By Liberty Report Staff
There shouldn't be a Federal Reserve, but it exists, and it's constantly creating a world of economic pain. Each Federal Reserve bubble must turn into a bust. It's unavoidable. According to the central planners, the "solution" for the bust is more creation of new money and credit. That's the only way they can keep their "system" alive. When the Fed's stock market bubble burst in 2000, it responded by creating new money and credit. Lo and behold, this led directly to the next bubble that was even bigger. When the housing bubble burst in 2008, Wall Street was bailed out by taxpayers, and TRILLIONS of new dollars were created as the "solution." And now, almost 10 years later, we have an even bigger bubble than 2008. The central planners at The Fed have done it again. How much longer will we allow this "system" to last? How much economic pain will it take to return to sound money again? Ron Paul discusses the latest bubble below:
Everyone is surely aware by now that all of our digital communications are being sent to government databases for storage. If our American ancestors could see it, they wouldn't believe their eyes. We still, however, have the ability to use cash. All of our economic decisions are not under constant government surveillance. Ron Paul discusses the dangers of Big Brother's War on Cash.
Russiagate has "jumped the shark." So says Robert Parry, investigative journalist and founder of ConsortiumNews.com. Parry joins today's Liberty Report to discuss the current state of the mainstream media and the ongoing allegations of Russian interference in American political and social life.
By Liberty Report Staff
Unintentionally, President Trump has shown everyone what government-"licensed" mainstream media is all about. Trump attacks their dishonesty. But dishonesty is baked in. It's pretty much a requirement. Mainstream media has bamboozled Americans to support a century of devastating wars. It was all dishonest and propped up with lies. But those lies were OK. They were "licensed" lies. Honesty is not a criteria for keeping your government license. Just the thought of government licenses for networks should send chills down everyone's spines. It's Orwellian to the core. Here's a good question: Trump doesn't approve of the "reporting" now. But what's going to happen when he tries to trump up another war? As with all wars, the propaganda will have to be built on a mountain of lies. Will Trump threaten the networks as they help him to peddle? Will he threaten to take away their "licenses"? Of course not.
Did you ever notice that government-licensed mainstream networks are always on the same page when it comes to "news"?
"Trump challenges Tillerson to IQ Test" "Ivana Trump says she is the 'First Lady' The mainstream media are like mental babysitters. Government schools babysit your mind when you're a kid, and mainstream media takes over when you become an adult. Meanwhile, as everyone focuses on the bubble gum topic of the day, the real crimes are happening in the background. Yet, you'd never know it if your source of information is the mainstream media. Sure, you may get different arguments from different networks. But the scope of the arguments fit on what Tom Woods refers to as a 3x5 index card of allowable opinion. On lefty networks you'll get passionate arguments saying "Taxes should be 50% of your income. Government is the great superhero." On the right, you'll hear "No...no...no...that's tyranny! Taxes should be 49.5% of your income." Left or Right, you're in government's hip pocket. That's the function that "licensed" media serves. Go ahead and pick a side ... it makes no difference whatsoever. Fortunately, with each passing day, more and more people are turning off the licensed media. The damage that they've done by acting as megaphones for government power cannot be measured.
President Trump vehemently denied an NBC report that he called for a ten-fold increase in US nuclear weapons at a meeting this summer. Calling it "fake news." the president reportedly threatened NBC's broadcast license. Is this really "fake news"? Or is President Trump just continuing President Obama's massive nuclear weapons "modernization" program?
By Ryan McMaken
When Hurricane Maria knocked out power in Puerto Rico, residents there realized they were going to need physical cash — and a lot of it. Bloomberg reported yesterday that the Fed was forced to fly a planeload of cash to the Island to help avert disaster: William Dudley, the New York Fed president, put the word out within minutes, and ultimately a jet loaded with an undisclosed amount of cash landed on the stricken island...
For a time, unless one had a hoard of cash stored up in one's home, it was impossible to get cash at all. 85 percent of Puerto Rico is still without power, as of October 9. Bloomberg continues: "When some generator-powered ATMs finally opened, lines stretched hours long, with people camping out in beach chairs and holding umbrellas against the sun."
In an earlier article from September 25, Bloomberg noted how, without cash, necessities were simply unavailable: “Cash only,” said Abraham Lebron, the store manager standing guard at Supermax, a supermarket in San Juan’s Plaza de las Armas. He was in a well-policed area, but admitted feeling like a sitting duck with so many bills on hand. “The system is down, so we can’t process the cards. It’s tough, but one finds a way to make it work.”
Note the deep concern with "trac[ing] revenue" and "enforc[ing] tax rules" — as if making payroll for ordinary people were not the real problem here.
Puerto Rico has been fortunate that the United States, so far, has not attempted to implement many anti-cash measures that have been popular among central bankers in recent years. Abolishing cash, of course, has become de rigueur among mainstream economists who have long argued that physical cash is an impediment to "nontraditional" monetary policy like negative interest rates. Moreover, advocates claim, physical cash makes it harder to control the flow of money, collect taxes, and control black markets. This drive to supposedly fight crime and corruption was given as the justification for the disastrous war against cash in India in 2016. Hatched as a scheme to assert more government control over the economy, the Indian government removed mostly large bills from circulation in India, which accounted for 85% of its physical cash by value. The demonetization badly damaged the economy. The Wall Street Journal reported in December: Not surprisingly, shock waves from the announcement continue to crash through the economy. The Asian Development Bank cut its growth estimate for India for the financial year ending March 31 to 7% from 7.4%. JP Morgan expects growth to decline by half a percent to 6.7%.
One can only imagine how much more grim matters would be for Puerto Rico if most physical cash were made illegal as happened in India.
It's unlikely, however, that any well-known economists — such as Kenneth Rogoff who has deemed physical cash "a curse" — will be recanting their anti-cash views. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs, and while some of the "little people" like Indian peasants and Puerto Rican workers might have to suffer greatly whenever the power goes out, we all have to make sacrifices. Perhaps this is what Richard Thaler — the newly announced economics Nobel-Prize winner — had in mind when he came in out in favor of demonetization in India. Certainly, abolishing cash is likely to devastate a poor economy more than a wealthy one. A wealthy country, with more advanced and reliable infrastructure, and with greater access to resources in general, is more fully weather a shortage of physical cash, and natural disasters. Overall, though, going cashless makes an economy more fragile, and makes ordinary people sitting ducks whenever there is a natural disaster, or even worse disruptions such as wars.
This article was originally published at The Mises Institute.
By Liberty Report Staff
When future generations look back, they'll surely ask the question: "What were the American people doing while their government bankrupted itself? Did they care about anything? Did they oppose anything?" They'll look back and see that of course there was plenty of bickering and fighting between different groups of power-seekers, but overall, the politicians and their media mastered the art of keeping everyone occupied on the immaterial. Americans were fed a steady diet of "the news of the day" with the guarantee that all eyes were kept off the real mischief. Let's look at a few headlines: Readers sound off on Mike Pence's Stunt Ivana Trump says she is the 'First Lady' Trump Challenges Tillerson to an IQ Test After “Moron”-Gate Trump can do this for four years. Heck, anyone can, and they all do. Then Americans wake up when it's time to vote, realize that everything is still spiraling further into the abyss, and fall for the next campaigner-in-chief.
Trump, by far, put on the greatest show. He broke all the political etiquette.
But etiquette is not our problem. We have a serious military empire and welfare state taking down the 'land of the free'. A few of the things that Trump said were even pretty good from a perspective of liberty -- abolishing Obamacare, getting out of NATO, getting out of NAFTA, and even auditing the Fed! But it was all a show! None of it is happening. Oh, yeah, let's not forget that Trump was really going to "stick it to the globalists" who are step-by-step taking us into a system of global tyranny. Look who Trump was sitting with today:
What were Americans doing while their government bankrupted itself?
Almost nothing. At least nothing that got to the root of the debacle. But there was a lot of top notch entertainment. One of the entertainers even became president.
The CIA has been forced to declassify nearly 300 documents about a secret torture site in Afghanistan where CIA psychologists devised some of the most cruel and inhuman ways of torturing. Some were killed. The psychologists made millions of dollars. It was more than ten years ago. Past history? Not if you listen to President Trump on torture. Waterboarding? "I love it," he said at a rally.
Press Play to hear Ron Paul deliver his Weekly Update:
By Ron Paul
President Trump and the congressional Republican leadership recently unveiled a tax reform “framework.” The framework has a number of provisions that will lower taxes on middle-class Americans. For example, the framework doubles the standard deduction and increases the child care tax credit. It also eliminates the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Created in the 1960s, the AMT was designed to ensure the “wealthy” did not use “loopholes” to “get out of” paying taxes. Today the AMT is mostly a means to increase taxes on the middle class. The framework eliminates the “death tax,” thus enabling family-owned small businesses and farms to remain family owned. It also helps the economy by lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, reducing taxes on small businesses. The framework also adopts a territorial tax system, which means US companies would only pay tax on profits earned in the United States. However, the framework is far from a total victory for liberty. Concerns have been raised that, depending on what income levels are assigned to what tax brackets, the plan could increase taxes on many middle- and lower-income Americans! This is largely due to the framework’s elimination of most tax deductions.
The framework also contains a stealth tax increase imposed via the chained consumer price index (chained CPI). Supporters of chained CPI clam the government is currently overstating inflation. The truth is exactly the opposite: government statistics are manipulated to understate inflation.
Chained CPI enhances the government’s ability to lie about inflation. One way it does so is by claiming that inflation does not lower our standard of living if we can substitute cheaper goods for goods made unaffordable by inflation. So inflation does not harm you if you can’t afford a steak dinner as long as you can still buy a cheeseburger. Chained CPI allows the government to take maximum advantage of “bracket creep,” where individuals are pushed into higher tax brackets not because they are actually earning more money, but because inflation creates the illusion they are wealthier. In fact, by decreasing their purchasing power, inflation makes most people poorer. The inflation tax thus raises taxes on declining incomes. It is hidden and regressive, making it the most insidious of all taxes. Most of the framework’s problems stem from Congress’ continued refusal to offset tax cuts with spending cuts. Instead, Congress continues to increase spending, with the only real debate over whether the government should spend more on welfare or warfare. Pairing tax cuts with increases in federal spending and debt — and the drafters of the framework admit their plan will increase the debt by at least $2.2 trillion — means that the economic benefit from the tax cuts will be outweighed by the economic harm caused by the increase in debt. Increasing the debt also means the Federal Reserve will further devalue the dollar in order to monetize that debt. While the Republican tax and budget plans predict uninterrupted economic growth, the US economy is far more likely to undergo a major economic crisis caused by a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. While all supporters of individual liberty and sound economics should support tax cuts, the Republicans’ failure to cut spending means that their tax plan will do little to increase liberty or prosperity. Instead of increasing debt, eliminating deductions, and relying on the inflation tax to “pay for tax cuts,” Congress should cut two dollars in spending on the military-industrial complex and other forms of corporate welfare for every dollar in tax cuts. Cutting both taxes and spending is the only way to protect prosperity and liberty.
The White House has rolled out the President's 70 point plan to reform the immigration system. Will building a wall, hiring more officers and prosecutors, mandating E-Verify, and other enforcement measures help solve the problem? Or is there a better way?
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