news.goldseek.com >> 1 February 2012
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news.goldseek.com >> 1 February 2012 |
Ben Bernanke: The Official Counterfeiter
By: Gary North
Back in 1969, a Disney cartoonist sat down at his story board and produced a booklet that the Disney organization never saw: The Official Counterfeiter. It was a presentation of fractional reserve banking and the role of the Federal Reserve System. His name was Vic Lockman. As far as I know, he was the first cartoonist ever to do a booklet based on the Austrian theory of the business cycle. He revised the booklet in 1974. It is now back online.
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news.goldseek.com >> 30 January 2012 |
Gold Procrastinators: The Endless Agony
By: Gary North
You and I are all in the back seat. Bernanke is in the driver's seat. We have two choices: buckle up or not. If you want to buckle up, you buy some gold bullion coins. If you want to live dangerously, you buy and hold a no-load fund of the S&P 500 and a no-load fund of U.S. Treasury bonds. President Obama is in the passenger seat. He is hoping that Bernanke knows how to drive. He had better pray that the air bag works.
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news.goldseek.com >> 20 January 2012 |
Auditing the FED's Gold
By: Gary North
Bernanke is facing what no Federal Reserve chairman has ever faced: public awareness of the Federal Reserve System. From late December 1913, when an almost deserted Senate voted for the Federal Reserve Act, until 2008, when the recession confirmed Ron Paul's warning in late 2007, there was almost no public awareness or even a vague understanding of the Federal Reserve System. The genie is now out of the bottle, where it had been corked since 1913. Ron Paul has uncorked it.
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news.goldseek.com >> 16 January 2012 |
Hangman Ben
By: Gary North
The name of the bureaucratic game is survival. Bernanke is a survivor. He is not going to rock the boat. He is determined not to get blamed if the boat capsizes. He will take action – inflation – if the necessity arises. Then bond rates will rise. Then the bond traders will reassert themselves. But, for now, he has hanged them high.
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news.goldseek.com >> 12 January 2012 |
Collapse, No. Huge Losses, Guaranteed
By: Gary North
We will see a continual erosion of productivity. The banks will refuse to lend. The government will continue to absorb $1.3 trillion a year of capital. The public does not care. It senses that this cannot go on, but it has gone on so long that politicians can always kick the can. So, this is what they do. Nobody loses his seat in Congress because of this. Erosion, not collapse, is in our future. But this erosion at some point will start increasing much faster than Keynesians expect. This will be our "Greek moment."
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 January 2012 |
You Are Washington's Collateral
By: Gary North
Washington has borrowed more heavily than any planter ever dared to or could do. Why so much debt? To get more leverage today. What is being leveraged? Promises. Voters trade votes for government promises. This system requires an ever-increasing supply of slaves in order to pay the interest on the debt. Problem: the rate of population growth is slowing. There will not be enough slaves to pay off the debt.
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news.goldseek.com >> 29 December 2011 |
Permanent Keynesian Unemployment
By: Gary North
Throughout the West, unemployment remains stubbornly high. Unemployment in these European nations ranges from 8.5% in Italy to over 20% in Spain. For Europe as a whole, the figure is 10.3%. What is revealing is this: ever since 1995, it has been above 9% most of the time. Only in February 2008 did it fall to 7.3%. For workers under age 25, the figures are much worse. A generation of educated college graduates has become a lost generation. Yet as the chart reveals, a few countries are doing far better. Netherlands, Austria, and Germany have rates from about 4.5% to 6.5%. These are nations noted for their comparative frugality.
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news.goldseek.com >> 22 December 2011 |
Interest Rates in a Gold Coin Standard
By: Gary North
Americans are living in a world of central bank profligacy. This has been true ever since 1914, when the Federal Reserve System opened for business. But the most recent bank-created economic crisis, which began in December 2007, has received more attention than ever before. This is mainly the result of Ron Paul's 2007 candidacy for the Republican nomination for President. He warned that this crisis would happen. He also spelled out the reasons: Federal Reserve policy. Then the crisis hit.
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news.goldseek.com >> 14 December 2011 |
Adapt or Die (in the Unemployment Line)
By: Gary North
Adapt or die: this is a free market principle. It was expounded as a fundamental principle of society by Adam Smith and the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. This idea was picked up by Erasmus Darwin and extended by his grandson, Charles, who applied it – adapted it – to biology. The Scottish Enlightenment announced "adapt or die" as the basis of social progress. "Adapt or die" is a principle of liberty, they argued. It is applied most productively and beneficially on a free market, they concluded.
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news.goldseek.com >> 12 December 2011 |
Taxation by Citation
By: John Brennan
Years ago, at its inception, the Internal Revenue Service, was duly deputized as the primary government agency responsible for collecting all personal and business taxes. The IRS, as it is referred to by most, has, over the years, grown into a mammoth operation. Steadily and methodically expanding, and with the use of new technology, has become very, very proficient at keeping track of what working Americans earn, and conversely, how much earnings should be returned to feed the king’s coffers.
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news.goldseek.com >> 11 December 2011 |
Another Neo-Greenbacker Central Banking Scheme
By: Michael S. Rozeff
If we had monetary freedom, Ruijter and other greenbackers could form a collective and create their own government organization for themselves. It would not be forced on others. They could devise their own state-owned and state-operated central bank that issues state money in the form of paper currency or credits. Their collective could operate as it pleased. Others of us could supply and demand moneys of our choice in freedom.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 December 2011 |
Twin Deficits
By: Gary North
There are two deficits that we hear about most: the federal government's deficit and the balance of payments of the United States. They are linked, but they are very different in their effects. The federal deficit is seen by Keynesians as mostly a benefit and by Austrians as mostly a liability, and for the same reason: higher government spending.
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 December 2011 |
French Fried Banks
By: Gary North
Ben Bernanke is in panic mode. The November 30 coordinated announcements of six central banks regarding their intervention into the currency markets was exactly that – coordinated. If you think it was coordinated by anyone other than Bernanke, you are out of touch with reality. (Test: name the heads of at least two of the other five central banks.)
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news.goldseek.com >> 16 November 2011 |
Compound Economic Growth and Atlas
By: Gary North
If you are still a taxpayer, you are Atlas. I am Atlas. There will come a time when Atlas will shrug. I have written about this before: When will he shrug? Before I can answer this, I want to discuss another factor, compound economic growth.
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news.goldseek.com >> 9 November 2011 |
Europe's Hangover
By: Gary North
Think of Europe's finances as a gigantic liquor supply system. There is a system of profit-seeking taverns (commercial banks). There is a clientele (sovereign states). Finally, there is a distiller (the European Central Bank).
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news.goldseek.com >> 6 November 2011 |
Too Many Eurozone Summits
By: Gary North
The Powers That Be are facing Problems That Won't Go Away. The heart of their control is fractional reserve banking and the market for government bonds (sovereign debt). Both are under siege. Both are showing signs of unprecedented vulnerability. The euro summit meetings are turning into reality shows. Which team will be The Survivors? Merkel-Sarkozy? Papandreou-Berlusconi?
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news.goldseek.com >> 30 October 2011 |
Budget Deadlock in Washington
By: Gary North
The debt ceiling battle led to a compromise. Congress and the President promised to submit to mandatory budget cuts. A bipartisan super committee was set up to put together a package of debt reduction cuts totaling several trillion dollars over supposedly a decade. If the committee deadlocks, the cuts will begin automatically on January 2, 2013. These must be $1.2 trillion in cuts, or $120 billion a year.
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news.goldseek.com >> 27 October 2011 |
Freedom From the FED
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Central banks exist for a single reason – to inflate the supply of paper currency. They are a currency-creating and currency-inflating institution. This serves two interest groups in the main. One is the fractional-reserve banks that they regulate. The other is the government that created them.
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news.goldseek.com >> 17 October 2011 |
Are the Federal Reserve and Its Primary Dealer Banks Manipulating the Stock Market?
By: Gary D. Barnett
The U.S. economy has continued to falter since the housing bubble burst. Virtually every part of the economy has worsened, and continues to do so. This is also true on a global scale. Whether discussing unemployment, housing, inflation, GDP, retail sales, etc., the picture is clear, we are still in a depression. Even though the economic picture is bleak, the stock markets have continued to go up in value during this period. Why is this happening?
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news.goldseek.com >> 16 October 2011 |
The Dawn of Late Fascism
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
The downgrading of US debt this summer didn’t have huge economic consequences, but the psychological ones were truly devastating for the national elites who have run this country for nearly a century. For a State that regards itself as infallible, it was a huge blow that market forces delivered against the government, and it is only one of thousands that have cut against the power elite in recent years.
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news.goldseek.com >> 12 October 2011 |
European Crash Dummies and Greece's Brick Wall
By: Gary North
A crash dummy has some of the physical characteristics of a human being. It is used to test the safety of the interior of a car that has suffered a major accident. A pair of dummies are strapped into the front seat of a car that is on a track. Then the car is run into a wall at high speed. The engineers then examine what happened to the dummies. If the dummies had been human beings, would they have been killed? Dismembered? But what if the dummies were in charge? What if they strapped the engineers into the car and ran the test? This is what is happening in Europe today.
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news.goldseek.com >> 9 October 2011 |
God, Gold, Groceries, and Guns
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
Why should you care about the four G's? Why should you imagine that things will not repeat? The financial system held up after 1980. Why won't it hold up today? Why won't things be business as usual?
One good reason is that it is clearly not government as usual. The size of the deficit, the gridlock in Congress, the desperation of the unemployed, the ineffectiveness of the Federal Reserve, the inability of the economists to offer a solution, the unwillingness of small businesses to borrow, and $1.7 trillion in excess reserves in the banks all point to a continuing crisis that is not going away. The government is helpless. The Keynesian solutions are not working.
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 October 2011 |
The Federal Reserve Is Playing Defense
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
This was a defensive speech. It indicates that the FED has no plan to get the economy back on track.
Falling long-term interest rates are the preliminary sign of a looming recession.
What will the FED do when recession hits next year, as seems likely? What rabbits will they pull out of the monetary hat?
The FED is on the defensive. Investors should take heed.
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news.goldseek.com >> 28 September 2011 |
Flying PIIGS
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
Politicians really do believe that they are wiser than investors who have their money on the line. Investors are trusting. But at some point they decide that it is safer to sell their bonds than remain on a sinking ship. Bond prices fall, i.e., interest rates rise.
PIIGS will not learn how to fly. But they remain aboard the Eurozone's central bank-funded hot air balloon by fattening up on loans from governments and the ECB until they finally relieve themselves from on high.
The Indianapolis Monetary Convention
By: Murray N. Rothbard
The presidential election of 1896 was a great national referendum on the gold standard. The Democratic Party had been captured, at its 1896 convention, by the Populist, ultra-inflationist, anti-gold forces, headed by William Jennings Bryan. The older Democrats, who had been fiercely devoted to hard money and the gold standard, either stayed home on election day or voted, for the first time in their lives, for the hated Republicans. The Republicans had long been the party of prohibition and of greenback inflation and opposition to gold. But since the early 1890s, the Rockefeller forces, dominant in their home state of Ohio and nationally in the Republican Party, had decided to quietly ditch prohibition as a political embarrassment and as a grave deterrent to obtaining votes from the increasingly powerful bloc of German-American voters.
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 September 2011 |
Europe's Botox Bailouts
By: Gary North
Mrs. Cox is the chief executive of England's Alliance Trust investment fund. She has dismissed Europe's attempts to solve its debt crisis as "economic cosmetic surgery", warning there is "more pain" to come over the next few months. So we read in the London Telegraph. The media are beginning to smell blood in the water. Like sharks, they are heading for the source: the European Monetary Union (EMU). Unlike an emu, the EMU cannot move very fast. But like the emu, it turns out that it cannot fly.
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news.goldseek.com >> 19 September 2011 |
A Sound Jobs Plan: 'Pull' the Federal Government
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Obama has sent to Congress a 199-page jobs plan. Experience shows that all such plans are filled with stupid and unsound ideas. They all are abominations. Congress debates them and likewise ends up with an abomination. My jobs plan, which is a smart, sound and comprehensive plan, is breathtakingly simple: end the federal government. The reason is that this government has become too large, too complex, too powerful, too subject to special interests, and too intrusive. It is too totalitarian now and becoming more so. All of this is to the great detriment of most of those who live in America.
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news.goldseek.com >> 18 September 2011 |
Paymaster Germany and the Endgame
By: Gary North
I did a Google search for "paymaster Germany." I got over 34,000 hits. They refer mostly to the Eurozone crisis over Greek government debt, and the German government's willingness to tax Germans in order to keep bailing out the Greek government.
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news.goldseek.com >> 15 September 2011 |
The Dollar As the World's Reserve Currency. Poor World.
By: Gary North
The present system of reserve currencies favors the United States government and American consumers. It is a subsidy to exports to the USA by way of holding down interest rates for U.S. government debt. Central banks inflate. They can buy any asset, but export mercantilism favors the U.S. dollar and the euro. The crisis in Europe favors the dollar. There are lots of things to worry about, The loss of the dollar's world reserve status is not high enough on the list to be of much concern.
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news.goldseek.com >> 5 September 2011 |
Sovereign Debt, Sovereign Bank Runs
By: Gary North
The phrase "sovereign debt" has become popular. I used Google to search for "sovereign debt" and got over six million hits. Yet I cannot recall hearing the phrase as recently as 2007. If I ever did hear it, I did not pay attention to it. It was called "government debt" back then.
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news.goldseek.com >> 31 August 2011 |
Pencils and Liberty
By: Gary North
Back in 1958, Leonard E. Read wrote what has become the most popular essay ever written in defense of the free market. It was better than Frederic Bastiat's 1850 essay on a broken window as destructive, not productive. It was as clever as Bastiat's humorous petition of the candlemakers calling for laws against the ruinous competition from the sun. Milton Friedman recommended it highly.
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news.goldseek.com >> 28 August 2011 |
The Many Collapses of Keynesianism
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
It should be obvious to everyone but the most dedicated adherent of Keynesianism that the stimulus did not accomplish its end. The combination of outright spending by Congress, the desperate schemes to reflate the housing market, the attempt to transfuse bleeding firms with other people’s money, and the creation of trillions in artificial money, has not done a thing to lift the US economy.
These Threats Will Not Collapse America's Economy
By: Gary North
The problem is not China. It is not India. It is not imports. The problem is the endless call from each special-interest group for the government to Do Something to Save America. The problem is that the government has done way to much for too long, all in the name of Doing Something to Save America.
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news.goldseek.com >> 25 August 2011 |
Your Portfolio of Lies
By: Gary North
If you are still planning to retire, you had better have a lot of money, and this money had better not be invested in markets that are going to collapse when the government's promises are finally exposed as lies.
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 August 2011 |
Roubini, Marx, and Keynes
By: Gary North
Nouriel Roubini, known as "Dr. Doom" – having replaced Henry Kaufman in this capacity – now says that Karl Marx was right, according to a recent article. Roubini teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business. Kaufman earned a Ph.D. at the Stern School of Business. They are both very stern fellows.
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news.goldseek.com >> 16 August 2011 |
Too Many Emergency Meetings in Europe
By: Gary North
The solution for the PIIGS' economies is the same as the solution for all economies: to get out of the government debt trap, not to take more debt. But Keynesianism is based on government-subsidized debt. So, there is therefore no solution for Keynesians, other than more of the same.
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news.goldseek.com >> 15 August 2011 |
Gold Standard or Nixon Standard
By: Gary North
On Sunday, August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon unilaterally brought to an end the last trace of an experiment in international monetary affairs that stretched back over a century. He announced that the United States government would no longer abide by the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to deliver gold at $35 per ounce to any government or central bank.
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news.goldseek.com >> 10 August 2011 |
Day of Reckoning
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
The trigger that apparently caused the market meltdown was the ever-so-slight suggestion from Standard & Poor's that the US government’s fiscal health might not be all that it is cracked up to be. This was not a case of the little boy noting the emperor has no clothes. It is more like the little boy suggested that the emperor's clothes, while beautiful, might have been more carefully tailored to suit the imperial dignity. Hysteria followed, and the entire Obama cult called for the kid to be stoned. Finally the emperor himself spoke in defense of his rainment. That’s when the market crashed.
The Crack in the Ice
By: Gary North
We are witnessing the break-up of the ice pond. The public is skating on the pond. They hear the cracking sounds. A few wise skaters have started heading for the shore. Gold hit $1,750 on Monday in response to Friday's cracking. Tens of millions of Americans and an equal number of Europeans are going to be trapped when the Great Default comes. Yes, Alan Greenspan has denied that this will ever happen. "The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default" said Greenspan on NBC's Meet the Press. Does this reassure you?
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news.goldseek.com >> 7 August 2011 |
The Yellow Fever Economy
By: Gary North
Financial columnists of the sky-is-sagging perspective have searched for an accurate metaphor to describe the current economy. We have all failed. "A slow-motion train wreck" doesn't work, because train wrecks as bad as what we are facing are high-speed. Then there is the "car without brakes." But at least the driver can take his foot off the gas pedal. Congress is accelerating. I have promoted "the burning trestle." But, again, the engineer could put on the brakes. No such luck. Congress is accelerating. How about "the Titanic"? That's closer to it.
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news.goldseek.com >> 3 August 2011 |
Debt Impasse: Fake and Real
By: Gary North
The debt ceiling agreement that came over the weekend will raise the ceiling by $2.1 trillion – enough to get this issue off the political table until January 1, 2013, which was Obama's desire. The House called the bill the Budget Control Act. It was the budget out of control act. It is 74 pages long. No one in Congress had time to read it. Typical.
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news.goldseek.com >> 27 July 2011 |
Rollover Risk and American Hegemony
By: Michael S. Rozeff
The debt limit will be raised. Neither side will get its way. The U.S. government always raises the debt limit. How else would the debt and the government have gotten so large? Not raising the debt limit means that the government takes the road to financial suicide. That step would shock its creditors. The government would increase its own debt costs dramatically. Washington is not that stupid.
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news.goldseek.com >> 25 July 2011 |
Counterfeit Gold Standards
By: Gary North
Mr. Benko supports the creation of a government-designed, government-run, and government-enforced gold standard. I do not. This is because there is abundant evidence that such a gold standard always turns into the central-bank fiat money standard that Keynesian economists and monetarist economists insist is the only possible way to maintain long-term economic growth. Fiat money is dishonest money.
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news.goldseek.com >> 22 July 2011 |
Accidentally Conceived in 1971, Gold Money Baby Now Due
By: Arthur M.M. Krolman
The United States economy is pregnant with child. Accidentally conceived on August 15, 1971, this wonderful blessing has been gestating for 40 years and it is now due: the replacement of the Fed's IOU-nothings with real, human-friendly money: gold.
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 July 2011 |
Good News on Taxes
By: Gary North
There will be no tax increases in the USA before 2014. There will be great increases in Federal debt. We see that the governments of the West are incapable of reducing massive deficits. There is no significant political resistance to the vast expansion of debt. We are in the final stage of the politicians' addiction to debt. On behalf of future generations, they are buying votes by buying time.
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news.goldseek.com >> 18 July 2011 |
The Free Market Currency Manifesto
By: Michael S. Rozeff
In order to rid ourselves of the currency monopoly, we need alternative currencies up and running. But before that we need the will and commitment to open free markets in currency, in both money and credit. We need to know the goal and to know that it is right and to know that what we now have is wrong. We need a Free Market Currency movement.
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news.goldseek.com >> 13 July 2011 |
Baloney
By: Gary North
The debate over the debt ceiling is political theater. There is no commitment to cut spending, because cutting spending creates negative voter responses by specific groups who vote as a bloc. Politicians will not risk this. They prefer to vote for another increase in the debt ceiling, because the pain is diversified over millions of unorganized voters. These voters do not perceive the increased deficit as an immediate problem causing intense pain. They prefer to have Congress kick the can. That is what Congress will do.
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news.goldseek.com >> 12 July 2011 |
A Run on the United States Government
By: Michael S. Rozeff
A run is a mass withdrawal of cash funds from a borrower. We are in the midst of a continuing worldwide credit crisis, punctuated by "runs" of varying prominence and publicity. These runs are rational, not panics and not due to quirks of psychology. They occur when investors realize that their funds are endangered in an institution. They try to get them out before they lose them.
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news.goldseek.com >> 10 July 2011 |
On the Road to Government Default
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
Nothing is going to be done. Politically, nothing needs to be done before November 2012. The debt ceiling will be raised. There may be some late-night meetings. There may even be a few days when the government has to rob some Peters on the payroll to pay Pauls with more political influence.
Then they will kick the can. They will send a ceiling-raising bill to Obama, who will sign it.
And we'll have fun, fun, fun 'till the market takes our T-bills away!
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news.goldseek.com >> 4 July 2011 |
Tricked on the Fourth of July
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
What would libertarians – even conservatives – give today in order to return to an era in which the central government extracted 1% of the nation's wealth? Where there was no income tax?
Would they describe such a society as tyrannical?
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news.goldseek.com >> 29 June 2011 |
Geithner's Victims of Last Resort
By: Gary North
You may have heard that the Federal Reserve System is the lender of last resort. This is a misleading concept. The Federal Reserve loans the U.S. government newly created fiat money. The government issues the FED an IOU. It is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. But who stands behind the United States government, wallets in hand? You do. And so do I.
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news.goldseek.com >> 26 June 2011 |
Bernanke Channels Benchley
By: Gary North
Ben Bernanke gave his second-ever press conference on June 22. Before I offer my assessment, I think it is wise to make you aware of a long-forgotten film: a 1931 movie short by Robert Benchley, one of the supreme humorists of his era. Benchley came on-screen as an economist. He provided information on why the economy was about to turn around. (It wasn't.) The depression was over. (It wasn't.) The recovery was just around the corner. (It wasn't.) Then he offered the appropriate evidence. The people in the theaters fully understood. Once you see this video, so will you. Professor Bernanke will never seem quite the same.
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news.goldseek.com >> 22 June 2011 |
Austerity Is Good
By: Gary North
Have you noticed the media reports on the intolerable nature of austerity in Greece? Have you read anything that praises this austerity and calls for more? You're about to. The austerity we read about is a code word for "government spending cutbacks." In a media world run by Keynesians, the thought of cutbacks in government spending is a nightmare scenario. Keynesians believe that government spending is the source of both stability and growth in an economy. Any suggestion that the government has been spending far too much money is regarded as heretical.
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news.goldseek.com >> 20 June 2011 |
The Federal Debt Elevator: Going Up
By: Gary North
Anyone who thinks the Federal debt ceiling is now or ever has been a ceiling has not come to grips with the political reality of the free ride. Until there is widespread political pain, there will be no debt ceiling. It's an elevator, and it keeps going higher.
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news.goldseek.com >> 13 June 2011 |
The Next Financial Crisis
By: Gary North
The mainstream financial media are running stories on the next financial crisis. This is unheard of two years into a so-called economic recovery. So weak is this recovery that the old pre-2008 confidence has not returned. The first sign that "this time, it's different," was Treasury Secretary Geithner's statement, which received widespread coverage, that there will be another crisis.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 June 2011 |
The Safe Banking Fantasy
By: Gary North
Occasionally, we see an official attempt at a serious discussion of what Federal Reserve System economists would like the public to believe is safe banking. This means safe fractional reserve banking. This means fraudulent safe banking. This means fantasy banking.
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news.goldseek.com >> 1 June 2011 |
Central Banking: Success Through Failure
By: Gary North
Western Europe has invented two institutions that have taken over the world: the university and the central bank. Today, both are under fire as never before. At the same time, both are in their respective diver's seats. The greater the criticism, the better they do for themselves.
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news.goldseek.com >> 30 May 2011 |
Is Greece the Future of America?
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Greece has a sovereign debt problem. The bonds of the Greek government have been downgraded by a major rating service. Their prices have fallen sharply in the market. This means that the risk is high that the government will default on its sovereign debt.
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news.goldseek.com >> 18 May 2011 |
Building Your Financial Storm Shelter
By: Gary North
Our problem today is that the most obvious source of a major crisis today is the debt structure of Western governments, central banks, and commercial banks. Because governments are the problem, there will not be a solution provided by politicians. The same is true of central banks.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 May 2011 |
Nixonomics at the New York Times
By: Gary North
On August 15, 1971, a Sunday, President Nixon unilaterally suspended the last traces of the gold standard. He "closed the gold window" on his own authority. From that time on, no government or central bank has been able to exchange dollars for Treasury gold at a fixed price. Nixon broke the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944. He broke the nation's word. He cheated. That was his way. Ever since that day, American monetary policy has been Nixonomics.
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news.goldseek.com >> 28 April 2011 |
Rick Ackerman Defects to the Hyperinflationist Camp After 30 Years
By: Gary North
With Ackerman gone, this leaves Mish and Robert Prechter as the last famous deflationists still standing. But there were never many of them. They were always vastly outnumbered by hard-money analysts who predicted price inflation. From John Exter and C. V. Myers in the mid-1970s until today, the leaders of the deflationist camp have been few and far between. Today, they are fewer and even farther between.
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news.goldseek.com >> 27 April 2011 |
Questions for Bernanke - First Ever Live FOMC Press Conference
By: Gary North
The Federal Reserve System is on the defensive. This has not happened before in my lifetime.
On Wednesday, April 28, Ben Bernanke will hold a press conference. This has never happened before. Journalists will be allowed to ask questions. It will be held at 2:15 in the afternoon, Eastern Daylight Time. The Bankrate site has set up a reminder program so that you won't miss it. It will be broadcast on their site.
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news.goldseek.com >> 20 April 2011 |
The Myth of Debt-Free Living
By: Gary North
I have set up a free website for people who are deep in consumer debt. I am a great believer in getting out from under the burden of consumer debt. But I am not a believer in getting out of debt. There is a reason for this. The only way to get out of debt is to die. Here are two great myths of the American dream: (1) financial independence; (2) debt-free living. Why are they myths? Because life involves both.
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news.goldseek.com >> 19 April 2011 |
The EU Crackup
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
It doesn’t take a True Finn to recognize the injustice of bailouts for foreign governments. Neither nationalism nor bailouts will fix the real problem. We will eventually find our way back to sound money. But it is going to be terrible slogging, and real convulsions, along the way.
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news.goldseek.com >> 13 April 2011 |
Your Gold Coins
By: Gary North
If you did what Bill Bonner and I have been recommending for a decade, you own gold. Bonner began promoting the purchase of gold in the year 2000. I strongly promoted this for my subscribers after September 11, 2001, when the Federal Reserve began pumping up the monetary base in earnest. Neither of us has ever stopped recommending holding money in gold.
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news.goldseek.com >> 11 April 2011 |
Rats! I Was Hoping for a Shutdown
By: J. Paul Henderson
For the past couple of weeks, all the talking bobble heads in TV Newsland could concern themselves with was the looming (partial) government shutdown and the dire consequences such an event would have for all of us out here in Normal Land. But there were so many aspects to this whole thing that seemed to escape the women with big blond hair and men with perfectly tied Windsor knots passing themselves off as journalists.
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news.goldseek.com >> 30 March 2011 |
Why Economists Love the Federal Reserve
By: Gary North
The Federal Reserve is untouchable inside academia. But it is beginning to have critics outside of academia. The bust and bailout in the fall of 2008 sent a message that finally penetrated the information barriers imposed by Old Boy Network: "The banking system is rigged to favor the biggest banks." This has been true ever since 1914. The FED still has a free ride inside academia. It does not have one on the Internet. QE2 will backfire. There will be either price inflation or another attempted exit strategy. The exit strategy failed in 2010, as you can see here. There is no permanent exit strategy, other than Great Depression 2. When it comes, either before or after hyperinflation, the FED's Kings-X within the ranks of academia, with its depleted pension portfolios, will finally end.
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news.goldseek.com >> 28 March 2011 |
Tiger
By: Gary North
You are on the back of a tiger. You had no say in the matter. You are part of the international economy, and central bankers run it. First they inflate. Then there is a boom. Then there is price inflation. Then they stop inflating. Then there is a recession. To keep it from becoming a depression, they inflate. Year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, this is what central bankers do.
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news.goldseek.com >> 24 March 2011 |
Why Interest Rates Will Rise
By: Gary North
The problem: no one in power is paying attention. The time for action is now, he said. Salaried economists have been saying this for years. But no one takes any action. Government debts will increase until rates go up. Then lenders will still lend. Private capital will suffer. It will be crowded out at the governments' low rates. The Federal Reserve System is buying most new Treasury debt today. The monetary base is rising. Monetary inflation is increasing. Price inflation is increasing. This is why interest rates will be going up. If you are in debt for anything on a floating-rate basis, you are in trouble.
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news.goldseek.com >> 18 March 2011 |
Gold vs. Badges and Guns
By: Gary North
Do you trust men with guns and badges to provide long-term economic growth? Or do you trust the free market?
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news.goldseek.com >> 17 March 2011 |
Is QE3 Ahead?
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Austrian School economists have often explained the business cycle using the metaphor of liquor or drugs. The expansion of paper money and credit gives a sense of exuberance, an economic high that leads to excessive risk-taking and ballooning production. But it can’t be sustained. There is a morning after.
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news.goldseek.com >> 16 March 2011 |
Value Investors Hate Gold
By: Robert Blumen
As a shadow money, gold is a hedge against times when value investing becomes difficult or impossible because money has become too unstable. During those times, gold is a way of preserving purchasing power until the some stability returns. The disruption of the price system and resulting misallocation of capital will undoubtedly create many opportunities for value investors, once the monetary crisis is over and the monetary system is stabilized. Having some asset that can then be converted into stable money (which may be gold itself) will give value investors the ability to take advantage of these opportunities when they emerge.
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news.goldseek.com >> 9 March 2011 |
How To End the Federal Reserve System
By: Gary North
Things are not always as complicated as they seem. With respect to the Federal Reserve System, it is a deliberate mystery. It was deliberately designed in 1910 to deceive the public, who were opposed the idea of a central bank. The conspirators who met on Jekyll Island in November 1910 knew this. They did good work from their point of view. They concealed the beast.
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news.goldseek.com >> 6 March 2011 |
Enemies of the Middle Class
By: Gary North
With less than one quarter of 2011 gone, we have seen the spread of three revolutions. The first is literal. It is happening in North Africa. The second is intellectual: the acceptance by large numbers of voters of a shutdown of the United States government, which is deemed to be out of control. The third is political: the willingness of state legislatures in the rust belt to remove the 70-year government subsidies to public employees' unions.
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news.goldseek.com >> 4 March 2011 |
Gold: A Valuable Thing to Store
By: Gary North
Gold is a valuable thing to store. Believe this with the trust of an Indian farmer. Don't pay attention to a self-educated gold promoter who tells you that gold is a store of value or has intrinsic value. Understand the logic of gold before you buy it. The logic of gold is that, fifty years from now, someone will buy that gold with something of value. Ben Bernanke does not believe this. That's another reason to buy gold.
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news.goldseek.com >> 27 February 2011 |
Booms, Busts, and Food Prices
By: Gary North
Maybe you have heard about rising food prices. It is happening all over the world. We hear of Third World rural populations that are trapped by rising food prices. Why are food prices rising? Simple: because urban people in formerly Third World nations are getting richer. India and China are the obvious examples. As these economies are freed from the regulations that once burdened them, the growing urban middle class bids up the price of food.
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news.goldseek.com >> 13 February 2011 |
Bernanke's Free Ride Is Over
By: Gary North
Ben Bernanke took over as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on February 1, 2006. On February 9, 2011, his free ride ended. On that day, Paul Ryan's House Budget Committee grilled him.
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news.goldseek.com >> 10 January 2011 |
Geithner Says U.S. Insolvent
By: Michael S. Rozeff
As the Federal Reserve keeps buying more and more government debt, with no prospect of reducing its holdings unless and until the government gets its house in order, bond yields are likely to rise, despite Fed buying, because yields also reflect inflation premiums. The prospect of inflation will rise as the Fed monetizes the debt. We would then see yields rising accompanied by firm prices of commodities and metals.
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news.goldseek.com >> 17 November 2010 |
Big Trouble for Ben Bernank?
By: Gary North
Ben Bernanke is in trouble. Big trouble. Bigger trouble than any Federal Reserve Chairman has ever been in. There is a cartoon video all over the Web that discusses "quantitative easing." It is a riot. This is very, very bad for Bernanke. When the public starts laughing at a senior government bureaucrat, he is in trouble.
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news.goldseek.com >> 12 November 2010 |
The Gold Standard Never Dies
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
But guess what? Gold actually hasn’t gone anywhere. It is still the hedge of choice, the thing that every investor embraces in time of trouble. It remains the most liquid, most stable, most fungible, most marketable, and most reliable store of wealth on the planet. It has a more dependable buy-sell spread than any other commodity in existence, given its value per unit of weight.
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news.goldseek.com >> 17 October 2010 |
End The FED. Get The Gold.
By: Gary North
How can we end the Federal Reserve System? Prior to 2008, this question would have been entirely hypothetical. It is still entirely hypothetical, because the Federal Reserve System is in charge of monetary policy; the Congress of the United States is not. Certainly, the voters of the United States are not. Nevertheless, I wish to indulge myself in a completely hypothetical speculation.
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news.goldseek.com >> 11 October 2010 |
The Killing and Reviving of the American Dream
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
However, if we take a longer-term look, we can see that these trends date back decades, with the turning point the severing of the dollar's last link to gold in 1971. This is the event that set up the explosion of government growth, of credit addiction across the population, of massive malinvestment in housing and many other sectors, of the gutting of American savings, and, most seriously, of the loss of freedom to the national security state.
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news.goldseek.com >> 10 October 2010 |
Bernanke's Declaration of Independence
By: Gary North
Ben Bernanke gave a grim speech on October 4. It did not get media attention. That was because it was so grim. It was on the looming fiscal crisis of the Federal government. There will be no easy way to avoid it, he said. Congress has to decide what spending to cut. This means that Congress must decide which special-interest groups to alienate. Then it must decide which taxes to raise. Whose ox will get gored?
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news.goldseek.com >> 26 September 2010 |
A Red-Alert Threat to the Regime
By: Gary North
In 2011, Congressman Ron Paul will introduce a bill in the House of Representatives calling for an audit of the gold held by the Federal Reserve System on behalf of the United States government. If he can successfully promote this bill by the phrase, "Show us the gold!" he will inflict enormous damage on the American Establishment.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 September 2010 |
The Federal Reserve's Reserve
By: Gary North
Every army keeps troops in reserve. If there is a breakthrough in the defensive line by the enemy army, the commanding general needs reserves to send into the breach to keep his army from being routed. It is too risky not to have reserves.
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news.goldseek.com >> 6 September 2010 |
Reality Economics
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
As a culture, we like our reality on television, but seem to oppose it in economics. For more than two years now, and even longer depending on your dating scheme, the federal government has waged war on the reality of the incredible Fed-fueled bubble that developed in housing with spillover effects on the rest of economic life.
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news.goldseek.com >> 5 August 2010 |
The New Push for a Global Currency
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
You surely didn't think that the governing elites would let this economic crisis pass without pushing some cockamamie scheme for control. Well, here is the cloud no bigger than a man's hand, a revival of a 60-year-old idea of a global paper currency to fix what ails us.
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news.goldseek.com >> 28 July 2010 |
Economic Warnings From Two Respected Analysts
By: Gary North
Two widely respected economic commentators, Harvard's Niall Ferguson and Nassim "black swan" Taleb, have offered highly pessimistic assessments of what lies ahead for the American economy.
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 July 2010 |
Bonds and the Fading Recovery
By: Gary North
Some commentators on the U.S. economy and the European economy are predicting that there will be "quantitative easing" soon. This is a euphemism for central bank inflation. I have been reporting for months that the present policy of the Federal Reserve System is to deflate the money supply. The chart of the adjusted monetary base since early March indicates this. Similarly, consumer prices have remained flat or close to it this year.
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news.goldseek.com >> 14 July 2010 |
Real Jobs, Fake Jobs
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
In many ways, the unemployment numbers are much worse than they appear. One factor has been the timing of the US census. The bureau hired some 700,000 workers to collect data, people who otherwise were having a very difficult time navigating the choppy labor markets. They went for the jobs because they were a sure thing, paid decently, and didn't require unusual skills (anyone can knock on a door and pester people about their private lives).
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 June 2010 |
101 Thoughts on America's Economy
By: Gary North
1. The crucial objective factor promoting economic growth in a private property social order is per capita investment.
2. Americans save less than 5% of household income.
3. The Federal Reserve System runs the show economically; Congress doesn't.
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news.goldseek.com >> 13 June 2010 |
Debt Liquidation and Economic Recovery
By: Mark R. Crovelli
In order to accurately appraise the status of the much-touted "global economic recovery" we are supposedly experiencing today it is vitally important to clearly and correctly understand the relationship between debt liquidation and economic recovery.
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news.goldseek.com >> 11 June 2010 |
Hazlitt's Battle With Bretton Woods
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"The Austrians were right" is a phrase we hear often now, and for good reason. The housing bubble and bust were called by the Austrians and, essentially, no one else. The Austrians were right about the dot-com bubble and bust. The Austrians were right about the 1970s stagflation and explosion in the price of gold after the gold window was closed.
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news.goldseek.com >> 6 June 2010 |
There Is No Money
By: Gary North
You must decide. Which default is most likely? When is it likely? When will I be affected? Then you must take expensive steps to prepare for the scenario you select as most likely. If you continue to act as if there will be no day of reckoning, you will find yourself unprepared for that day. If you sit there and do nothing, you will at some point face this reality: "There is no money."
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 May 2010 |
Sell in May and Run Away . . . Fast
By: Gary North
There is an old phrase regarding stock market investing: "Sell in May and go away." Recent markets have reinforced that saying. Stock markets all over the world are falling. The first market to begin falling was China's. It peaked in early August of 2009. It struggled back, though not to its August peak, but is now falling. The decline is accelerating. It is down by about 25% in 2010.
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news.goldseek.com >> 19 May 2010 |
The Keynesian Race to Bankruptcy
By: Gary North
It is clear where this will end: default. The investors who trust government bonds will be ruined. Also, voters who rely on government deficits to maintain their above-market incomes will be ruined. Both groups trust Keynesianism, and they are going to get it, good and hard.
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news.goldseek.com >> 11 May 2010 |
Who Bailouts the Bailouter?
By: Richard C.B. Johnsson
First private citizens, government agencies, major banks, financial institutions and corporations being saved from debt default in various government bailouts. Now we are seeing bailout of entire countries. First out is relatively small Greece, with a GDP of 2% of EU GDP and a bailout at $133bn. Another of the PIIGS countries in line for bailout is Spain, bailout size a monstrous $364bn according to rumors. Comparatively large California – 11% of US GDP and world top 10 if it was a country – might be another candidate, a state that is reported not even being able to meet its payroll obligations for May.
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news.goldseek.com >> 9 May 2010 |
How To Run a Federal Budget Surplus
By: Gary North
From time to time, someone asks me: "What would you do about the Federal deficit?" I have this amazing answer: "End it immediately. Then run a surplus until it is paid off 100% – exactly as I would do with my own budget."
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news.goldseek.com >> 3 May 2010 |
On Auditing the Fed: The Doddering Senate
By: Gary North
Retiring Senator Chris Dodd's financial reform bill is now open for debate in the U.S. Senate. For the next few weeks, the public will be treated to media sound-bite snippets of Senatorial debate on various aspects of the Senate version of the reform bill. The bill is supposedly designed to prevent a replay of the 2008 crisis, in which 75 years of Federal financial reform laws proved utterly useless in preventing the crisis.
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 March 2010 |
Ferris Geithner's Day Off
By: Gary North
In my previous report, "Why Should Your Children Pay for My Retirement?" I went through the logic and economics of Social Security and Medicare. I made the point that, at some point, the bill-payers are going to resist the payments that previous generations have legislated. What one generation can legislate, a subsequent generation can repeal.
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news.goldseek.com >> 14 March 2010 |
Invitation to an Anti-Keynes Project
By: Gary North
There is no question that John Maynard Keynes was the most influential economist in the 20th century. Yet his influence has been different from what economists and the intelligentsia have believed.
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news.goldseek.com >> 9 March 2010 |
Four Mental Images That Immunize Sensible People – But Not Economists – Against Keynesian Economics
By: Gary North
Four images provide the conceptual tools to refute Keynesian economics: the gun, the wallet, the IOU, and the printing press. Recall them every time you read a Keynesian promotion of the latest government-spending plan. Let me explain.
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news.goldseek.com >> 7 March 2010 |
Gold Money: Power to the People
By: Gary North
Before I explain the title of this report, I want to prove to you that Americans are losing their liberties, day by relentless day. I also want to prove to you why it is that, unless there is an economic breakdown so severe that Washington D.C. goes broke, we will not get back these surrendered liberties. My demonstration will take approximately three minutes. For skeptics, it may take five minutes.
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news.goldseek.com >> 3 March 2010 |
Bernanke on a Bailout of the Treasury
By: Gary North
On February 10, Ben Bernanke testified to the House Financial Services Committee. The topic: "Federal Reserve's exit strategy." His printed testimony contained the familiar promises. The Federal Reserve System will unwind when the economy recovers.
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news.goldseek.com >> 24 February 2010 |
A Regional Fed President Torpedoes Bernanke
By: Gary North
Two events took place last week that would have been inconceivable a year ago. First, on February 20, Ron Paul won CPAC's straw poll for the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in 2012. CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference. He routed Mitt Romney: 31% to 22%. Sarah Palin did far worse: 7%.
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 February 2010 |
Central Banks Are On the Defensive
By: Gary North
All over the Western world, central banks are under pressure from their governments to inflate. Governments are not satisfied with short-term interest rates at historic lows, such as a federal funds rate of 0% to 0.25% in the United States. Politicians want rapid economic growth, and they are convinced that this is possible after a major recession only with more fiat money. In short, they have accurately understood the message of their college-level textbooks.
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news.goldseek.com >> 18 February 2010 |
Squeaky Wheels Always Get 'Greeced'
By: Gary North
I think the euro is a lost cause. I think the rules governing fiscal policies are already broken. They no longer are taken seriously. Now it is the ECB's turn to break the rules. Why not? It lent commercial banks money at 1% so they could buy Greek and other PIIG debt. To stop now could bust the banks. The ECB is the agent of these banks.
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news.goldseek.com >> 10 February 2010 |
Southern Europe's Fiscal Crisis
By: Gary North
The euro is the focus of attention these days. This is because of a fiscal crisis in Greece, and looming crises in Portugal and Spain. Italy could follow. What is the problem? Greece is running a huge deficit in the range of 12.7% of its Gross Domestic Product. The investment world regards a deficit of this magnitude as unsustainable. There are rumors of default.
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news.goldseek.com >> 29 January 2010 |
How To Fix the Jobs Problem
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
All this talk of unemployment is preposterous. Think of it. We live in a world with lots of imperfections, things that need to be done. It has always been so and always will be so. That means that there is work to be done, and therefore always jobs. The problem of unemployment is a problem of disconnect between those who would work and those who would hire.
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news.goldseek.com >> 28 January 2010 |
Ben Bernanke: Role Model
By: Charles Goyette
Even Bernanke’s desire to be reconfirmed for another four years testifies to the persistence of his failed Keynesian dogma and his cluelessness about his hand in the creation of the coming currency crisis. As the Fed persists in its folly and one Fed bubble begets another, the motion picture Groundhog Day comes to mind.
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news.goldseek.com >> 27 January 2010 |
Monetary Unwinding and Secondary Recession
By: Gary North
Officials at the Federal Reserve System insist that the FED will unwind its more than doubled monetary base. They do not say when. They do not say how. But they insist that they will do this when the economy recovers.
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news.goldseek.com >> 24 January 2010 |
Bernanke's Doom Loop
By: Gary North
Two Bank of England economists have written one of the most perceptive and forthright papers in the history of central banking: "Banking on the State." Compared with any of the dozens of deadly dull, equation-filled, narrowly focused, recommendation-avoiding, career-enhancing, résumé-padding, utterly useless academic exercises published in the dozen regional Federal Reserve bank journals every month, this paper stands out like a diamond in an immense dung hill.
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 December 2009 |
Reliving the Crash of '29
By: Murray N. Rothbard
Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it – except that now, with gold abandoned and each nation able to print currency ad lib, we are likely to wind up, not with a repeat of 1929, but with something far worse: the holocaust of runaway inflation that ravaged Germany in 1923 and many other countries during World War II. To avoid such a catastrophe we must have the resolve and the will to cease the inflationary expansion of credit, and to force the Federal Reserve System to stop purchasing assets, and thereby to stop its continued generation of chronic, accelerating inflation.
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 December 2009 |
Weapon of Monetary Destruction
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
By way of review, the Fed has only one distinct power: the capacity to create money out of thin air. In the end, and despite all its other powers, this is the one that matters. So if you are interviewing the Fed governor, one would think that this would be the central question: what did you do with the money-creating power to bring about this situation?
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news.goldseek.com >> 15 December 2009 |
Washington – Tear Down Your Wall Against Currency Competition
By: Ron Holland
Americans should in the meantime insulate themselves from the coming dollar and debt debacle by investing in gold bullion stored in the US and outside in secure facilities like "Global Gold" in Switzerland as well as foreign currency diversification with the Euro and Swiss franc. Don’t wait, take action now while you still have the opportunity to protect and preserve your wealth.
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news.goldseek.com >> 10 December 2009 |
Leave Markets to Themselves
By: Don Cooper
Obviously the whole situation is a joke; trust me, there are thousands of economists in academia around the world who have made careers out of trying to develop models to predict markets, of all kinds, and no one has succeeded yet. I don’t think the likes of BO or Bernanke are up to the task.
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news.goldseek.com >> 24 November 2009 |
Gold’s Price Is Not A Bubble Price
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Gold remains undervalued, even at its current price of $1,150 an ounce. One signal of this is that at current market prices of gold, the notes of the FED – its dollar bills – are not fully-backed by gold. That is to say, gold’s price is lower than the Zero Discount Value (ZDV) of gold by a wide margin.
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 November 2009 |
Is Gold in a Bubble?
By: Robert Blumen
If I am correct, then the next phase of monetary history would almost certainly involve an informal or formal recognition of gold as a monetary reserve asset by central banks. Gold would then be revalued at a much higher level of purchasing power relative to recent history.
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news.goldseek.com >> 22 November 2009 |
What Is Money? Part 17: Conclusion
By: Gary North
Decide which way of default is most likely. Then decide when. Then plan accordingly. Or you can do what the policy-makers do. Kick the can. Most people do. But then, one day, there is a day of reckoning. However, until then. . . . "We'll have fun, fun, fun till the market takes our T-bills away."
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news.goldseek.com >> 13 November 2009 |
Inflation Is Worse Than You Thought
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Suppose that I am thinking about buying a bond and its yield is 3.5 percent. This is a nominal yield before taxes and before accounting for price inflation. To estimate my real return, I need to estimate future price inflation. If, for example, I think that price inflation is going to be 3.0 percent, then I expect my before-tax yield will be only about 0.5 percent.
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news.goldseek.com >> 11 November 2009 |
What Is Money? Part 14: Money and Uncertainty
By: Gary North
Three decades ago, I was visiting a friend. He was a graduate of the Harvard Business School. He was beginning a successful career as an entrepreneur. We were outside, watching his son play. His son was about five years old. "Robbie," he said, "why does daddy have to go to work every day?" "To buy money," Robbie replied. "No, Robbie. I go to work to earn money."
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 November 2009 |
What Is Money? Part 13: Exported Inflation
By: Gary North
When you hear about America's exported inflation, be sure you distinguish Manuel Labor from Exxon. Be sure you distinguish paper currency sent abroad from digits held in New York banks. In the first case, inflation is exported, and the result is deflation in America. In the second case, inflation stays at home. So does most of the money. Ownership changes. The money supply rises in the United States when the Federal Reserve buys any asset, but that money is not exported. It just changes hands, which of course are not hands. They are computers.
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news.goldseek.com >> 6 November 2009 |
Reserve Bank of India’s Gold Purchase From the IMF
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Viewed in this context, U.S. fiscal and monetary policies seem grotesquely out of step with reality. Yet another bout of massive inflation and debt creation in order to "create" a buoyant economy does nothing to address the basic political economic issues. While America ponders further socializing health care and further controlling and taxing energy use, it continues to debase its currency.
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news.goldseek.com >> 4 November 2009 |
What Is Money? Part 12: Why Central Banking Persists
By: Gary North
To call for the abolition of central banking in the name of economic theory is to call for the abandonment of economic theory. It means calling for expensive political mobilization against an unknown institution. It means imagining that someone will put up the money to change millions of voters' minds. Who will do this? Why? What results can he legitimately expect?
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 November 2009 |
What Is Money? Part 11: The Great Default
By: Gary North
The governments of every major nation are going to default on their debts. There are two relevant questions: (1) How? (2) When?
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news.goldseek.com >> 28 October 2009 |
What Is Money? Part 10: When Money Dies
By: Gary North
Bottom line: "When money dies, so do people." Hyperinflation in a modern urban nation would kill people. I think it would kill a lot of people.
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news.goldseek.com >> 27 October 2009 |
Zero Discount Value of Gold in the Total Banking System
By: Michael S. Rozeff
The U.S. banking system has many banks with large amounts of bad loans on their books. How do these bad loans affect the value of the dollar and gold? Specifically, how do they affect the Zero Discount Value (ZDV) of gold?
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news.goldseek.com >> 25 October 2009 |
What Is Money? Part 9: Monetary Reform
By: Gary North
An obvious response to the information that I have presented in the first eight parts of this series is this: "What should we do to reform the system?" This is a nice sentiment. It ignores the obvious: "we" have nothing to say about monetary reform.
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 October 2009 |
What Is Money? Part 8: Why Gold Has No Intrinsic Value
By: Gary North
The more unreliable the decisions of the central bankers, the more upset the economists are with owners of gold. They do not want the price of gold to rise. Such an increase would signal a voice of protest by a small group of private citizens. If you would like to protest the extension of centralized government power over your life and society in general, buy a few gold coins. I like protests that can turn a profit. This is such a protest.
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news.goldseek.com >> 20 October 2009 |
The Zero Discount Value of Gold and Dethroning the Dollar
By: Michael S. Rozeff
A truly major change in the global monetary system is beginning to materialize. The dollar is starting to be dethroned. Foreign governments and central banks are going to do the dethroning.
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news.goldseek.com >> 18 October 2009 |
What Is Money? Part 7: Gresham's Law
By: Gary North
Gresham's Law, properly understood, is a real phenomenon. When a government threatens violence against currency traders for daring to make an exchange at a rate not mandated by the government, there will be a glut of the overpriced currency and a shortage of the underpriced currency in that jurisdiction. The result will be decreased trade across borders. There will be shortages of goods on both sides of the border. Most people's wealth will decline as a direct result of reduced trade.
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news.goldseek.com >> 12 October 2009 |
What Price Gold?
By: Michael S. Rozeff
I recently received an e-mail asking about the price of gold. This person presented two gold-pricing models in the body of the e-mail along with an estimate of what price gold might command in the future in dollars. Let’s examine the gist of what he wrote and provide an extended reply.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 October 2009 |
Divorcing the Dollar and Marrying Gold
By: Michael S. Rozeff
With their money and banking system having presented them with a case of system failure by disintegrating before their eyes and taking the economy with it, America’s economic experts who support and run the FED’s central banking–inconvertible paper dollar system cannot place the blame for this where it belongs, which is on the system itself, its supporters, and those who make its policies.
What Is Money? Part 4: Bait and Switch
By: Gary North
The phrase "bait and switch" refers to a sales practice of advertising a desirable item at a low price to get potential buyers into a showroom. Then the salesman tells the shopper that the firm has run out of the sought-after item. The salesman then uses his sales skills to sell the shopper a more expensive item. This practice is illegal. It is a form of fraud. It steals time from the shoppers. Bait and switch is at the heart of all fractional reserve banking. It is not illegal. It is the heart of the modern economy.
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news.goldseek.com >> 7 October 2009 |
What Is Money?
By: Gary North
If monetary theory is accurate, it is a subset of general economic theory, which must also be accurate. Monetary theory is not an independent theory of human action that is divorced analytically from a general theory of human action.
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news.goldseek.com >> 1 October 2009 |
What Is Money?
By: Gary North
A gold coin standard or silver coin standard provides continuity that fiat money systems do not provide. Such a standard makes life difficult for counterfeiters. This is why governments do whatever it takes to substitute a fiat currency unit for a precious metals coinage. The government wants to benefit as the nation's monopolistic counterfeiter. It will share this only with commercial banks and the central bank. It does this only because the central bank promises to be the lender of last resort to the national Treasury.
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news.goldseek.com >> 30 September 2009 |
Fractional Reserve Banking Made Easy
By: Terence Gillespie
The paper bills in our wallet are not money. And they are not Notes as in "Federal Reserve Note" written on the top of the bill. They are actually just Tokens. Federal Reserve Tokens, if you like, is what should be written on top of the bills. They are not redeemable for anything other than themselves. And they represent only one thing: Your belief in their value. Hopefully, your belief extends to the next person you try to give them to.
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news.goldseek.com >> 29 September 2009 |
What Is Money?
By: Gary North
This question divides economists even more than it divides voters. Voters do not think much about this question. Economists think about it throughout their careers. They do not agree with each other regarding the answer.
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news.goldseek.com >> 28 September 2009 |
My Day Among the Tax-Eaters
By: Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Last week I testified before the House Financial Services Committee in support of HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009. Speaking on behalf of HR 1207 is particularly tricky because (1) what the Fed might be up to is entirely speculative, and thus can hardly be admitted into testimony; and (2) the bill is not opposed to the Fed per se, so arguments about the Fed’s performance as an economic stabilizer are also out of bounds (unless a congressman happens to raise them).
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news.goldseek.com >> 25 September 2009 |
Audit the Fed
By: Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Testimony in Support of HR 1207, The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, House Financial Services Committee, September 25, 2009.
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 September 2009 |
One Fine Day
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Since the government and central bank are once again inflating the economy, let’s look back at what happened the last time they did this.
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 September 2009 |
Nuclear No-Contest
By: James P. Hogan
For reasons that have mainly to do with politics and the media's thirst for sensationalism, nuclear energy has been a subject of much disinformation and alarmism for several decades. In fact, nuclear is safer, cleaner, and potentially cheaper and more abundant than any other proven source of energy that the human race has come up with. But beyond this, its real significance is that it represents the next natural step in the evolutionary progression that has marked the history of energy development.
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news.goldseek.com >> 16 September 2009 |
Gold Is Money
By: Greg Canavan
Gold's recent breach of the symbolic US$1,000 level has elicited a predictable amount of commentary from mainstream analysts. The problem is, much of it is ill-informed. Due to the general amnesia of most market analysts, of all asset classes gold remains the most misunderstood. In order to comprehend why gold is rising and why it will continue to rise in the years ahead, we need to review some history.
The Third Rail of Academia
By: Gary North
The Social Security system has long been described as the third rail of American politics. "Touch it, and you die." You get electrocuted. If you should somehow survive, the next subway train will cut you in pieces. There is such a rail in academia: the Federal Reserve System.
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news.goldseek.com >> 9 September 2009 |
The Great Fakeroo Recovery
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
There is something affected, something not believable, something agitpropish, about all the cheers for the glorious economic recovery we are experiencing. Some of its biggest boosters don't even quite believe it.
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news.goldseek.com >> 3 September 2009 |
Deficits Will Matter
By: Gary North, Lew Rockwell
The defenders of supply-side economics have regaled conservatives with this slogan, "deficits don't matter," from the late 1970's until today. As far as I can determine, this was the only idea to come out of the supply-side movement that was ever agreed to by the mainstream Keynesians and Chicago School economists. They all agree: Federal deficits don't matter. Someday, yes, but not yet. Not now. Don't worry. Be happy.
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news.goldseek.com >> 31 August 2009 |
The Fed on the Defensive
By: Gary North
I do not recall this in my lifetime. A majority in the House of Representatives has co-signed H.R. 1207, a bill introduced by Ron Paul to have the Federal Reserve System audited by an independent government agency, the Comptroller General's office.
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news.goldseek.com >> 20 August 2009 |
Sound Money: The Impossible Dream?
By: Floy Lilley
Our gold standard money didn’t fail us in 1913; it was murdered. Did it deserve to die? What was its crime? It had provided us with nothing less than relative peace and prosperity over a span of 136 years. It had not only retained one hundred percent of its value, it had gained eleven percent. That’s right. The dollar we started with in 1776 bought us eleven percent more after almost seven generations. Then, J.P. Morgan’s creatures picked a quiet 23rd of December in 1913 to suffocate our sound money system. Since that manslaughter, the purchasing power of a dollar has plummeted over 95%. We now pay twenty times more than J.P. Morgan did for any item.
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news.goldseek.com >> 12 August 2009 |
Pink Slip Nation
By: Gary North
I don't know when the term "pink slip" originated. The term is at least a century old. It refers to a "your fired" notice. The American economy shows no signs of reversing its relentless increase in the rate of unemployment. Jobs are disappearing at a rate not seen since the 1981–82 recession.
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news.goldseek.com >> 11 August 2009 |
Hit-and-Run: How the Government's Billion-Dollar Cash for Clunkers Boondoggle Hurts the Poor
By: Gary North
Back in the recession of 1958, one solution offered by the car industry was this: "You auto buy now." Get it? Auto. Ought to. Someone got paid a bonus for that slogan. There were others. Same theme: save the economy by buying a new car. Do your patriotic duty. Back then, the government did not get involved. That was then. This is now.
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 August 2009 |
Why Bernanke Is in Panic Mode
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
Usually, when Ben Bernanke is interviewed, he has the demeanor of a college professor in the presence of freshman students. Of course, as a full professor, he did not have to teach freshmen. That is for untenured assistant professors to do. Stammering and stuttering are therefore a real departure for him. There is a reason for this.
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news.goldseek.com >> 31 July 2009 |
Bernanke’s Collectivism
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Mr. Bernanke is the world’s premier central banker. He is a very smart man with a stellar academic record. He has carried the ways of the seminar into the FED. He thinks about central banking a great deal, and he lets us know what he thinks.
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news.goldseek.com >> 30 July 2009 |
A Very Few Elements of Gold Strategy
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Gold strategy depends on age, wealth, anticipated labor income, one’s expectations, and risk preferences, among other things. A complete gold strategy covers alternative metals, alternative ways to own gold, and shares in metal and mining companies.
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news.goldseek.com >> 27 July 2009 |
23.7 Trillion Reasons To Buy Gold
By: Michael S. Rozeff
American government has one good thing about it. It has Inspector Generals. The government ignores what they say, but at least they give us a measure of truth about government. The truth these days on the extent of government bailouts is undeniably mind-boggling. It may make you feel queasy. It may set off alarm bells.
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news.goldseek.com >> 26 July 2009 |
Mass Layoffs: The Continuing Devastation
By: Gary North
Stock market investors shrug off a disaster in our midst: mass layoffs. Investors act as though it will soon be business as usual. Companies cut costs by firing employees that have been with them for decades. Then the companies can report higher earnings from cost-cutting measures. The media then proclaim an increase in earnings. But how will these increases be sustained? How will an unemployment rate of 11% help get the economy back on its feet?
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news.goldseek.com >> 24 July 2009 |
The Record of the Federal Reserve
By: Erik Voorhees
From 1776 to 1912 (136 years), the value of the dollar, relative to the Consumer Price Index, increased by 11%. A dollar could buy 11% more goods in 1912 than in 1776. Thus, if in 1776, you sat on your savings pile of $1,000,000 for 136 years, it would then be worth $1,110,000 in purchasing power (it will have appreciated in value by 11%). A loaf of bread for Thomas Jefferson cost the same as a loaf of bread for Lincoln 50 years later and again the same for J.P. Morgan 50 years after that.
The FED: No Exit
By: Michael S. Rozeff
The FED has changed enormously in the past nine months. Between last September and now, Reserve Bank credit has gone up 135 percent. Will the FED change back to what it used to be? Does it have a workable exit strategy? Very, very doubtful.
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 July 2009 |
Bernanke Sidesteps the Three Big Questions, Again
By: Gary North
In a recent international Bloomberg poll, Bernanke was rated by investors as the greatest central banker, the man who saved the world's economy. All it took was a doubling of the monetary base and $3 trillion – as of today – of government bailout money.
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news.goldseek.com >> 22 July 2009 |
When Atlas Shrugs: The Great Default
By: Gary North
Have you ever heard this argument? "The national debt is too high. We are laying an enormous burden onto our children." It is misleading. In what way? Because our children, like Atlas in Ayn Rand's novel, will shrug. They will send Congress a message: "No more."
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news.goldseek.com >> 15 July 2009 |
Why Gold's Price Rose in the Great Depression
By: Gary North
I keep coming back to this theme because the non-Keynesian, hard-money deflationists keep pitching the same old deliberately deceptive statement: "Gold's price rose in the Great Depression." They tell their readers to buy gold.
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news.goldseek.com >> 13 July 2009 |
How To Create a New World Reserve Currency
By: Gary North
For several months, there have been news reports of announcements by bureaucrats in China and politicians in Russia about the need for a new reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar. One suggestion: substitute the non-currency known as the SDR (special drawing rights) of the non-governmental, non-central bank IMF (International Monetary Fund).
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news.goldseek.com >> 25 June 2009 |
Obama's Fix-It Plans
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
The entire presumption of the Obama-proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency is that banks and mortgage companies are under-regulated by the state. This is why the financial meltdown took place – never mind that the federal regulatory Gosplan includes tens of thousands of pages purporting to regulate the mortgage industry alone.
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 June 2009 |
Pushing on a String
By: Gary North
Back in 1973, gold standard advocate John Exter made a phrase famous in hard-money circles: "Pushing on a string." Exter argued that prices of all assets except gold (he ignored silver) would someday collapse because of the pyramiding of debt. Banks would eventually cease to lend, out of fear of default. That would cause the default.
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news.goldseek.com >> 19 June 2009 |
The Federal Reserve System's Party Line
By: Gary North
I monitor statements by senior officials of the Federal Reserve System. There are supposedly "hawks" among the regional Federal Reserve banks – privately owned banks. These "hawks" oppose the "doves." The "doves" are always ready to inflate. The "hawks" are always ready to remind the "doves" that inflation may be a problem one of these days, but not yet. Then the "hawks" vote with the "doves" to expand the monetary base.
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news.goldseek.com >> 14 June 2009 |
Bankers Are Scared. Are You?
By: Gary North
Those who predict price inflation believe that the money multiplier will turn upward again. They just don't know when. Those who predict price deflation believe that the money multiplier will not turn upward again. Indeed, it must fall much further. Prices are close to stable today. To get to significant decline – 5% or more per annum – the money multiplier must continue its downward path. I am in the inflationist camp. But until I see a sustained reversal of the money multiplier, I will continue to predict relatively stable consumer prices.
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news.goldseek.com >> 10 June 2009 |
A Regional Central Banker Blows the Whistle
By: Gary North
The FED is on the back of the tiger. Hoenig sees this. He knows the financial system remains fragile. I presume that he knows that the only way to keep it solvent is for the FED to refuse to sell its assets to the general investment community. Bernanke knows this, too.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 June 2009 |
Around With Ludwig
By: Chris Clancy
I’m coming to the end of the third year of my journey into Austrian economics. At times it has become almost obsessive as so much of what I believed before has been turned on its head. Its been a bit like playing a new golf course – one which has been cunningly designed with all sorts of traps and hazards – to play this course properly a new approach is needed.
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news.goldseek.com >> 4 June 2009 |
Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
How about a bit of reality? Not the ridiculous promises from Washington, the absurd talk of "green shoots" while unemployment soars and investment falls, the silly guarantees that GM has a bright future even as its stock price falls to less than the price of a Snickers bar, the nonsense about how if we spend more and inflate more. Recovery will come tomorrow morning.
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 June 2009 |
The Austrian Cure for Economic Illness
By: Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
As in medicine, with its opposing schools of allopathic (pharmaceutically oriented) medicine and homeopathy, there are two diametrically opposed schools of economics: the Keynesian one and the Austrian School of economic thought. Based on the ideas of the John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), a British economist, Keynesian economics is the one government officials, academic experts, pundits, journalists, editors, and establishment economists follow.
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news.goldseek.com >> 31 May 2009 |
The 'No Problem' Mindset: Guaranteed Destruction
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
We live in today's world. It's bad, but it's not a catastrophe. We must keep our heads above water.
A Tsunami is coming. In such a scenario, you have got to get out of the water and off the beach. But few people ever do, unless they have seen a tsunami. Few have.
Allocate some percent of your wealth to tsunami-avoidance. Do it quietly. Do not discuss this with your big-mouth brother-in-law.
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news.goldseek.com >> 26 May 2009 |
Romer, Bernanke, and the Flying Donkeys
By: Glenn Jacobs
It seems as if Romer, Bernanke, et al. are proposing something new and revolutionary – inflate the money supply and devalue the currency. Genius! But there is a big problem. This solution is neither new nor revolutionary. Although it has never before had as fancy a euphemism as "quantitative easing," the practice of monetary devaluation is ancient and is standard government operating procedure. Unfortunately, it has also proven a disaster everywhere it has been implemented.
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news.goldseek.com >> 13 May 2009 |
Sucker's Rally, Not Green Shoots
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
The rally has been based on the rise in bank stocks. To understand the rise in bank stocks, you must understand the stress test. Saturday Night Live understands this quite well.
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news.goldseek.com >> 11 May 2009 |
The Meaning of Quantitative Easing
By: Michael S. Rozeff
I begin by describing quantitative easing in technical terms. I go on to describe what it means when a central bank and its government engage in quantitative easing. What is quantitative easing? It is a central bank’s "purchase" of government securities (bills, notes, bonds) directly from the government.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 May 2009 |
No, the Free Market Did Not Cause the Financial Crisis
By: Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
In March 2007 then-Treasury secretary Henry Paulson told Americans that the global economy was “as strong as I’ve seen it in my business career.” “Our financial institutions are strong,” he added in March 2008. “Our investment banks are strong. Our banks are strong. They’re going to be strong for many, many years.”
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news.goldseek.com >> 4 May 2009 |
Gold-Exchange Standard, Gold, and Monetary Freedom
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Two major government economists, Christina D. Romer and Ben Bernanke, have done influential research on the Great Depression. Both implicate the State-run gold standard of that era, which differed from the pre-1914 gold standard, as a major culprit in the Great Depression. (See here and here.) Their work parallels that of other economists such as Barry Eichengreen and Peter Temin on the negative role of the interwar gold exchange standard. There is an emerging or existing consensus among economists about the negative effects of the gold-exchange standard. Still, research continues.
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news.goldseek.com >> 30 April 2009 |
Fiscal and Monetary Policy Annoy Me
By: Michael S. Rozeff
The terms "fiscal and monetary policy" annoy me. The fact that fiscal and monetary policy even exist annoys me. They are the terms that mean government control over the economy. That annoys me too.
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news.goldseek.com >> 22 April 2009 |
Credit Welfare and the FED
By: Michael S. Rozeff
I’d like to extend my remarks on Donald Kohn’s recent speech in Nashville, because here we have a top FED official clearly outlining the FED’s recent actions and, to some extent, trying to justify them. His speech makes clear what the FED has done and why it has done it.
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news.goldseek.com >> 21 April 2009 |
Defending the FED’s Power With Myths
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Donald L. Kohn is a powerful man, as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors of the FED. He shouldn’t have this power. Nor should the FED have the power it has. Not under the U.S. Constitution. Not in a nation of free men and women. And not if we want a sound economy.
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news.goldseek.com >> 16 April 2009 |
Robert Shiller’s Fatal Prescriptions
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Shiller proposes the massive expansion and extension of the State into the American economy "to get us out of the current economic slump, and to restore confidence." This is utter nonsense. The economy would not have tumbled and would long since have been recovering had the government stayed out of it altogether. American confidence is legendary. Americans are ready at any time to take and manage risks. Only concerted government policies can bypass and undermine this American characteristic.
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news.goldseek.com >> 15 April 2009 |
94 Years of Serfdom
By: Paul Craig Roberts
This April 15 is the 94th year that Americans have had to file an income tax. For most Americans, the day is a non-event. The federal and state governments have already collected the taxes due by withholding from each paycheck over the course of the calendar year. Most Americans never saw the money and have no real idea that they earned it.
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news.goldseek.com >> 10 April 2009 |
Bailout Bonds?
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
If private markets have learned from past mistakes, they will stay away from these bonds. They will freely tell others not to buy them either. But then what happens, especially as the depression deepens? In the First World War, such people were sent to jail. That tended to have a chilling effect on open discussion of the subject.
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news.goldseek.com >> 9 April 2009 |
The Real Estate Bust Is Far From Over
By: Doug French
For those thinking that the real estate bust is all over with – think again. The residential market has hit the ditch and continues to sink lower, but now the commercial property market is rolling over and will take many lenders down the drain with it.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 April 2009 |
Panic: First Wall Street, Then Main Street
By: Gary North
We have not yet seen panic on Main Street. The malls' parking lots are full. Most yuppie restaurant chains are still in business. Their local restaurants may not be as full as they were a year ago, but they are open for business. There are still shoppers at Wal-Mart.
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news.goldseek.com >> 7 April 2009 |
Blowing Bubbles
By: Doug French
While history clearly shows that it is this very government meddling in monetary affairs that leads to financial market booms and the inevitable busts that follow, mainstream economists either deny that financial bubbles can occur or that the "animal spirits" of market participants are to blame.
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news.goldseek.com >> 6 April 2009 |
Insolvency vs. Liquidity, or Austrians vs. Keynesians
By: Michael S. Rozeff
An economics debate of very great importance is surfacing. Is the government’s economic rationale for bailing out the banks valid? If it is not, then the entire case for the bank bailouts fails.
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news.goldseek.com >> 5 April 2009 |
There Will Be (Hyper)Inflation
By: Thorsten Polleit
The solution to a destruction of the currency is the return to sound money – free-market money – as outlined by Mises and further developed by Murray N. Rothbard. It would presumably, at least in the initial stage, result in gold-backed money under 100% reserves. The edging up of the gold price seems to support the view that people consider gold as the ultimate means of payment – a status that will become increasingly obvious once people fear that the exchange value of fiat money will be eroded substantially.
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news.goldseek.com >> 3 April 2009 |
The Trouble With Warren Buffett
By: Doug French
When a junior high investment club wrote in to CNBC’s Squawk Box to ask legendary investor Warren Buffett what he thought the price of gold would be in five years and whether the yellow metal should be a part of value investing, the Oracle of Omaha responded with:
Bailout Baloney
By: Dom Armentano
As even Karl Marx once reluctantly admitted, the capitalist system has created more wealth (and more quickly) than any other economic system in history. Yet, despite its obvious success (or, perhaps, because of it), the system is poorly understood and almost never loved. And this ignorance and lack of affection (for self-interest and profit and competition) always makes capitalism vulnerable (especially during recessions) to crack-pot schemes and reforms that strike at the root of its economic performance.
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 April 2009 |
Would Cleansing Banks' Balance Sheets Kick-start the US Economy?
By: Frank Shostak
It is believed that banks fund economic activity by means of credit expansion. Toxic assets, however, cause banks to curtail the expansion of credit and thereby plunge the economy into a severe economic slump. So it is not surprising that for most experts and President Obama the success of the Treasury plan (i.e., the removal of toxic assets from banks' balance sheets) is a key for economic recovery.
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news.goldseek.com >> 1 April 2009 |
Nightmare on Wall Street
By: Lila Rajiva
The furor over the AIG rescue and the possibility that American banks might be nationalized have turned March into a financial horror film: Zombies on the street, empty vaults, tentacled monsters, and cryptic pronouncements from a parallel universe. It deserves rewinding and deconstruction, episode by episode.
Destination Collapse
By: Michael S. Rozeff
The massive government and FED stimulation that we are now being subjected to cannot and will not produce a sound and sane economy. The greater the stimulus, the more the free market prevented from working and restoring the economy to normalcy.
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news.goldseek.com >> 29 March 2009 |
George Soros on Main Street and Wall Street
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
Donald Trump is smart. His bondholders are smart. Central bankers are smart. But they are not smarter that the assembled knowledge of a free market that is not being distorted by bureaucratic monetary policy.
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news.goldseek.com >> 25 March 2009 |
Save the Big Banks, Trash the Dollar
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
Timothy Geithner's plan to save the big banks will be a success. This success will come at a cost. The plan will hurt taxpayers, and it will lead to severe price inflation. It will not revive the faltering economy in 2009. It will not restore the housing market. Family wealth will continue to decline.
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 March 2009 |
Global Money Inflation in the Late-Departed Boom
By: Michael S. Rozeff
The world economy is experiencing a severe recession or depression. This has been preceded by a steep inflation in nominal stocks of money across the entire world. Central banks control these money stocks or money supplies. They engineered a global credit boom by inflating their local currencies.
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news.goldseek.com >> 20 March 2009 |
The Unholy Marriage of 'Fiscal' and 'Monetary' Policies
By: William L. Anderson
Although economists are cheering this latest development, the Austrians know better. There is no way the economy can absorb this amount of new money without severe malinvestments and dislocation of the economic fundamentals, and that simply sets the stage for later and more virulent crises.
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news.goldseek.com >> 18 March 2009 |
Obama's War on Recovery
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Obama came to power with the idea of repeating the storybook-view of FDR's presidency and how he saved us from the Great Depression. Had he and his friends read the history more carefully, he would have seen how FDR did nothing of the sort. His policies waged war on recovery, perpetuating the problem he said he was solving.
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news.goldseek.com >> 15 March 2009 |
Master Madoff
By: Don Cooper
We my friends have been fortunate enough to live in a wondrous time. A time of invention, innovation and technological advancements that has inspired an evolution of the human species never before seen. And we have been chosen to live in the time of one of the greatest masters of them all. A teacher among teachers. A Jedi knight of the first order.
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news.goldseek.com >> 12 March 2009 |
We Need Our Heads Examined, Says Harvard
By: Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Last weekend, Harvard University sponsored a conference called (I am not making this up) "The Free Market Mindset: History, Psychology, and Consequences." Its purpose was to try to figure out why, since everyone knows the current crisis amounts to a failure of the market economy, the stupid rubes continue to believe in it.
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news.goldseek.com >> 9 March 2009 |
Systemic Risk Reduction via Failure
By: Michael S. Rozeff
One year ago, Bear Stearns faced collapse when its short-term lenders stopped rolling over their loans to the investment bank. The federal government and the FED stepped in. They financed and brought about an acquisition by the JP Morgan Chase (JPM) bank.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 March 2009 |
Dialogue #4 on the American Gold Standard: Trust and Distrust in Banking
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
The private money guy and the state money guy go at it again.
PMG: If a gold standard is really a standard, who sets it?
SMG: The government.
PMG: Why not the free market?
SMG: Because someone has to enforce the law.
PMG: What law?...
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news.goldseek.com >> 6 March 2009 |
The House That Regulation Built
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Ground zero of the economic depression is the banking system – worldwide. The system is collapsed, exploded, demolished, gone, ruined, kaput. The global banking system was a house of cards, and it has fallen. Governments and central banks everywhere do not yet realize this. They are attempting to rebuild the house from the pieces and scraps scattered far and wide. Better to salvage the pieces that still work and use them in an entirely new system than attempt to rebuild this one on the same cracked foundation and along the same flawed lines that produced this wreck.
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news.goldseek.com >> 5 March 2009 |
Where Did the Jobs Go?
By: Bill Trench
The solution to the current recession is to scrap the whole “bailout” bill, and cut government spending drastically. At the same time cut taxes across the board, thus making money available for people and companies to spend and invest, thus creating more demand, thus creating more production, and thus creating more, newer and better jobs which will, in the end, mean greater wealth for everyone. Will it happen? I for one am not holding my breath.
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news.goldseek.com >> 4 March 2009 |
The Root of All Evil
By: Paul Hein
So look about once again. What you see is the collapse of a society built upon a bubble of deceit and dishonesty, a society which has been trying to borrow itself into prosperity. It’s happened before, many times. A fiat "money" eventually reaches its intrinsic value. Do we learn from experience? In monetary matters, the answer would seem to be "NO!" And civilization crumbles, on a foundation of fiat. A sound society needs sound money.
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 March 2009 |
Dialogue #3 on the American Gold Standard: Science Is as Science Does
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
The gold standard has advocates, but the problem is, there are competing versions. The government-enforced gold standard is the one that gets all the space in the history textbooks. This is because it is the only version governments allow.
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news.goldseek.com >> 1 March 2009 |
The FED’s Unsound Theories
By: Michael S. Rozeff
There are many slips betwixt cup and lip, and thus this introduction before getting to the FED’s unsound theories. Neither the federal government nor its Constitution have a moral or rightful foundation over any person residing in America who does not consent to them, for civil and political rights include the right of association.
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news.goldseek.com >> 22 February 2009 |
Dialogue #2 on the American Gold Standard
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
PMG: You still believe in gold.
SMG: Yes, I do. I own gold coins.
PMG: Is that because you don't trust the Federal Reserve System?
SMG: Yes.
PMG: Why don't you trust the FED?
SMG: Because the country isn't on a government-enforced gold standard.
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news.goldseek.com >> 20 February 2009 |
Where the Future Went
By: Joe Schembrie
Almost forty years ago, the United States had seemingly reached the zenith of economic power. Then on August 15, 1971, the federal government abandoned the gold standard, and the last tether between Federal Reserve policy and fiscal responsibility was severed. For America, it was when the future went away.
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news.goldseek.com >> 19 February 2009 |
Debt and the Price of Gold
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Gold is a speculative market. Price can go "too low" or "too high" compared with whatever theoretical notions we may have about what prices should be. If gold rises too fast compared to the rise of debt/GDP, then it may be overpriced. If it rises too slowly compared to debt/GDP’s rise, it may be underpriced.
The Looming Collapse of European Banking
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
The West's economy really is at the edge of a leveraged disaster. The politicians know only one answer: deficit spending. The central bankers have only on significant tool: monetary inflation. The speed of events is increasing. The markets don't reflect this yet. This gives time to a few people to get out. But the vast majority cannot get out. There are too few escape hatches open.
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news.goldseek.com >> 18 February 2009 |
On the Price of Gold
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Notes of caution are appearing in market letters written by gold enthusiasts. They remain long-term bullish, but some fear that a temporary sharp setback is at hand. Others advise against buying until prices fall back somewhat. Others mention gold’s volatility. Some note that commercial hedgers have increased their selling. There is rather widespread fear that gold will have a difficult time making much more headway soon. However, the more that I have studied the gold market, the more I have become long-term bullish.
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news.goldseek.com >> 16 February 2009 |
Dialogue #1 On the American Gold Standard
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
In reading any dialogue, you know in advance that the guy asking the questions is the guy who wrote the dialogue. He will win the argument. This tradition goes back to Plato, where the losers were sometimes reduced to some variation of "Tell us more." This dialogue is between two vocal advocates of limited civil government: Private Money Guy (PMG) and State Money Guy (SMG).
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news.goldseek.com >> 11 February 2009 |
The Stimulus of Abominations
By: Michael S. Rozeff
The federal government is about to pass a law that authorizes $800 billion or so of new expenditures. The Secretary of the Treasury will be introducing other new measures today. More such will be forthcoming. In addition, the Fed’s monetary policy will support this spending.
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news.goldseek.com >> 8 February 2009 |
Economic Fascism and the Bailout Economy
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
What I am saying is this: this time it's different. This time, the fractional reserve banking system has shot its wad. It is begging for ever-larger handouts from the Treasury Department, which needs central bank fiat money to bail out the economy. The public is accepting this grudgingly, and the academic economists are cheering, but the reality is this: this time it's different. You had better adjust your portfolio, your career plans, and your retirement plans accordingly.
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news.goldseek.com >> 4 February 2009 |
The Federal Reserve's Self-Imposed Dilemma
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
The only thing that is keeping this from creating mass inflation is the decision of commercial bankers to deposit the bulk of this increase with the Federal Reserve. The banks are not lending out this money. Neither is the FED. This money does not legally belong to the FED.
Big Deficits and a Weaker Dollar
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Hyperinflation in the U.S. hasn’t happened for quite some time. The last two instances that come to mind are confederate money in the 1860s and the continentals in the 1770s. In both these cases, governments used inflation to finance wars because their tax systems were weak.
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news.goldseek.com >> 2 February 2009 |
Forced Lending To Undermine the Economy
By: Michael S. Rozeff
The Obama administration promises us a program of forced lending by banks. By this means, they intend to promote economic recovery. Amazing as it seems, our major officials do not understand that forced lending by banks severely undermines an economy. Subsidizing loans will destroy the market for bank credit. Bank credit will no longer be allocated by rational means of comparing real costs to real benefits. The results will be to harm many people and worsen the structure of the U.S. economy.
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news.goldseek.com >> 1 February 2009 |
If Deflation Is Coming, Sell Your Gold
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
The debate over inflation versus deflation has been going on in hard money circles since about 1973. The debate has gone on within academic circles for well over a century. The economists are as confused as the general public, but they are confused in a far more sophisticated way. They turn confusion into a science.
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news.goldseek.com >> 28 January 2009 |
Ben Bernanke's Wild Ride (and Ours)
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
I am all for muddling through. But, at this point, I don't see Conventional Creek on my copy of the map. The monetary base has been doubled. The only thing keeping banks from lending to the limit of their legal reserves is fear. If bankers are so afraid to lend, despite returns of one-tenth of 1%, we are not heading toward Conventional Creek. We are headed for the falls. Inflation Falls. Dollar falls. Gold rises.
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news.goldseek.com >> 27 January 2009 |
Money and Our Future
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
We are fortunate to be living in these times, for we are seeing the unfolding of events long explained and predicted by the Austrian tradition. Maybe that sounds implausible. What is fortunate about our times? The economy is tanking, stocks have been pummeled, unemployment is rising, and Washington is pursuing the worst combination of economic policies since Hoover and FDR. Nor does the new guy in charge seem to have a clue about the limits of what government can do.
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news.goldseek.com >> 26 January 2009 |
Tour the Worldwide Economic Crash for 39 Seconds
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
So, you want to know how bad this crash will get. Fine. Spend 30 seconds to see the magnitude of what it is today. It's going to get much worse. The Manchester Guardian published 13 photos from around the world that show the extent of the disaster. Spend just 3 seconds per photo. (You won't see these on Tout TV.)
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 January 2009 |
Bring Back Capital!
By: Jeff Snyder
The moral of the story? If we get rid of the Reserve, we get rid of an institution with the power to undercut all investors and to provide cheap credit divorced from economic reality, and if we also get rid of the tax bias in favor of debt financing, then companies will have a more rational balance of capital and debt, investors may again be able to make money on their money, and companies will have a greater ability to hang on to workers, who they will need when business picks up again.
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news.goldseek.com >> 15 January 2009 |
Has a Stimulus Ever Been Necessary?
By: Scott M. Rosen
The fallacy behind the call for economic stimulus is that declining aggregate demand is the mother and not the daughter of economic contraction. When left to its own devices, the market will return back to prosperity (consumer demand and all). Government intervention oftentimes has the effect of actually prolonging the crisis. The new administration would be wise to let the market adjust on its own and spare us the additional debt and debased currency that an active fiscal and monetary policy will yield.
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news.goldseek.com >> 14 January 2009 |
Blood in the Streets? Nope. Red Ink.
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
The phrase, "blood in the streets," refers to economic panic. Wise investors say they will buy stocks when there is blood in the streets. This means panic. It refers to a final sell-off, when fear trumps greed. We are nowhere near that stage today.
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news.goldseek.com >> 11 January 2009 |
The Sunset of Federal Government Guarantees
By: Michael S. Rozeff
Our federal officials have passed laws that guarantee an incredible variety of debt and debt-like obligations. The amounts run to 50–100 trillion dollars or so. If events occur such that they have to pay off a cluster of these guarantees, they cannot do so. They can pay off in paper but they can’t pay off in terms of real assets.
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news.goldseek.com >> 31 December 2008 |
Closet Keynesians Emerge
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
One of the best tests for determining whether a financial columnist or a professional economist is a Keynesian is to examine his views on personal spending. If he favors an increase of personal spending as a means to stimulate the economy, he is a Keynesian. He may not call himself a Keynesian, but he is a Keynesian.
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news.goldseek.com >> 30 December 2008 |
Who Controls the Money?
By: Michael S. Rozeff
In their attempts to halt credit deflation, the government and the Fed are unleashing a torrent of corruption, inefficiency, misuse of funds, and fraud. If a bank is too big to fail and the government and/or the Fed make sure that it survives, despite the past mis-behaviors of its officers, then they invite those officers to misuse the funds that they infuse.
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news.goldseek.com >> 26 December 2008 |
Rating the Rating Agencies and Securitization
By: Michael S. Rozeff
The risks and drawbacks of securitization were ignored in the flush of a success that was supported by government and government-sponsored enterprises. Securitization is all but dead, but it’s on extremely expensive life support being paid for by forced exactions from taxpayers.
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news.goldseek.com >> 24 December 2008 |
When Trust Runs Out
By: Gary North, Mises on Money
Every society and every institution rests heavily on trust. There is active trust, the result of "trust, but verify." I call this stage one trust. Then there is stage two trust, which I call default trust: "Trust, and assume that someone else has verified." Next, there is stage three trust, which I call blind trust: "Trust, because there is nothing else worth trusting." Then there stage four trust, which I call tooth fairy trust: "Trust, despite all evidence to the contrary." This form of trust is the foundation of all Ponzi schemes.
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news.goldseek.com >> 23 December 2008 |
Banking Demystified
By: Doug French
All of this regulating won’t make for sound banking. That’s impossible with fiat money, fractional reserves and central banking as Rothbard explains. To put banking back on sound footing, the dollar must be defined by weight in gold, the Fed must be liquidated, banks must have gold equal to 100 percent of demand deposits, the U.S. Mint should be abolished, and the FDIC, instead of bulking up, should be abolished, "so that no government guarantee can stand behind bank inflation, or prevent the healthy gale of bank runs assuring that banks remain sound and noninflationary."
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news.goldseek.com >> 22 December 2008 |
Madoff Explained
By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr
Most of us like to believe that we wouldn't have been tricked by Madoff. But are you being tricked by the elites who claim that they can conjure up a trillion dollars to stabilize our economy by clicking a few buttons on a computer screen? Most people are. Certainly the press seems to have bought it. Many people were outwitted by Madoff. Many more people are today being outwitted by the government and its central bank. And it will all end in disgrace and disaster, only on a far, far grander scale.
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news.goldseek.com >> 19 December 2008 |
As 2008 Fades Away
By: Michael S. Rozeff
As 2009 approaches and 2008 fades away, I have a few thoughts about our economy. Perhaps you can factor them into your forecasts of what lies ahead.