Thread: Dollar Will be Utterly Destroyed: Global Currency, New World Order

Interest rates. The Fed does not need slinky women in plunging necklines to peddle money. All it needs is low interest rates. When rates are pushed lower than the rate of inflation, the Fed provides a subsidy for borrowing. This is not as hard to grasp as it sounds. If I offered to give you $1.00 for very 90 cents you gave me in return, you would buy as many dollars from me as you could. The Fed operates the same way. It generates market activity by creating incentives for borrowing. Borrowing leads to speculation, and speculation leads to steadily rising asset prices. This is how the game is played. The Fed is not an unbiased observer of free market activity. The Fed drives the market. It fuels speculation and controls behavior by fixing interest rates.

When Lehman Bros flopped last year, markets went into freefall. A sharp correction turned into a full-blown panic. The bubble burst and trillions of dollars in credit vanished in a flash. Trading in exotic debt-instruments stopped overnight. A global sell-off ensued. Markets crashed. For a while, it looked like the whole system might collapse.
The Fed's emergency intervention pulled the system back from the brink, but the economy is still wracked with deflation. Billions in toxic waste now clog the Fed's balance sheet. The dollar has fallen like a stone.
When the financial system blows up and credit is sucked down a capital-hole, the economy goes into a downward spiral. Businesses slash inventory and lay off workers, workers have to cut back on spending and credit. That creates less demand for products, which leads to more lay-offs. This is the vicious circle policymakers try to avoid. That's why Fed chair Ben Bernanke wheeled out the heavy artillery and launched the most aggressive central bank intervention in history.
The Fed dropped rates to zero, but its Quantitative Easing (QE) program (which monetizes the debt) actually pushes rates even lower to roughly negative 2 percent.

Bernanke has underwritten every sector of the financial system with government guarantees. He has provided full-value loans for dodgy collateral which is worth only a fraction of its original value. The market can no longer operate without the Fed. The Fed IS the market, which is why it is foolish to talk about a "recovery". The idea of recovery implies a free-standing system based on supply and demand. But, for now, the government provides the demand, which is why there is no market and no recovery. Analysts at Goldman Sachs sum it up like this:

"How much of the rebound in real GDP was due to the fiscal stimulus, and where do we stand in terms of the effects of stimulus thus far? Although precise answers are impossible at this juncture, several aspects of the report are consistent with our estimates that the fiscal package enacted in mid-February as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) would have accounted for virtually all of the growth reported for the third quarter."

Positive growth is an illusion created by government spending. The economy is still flat on its back. Consumer spending and credit are in sharp decline. Unemployment is steadily rising (although at a slower pace) and wages are flatlining with a chance of falling for the first time in 30 years. Deflationary pressures are building. The talk of a "jobless recovery" is intentionally misleading. Jobs ARE recovery; therefore a jobless recovery merely points to asset-inflation brought on by erratic monetary policy. Surging stocks shouldn't be confused with a genuine recovery.
The Fed faces stiff headwinds ahead. Low interest rates can have unintended consequences. The "cheapness" of the greenback has made the dollar the funding currency for the carry trade. Investors are borrowing low-cost dollars and using them to purchase higher-interest assets elsewhere. The process, which is rapidly escalating, is fraught with peril as economist Nouriel Roubini points out in an article in the Financial Times:

"Since March there has been a massive rally in all sorts of risky assets... and an even bigger rally in emerging market asset classes (their stocks, bonds and currencies). At the same time, the dollar has weakened sharply, while government bond yields have gently increased but stayed low and stable...
But while the US and global economy have begun a modest recovery, asset prices have gone through the roof since March in a major and synchronized rally... Risky asset prices have risen too much, too soon and too fast compared with macroeconomic fundamentals.
So what is behind this massive rally? Certainly it has been helped by a wave of liquidity from near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing. But a more important factor fueling this asset bubble is the weakness of the US dollar, driven by the mother of all carry trades. The US dollar has become the major funding currency of carry trades as the Fed has kept interest rates on hold and is expected to do so for a long time. Investors who are shorting the US dollar to buy on a highly leveraged basis higher-yielding assets and other global assets are not just borrowing at zero interest rates in dollar terms; they are borrowing at very negative interest rates...
Every investor who plays this risky game looks like a genius – even if they are just riding a huge bubble financed by a large negative cost of borrowing...
...This policy feeds the global asset bubble it is also feeding a new US asset bubble...
The reckless US policy that is feeding these carry trades is forcing other countries to follow its easy monetary policy... This is keeping short-term rates lower than is desirable... So the perfectly correlated bubble across all global asset classes gets bigger by the day.
But one day this bubble will burst, leading to the biggest co-ordinated asset bust ever: if factors lead the dollar to reverse and suddenly appreciate... the leveraged carry trade will have to be suddenly closed as investors cover their dollar shorts. A stampede will occur as closing long-leveraged risky asset positions across all asset classes funded by dollar shorts triggers a co-ordinated collapse of all those risky assets – equities, commodities, emerging market asset classes and credit instruments." ("The Mother of all Carry Trades Faces an Inevitable Bust," Nouriel Roubini, Financial Times.)

Everyone who watches the market has noticed the inverse correlation of stocks to the dollar. When the dollar fades, stocks soar. And when the dollar strengthens, stocks plunge. Eventually, the dollar will reverse-course and stage a comeback, probably when Bernanke stops his printing operations. That will trigger the next severe correction which will burst bubbles across all asset classes.
Bernanke's success in reflating sagging asset prices has depended entirely on interest rate manipulation and liquidity injections. There's been no effort to patch household balance sheets, increase production, or strengthen overall demand. It's a clever trick by a master illusionist, but it has its costs. When the dollar rallies, markets will crash. And Bernanke will be responsible.

YouTube- Economic Collapse 3.0 - The Implosion

Sources –
Geithner Says Recovery Signs Are Stronger Than Expected
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pi…
Greenspan predicts economic growth to hit 3 percent or higher
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/0…
Geithner: Stimulus Working But Pain Still ‘Acute
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/geithn…
Stimulus: How Fast We’re Spending Nearly $800 Billion
http://projects.propublica.org/tables…
Companies Near You Receiving Highway Stimulus Money
Stimulus Contractor Database
Companies Near You Receiving Highway Stimulus Money
Stimulus Contractor Database
Stimulus Contracts Go to Companies Under Criminal Investigation
http://www.propublica.org/ion/stimulu…
U.S. Foreclosure Filings Jump 23% to Record in Third Quarter
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pi…
More bearish Real Estate Info
http://goldversuspaper.blogspot.com/2…
Paulson On The Bailout
Paulson On The Bailout - 60 Minutes - CBS News
US bank regulators warn on commercial real estate
http://www.reuters.com/article/govern…
Charge-off and Delinquency Rates
http://www.federalreserve.gov/release…
Monetary Policy Report to the Congress
http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetar…
Maiden Lane Transactions
http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/mai…
WaMu Part II? (Wells Fargo)
The Market Ticker
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/ar…
Exclusive Wells Fargos Commercial Portfolio is a ticking time bomb
http://bankimplode.com/blog/2009/09/1…
CITs Bankruptcy May Help Bondholders and Erase Taxpayer Stake
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pi…
As Banks Repay Bailout Money, U.S. Sees a Profit
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/bus…
Awaiting Returns Image Link
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/200…

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: November 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — With the Federal Reserve under more intense attack than at any time in decades, Ben S. Bernanke, the professorial chairman of the central bank, was schooled last month in how to handle the increased political demands of his job.
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Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News
Representative Barney Frank, left, said of Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, right: “Ben Bernanke turns out to have better political instincts than anybody thought.”

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Times Topics: Federal Reserve System | Ben S. Bernanke




For months, he had warned — without anyone on Capitol Hill appearing to listen — that a seemingly innocuous bill to let Congress “audit” the Fed would gravely threaten the central bank’s independence.
It was alarming enough that the bill’s author was Representative Ron Paul, the quixotic Texas Republican whose new book, “End the Fed,” had just landed on the best-seller lists. Despite vigorous protests by Mr. Bernanke, nearly 300 House lawmakers and 30 senators had endorsed Mr. Paul’s bill.
But when he sat down shortly after 8 a.m. on Oct. 1 at the Rayburn House Office Building for coffee and muffins with Representative Barney Frank, the rumpled and wisecracking chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, he took in some blunt advice.
Voters had become suspicious and unnerved by the Fed because of its trillion-dollar efforts to bail out the financial system, Mr. Frank warned. If the Fed really wanted to survive the disgruntlement in both parties, he continued, Mr. Bernanke would have to step back and let him devise a compromise.
Reluctantly, the Fed chairman agreed to reduce his own visibility on the issue and let Mr. Frank take the lead.
It was just one example of how the Fed has been forced to scramble as its power comes under more fire than at any time in decades.
On Tuesday, a new threat opened up: Senator Christopher J. Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, declared that the Fed had been an “abysmal failure” at regulation. He introduced a bill that would strip virtually all of its power to regulate banks, including financial institution considered too big to fail.
There will be a fight. Mr. Bernanke and the Fed has powerful political supporters, from lawmakers like Mr. Frank and President Obama. But the Fed chairman is being forced to nurture those ties as never before and to carefully map out which battles are worth fighting.
“Ben Bernanke turns out to have better political instincts than anybody thought,” Mr. Frank said in an interview last week. “They accept the fact that I know what I’m doing up here.”
On one front, the Fed faces populist anger from both left-wing Democrats and right-wing Republicans about its power and secrecy. At the same time, officials are locked in brutal but arcane battles about who should oversee Wall Street and big banks as Congress tries to pass a sweeping overhaul of financial regulation.
Last summer, the central bank hired an experienced Democratic hand and former lobbyist, Linda Robertson, to help deal with members of Congress. Mr. Bernanke alone has met privately with about 40 senators and many House members in the last few months, sometimes to dissect arcane policy issues and sometimes just to explain what he does in plain English.
At one recent meeting, Senator Sherrod Brown challenged Mr. Bernanke’s bona fides as a regular guy by giving him a pop quiz on baseball statistics. Mr. Bernanke, a passionate fan, passed.
Mindful that Democrats now control the White House and Congress, Mr. Bernanke put up virtually no opposition to President Obama’s proposal for a new consumer agency that would take over the Fed’s authority over consumer lending issues. Similarly, he avoided a bruising turf battle by agreeing that the Fed would share responsibility with other regulators to monitor systemic financial risk.
But Fed officials have been steely in protecting their two top priorities: the Fed’s political independence on monetary policy and the Fed’s role as undisputed overseer of financial institutions deemed “too big to fail.”
Mr. Bernanke took over the Fed nearly four years ago with less political experience than his predecessor, Alan Greenspan. And because he was forced to bail out companies and credit markets in such visible ways, Mr. Bernanke has enjoyed little of the mystique and distance that Mr. Greenspan used to his advantage.
No fight illustrates Mr. Bernanke’s political challenge better than the one over Mr. Paul’s bill to audit the Fed.
The maneuvering is still under way, involving intricate negotiations outside of public view. But, aided by the pledge of help from Mr. Frank and backing from the administration, Fed officials cautiously predict they will get what they want.
Mr. Paul’s bill would require the Government Accountability Office, an arm of the Congress, to complete a wide-ranging assessment of the Fed’s financial operations by the end of 2010. The audit would delve into bailouts of individual firms, short-term loans to banks, currency swaps with foreign central banks and the Fed’s effort to prop up mortgage lending by purchasing $1.25 trillion in mortgage-related securities.
Mr. Bernanke initially reacted to the bill in almost apocalyptic terms. The G.A.O. audits, he told a House hearing in late June, could lead to a Congressional “takeover” of monetary policy that would be “highly destructive to the stability of the financial system, the dollar and our national economic situation.”
That did not go over well with many lawmakers, who were competing to describe the Fed in dark and conspiratorial tones.

By David Cho, Brady Dennis and Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping regulatory reform bill that would strip the Federal Reserve of nearly all of its power to oversee banks, setting up a possible clash with the Obama administration, which has argued for the central bank to play a pivotal role in addressing financial threats.
The legislation promoted by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) would impose the most fundamental change in the Fed's mission since the Great Depression, leaving it responsible for little besides setting monetary policy. Senior administration officials and Fed leaders, by contrast, have urged that the central bank retain its power to oversee large and complex financial firms whose collapse could endanger the global system.
Dodd's bill not only abandons the proposal that the Fed take the role of regulating potential risk to the financial system, but it also would remove the Fed's responsibilities for overseeing consumer protection and bank regulation.
"We saw over the last number of years when they took on consumer protection responsibilities and the regulation of bank holding companies, it was an abysmal failure," Dodd said.
If he can persuade a majority of Senate Democrats to sign on to his proposal, his vision for regulatory reform could prove tough to derail. While the House is also considering a bill on financial regulation, the Senate debate could be decisive because its final version would be more difficult to change given the challenge of garnering the necessary votes there.


The legislation reflects the wide disdain for the Fed held by many on Capitol Hill and in the public. Often faulted by critics as too powerful and largely unaccountable to lawmakers, the central bank's standing deteriorated in recent years as it failed to foresee, much less prevent, the financial crisis. Its massive bailout of American International Group and other financial firms has also been unpopular with many in Congress, who see these actions as proof that the Fed is beholden to big banks.
"When it comes to systemic risk and things like that, the Fed knows these markets better than anyone else," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), another member of the Banking Committee. But he added, "Whether rightfully or wrongly, [the Fed] is highly unpopular with the left and the right."
Fed leaders have previously argued that they need to regulate banks as part of their mission to guide the overall economy, and they defend actions taken during the financial crisis as necessary to avert a far worse recession. But while the Fed could now be headed into a battle with key senators, central bank officials avoided an open conflict Tuesday as a spokeswoman said only that the central bank is reviewing Dodd's proposal.
With few champions among lawmakers, the Fed may now have to depend on its allies in the administration, which finds itself in an awkward position, congressional sources said. Obama's top economic officials, who argued for months that the system for regulating financial markets needed a major overhaul, now see an effort in the Senate that is more ambitious.
"Dodd is basically starting out by out-reforming the administration," said a senior congressional staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment.
Administration officials are taking a long view, aware that legislating such major changes would involve many twists and turns before they're finally adopted. The officials also noted that the bill is similar to the administration's plan in significant ways, such as imposing tough new capital standards on banks, punishing big financial firms for reckless behavior and creating a new agency to protect consumers of mortgages, credit cards and other financial products.
"Chairman Dodd's draft bill moves us one step closer toward comprehensive financial reform," Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said. "We look forward to working with the chairman and his committee in the coming weeks on a set of strong reforms to strengthen consumer protection, crack down on excessive risk-taking, and stabilize the financial system while protecting the taxpayer."



CONTINUED 1 2

Jon Stewart Catches Sean Hannity Falsifying Footage To Make GOP Protest Appear Bigger (VIDEO)
The tea party protests continued last week, as Congresswoman Michele Bachmann held an anti-health-care-reform rally on the steps of the Capitol. While she estimated that 20,000-45,000 people attended the event, the Washington Post reported it was actually more like 10,000.
Still, that is a sizable number of Americans exercising their right to free speech and assembly, and that warrants news coverage. But Sean Hannity and his team did more than cover the event. They not only inflated the number in attendance with their words, but actually used footage from a heavily-attended protest this summer to make this health care rally appear more popular. Hannity even pointed out that this was a huge crowd for a Thursday, when the protest footage they used was from a Saturday.
Jon Stewart and his team caught this discrepancy and ran with it, pointing out neither the color of the leaves nor sky in the tacked-on video matched that of the actual footage. They went on to mock Fox by adding more video to the interview, this time from Woodstock and the movie "300."

I just saw an article the other day quoting George Soros where he was talking China up and America down.
This is the guy that trades currencies and knocks them around. He knocked a stack off of the British Pound in the past and if he says the dollar is going down, he would know.

Originally Posted by Lord Sidious

I just saw an article the other day quoting George Soros where he was talking China up and America down.
This is the guy that trades currencies and knocks them around. He knocked a stack off of the British Pound in the past and if he says the dollar is going down, he would know.

One telling thing is that Soros' right hand man has went and moved to Asia. Jim Rogers has stated publicly that the money is all moving to China.

Since last year’s collapse of the banking system, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent to bail out some of the major players. Additionally, governments all over the world, and their central banks, have implemented huge stimulus programs to combat the consequences of the burst real estate bubble.
Economic history is being written right before our eyes. Hence, I refer to this episode as the largest economic experiment since the implementation of communism. And here’s what really frightens me: None of the experimenters saw this crisis coming, but all of them claim to know the remedy!
At the same time politicians and economists are very busy explaining what they deem to be the reasons for the economic malaise …
Speculators, hedge funds, greedy bankers, and lax regulators are said to be responsible. And a lot of talk about a market failure is being presented as the alleged root of this crisis.
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Sure, hedge funds, bankers, and regulators certainly played a role. But their reckless behavior is but a symptom of what had been going wrong and was not the cause. And the latter proposition is plain wrong. Let me explain why …
This Crisis Is Not a Market Failure.
It’s a Monumental Policy Failure!
Irrational central bank policies are the source of the current crisis. By now, nobody — not even Greenspan or Bernanke — will deny that the U.S. housing market was a huge speculative bubble. And the bursting of this bubble triggered the banking problems and the recession.
So we have to look into what causes a speculative bubble to understand the real culprits of the current predicament. The answer is fairly straight forward: Expanding money supply and credit growth.
Since the central bank controls the money supply and credit growth, it’s obvious that the central bank is accountable for the evolution of bubbles and the consequences of their inescapable bursting.
You could easily conclude then, that an unsound monetary policy caused the real estate bubble. That means that the same unsound monetary policy is also accountable for the sad and predictable consequences of the bubble bursting.
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Unfortunately we’re not hearing or reading much about this obvious truth. Instead, fairytales about market failure are dominating the media. And an old and cynical policy joke comes immediately to mind: “When the day of reckoning arrives there is but one policy solution: Lying, lying, lying.”
This seems to be the conclusion, the current credo of our politicians and the vast majority of economists. Many of whom are in the business of consulting politicians.
From Economists and Solar Eclipses …
To get a better understanding of what is going on let’s switch to an exemplary story: Suppose we were not dealing with economists but with another breed of scientists, let’s say astronomers. Nearly all of them are using the same theories and models. They’re highly regarded and some have even won the Nobel Prize.
Suddenly something totally unexpected takes place, a total solar eclipse! None of our astronomers had seen this coming. After a short moment of shock and silence, they quickly regain their confidence.
Immediately they start explaining extensively why it had been impossible to predict this eclipse — in spite of the fact that some of their peers had done exactly that, although with an alternative theory.
But the audacity doesn’t stop here. These so-called experts also come up with a variety of necessary measures to make sure that — no more eclipses will happen in the future.
This story illustrates perfectly the sorry state of our current mainly Keynesian-dominated establishment of economists. Their behavior is totally unscientific. And it’s way off track, too.
More Bubbles to Come …
The next crisis will be much more severe than the current one. As you can see, most politicians and economists haven’t learned anything from the near breakdown of the financial system. More of the same is their dangerous answer, much more.
Right now this policy is showing some desired effect: The housing market has stabilized, the stock market has risen and the economy has been growing again. But this short-term success has a dangerously high price …
Eventually this policy will again fail, like it did before. Already new bubbles are emerging, and the budget deficit is going through the roof! Now, however, the stakes are even larger, much larger. So the next crisis will be much more severe than the recent one.
My job now is to recognize when the current bounce is over and when the next act in this government-fueled crisis will begin. I’m confident that my models will again lead me successfully.
Right now I don’t see signs of renewed weakness. But we must stay constantly on the alert of changes for the worse. The next time down is unavoidable. And the outcome of this great experiment is clear.
Now the only question is: When?
Best wishes,
Claus
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YouTube- CNBC - Dollar Will be Utterly Destroyed, Global Currency, New World Order

As The Corbett Report reported yesterday, veteran Bilderberg researcher Daniel Estulin has obtained documents from inside last week's G20 Finance Minister's meeting in St. Andrews, Scotland. The documents—including attendee lists, drafts of the conference's communique and handwritten notes with deatils about who said what during deliberations—were snuck out of the conference by Estulin's sources despite security measures which were high "even by Bilderberg standards." The documents can be viewed at BilderbergBook.com and have been mirrored here in PDF format.

Listen to The Corbett Report's exclusive interview with Estulin about these documents by downloading the mp3 or listen in the player below:

In addition to the expansion of the African Union and the population reduction goals that Estulin has identified as key G20 talking points, the documents also shed light on how the financial oligarchs hope to establish a global fund of "predictable public finance" to fight the phoney global warming problem. Startlingly, the draft document admits that the fund could be administered by "an existing international financial institution."

Although this potentially explosive language was removed from the bland, politically palatable final version of the G20 communique, attendee notes indicate the nature and operation of this fund was a key discussion point during the conference.

Although the paragraph on climate change in the final version of the document seems like an afterthought, inserted as the last point before the summation, the draft communique indicates it was in fact one of the highest priorities, originally coming right after the opening preamble. The final version has also exorcised all but the most mealy-mouthed political language.

Compare this sentence in the final version: "Public finance can leverage significant private investment" to the original: "Substantial additional and predictable public finance from developed countries is essential, and should serve as a foundation for private finance, carbon markets and domestic public resources of developing countries to contribute to climate action. Public finance can also leverage significant private investment."
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW






The draft text opens the kimono on the financier's plan to establish a process for systematic wealth transfer from developed countries not to aid developing countries (who will also contributing "domestic public resources" to fight the non-existent carbon dioxide scare) but to help prop up private financiers and carbon markets. This "public finance" will of course be raised by the developed nations through taxation, thus amounting to an indirect carbon tax on the population of the developed world.

Perhaps the most egregious language in the draft document comes from the final sentences of the climate change paragraph, also replaced by bland platitudes in the final communique:
"...serious consideration should be given to the creation of a new fund, as a complement to existing mechanisms, to support projects, programmes and policies, possibly with multiple windows, to support adaptation and mitigation, technology cooperation and capacity building in developing countries. It should have balanced representation and operate under the policy guidance of, and be accountable to, the Conference of the Parties, with its operation possibly entrusted to an existing international financial institution."

In other words, the carbon tax revenue deposited in this new wealth transfer fund will be given directly to the very institutions that have been shown as a tool of Anglo-American imperialist hegemony again and [url][url][url="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452287081/leadershipsoluti/102-5520044-3860901"]again and again.

Ultimately, the G20 defers the decision on what type of carbon tax/wealth transfer mechanism to set up to the UNFCCC, the similarly unelected and unaccountable United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that will be meeting in Copenhagen next month. Although it is clear the UNFCCC is fully on board with the global carbon tax scheme, the controlled corporate media is now reporting that the Copenhagen summit is unlikely to finalize a broad international treaty. Once again, however, the smuggled G20 documents again say otherwise.

One attendee's handwritten note under the heading "US-Geithner" reads: "President optimistic have basic elements in place in US in next year."

Another, under the heading "Address issues ahead of Copenhagen - Wayne Swan" reads: "More agreement than think. Need find public way of communicating." Perhaps such self-consciousness about the deep unpopularity of the proposed bankster carbon tax explains why the more controversial elements of the draft communique were removed.

Do you think ideas don't matter, that what people believe about themselves and their world has no real consequence? If so, the following will not bug you in the slightest.

A new BBC poll finds that only 11 percent of people questioned around the world – and 29,000 people were asked their opinions – think that free-market capitalism is a good thing. The rest believe in more government regulation. Only a small percentage of the world's population believes that capitalism works well and that more regulation will reduce efficiency.

One-quarter of those asked said that capitalism is "fatally flawed." In France, 43 percent believe this. In Mexico, it is 38 percent. A majority believes that government should rob the rich to give money to poor countries. In only one country, Turkey, did a majority say that less government is better.

It gets even worse. While most Europeans and Americans think it was a good thing for the Soviet Union to disintegrate, people in India, Indonesia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Russia, and Egypt mostly think it was a bad thing. Yes, you read that right: millions freed from so******t slavery: bad thing.


That news must lift the heart of every would-be despot the world over. And it comes as something of a shock twenty years after the collapse of so******m in Russia and Eastern Europe revealed what this system had created: backward societies with citizens who lived short and miserable lives. Then there is the China case, a country rescued from bloody barbarism under communism and transformed into a modern and prosperous country by capitalism.

What can we learn? Far from not having learned anything, people have largely forgotten the experience and have developed a love for the ancient fairytale that all things can be fixed through collectivism and central planning.

As to those who would despair at this poll, consider that it might have been much worse were it not for the efforts of a relative handful of intellectuals who have fought against so******t theory for more than a century. It might have been 99% in support of so******t tyranny. So there is no sense in saying that these intellectual efforts are wasted.

Ideas also have a life of their own. They can lie in waiting for decades or centuries and then one day, the whole of history turns on a dime. Especially these days, no effort goes to waste. Publications and essays, or any form of education, is immortalized, ready for the taking by a desperate world.


As for the opinion poll, we have no idea just how intensely these views are held or even what they mean. What, for example, is capitalism? Do people even know? Michael Moore doesn't know, else he wouldn't be calling bailouts for elite, Fed-connected financial firms a form of capitalism. Many other people reduce the term capitalism to: "the system of economics in the U.S." It is no more complicated than that. This is despite the reality that the U.S. has a comprehensive planning apparatus in place that is directly responsible for all our current economic troubles.

Now, let's take this further. Among the people around the world who do not like the U.S. empire, many believe they don't like capitalism either. If the U.S. economy drags the world down into recession, that is a prime example of capitalism's failure. Even more preposterous, if you didn't like George W. Bush, his ways and his cronies, and Obama is something of a relief, then you don't like capitalism and you do like so******m.

Another point of view misunderstands the idea of capitalism itself. It is not about creating economic structures that benefit capital at the expense of labor or culture or religion. It is about a system that protects the rights of everyone and serves the common good. Capitalism is just the name that happened to be identified with this system. If you want to call freedom a banana, fine. What matters is not words but ideas.

I do know that none of these messed-up definitions of capitalism follow. You know this too. But for the world at large, serious ideological analytics are not the animating force of daily life. Many people attach themselves to vague slogans.


Further, as Rothbard has forcefully argued, free-market capitalism serves no more than a symbolic purpose for the Republican Party and for conservatives. Economic liberty is the utopia that they keep promising to bring us, pending the higher priority of blowing up foreign peoples, jailing political dissidents, crushing the left wing on campus, and routing the Democrats.

Once all of this is done, they say, then they will get to the instituting of a free-market economic system. Of course, that day never arrives, and it is not supposed to. Capitalism serves the Republicans the way Communism served Stalin: a symbolic distraction to keep you hoping, voting, and coughing up money.


All of which leaves true capitalism – a product of the voluntary society and the sum total of all the exchanges and cooperative acts of people all over the world – with few actual intellectual defenders. They are growing, but the educational work we need to do is daunting, and we are facing the most powerful forces in the world.

There is nothing new in this. In the history of the world, freedom is the exception, not the rule. It must be fought for anew in every generation. Its enemies are everywhere, but the leading enemy is ignorance. For this reason, the main weapon we have at our disposal is education.

Education includes explaining that so******m is an unworkable idea. There is nothing better than Ludwig von Mises's 1922 book [url][url][url="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0913966630?ie=UTF8&tag=lewrockwell&linkCode=xm2&ca mp=1789&creativeASIN=0913966630"]So******m, a comprehensive presentation of the fallacy of the so******t idea. Another essential work is the Black Book of Communism. Here we have a wake-up call that shows that the dream of so******m is actually a bloody nightmare.

Then there is the issue of the positive case for capitalism. One can do no better than Mises's own Human Action, which is not likely to ever be surpassed as a treatise on the free economy. True, it is not for everyone. And that's fine. There are many primers out there too.

The fashion for so******m and the opposition to capitalism should alarm every lover of freedom the world over. We have our jobs cut out for us, but with numbers this bad, it is not difficult to make a difference. Every blow you can land for free markets helps protect freedom from its enemies.

Governor uses s-word in front of Midland crowd … State official fired over remarks about Spanish-speakers … Former forensic chairman disagrees with Bradley
Happy birthday to conservative activist Jim Cardle and Jim Hurley of the Texas Youth Commission.

Austin weather from News 8 Austin’s Maureen McCann: Mainly sunny with temps slightly above average. High of 77.

(Send me an e-mail at jembry@statesman.com if you want a link to First Reading when I post it. Let me know if you want the Blackberry-friendly version. It doesn’t have the videos, but it pretty much has everything else.)
Wednesday highlights and the day ahead

Gov. Rick Perry had some pretty strong comments about the Obama administration on Wednesday in Midland, saying, “This is an administration hell-bent on taking America towards a so******t country.”

Here’s the full video, and it’s pretty important, so I suggest you watch:



Find more videos like this on Mywesttexas Chatter

The first part of Perry’s remarks focused on what’s called the Alien Transfer and Exit Program, something that he has been talking about for more than a week. Perry describes it as a plan where illegal immigrants who are captured in Arizona are sent to the small Texas town of Presidio and set free. It’s a sign that the Obama administration is trying to punish Texas, Perry said, adding that members of the state’s congressional delegation, as well as his office, weren’t given any warning of the administration’s plans for Presidio.
But there’s more to the program than Perry described.

According to a story by the CBS affiliate in Odessa, the illegal immigrants are returned to Mexico via secured buses. The station also reported, “last year 4,500 illegals were sent back through Presidio. Now 94 will be bused across this bridge 7 days a week.”

In addition, Brandi Grissom of the Texas Tribune reported last month that Bill Brooks, spokesman for the Border Patrol Marfa Sector, where Presidio is located, said the plan would not create any burden on the local community.
Grissom wrote, “The plan will bring two buses per day to Texas, each with 74 undocumented immigrants. The immigrants will be checked for health problems and will have signed voluntary deportation agreements. The program will not involve immigrants charged with criminal violations, Brooks said. Mexican officials are participating and will provide the immigrants with bus tickets to their hometowns, Brooks said.”

Advocates for the program say the point of transferring the immigrants from Arizona to Texas is to breaking the smuggling cycle that allowed them to enter in the first place, Robert Gilbert, the Tucson sector chief for the U.S. Border Patrol, wrote in a January op-ed. He wrote that in 2008 (during the Bush administration), more than 10,000 illegal immigrants were removed through the program (although it did not go through Texas then). Gilbert wrote, “The largest impact can only be made by breaking the smuggling cycle, by putting up barriers and checkpoints that make the business of smuggling humans and narcotics unprofitable and unattractive. Only as the smuggling cycle is disrupted do we see consistent decreases in arrests and increases in drug seizures.”

• The Statesman’s Gardner Selby has the story this morning of an official in the secretary of state’s office who was fired Wednesday after she made some controversial remarks to a meeting of Democratic and Republican county chairs about helping Spanish-speaking voters. When you click on Gardner’s story, you can hear full audio of those remarks, as well as the response from a member of the audience who didn’t like what she heard.

• Sam Bassett, the former head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, took objection Wednesday to the panel’s new chairman saying the need to develop rules and procedures could delay the inquiry into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham and the controversial arson investigation that led to Willingham’s execution. “Mr. Bradley stated that he believes that the Commission needs ‘rules and procedures’ before it can move forward,” Bassett said. “I respectfully disagree. Though the Commission might benefit in the long term from development of written standards, I do not believe that this should result in paralysis of Commission activity. The Commission doesn’t need to evolve into a large, bureaucratic State agency to carry out its mission.”

Bradley objected to Bassett’s objection, saying, “Mr. Bassett is changing his story. He clearly told me that he was scared of the hearing getting out of control because the Commission had no plan or rules for the hearing.”
The Statesman’s Mike Ward has more on this over on the Postcards blog.
• Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday that Kay Bailey Hutchison’s campaign has been checking out the availability of TV time over the next couple of months — a sign that the campaign may be thinking of going up with ads soon. Hutchison spokeswoman Jennifer Baker downplayed, saying the campaign has been making such inquiries since August, and that the Perry campaign is doing the same.

• Hutchison is supporting legislation to limit members of the U.S. Senate to two terms, Todd Gillman reports. She also wants to limit the Texas governor (not just the current one) to two terms. Of course, since we’re talking term limits, it’s important to remember that early in her Senate career, Hutchison said she’d only serve two terms, and she’s now on her third.

• Democratic gubernatorial candidate Hank Gilbert laid out his environmental agenda Wednesday on the shores of Lady Bird Lake. Among his proposals: A newly named agency, the Texas Environmental Commission, where all environmental regulations would be consolidated; an elected chairman of the Public Utility Commission; property-tax incentives for homeowners who install solar panels; higher energy efficiency standards for residential and business construction; and a requirement that more of the state’s energy supply comes from renewable sources.

• A second Republican has stepped forward to say he’ll challenge GOP Rep. Fred Brown. This time it’s Rick Davis, a former district judge, according to the Bryan-College Station Eagle. Brown still hasn’t announced whether he’ll run again.
Poll watch

Pew Research Center: “About half (52 percent) of registered voters would like to see their own representative re-elected next year, while 34 percent say that most members of Congress should be re-elected. Both measures are among the most negative in two decades of Pew Research surveys. Other low points were during the 1994 and 2006 election cycles, when the party in power suffered large losses in midterm elections. Support for congressional incumbents is particularly low among political independents.”

A random sample of 500 Texans done for Citicorp’s financial services arm in September found 38 percent have dipped into savings to pay their bills and more than one in three are working longer hours to make ends meet. Source: Dallas Morning News.

Barney Frank vows to “wall off” Fed from monetary scrutiny, warns Bernanke to brace for audit

Barney Frank warns Bernanke that he might be forced to embrace a compromised version of Ron Paul’s ‘Audit the Fed’ bill; promises to “wall off” attempts to examine monetary policy
Aaron Dykes

Infowars.com

November 12, 2009

The NY Times reports that House Financial Chairman Barney Frank has met in private with Ben Bernanke to plan strategies for bracing against the overwhelming popular demand to audit the private Federal Reserve, voiced– piercingly for Bernanke– in Rep. Ron Paul’s bill, now with some 300 co-sponsors.

Frank’s part in meeting was to urge Bernanke to face reality– “Mr. Frank warned that he might have to embrace a version of Mr. Paul’s bill,” wrote the Times– now it was time to consider compromises.

However, responding to Bernanke’s top concerns, Barney Frank “vowed” that:

“he would “wall off” deliberations on basic monetary policy, and delay the release of information about the Fed’s financial operations to prevent traders from capitalizing on its moves.”

Bernanke’s “apocalyptic” fear of H.R. 1207 and the accompanying rise in public interest in the Fed, as the NY Times describes it, underscores the drastic survival mechanism of an institution that has historically relied on the secrecy provided by its bland exterior.

Mr. Bernanke initially reacted to the bill in almost apocalyptic terms. The G.A.O. audits, he told a House hearing in late June, could lead to a Congressional “takeover” of monetary policy that would be “highly destructive to the stability of the financial system, the dollar and our national economic situation.”

Why this fear has lingered overhead for so long may be simply because he knows that his thin-air empire can’t withstand a Constitutional examination. Bernanke worries about a “takeover” by Congress because he knows that it alone has the Constitutional authority to oversee the issuance of currency.

As Alex Jones’ Fall of the Republic reveals, Ben Bernanke told Congress in no uncertain terms, that an examination of its monetary policy would amount to a ‘takeover’ and instilled the fear that it would trigger further economic devastation.

The Federal Reserve should not have “independent” autonomy to direct the financial commitments of a nation, print its money at will and risk its stability.

Of course Congress’ constitutional power over money is enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution:

The Congress shall have power… To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.

If Bernanke is looking over its shoulder, it is because he knows the Fed’s days are numbered, and that any light (via even a soft audit) will only serve to further expose the improper occupation of the nation’s financial instruments by a private, self-interested global banking cartel.

“The Fed faces populist anger from left-wing Democrats and right-wing Republicans about its power and secrecy… It was alarming enough that… “End the Fed,” had just landed on the best-seller lists.”

Bernanke and his masters are obviously very unsettled by such a significant public outcry, and, as the NY Times notes, the fact that Ron Paul’s ‘End the Fed’ has reached the best-seller list.


YouTube- Fall Of The Republic 6/14: The Presidency Of Barack H Obama