings based on the tribe, the clan and the enclave. This is the last phase of the Zionist colonial mission, culminating in inaccessible townships, camps, villages, districts, all of them to be walled or fenced off, and patrolled by a powerful army which, in the absence of a proper military objective, is really an over-equipped police force, with F16s, Apaches, tanks, artillery, commando units and hi-tech surveillance at its disposal."