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The biggest bubble that the Fed ever created has burst. We're now seeing the answer to the question: "What happens if everyone needs a bailout at the same time?" The Fed creating trillions of new dollars out-of-thin-air will only make everything much worse. A return to sound money is an absolute necessity, and only a matter of time.
 By Liberty Report Staff
NY Times bestselling author Tom Woods co-wrote the film with Jimmy Morrison, a filmmaker who started a house painting business just in time to watch the market unwind. Determined not to fall for the next bubble, Jimmy traveled over 35,000 miles to ask those that predicted the biggest crash since World War II: Why does this keep happening and what can we learn from the past before it happens again? The world premiere set a record at the Anthem Film Festival, when over 300 people packed into a 250-seat theater! The NYC premiere sold out the iconic Angelika Film Center, with Fox Business’s Liz Claman moderating a star-studded panel after the screening. Audiences around the world are loving the cartoons and movie clips that make the economy easy to understand for all ages. I caught myself laughing throughout the film, and you will too! This documentary is the definitive movie on the crisis and will be used in schools, prisons, libraries, and reservations across the country! There has never been a more important time to share this free market story with friends, family, co-workers, or clients. Now we don’t have to try to cram all this information into a conversation or try to convince someone to read an entire book. We can give them a gift and 79 minutes later, actually start the conversation with which scenes they found themselves agreeing with us and which points they disagreed with. Instead of spending our time trying to explain the basics, we can elevate the discussion and finally address their specific concerns! Order THE BUBBLE and watch the NYC panel, interviews, podcasts, & more at TheBubbleFilms.com!
Anthony Fauci has dominated the headlines for weeks with his doom and gloom predictions of two million Americans dead from Covid-19. If we lock the country down, maybe only 240,000 will die he claimed. But even those numbers collapsed, with the new official prediction coming in under the normal flu numbers for 2018. Was it "social distancing" that saved us? Let's look at the states and countries that did not lock down - they should have massively higher deaths. Do they?
By Chris Rossini
A vast majority of people have no overriding desire to rule over other individuals. If that were the case, and that was the default position for every individual, then humanity would've extinguished itself a long time ago. Most people live their lives without trying to conquer their neighbor's land, or break into their neighbor's house, or pick pockets as others walk by. The default position is harmony. You do your thing, and I'll do mine. You leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone. Now, of course, there are moments in every person's life where we slip and do something that is not very libertarian. But, these instances are the exception and not the rule. The lust to dominate others is not the overriding desire that consumes the lives of most individuals. With that being the case, and because most of us never come in contact with a genuine Napoleon-like person, it can be easy to not fully grasp what all the Little Napoleons in the world are really like. First, of all, in order to be a Little Napoleon, you can't do it in the world that everyone else lives in. It's illegal! You can't legally rob, steal, cheat, defraud or kill in the real world. Punishment is a deterrent. So Little Napoleons will seek out areas where punishment can be avoided. Now, the proper role of government, if one is formed, is for it to protect the liberty of individuals. If some individuals violate the liberty of others (i.e., rob, steal, cheat, defraud or kill) the government steps in to punish them. Government has no other job beyond that. Alas, it doesn't take long for Little Napoleons, of all stripes, to gravitate to government, since government is the use of force. They then warp the role of government and try to bend it to legally do what they can't do in the real world. The government is, in essence, transformed from being a protector of Liberty, to becoming the prime aggressor! When government is an aggressor instead of protector, it means the Little Napoleons have succeeded in their mission. They have eliminated the deterrent of punishment for themselves. They are shielded from it! And now, the lust to dominate other human beings can be expressed into the real world. There's one caveat about the lust to dominate others that everyone should understand. It is NEVER satisfied. There is never a point that is reached where the Little Napoleon says "That's enough." There can be (and are) pauses, where the people can acclimate themselves to the new power grabs. But it is never the end. After enough time passes, a more intense power grab follows. This has played itself out in history, over and over. It's the same story, with different faces. The names change, but the principles at play are exactly the same. The lust that animates today's Little Napoleons is the same lust that dominated the real Napoleon, and the same that dominated the Roman Emperors, and so on. There's only one escape hatch....For the people to guard their Liberty, to speak out the ideas of Liberty, and to call for the government to take on its proper role. Government should be protector and not aggressor. It cannot do what an individual citizen cannot do. Since individuals cannot (rob, steal, cheat, defraud or aggressively kill), government cannot do so either. There is no right time to start guarding and speaking out for Liberty. There's no reason to wait for the pain to be greater, which it must be as time goes on. There's no reason to wait and see what the Little Napoleons have in store for us next. Now is as good a time as any. The Champion of Liberty speaks the word. And that word is Liberty.
Tennessee experienced more suicides last week than coronavirus deaths. Alcohol sales are skyrocketing. The nation seems gripped by fear. What are the unintended consequences of shutting the country down over Covid-19 fears...and how many of these consequences were actually intended? More surveillance? End of habeas corpus?
By Ron Paul
For many millions of Christians, Easter is a time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Others may celebrate the arrival of spring and the promise of new life. Whatever one’s beliefs, after several weeks of mandatory “stay at home” orders and the complete shutdown of the US economy over the coronavirus, this self-destructive hysteria must end and we must reclaim the freedom and liberty that has provided us so much opportunity as Americans. To do that we should first understand that much of the hysteria is being generated by a mainstream media that has long prioritized sensationalism over investigating and reporting the truth. Government bureaucrats are also exaggerating the threat of this virus and appear to be enjoying the power and control that fearful people are willingly handing over to them. One “coronavirus” bureaucrat even told us that we can no longer go to the grocery store! So we should just starve? It is certainly possible to believe that this virus can be dangerous while at the same time pointing out that radical steps are being taken in our society – stay-at-home orders, introduction of de facto martial law, etc. – with very little knowledge of just how deadly is this disease. On March 24th, the CDC issued an alert stating that doctors should classify “probable COVID-19” or “likely COVID-19” as Covid-19 deaths. Perhaps that explains the seeming drop-off of pneumonia deaths this year and the simultaneous spike in Covid-19 deaths as some researchers have reported. The BBC reported last week that, “At present in the US, any death of a Covid-19 patient, no matter what the physician believes to be the direct cause, is counted for public reporting as a Covid-19 death.” Does that sound like a scientifically sound way of determining how deadly Covid-19 really is? What is most dangerous is that although this virus will eventually disappear, the assault on our civil liberties is not likely to be reversed. From this point on, whenever local officials, county officials, state governors, or federal bureaucrats decide there is sufficient reason to suspend the Constitution they will not hesitate to do so. Anyone who challenges the suspension of the Constitution “for our own good” will be labeled “unpatriotic” and perhaps even reported to the authorities. We have already seen hotlines springing up across the country for Americans to report other Americans who dare venture outside to enjoy the sun and build up their vitamin D protection against the coronavirus. The government is justified in cancelling the Constitution, we are told, because we are in an emergency situation caused by the Covid-19 virus. But do people forget that the Constitution itself was written and adopted while we were in an “emergency situation”? Did the framers of the Constitution fail to add an 11th Amendment to the Bill of Rights saying, “oh by the way, none of this counts if we get sick”? Of course not! Those who wrote our Constitution understood that these rights are not granted by the government, but rather by our Creator. Thus it was never a question as to when or under what conditions they could be suspended: the government had no authority to suspend them at all because it did not grant them in the first place. Our country is far less at risk from the coronavirus than it is from the thousands of small and large authoritarians who have suddenly flexed their muscles across the country. President Trump would do well to end this ridiculous shutdown so that Americans can get on with their lives and get back to work. Americans should remember the tyrants who locked them down next time they go to the ballot box. Let’s demand an end to the shutdown so we can resurrect our economy, our lives, and our liberties!
Across the country, from political leaders, to small business owners, to parents who just want to take their children to the park, resistance is growing to the authoritarians who have effectively suspended the Constitution and placed most of the country under house arrest. Lawsuits are also challenging unlawful "stay at home" orders. What if all the hysteria-driven orders have actually made the virus outbreak even worse? More scientists are coming forward to argue for the "Sweden model" of moderation rather than lockdown.
By Jeff Deist
"South Dakota is not New York City." A seemingly innocuous statement, made last Wednesday by Governor Kristi Noem in response to calls for her to issue a coronavirus shutdown across a state with the motto "Under God the People Rule." South Dakota, after all, is one of the least densely populated states in the vast American West. Surely local circumstances should inform local responses to a communicable disease? Not so, according to Noem's scolds at Change.org. They want the same "theory" applied in Brooklyn and in prairie towns with eleven residents per square mile. To her tremendous credit, Governor Noem has held firm against the tide of state officials ordering lockdowns and shelter-in-place directives. As of today five US states do not have statewide shutdown orders in place, and some sheriffs too have stood bravely against impositions of soft martial law. Here are some of Governor Noem's excellent recent statements regarding South Dakota's response to the pandemic: The calls to apply for a one-size-fits-all approach to this problem is herd mentality.
Refreshing, and also a needed reminder that all crises are local. No matter how rich you are or where you live, you are enormously dependent on localized medical care, food, water, electricity, gas, and general lawful behavior. Every calorie, kilowatt, and drop of water must make its way to your location no matter how complex the underlying economy is today. Doctors, nurses, and drugs must be available within a reasonable distance of your location. None of the physical substances necessary for your survival can be sourced from a global supply chain unless "last mile" delivery remains intact. If faraway production facilities, farms, warehouses, trains, trucks, and power plants break down, eventually Governor Noem's constituents will feel it. People seem to intuit the local impact of a global crisis, and the reality that the greater world is not coming to save them. South Dakotans are entitled to think locally, out of self-preservation, in this crisis.
So are Japanese, Singaporeans, South Korean, and Swedes, for that matter. There is no UN agreement or statement at work concerning the pandemic, nor any universally agreed-upon supranational guidelines. International bodies such as the World Health Organization have been unable to project authority during the crisis, much less gain international compliance with their shifting recommendations. Countries around the world have implemented a hodgepodge of policies, and they've done so unilaterally. China brutally locked down its Hubei Province, while Sweden chooses to keep public life largely unaffected, with virtually no quarantines or business shutdowns. Many countries chose an intermediate path. In Europe, the 1985 Schengen Area Agreement allowing open travel between twenty-six European countries has broken down due to the virus, with Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, and others closing off borders with armed guards. In a crisis, it turns out a German or French passport really is not a "European" passport after all. Nationalities and citizenship, the bane of political globalists, exist. Whether this fact of life is inherently illiberal depends both on one's perspective and how various nations act internally under duress. Is Germany too trenchant in its response to the virus and Sweden too liberal? Who's to say? The calculation becomes more and more difficult at scale, moving from the local to regional to national to international to global level. Crises remind us exactly why local matters. This is exactly what we should expect, and want, in a pandemic: competing visions as to the severity and scope of the problem, differing localized approaches, experimental treatments, and nimble entrepreneurial provision of resources and supplies. To an extent, there will be scoreboard. Some countries and some US states will fare better than others. But questions about top-down control from Washington. DC, or beyond will not go away. Federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have looked foolish and impotent throughout this crisis, as has the Trump administration's infectious disease expert Dr. Fauci. If in hindsight cheap antimalarial drugs and antibiotics prove to be effective treatments, the entire narrative of ventilators and lockdowns will appear foolish and destructive. Yes, there will be accusations, recriminations, and calls for more bureaucracy and more regulations. The political class will gain; the American people will lose. But there is a silver lining as our already dangerously polarized country begins to understand more deeply how South Dakota really isn't New York City at all—and question why that same political class wants one set of rules for 330 million people. After all, if Brooklyn and Sioux Falls don't need the same policy on coronavirus, what about taxes, guns, abortion, climate change, and everything else?
This article was originally published at The Mises Institute.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) became "the most hated man in America" when he dared to demand that Congress actually vote on the biggest bailout of Wall Street in history - the two trillion dollar "coronavirus" bill. What happened behind the scenes and what are the dangers? Rep. Massie tells all in today's Liberty Report.
By David Stockman
Based on the shocking 6.6 million of new unemployment claims, we’d bet they’ll be some explosive political fireworks soon in this country about Covid-containment versus keeping the main street economy alive. There have now been an unprecedented, off-the charts 9.96 million new unemployment claims in the last two weeks. For point of reference, it took fully 28 weeks to generate the same level of cumulative new claims after the beginning of the Great Recession. During that interval, the largest weekly number was 387,000 during the week of March 29, 2008. Even when you scroll forward (not shown) to the worst week after the Lehman Bankruptcy meltdown commenced on September 15, the peak number was only 665,000 during the week of March 28, 2009. So today’s new claims number was 10X higher! So, yes, some politically incorrect pundit is likely to note that there are now:
Well, yes, it seems that our establishment betters can’t get rabid enough urging on a total shutdown of the US economy. 
Indeed, the thinly disguised subtext in the whole daily MSM narrative for the last couple of days has been that the benighted governors of the Red States are not doing their part to order their economies into instant cardiac arrest. But it took the perennially obnoxious liberal columnist for the New York Times, David Leonhardt, to come right out and say it.
Thus, opined Leonhardt: Donald’s Trump’s minions have been putting the public health in grave danger. Much of red America is finally going on lockdown. After resisting the pleas of public health experts for days, the governors of Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi – all states won by President Trump in 2016 – announced yesterday that they will be ordering their residents to stay home, effective Friday. The turnabout from Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, was especially stark….These new lockdowns are welcome, because they will help slow the virus. But they are also coming much later than they should have, A big reason that the virus has been recently spreading more rapidly in the United States than in Europe or Asia is the slow response from American political leaders. Trump spent almost two months falsely claiming the virus was going away…Many Republican governors have chosen to echo him, DeSantis, for instance, acted as if he could stop the virus by merely keeping New Yorkers out of his state. There you have it – a shrill dump of left-wing agitprop and lies that are coming front and center to the debate real soon. Namely, the charge that Trump and his GOP minions caused the coronavirus crisis – so now the regulatory machinery and fiscal resources of the state must be mobilized without limit to wrestle the monster to the ground. Then again, by the statistics you might conclude that DeSantis has a point about pulling the welcome mat from New Yorkers. As of yesterday, nearly 62,000 Floridians have been tested, but the infection rate has been just 10.2%compared to New York’s 37%; and it’s infection rate per 100,000 population was just 29 compared to New York’s 389. That’s right. The infection rate in New York is 13.4X higher than Florida’s, while New York’s hospitalization and death rates are 21X and 22X higher, respectively. Yet this sanctimonious Big Apple brat has the gall to accuse the governor of Florida of being a Republican moron or even criminal. The fact is, DeSantis was right not to go full retard shutdown. For crying out loud, the coronavirus death rate in Florida to date is just one-third of a personper 100,000 population. At some point the idea of quarantining the aged, infirm and vulnerable rather than shit-canning the entire economy might make more sense. But as of the moment, the liberal commentariat and it Washington collaborators are on their high horse and won’t rest until they have intimidated the entire country into a heretofore unimaginable Economic Cardiac Arrest. In fact, you might as well call it the Anderson Cooper/Chris Cuomo Memorial Depression and be done with it. After all, it’s the same old shtick. Namely, that the liberals’ unhinged case for plenary economic shutdown is allegedly driven by “science” and that anyone who dares question the fashionable prescriptions is some kind of antediluvian rube. Of course, in many ways the Donald is exactly that – such as with respect to the entire economic, financial and monetary policy file. There his views are downright neanderthalish. But that’s what makes this whole Covid-19 imbroglio so forebodingly dangerous. The MSM and Washington political class are turning it into the next phase of the RussiaGate/UkraineGate/Impeachment inquisition against the Donald; and the litmus test of choice is, effectively, shut-it-down-and-lock-them-up at home from coast-to-coast; and keep them there until the Donald’s Greatest Economy Ever is pounded to smithereens. Ordinarily, the main street economy would have a fighting chance against that kind of ad hoc statist assault on production, which is now accelerating to a full gallop. That’s because the business community – large, small and in-between – would be descending on Washington in waves that would put even the Zulu army to shame. But not this time. The fact is, we have an Ersatz Socialist and economic primitive in the Oval Office who has managed to club to death like a baby seal whatever was left of GOP fiscal, monetary and free market orthodoxy. So the $2.2 trillion Everything Bailout (soon to be $4 trillion) was effectively a giant advance from Uncle Sam to hold one-and-all harmless for any lost ground occasioned by the shutdowns which are now sweeping across America like a prairie fire. In general terms, UI and helicopter money will be keeping paychecks close to 100% of take home, while trillions of easy-peasy loans/grants to business will also cover paychecks (double dip?) for employees – working and not working – as well as most other cash outflows for utilities, overheads, insurance, loan service and the CEOs’ paychecks. Yet when nearly everyone is held harmless, three very bad things are sure to happen. To wit:
But in the interim, the eruption of statist intervention and fiscal profligacy will reach literally hysterical excesses. That’s because the economic contraction now upon us is nothing like your grandfather’s recessions, which were triggered by the Fed and the collapse of credit and stock market cycles. By contrast, this one was being prepped by the Fed for years as it fostered egregious excesses of debt, speculation and hand-to-mouth fragility throughout the system. But it is actually being triggered by sudden shutdown edicts from governors, mayors and public health authorities – amplified by both prudent and hysterical precautionary actions being undertaken by the broad public. It is therefore proceeding with warp speed, as today’s claims data dramatically illustrates. When placed in historical context, the reported 6.6 million of initial unemployment claims (thin red line on the right margin) filed thru last Saturday truly give the notion of being “off the charts” a wholly new definition. 
And here is where 30-years of incessant monetary and fiscal intervention and “stimulus” will take its toll. That’s because America’s chattering classes, politicians and business leaders alike have been house-trained on the misbegotten assumption that capitalism has a death wish; and that once it goes into a contraction there is nothing stopping it from disappearing into an economic black-hole, save for the heroic interventions of the state and its central banking branch.
What is coming down the pike in terms of the “incoming data”, therefore, will generate sheer panic in the Imperial City and on Wall Street, too. Thus, as recently as February 19 when the stock market was 35% higher, the talking heads put the odds of recession at essentially zero. After two more weeks of the massive claims reported today, however, the BLS unemployment survey taken in mid-April is likely to find upwards of 15 million newly unemployed and a U-3 unemployment rate of 12-15%. That will rattle their teeth to the bone on both ends of the Acela Corridor. After all, last time they went into an end-of-the world panic mode during the Great Recession, it took the U-3 rate 31 months from the cyclical low of 4.4% in March 2007 to reach the 10.0% peak in October 2009. Likewise, the worst quarterly GDP SAAR during that downturn was 8.7% in Q4 2008, while Q2 2020 could hit 3X that rate at negative 25% or worse. 
Indeed, the shocker will come on the first Friday of May when the monthly number of newly unemployed workers will be reported for April.
During the bottom of the Great Recession in February 2009, that number peaked at 840,000, but April’s gain could come in at 15X-20X that level. So get set for a hideous hair-on-fire orgy of monetary and fiscal stimulus demands on both ends of the Acela Corridor, as if we have not gone off the deep-end already. Indeed, when you add in the automatic stabilizer outlays to the $2.2 trillion Everything Bailout, the hemorrhage of Federal spending and borrowing will be damn near incalculable. By the end of April, for instance, there will easily be 15 million continuing unemployment insurance claims: Even under pre-existing eligibilities and benefit levels (which were massively expanded by the Everything Bailout) the annualized run rate of outlays would rise from $28 billion in FY 2019 to upwards of $250 billion. 
In short, this is merely not your grandfather’s recession; it’s actually a Bubble Finance era Doomsday Machine.
With the establishment media keeping the US economy on lockdown – and we mean that literally, as even Dr. Fauci is now saying there should be no relaxation of the economic freeze until there are zero new cases and zero deaths – and the Trumpified GOP keeping the spending machine and Fed printing press at full throttle until at least the November election, it is truly impossible to imagine the level of madness ahead. The tragedy, of course, is that the blistering fiscal and financial calamity ahead is totally unnecessary. Public health measures to contain the virus until the summer heat kills it off could be far more targeted and less intrusive via a policy of protective isolation for the vulnerable populations, and maximum flexibility and personal protection (masks, gloves etc.) for the workers and participants in daily commerce. Likewise, to the extent that commerce and household and business spending are sharply curtailed until the contagions pass, there is no need for Washington’s idiotic 100% make whole policy. The overwhelming bulk of the truly needy and economically marginal population is already protected by the $3 trillion Welfare State and the automatic stabilizers, which will soon be pumping additional hundreds of billions into income support for the unemployed and disadvantaged. But the greatest folly ever to beset our fiscal democracy is now racing full speed ahead. Instead, of belt-tightening, work-arounds, payment deferrals and negotiated price and wage adjustments for a few months among the bulk of US businesses and households, the current and future taxpayers are being saddled with trillions of unnecessary obligations, which will prove to be the final straw on the debt-ridden camel’s back which pre-existed the Covid-19. And why has America elected to make this insane tradeoff? Because the ship-of-fools in the Eccles Building have led Washington and Wall Street alike to believe in what amounts to the greatest lie in financial history – that we can borrow and print our way back to prosperity!
This article was reprinted with permission from David Stockman's Contra-Corner.
David Stockman began his career in Washington as a young man and quickly rose through the ranks of the Republican Party to become the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. Stockman is an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. |
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