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The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself... And Governments Telling Us What To Fear: Why The Beginning Of The End Started With FDR's Confiscation Of Gold
As is well-known by now, following America's collapse in the first Great Depression back in 1929, one of the first decisions undertaken by president FDR, not even a month following the first of four inaugural speeches (in which he notably said that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself") was to respond to the rolling bank runs and shutdowns, by doing something unprecedented: confiscating the gold of American citizens. And then he logically followed up by doing the only thing that insolvent governments know how to do: he debased the US Dollar overnight by 40% by changing the official exchange ratio of the USD to gold from $20.67 per ounce to $35.00 per troy ounce. Alas, since exchanging such gold would be impossible until 40 years later, nobody could take advantage of this generous offer. It is this point in history that to William Buckler of the famous Privateer newsletter marks the transition of American government from republican (on behalf of the people) to being authoritarian (in control of the people). It also begs the question: what did FDR offer in return for gold confiscation - after all if gold confiscation is not "something to be feared" then there is a quid pro quo. Why he gave us Social Security and the Welfare state. The same "welfare" state whose unfunded obligations amount to roughly $80 trillion, and whose increasingly tangible insolvency is precisely the reason why ever more capital is shifting right back to, you guessed it, gold. Perhaps FDR should have added that in addition to fear itself, the one other thing everyone should fear is governments believing they they know what they are doing when transitioning to central planning an an authoritarian regime based on nothing but faith.
From the latest Privateer newsletter:
The US banking collapse which occurred early in 1933 was the result of a huge withdrawal of Gold by both foreigners and Americans. There was real fear that the incoming government would repudiate the Gold standard - just as the UK government had done in late 1931. The worst nightmare of all central bankers was taking place. Just as Mr Bernanke does today, Fed Chairman Eugene Mayer had access to (primitive) helicopters and printing presses. What he did not have was a “fiat” currency. As long as foreigners - AND AMERICANS - could redeem their US Dollars for Gold, his hands were tied.
As already stated, FDR declared a bank holiday immediately upon his inauguration on March 4, 1933. The banks had already ceased making payments and were paying out only five percent of deposits. The bank holiday merely froze this last gasp of bank activity - for a week. It took a lot more to “scare” Americans in the early 1930s than it does today, but the bank collapse of early 1933 was the culmination of the aftermath of the stock market crash of October 1929. For three-and-a-half years, Americans had been rocked by a series of economic and financial calamities - each one of them worse than the one that preceded it. The bank holiday was the last straw. Something RADICAL had to be done.
Something radical was done. When the bank holiday ended, thousands of US banks had ceased to exist. The ones that remained were “SOUND” - so said FDR. Most Americans could no longer afford not to believe him. The Gold poured back into the still standing banks. No sooner had it done so than the US government literally stole it - on April 5, 1933 - by making it illegal for Americans to hold or own Gold. From that day to this, the US economy has run on a totally fiat currency. Until December 31, 1974 - the day it once again became legal for Americans to buy, sell and hold physical Gold - there was no escape.
Gold confiscation was all it took to turn the form of US government from being republican (on behalf of the people) to being authoritarian (in control of the people). It is all it took for that same US government to start to nurture the attitude among Americans that they were dependent on their government. To nail down that attitude, “social security” (a contradiction in terms), old age pensions and unemployment insurance were all enacted into law by 1935. By the end of the 1930s, they were electorally sacrosanct. Deprived of the means to maintain independence, Americans were given the substitute of “welfare”.
Segment courtesy of Bill Buckler and his prior permission.
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Social Welfare is all a lie, did you not get the memo from the last century? It's all a bunch of Marxist/socialist lies and scams just to obtain power, ala Lenin, Castro, and Saul Alinsky.
The silly 'whacked out dems' are the less fortunate, that's why prey upon you. Even though we're already insolvent, they make you scream for more government cheese so your overlords can embezzle it and skim off the top. They don't give a shit about you or your compassion. They just say that stuff to try identify with a motivated underclass packing hostile grievances -- read your Alinsky, "Rules for Radicals", don't skip the first part where he dedicates his book to Lucifer, "The first radical."
Andy Stern, former SEIU president, is now in his second year on the board of a Defense pharmacuetical company making $500K/yr (+ plus bonuses I'm sure), bringing home the bacon from Obama contracts -- the company makes antidotes and vaccines for chemical and biological warfare agents. He's laughing at you.
Besides, conservatives not only give far more to charities than dems do, they earn 60% more college degrees, pay far more in taxes, are less likely to cheat on their taxes, and are more tolerant of others. Oh yeah, and 95% of prison inmates identify with the democrat party -- that's why dems want to give their fellow traveling rapists and murderers the right to vote. (Rhetoric vs Reality... Democrats vs Republicans, Joseph Fried, 2008.)
Crunch the numbers. If Dems could just stay in school and keep up with Republicans, there would be no national debt and social problems would be nil. If the Republicans are so awful, how come democrats are such losers and can't keep up with them? Until you are actually part of something that brings more solutions to the table instead of problems, you'll always be wacked out.
Right, like the lies of big capital aren't a scam to obtain and keep power? The USA has been moving hard to the right for the last 30 years, yet conservatives can't stop whining about how government is making their lives a living hell.
BTW blue states invariably have higher percentages of educated adults than do red states.
You're full of it, just like that big red painful pimple on your face getting ready to explode.
America has been moving left for the last 80 years. Big capital and the crony socialist left are one and the same. Things are screwed up in no small part because your socialist buddies are partnering with corporate monopoly-wannabees by carving out winners and losers based on a patronage system, not free market capitalism. GE =Obama Goldman Sachs = Obama Solyndra = Obama. Solyndra Investigation: Probe Into White House Role in Massive Energy Loan - ABC News
Keynesianism is socialism -- our entire monetary system is built on crony banksterism. Those are your people helping the banksers, RINOs, too. They scratch each others backs and mooch off the middle class and poor. You don't even know what 'hard right' is. You think Obama is a moderate.
And Blue states are the worst states for undereducated (stupid) people. Check out the drop out rates of Illinois, Michigan, NY, CA. And let's focus on those bastions of true blue state liberal democratic educational control -- namely, virtually all the major metro areas of the country. Detroit = 60% drop out rate. Chicago = 50% drop out rate. DC = 50% droop out rate. Cleveland = 67% drop out rate.
These are also some of the worst places for crime. See the connection? That's you and your people creating those problems and then bragging how compassionate you are. Castro and Stalin both bragged they are/were compassionate and on the side of the people, too.
BTW, conservatives have earned about 60% more college degrees than democrats ever since 1958, that's when the records were first kept. And the gap is true for both the men and women.
Actually our monetary system is based on monetarism. Currently Keynesian is in charge.
Austrian is just as bad. Just from a different bullshit induced perspective. People want to change from one type of monetarism, to another type. Expecting it to be better because it's the other part of the dichotomy.
But they forget to ask...is that really a change? Or is it just the same bank robbing flick with different actors and different way to break into the vault?
The reason why they do it 'left' as you say it. (because fascism is right, socialism is left, but both are monetary and both are used in banksterism) Is because cronyism based on the Austrian ideology would last about two seconds before people revolt. Of course in reality they could never achieve that all at once without utter collapse so it would be a slow painful drag into that direction, where people would suffer for quite a while before finally revolting.
Austerity or Printing or both, doesn't matter. This monetary system is fucked. Neither *major* perspectives of monetarism will save this destroyed and crashing system. Not Austrian, not Keynesian.
Austrian or Keynesian ideology are based off of monetarism. Monetarism is based off bullshit. Only benefits the very top, it's just differs on how, and how fast the wealth is stolen from everyone else.
Both have their own subtle along with not so subtle ways they tilt the game in the favor of very top, until such time that it finally snowballs and you get Austrians enacting laws as stupid and as much overboard as the Keynesian recently and upcoming will try.
The only way out is American Credit System, actually based off American ideals and non-dogmatic thought.
The statistics you point out are meaningless. One can easily say cherrypicked. Not that they matter anyways. Republicans, democrats, tea party...all fucking nuts...following anti-american ideology.
So who gives a fuck what someone is, based off of bullshit metrics? (rhetorically).
Glass-Steagall
[because fascism is right, socialism is left...]---jmc8888
"Fascism is right" Where did you hear that nonsense, jmc?
Please provide an example.
What do you mean by the "right"?
You seem confused. What you are describing, the collusion of big business/big money and politics, is not socialism -- closer to facism. Yeah I know what hard right is - I've been watching what conservative groups have been doing for the last 40 years -- alliances with racists, evangelical fundamentalists and big money is what gets them elected.
BTW as far as educational stats, take a look at where most of the college grads live -- hint, it's not Mississippi or Idaho. It's not about the drop out rate, it's about where the majority of the better-educated folks tend to live... blue states.
The cities you mention, Detriot, Cleveland, etc -- these places are some of the worst victims of outsourcing and the collapse of US manufacturing, it's not surprise that there are a lot of problems with crime and poverty. There are a lot of people with no jobs in those towns... what do you expect when you kick America's workforce to the curb, sunshine and rainbows?
If conservatives get more degrees (which I question -- how would anyone know?) it's probably because they tend to be more able to afford them. Finally, your assertion that the US has been moving to the left for the last 80 years is laughable. Since Jimmy Carter's presidency ended, the country has been moving to the right. Obama isn't doing much that Bush wouldn't be doing were he still president. The destruction of the labor movement, you'd think conservatives would be celebrating, but they never stop complaining how the government is getting in their way of making the big bucks.
Yes, and those social safety nets are bankrupting every economy in Europe as well.
Socialism. Never. Works!
That you and Reefer are stupid enough to believe that this is a partisan issue astonishes me. Obama is just as fascist as Bush, and Clinton just as fascist as Reagan/Bush before. They are ALL after more power and more control for their real masters in the banks and big corps. They couldn't care less about "the little people" and would screw them over in a heartbeat if their masters commanded it.
Grow the fuck up, morons!
Close, but it really isn't 'bankrupting' them. MONETARISM is bankrupting them.
They've screwed the system up so bad, that anything spent by gov't's then the part pointed to first is the safety nets, and then one concludes THAT is why the economy is being bankrupted.
No.
It's the system that has broken down so that anything that goes against the trend needed (giving more to the banksters) and thus a decent perecentage spent, and one that people can be bullshitted on that it is expendable or voluntary or whatever) is thus the 'little bit' breaking the system. It isn't. It's because everything has been hollowed out.
Think of it like this. Say you have a tree house, and now you see in the process of falling. Is the fault that you built the little kids fort in the tree? Or that 3 children are up there? Or is it the fact someone is taking a hacksaw to the tree? While not a perfect example, it does sort of describe what's going on. We have a bunch of hacks going at our system stealing everything, and it's destroying our manufacturing, our pensions, our states, our social security, our medicare....EVERYTHING. Not because all these things went bad at once, but because the economy which used to support all these things (even under a fucktard monetary system) got rigged just enough for it to all start collapsing in on each other.
Close on the one end, that everyone is fascist. (with some socialism trends...which of course socialism is a moentary ideology...but that doesn't mean everything termed as socialist...belongs fully under that banner.)
But the other part of the argument needs to be flipped on it's head 180 degrees...the cause is the effect. The real cause is monetarism. Not the social safety nets. The bankruptcy is due to the fraudulent setup of the system. Who cares if it's figure out before or after the safety net is cancelled in terms of academically. That it will happen with or without safety nets is certain, and that's all you need to know it's something else causing the bankruptcy. (no it won't be saved at the last minute if cuts are made, and it would have trended this way even if there were no social safety nets...of course if mobs hadn't formed before then, and they don't always happen, especially when mob mentality is driven from a relative position). So if you're given less, there's also less to mob over as there are fewer potential triggers to mob.
Overall the point is that the banksters want a MONETARY system. Austrian....Keynesian....other....doesn't matter. They can screw the little guy in favor of them EASILY using the dogma of any such school. As long as it is based off monetarism, then the banksters and those that own the banks are the winners. At obviously anyone else's expense. They try to spin it any way they wish, but their ideology is based off bullshit which conveniently gives them the advantage over everyone else. I call it out as bullshit.
Glass-Steagall
American Credit System (not whatever monetary system)
Obama -- trying to carry on the great tradition of statism by progressives, doubling down on cronyism and Marxist ideology, because he's another in a long line of statist democrats like ...
Woodrow Wilson -- Federal Reserve Act, racist segregationist, segregated Federal service after doing same to Princeton University, Misogynist, pro-lynching, Sedition Act (10s of thousands beaten and put in jail for criticizing), WWI,
FDR --gold confiscation, racist segregationist, KKK to Supreme Court, pro-lynching, Japanese concentration camps, Social Security Trust fund fraud, WWII, omnipotent Commerce Clause, Keynesianism.
LBJ -- Vietnam War, "Great Society" and expansion of welfare state, Medicare, Medicaid, rescinded Kennedy's Treasury silver notes.
Obama -- Executive order for Council of Governors to run USA under martial law out of White House; Executive order allowing Interpol to operate out of the WH DOJ without constitutional constraints against US citizens on US soil allowing searches and seizures without even being subject to FOIA -- ie., they can dissappear you legally; Open borders for illegal aliens and drug smugglers; Trillion dollar bank bailouts paid by taxpayers; expansion of illegal Middle Eastern wars; illegal confiscations of property such as GM bondholders stake, trying to control energy industry; exhuberant cronyism; TSA - illegal searches and seizures; in contempt of Federal court for drilling moratorium; Obamacare voided by Federal judge but continues spending and implementation anyway; created CFPB which allows private Federal Reserve to control and surveille every single financial transaction by US citizens.
Obama = NWO fascist
That size 4 tinfoil hat must be pretty snug.
Dood, all of it is old news. If you want to sit at the adult table you'll have to try to keep up.
Archived-Articles: Feed Me, Obama, Feed Me: The Plan for Food Dependency
Why Does Interpol Need Immunity from American Law? - By Andrew C. McCarthy - The Corner - National Review Online
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Unaccountable and Costly
And I never even mentioned the part about Obama helping Chavez in the attempted marxist takeover of Honduras by Manuel Zelaya in June 2009. And Obama is now shipping guns to Honduras in Operation Castaway -- Darrell Issa has the information and is investigating, as part of the ATF operation gun walker investigation. Sounds like a marxo-fascist to me, and since Obama, and the DNC, is Soros funded and otally on board with all the UN mandates with loss of US sovereignty, sounds like the NWO to me.
Obama Sides With Marxists Over Honduras
Operation “Castaway: Second ATF Gun-Running Scandal Exposed in…… Honduras | UNCOVERAGE.net
Obama is also smooching it up with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Don't trust my links, just Google up: Pink Ladies, Hamas, Gaza, demonstrations, flotillas, MB and Obama.
Better yet, just google up the images -- there's Bill Ayers marching with Hamas in Gaza with the pink ladies!!
Great work digging up these stories.
Socialism never works, except for the parasites the Socialists feed off of. And then they run out of money.
"Adults" comment at Zero Hedge? I don't think so, it's a fucking echo chamber.
Explain to me why interpol agents should be able to make arrests in the United States?
I will agree that they probably can't make people disappear without any records, but why did we allow other nations' police organizations to make direct arrests here in the USA?
Your head must be pretty snug up 0bama's ass since you like to keep it there
You're the only size 4 here, i.e., a 4 inch smelly dick (going by your name, anyway).
Do you really think the police state began recently? We have been in a soft-police state for my entire life. It is only recently that people have realized it.
pods
Robber Baron's have no conscience to disapprove of their sociopathy.
agreed - the two-party charade has gone on long enough - there's only one party - the political party, and they are partying on our asses like The Gimp
Get of the crackpipe, you fucking 0bama partisan zombies
reefermadness
< How convenient you Capt American Tea Party fools forget. Fuck your partisan bullshit.>
Yes, How convienent you (??) Leftwingtard, or???.......forget that the NEW POTUS was going to DO away(one his main priorities) the Patriot Act(did he?, no, he resigned it, then what did he do?.), he decides we need to add antoher 17,500IRS Agents/Emps, our friends...................
Of the 16 T you mention,your boy, (evidently) has put OVER 4T of that 16?, on in LESS than 3yrs, and IS still going............
I guess the FASCIST Repubs did that too( I do not like them either), but chosing the lesser of the two evils I CAN SEE, is what we have NOW.
It is, what it is.
And yes, I know there's not a dimes difference between either.......................one's just pushing us FASTER offf the cliff, and has MOST of the so called informed FOOLED that he is stupid.......................woe be unto the man that believes that.
I never met a Radical Muslim yet I trust.
And bank it he is a Muslim.
FDR's gold grab was just the final nail in the coffin. It began under the Lincoln administration. The best sources I've read that tell the story are Griffin's The Creature From Jekyll Island, Sutton's The War on Gold , anything by Edwin Vieira or Gary North. Murray Rothbard's work is priceless as well - particularly his essays on money.
yeah, if only we could go back to those glory days when a few white men owned everything -- including all other human beings. Where did everything go so wrong?
You should study a little history. The first officially sanctioned American Slave holder was a Black Man and his Slave was an Irishman.
While that is an interesting factoid, it is hardly representative of the general socio-economic trend of the day.
I know you're not that fucking stupid.
Hitler developed the autobahn. I suppose the autobahn is evil.
Are you forgetting Egyptian slaves thousands of years ago? Or is your first name stimpy?
Unfortunately, it is primarily Republican governments who have cased the problems of the last 40 years. Blaming Keynes or the 'socialists' or FDR misses the point entirely; the U.S. was a creditor nation until the seventies. Nixon, Kissinger and continuous 'war economies' ever since (starting with Vietnam right through to the 'war on terror') are your real culprits.
Forgive me, but wasn't the Vietnam war started by JFK, and LBJ? Nixon was left with the baggage, along with post war inflation of the 70's.
How quaint - someone actually still believes in the "right vs. left" thingy. You must be very young.
What is more unfortunate is that you miss the simple fact that there is a greater power that controls all levers of government.
All of the problems of the last 40 years have been caused by creating credit out of nothing.
Your argument is akin for blaming the people in the front car on a roller coaster for the dips.
What you need to do is free your mind and unlearn almost everything you have learned, for even the seeds of poor compulsory education were sowed a long time ago.
pods
Great point, Pods. It amazes me the people that scream "it's all the (insert the party they hate) fault, and (insert their party) would make everything better if these guys were out of power."
There is ONE party, the party of increasing government power, and the rhetoric is as empty as the promises.
Too bad these people are the norm, since democrats (anti-war, pro civil liberty, anti-corporate) should support Ron Paul but can't look past the (R) next to his name. Brainwashed fools. It's sad.
forgive me too, but wasn't the war on poverty started by LBJ? Didn't the democrats start and continue to expand the welfare monster ?(I refuse to call it entitlements because you ain't entitled to my money)
FDR was a god. Widely loved and admired by the greatest generation. You dishonor the memory of possibly the greatest American ever.
You forgot the sarcasm tag
no sarcasm intended.
people crack me up. they stash a few overpriced oz in an ammo box somewhere and delude themselves into thinking they are protected from guys who steal hundred$ of million$ at a whack. SS is the only thing standing between the people and (maggot induced) utter destitution.
But those few oz in an ammo box have more value than hundreds of millions of FRNs when the FRN loses reserve currency status.
See Zimbabwe.
pods
those hundreds of millions are converted into yachts, private islands, factories, oilfields, and yes gold, lots of it.
I finally got it figured out buzz.
You get a disability check don't you? Or you live on social security.
I agree it is laughable that people store a few thousand rounds of ammo and ten ounces of gold and think they are protected, but I believe their virtue is intact when they espouse libertarian solutions, particularly since they aren't wealthy. Their belief is true moral conviction.
You fail. Libertarianism has nothing to do with morals.
At the moment they are. If we follow the Zimbabwe model, those hundreds of millions won't buy breakfast.
I am with you that we should not have false hope. This will most likely end in a way that many here will not like, at least on an individual basis, if not the whole of society. And when it does end, the next system proposed will probably be proposed by the same cocksuckers who ran this one.
pods
[FDR was a god. Widely loved and admired by the greatest generation. You dishonor the memory of possibly the greatest American ever.]---buzzsaw99
The Greatest Generation was Great for having survived FDR's statist unconstitutional anti-liberty policies.
We are here facing the great economic collapse in large part because of FDR.
FDR has his place in US history, but not among the greatest of Americans. (buzz, you've been watching too many Left-Coast Hollywood movies. Read a history book or two.)
buzzsaw,
You on crack?
Americans hated him,and feared him.
WHY do you think as soon as the bastard died they changed the Const so that NO ONE PERSON could ever hold but 2 terms as POTUS.
Because of that cockskr.
I would just make the point that it took 41 years from the 1933 confiscation to the 1974 private party allowance. Now here we sit at nearly 38 years for the possibility of new inflection - confiscation. I sure as hell would not keep anything important inside a bank deposit box.
I used to think gold (PM) confiscation was impossible, but when armed Feds rampage Gibson Guitars in search of wood and one looks at the absolute wreckage and apathy toward the US citizenry by the last 2 administrations, these eff'in crooks in government WILL take everything once they realize their pensions are on the line.
Well just be thankful that you can still get a Saiga and a 1000 rds of Wolf for about 700 FRNs.
pods
For now. Be thankful as well that gold is still available.
Thankful every day for that DCRB!
pods
If you have more than a 5 round mag in that Saiga the BATF will take it away from you just to count the number of U S made parts in it. Beware.
Are you speaking of the Saiga 12? Or the general 922r crap? (Sounds like the 922r)
I figured the ATF is too busy running guns into Old Mexico.
pods
Yeah, specifically the Saiga 12. It's a "destructive device" if it's in its "sporting configuration" with more than 5 rnds loaded. My point is that if they wanna get ya -- you're got!
I agree Rocky. When you said more than 5 in the mag I thought Saiga 12, but there are the NMT 9 (I think) foreign parts for 922. PIA.
I like Saiga cause they are rock solid, cheap as dirt (relative to any solid pre ban guns) and there are plenty of pre ban mags to fit. Not a huge fan of the 7.62x39, but since a PTR91 will run you almost 1200, it sure will make room for other things.
pods
Actually if we're talking capital that's going to Treasuries and has been for years. Money goes to gold not capital--unless of course we're talking Barrick which apparently has about 280 billion plus in proven gold reserves. Sounds like a lot.
The federal reserve spawned the stock and realestate bubbles of the 20's. The great depression was the hangover, made worse by the government's and federal reserve's reaction to the credit collapse. FDR must have had some fear, the politcal fear of doing nothing, so here we are. Hopefully, the socialist tradition FDR helped create will soon be a thing of the past. Funny, my kids history books at school all portray FDR as a hero, a great savior of the less fortunate. I of coarse give them the alternative viewpoint that their teachers all predictably seem to hate. The evolution of socialist tendencies in America are unfortunately quite mature, and deeply rooted at this point.
You mean "the fact that they monetized the debt in the Great Depression" helped prolong the Depression? Sounds like we're in a real pickle. We got the first part of the final exam right: "don't raise rates going into the collapse--lower them to zero." It would be that part II of the final exam that is pretty much exactly the same as was done the last time however. Hmmm. Couldn't have been political interests. Naaaa. That couldn't be the reason. Not again. That would be just like Japan of the 80's. And Europe of right now.
In a credit collapse, you have 2 choices, let it collapse and allow the bankruptcies to occur, or try to re-inflate the debt bubble with the hope that you can grow out of it. Current policy has been the latter, but given the severity of the credit collapse, along with other factors such as peak oil, I'd say that option is impracticable.
Perhaps it is because teachers may actually know something instead of some wanker. You might try learning the difference between fascism and socialism.
The difference between fascism and socialism is thinner than the difference between mainstream Republican and Democrat. Both are built on government control of the economy, with a thin veneer of nominal privatization on the fascist ideology. Sounds like you never figured that out.
Where do these jackbooted thugs come from? Is Obama paying them to spam ZH with their shit?
Oddly enough, a nephew of mine fresh out of Uof Indoctrination back in 2008 did work for the Obama campaign and did just that - search the internet for blogs and sites anti-Obama and spam the hell out of them. Not bad minimum wage work I suppose........
So why did the rest of Europe pull out of the contraction after about two years?
Why did it take the united states ten years?
Why did Ben Bernanke apologize for the government doing the wrong thing during the great depression and promise not to make those mistakes again?
Everyone who has seriously looked at the issue has concluded that FDR lengthened the great depression with some help from the Fed.
Hey, 4-inch smelly dick, didn't I tell you to stfu? There is no diference between socialism and fascism. THEY BOTH CLAIM TO KNOW BETTER THAN YOU. Which of course "YOU" is not you personally, cuz clearly everyone knows better than you, u gd ignorant peasant.
There is a small difference between national socialism and the more generic variety of socialism, but agreed the small difference pales in comparison to the similarities, they both believe that central planners are smarter than the rest of us and we have to be told what to do for our own good.
Weinerdog likes tye system. He is typical for people my dad's age. they had their formative years in the fat days after world war two but before the first oil embargo. They believe those fat days were the results of government action rather than just the dumb luck of being born in a newly exploited continent with the rest of the world in ruins after a huge war and no competition to our industry.
And dun forget about pricing oil in dolla. That alone was the largest "world wealth transfer to the US" scheme ever ever. And it's still going!!
[Perhaps it is because teachers may actually know something instead of some wanker. You might try learning the difference between fascism and socialism.]---weinerdog43
Hey Professor, why don't you give it a shot. What's the difference between fascism and socialism? Enlighten us wankers.
So how would you store your gold safely? Considering that the govt has signficnat influence on banks, using their safe deposit boxes may not be bright. They could simply tag the boxes with precious metals days before a confiscation order by using some sort of metal detector (I presume the technology would allow that). Using offshore banks may be a possibility but subject to similar risk plus added work to move back and forth. Keeping in your residence had theft risk. Are there better options people can argue for?
So how would you store your gold safely?
Depending on the amount, it's a meaningless and silly question pragmatically.
A tube with a hundred or so maple leaf's is ridiculously small considering. If you cannot safely hide a couple packas of cigarettes, the person deserves being confiscated. How do you store anything valuable in your home?
Answering the required next question, 'Do you tell your neighbors and friends at work of location of any other valuables that you own?
If you are addressing millions of dollars worth, your tough luck. You're nobody in my neighborhood. Pray/prey. Money is sometimes a weight grasshopper.
It comes down to 'How ya gonna trust to keep it for ya?'
Confiscation? pffff.
They been confiscating pot for 40-60 years.... As if THAT's a big determent.
If the wind changes, Change your sails. Learn to think like an outlaw. (Like the big boys, how do you think they got everthing?), in the times ahead thinking like an honest person will get you killed or worse.
Many people will suffer greatly many die because of 'Lack of Imagination"
Listen to a person tell you 'I can't imagine them doing that...., I can't imagine that happening...., I just can't Imagine...."
Lack of Imagination will kill many people.
Pirates used to bury their gold, and they knew a thing or two about keeping their treasure hidden. Just sayin...
I had a walking liberty that I was carrying around in a shirt pocket just for the hell of it, and dropped it out in the yard while playing with the kids.
Took all of five minutes to borrow a metal detector to sweep the yard for it. Then again, in my neighborhood, it only took a couple of hours to lay hands on a Geiger counter.
Anyhow, that's besides the point. The detector I borrowed was a pretty nice one, but it still just detected things made from metal- for every coin it found, it found a dozen old nails, bottle caps and other junk. It could not distinguish between steel and silver, though the sensitivity could be dialed in for size. What it could do is find every single scrap of metal in my yard, and it did that just fine.
In ye olde pirate days, that wasn't the case. Could be that a better place to hide a little gold would be in the steel hull of a ship these days. Just sayin...
Excellent point. Fuck. I guess I have to go buy a ship now.
(psst...) or near some plumbing...
Or not in the yard but perhaps in some land you own in the middle of nowhere.
Doesn't matter for me, though, as all my physical was lost in a tragic alchemy accident. It was a Weird Science/Kelly Le Brock kind of thing, the details of which are very hazy, but suffice it to say that when I came to, the shiny metals had disappeared and I was left with a case of the clap.
That's funny, but you shouldn't make fun of unfortunates like myself, whose PM stash was stolen by pirate-busters with metal detectors in the night.
I was crazy enough to take mine canoeing on the lake, and a freak wave capsized my canoe! The PMs when straight to the bottom and sunk in the mud I guess. Divers couldn't find it. So sad....
pssst... it was a river, wasn't it?
The 2008 book: "New Deal or Raw Deal" by Burton Folsom, Jr. is an excellent, if one sided, examination of the political policies of FDR.
Released before the Obama Administration's attempts to rescue the economy, it reads like a blueprint of what Obama is really trying to accomplish as he seems to be following FDR's political strategy to the T.
Some might say that, unlike FDR, Obama has not attempted to manipulate the price of gold and other commodities to achieve a political goal, but this is only because when his advisors study the perceived mistakes in tactics within the overall FDR strategy, you attempt a different course of action to achieve the goal. After all, there's more than one way to skin a cat.
I'd say the policies of the 2 administrations have been nearly identical with both pursuing dollar devaluation as a means of reducing debt. FDR was just right out in the open, while Obama is more surreptitious about his dollar devaluation. They have a nice academic term for it now "financial repression", oh isn't that nice.
"...electorally sacrosanct..." There's the operative phrase.
The fell compendium of politicians promising a chicken in every pot like mana. No new taxes. Kick out the fat cats in DC.
Elected.
Why do they even believe one single word? Why do they pin their false hopes on grim reapers bent on vistaless rapine?
I don't have to hear the Bernank or see is body language to know he is being untrue. The clicking noises between his words tell you everything. He's nervous as fuck.
Hey Third,
Please leave the cats out of this----om
Growing up in the 50s folks still loved FDR...they were as ill informed then as the masses are now. People trust the government and do not understand that they should know some thing about economics. Soon American trust in government will be much less and they will come to understand economics the painful way third world folks have to understand it.
Worst piece of advice I've ever heard.
If one fears fear, one is fucked. It goes like this...
I'm afraid of the boogie-man...Oh shit!!
I'm afraid of being afraid of the boogie-man...Fuck me!!
I'm afraid of being afraid of being afraid of the boogie-man...and on
Face the fear, fight the fear and finish it.
A propos to the story I told my daughter tonight. She was talking about a dream she had, and she has had some troubles with nightmares in the past.
Personally, I rarely dream, or at least, am not aware of having dreamt the next morning. Occassionally, though, it happens, and I passed the last one on to her.
I was in some kind of building with what seemed like endless crappy single room apartments joined end-to-end, and while walking through the chain of them, I came across three men torturing and preparing to kill an infant. I snatched the child up, and made a break for it.
Obviously, it being a dream, the three gave chase, and for a few brief moments, I started to become afraid. Then I realized it was a dream. I set down the baby, and grabbed each of the three in turn and smashed their faces into the ground, where they shattered like glass.
I woke up, not trembling, but with a little chuckle. The point of it was simplicity itself- the fear only has power as long as I (or anyone) allow it to. The moment you turn and fight is the moment you discover that the boogeyman was nothing but a shadow.
It's the same for all of this shit. We do have valid reasons to be concerned, and must plan accordingly, but if you were to stand face-to-face against the dreaded "Powers that Be," odds are you would find yourself confronted by nothing more than a cabal of old men with frail bones that could easily be dispatched with a good stick and a few minutes of moderate exercise. Don't let them skull-fuck you before you even get into the thick of things.
Gold $20.67 April 5, 1933----- US citizens told to turn gold in, crime to own it.
Gold $35 January 31, 1934 --- Roosevelt raised the price of gold after the Government had it and made a 75% profit. That gave the Government 10 months to get the gold from the citizens.
Social Security 1935---- benefits at 65 years old----- life expectancy M 59.9 F 63.9
1936 ----- life expectancy M 56.6 F 60.6
SS was based on the numbers that most would not live to get it. Well, they messed up, after the depression people lived longer and the Fed got just dues by actually having to pay money out. It was not designed to pay out.
So you're saying; ignore the 80 years when it's been paying out. Day in, day out and instead concentrate on... something. I'm not sure of your point.
Listen. I've been paying for 30 effin' years and I've EARNED those benefits. So has everyone else who's been paying.
The socialist promises will all end in tears because the debt slaves, they hoped to make of our children, will revolt. They will refuse to pay into a system that has no hope of returning anything of value. There is no trust fund, only IOU's. Prepare accordingly because they have dupped us all. SS is the largest ponzi scheme in recorded histroy.
True, kind of.
There's something you're not considering, though. Americans are an inherantly fair-minded people. Laugh if you like, but I think it's essentially true- that does not necessarily include the political or criminal elements, but the average and much reviled "Joe Six-pack" is not out to screw anyone.
As one of the folks who is kind of stuck between "the youth" and "the boomers," I know that I am not going to be recieving one red cent from Social Security. I don't "want" to pay it any more than I want to pay any taxes, but I am equally unwilling to see a 63-yr old told that the retirement pension they had been told was there is not. There is just not enough time left for them to recover from such a thing, and it is morally repugnant to force one's elders into abject poverty and destitution to save a buck.
If I have to, I am willing to pay a SS tax that decreases annually, as the retirees finish up their time. It would have to have a cutoff age- let's say 40 years old in 2011 (and in the spirit of disclosure, that would easily disqualify me from collecting,) and it would have to show a real decrease every single year when those taxes are withheld. It would also have to come with genuine systemic reform, and some serious jail time for those who helped to cause the problems in the first place.
It's not Boomers, or as some of us call them, Grandma and Grandpa, who caused this mess. They just went to work and did their jobs- and built us some pretty solid infrastructure to inherit along the way. They paid taxes so that I could be educated, and, quite frankly, likely did it with a lot less bitching than the people around me today. How about we let them eat when they're old, and, god forbid, even wear clothing and watch gameshows on a tv that is turned up way too loud.
And as for the ones who helped this situation develop- not the factory foremen and gas station attendants, but the political slimeballs and lobbyists, strip those sick fucks and let them live out the remainder of their days in a damp dungeon somewhere, with nothing to eat but animal food and no healthcare. See how they like starving and dying in their own filth, as cancer eats them to their marrow. It's only fair, after all- it's what they thought all the rest of us deserved.
Let's hope they wake up and revolt against it. Seeing any signs of that out there?
Paying money into a fund and then expecting to recieve that money at a later date, is not socialism.
Having money appropriated from you before you receive it (and under the threat of force or imprisonment) is not 'paying' - it's called extortion. And having money extorted to be 'paid' into a scheme where that money is used to pay benefits to someone else is called a 'Ponzi scheme'.
Go back to playing in the cat's litter box, junior - the only echo chamber around here is the one between your ears.
Sizzurp,
You working? Get out your pay stub. See the box marked 'FICA'? That's right, you're paying. That's the reality.
It is against Federal law for your employer to print on your pay stub the amount of contributions they make to the system in your name.
Why? [I know, do you?]
Wow, weinerdog, now I feel bad for attacking in that last reply. I didn't know that you were in your 50s- I assumed you were a petulant college student.
Doesn't matter- you trusted the gov't to pay you for your SS contributions, but if you've still got 10-15 years before you collect...well, you're screwed. The system is insolvent, and will pay you pennies on the dollar of what you've contributed.
Don't you wish you'd had a private account now? At 5,000 a year, plus interest, over 40 years, you could've retired a millionaire. Now it'll be gone.
Aren't you glad you trusted the gov't?
The ignorance regarding SS on ZH is astounding. Get educated. Or not, because these discussions are ultimately academic.
It's a ponzi scheme bud. The biggest in history. Get that through your head. Do you think all these Latino immigrants and their children will be willing to pay 25% payroll taxes on top of 25% income taxes to fund your retirement because you paid into the system?
Nice bit of out of touch racism there. Latinos hate the US so much that they make up a plurality of the Marine Corps. And you think they'll flinch at paying SS? Let it sink in. The Marine Corps speaks Spanish. They want to work hard, pay taxes and be Americans. Comprende, amigo?
Weiner dog you have earned nothing.
I would gladly let you take out all your money plus its earnings in the average treasury bond rate over your lifetime of contributions.
it would last you a few years probably. It wouldn't come close to paying for your medicare.
Your are really a moron financially, or duplicitous to say you have "earned" those benefits. You are just another parasite who thinks he earned all these benefits he is set to receive.
Check your pay stub. What do you think the amount in the 'FICA' box is for?
God you're dumb. Everytime I read a post of yours, you re-confirm how f dumb you are. IT'S OVER. SS is OVER, no more growth = no more ponzi, you and your ilk are done, finished. Good riddance!
The fear and loathing of SS is based on a few questionable assumptions.
"The work that I currently perform is valuable to society."
"SS recipients are parasites and their contributions from past work can be disregarded."
"If only we could end SS, my FICA taxes will be given to me."
"Of all the things government funds, SS has the least merit."
"Ending SS will have no adverse consequences for me or my children."
"I am 100% certain that I will be able to save for my retirement. I will remain healthy and there will be no catastrophic economic events."
Question your assumptions, don't just parrot what you saw on Faux News.
The end of smoking really messed up Social Security!
True enough.
I'm still a fan of smoking, myself. Having one right now, as a matter of fact.
I'm going to have myself a big old belly laugh when the fat fucks that crusaded against smoking stand dumbfounded when the price of donuts or salty snacks doubles and then trebles after the inevitable "Sin taxes" the anti-smoking lobby paved the way for.
(After that, I'll likely weep- but one moment of I told you so won't hurt a thing.)
Good luckwith that smoking poison thing when you come to emphysema-land.
Good luck with those donuts when you come to heart-attack and diabetes land.
onlooker, 21:51,
I challenge you on that statement.
That's a ragged assed excuse the bstds are using now.
IF they had NOT taken the funds solely designated for SS out of it's TRUST FUND, left it alone, invested it in Treasuries, and Bonds, over the course of the raises in witholding over those years, there would be Trillions of dollars in the system RIGHT NOW.
When the Democrats, started the Great
Society in '68, and the Welfare state, the Black families that were the rule of thumb just as much as any other race, would have stayed in one unit.
The Dems screwed them up,have been ever since and put them on a new plantation.(have as many kids as you want, JUST do not be married), or you lose bennies.
This hit ALL ethnicities, and started us down the long path to hell.
Not only have those funds been used for that, they have been used for PORK projects by every party on the Hill.
Also, the funds from there, are GIVEN to Political Asylum seekers, and illegal aliens...............free hospitalization,FREE baby drops, new citizens.
This is all a PLAN.
And whoever said the Progressives were not a MAJOR cause of the fixes we are in is sadly mistaken.
They are FKIN COMMIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.PERIOD.
9 of the 10 planks of the Commie Manifesto are in place here now.................who do you think made that possible.
Progressives, that is just a new name for MARXIST.
this article stated well the spectre of totalitarianism governing amerika.....it is no mere happenstance that fdr's and hitler's reigns coincided. i would note, however, that fdr was under the control of more than one rasputin - a fascinating subject in its own right.....
although fdr's despotism was a highwater mark for american totalitarianism, the income tax and federal reserve systems were even higher....and i will make one extraordinary statement - women's suffrage was the enabler to roosevelt's debt and spending orgy which is swallowing us today.
as much as i inveigh against banksters, i must also inveigh against the american idiocracy - the fools who imbibed the lies falling out of the asses of flying unicorns like so many bushels of multi-colored skittles....
fdr was not alone in popping up circuses - even as late as baby bush, the despots were promising free drugs and massive expansions to the great society and new deal. and bush iii is expanding it still - engorging future generations with suffocating debt....i think of the liar-in-chief - with his faked birth certificate - as jason from friday the 13th....trillions of dollars of debt as far as the eye can see - all to prop up and enrich the banksters....
You might add, the more emotional and less logical you are, the more likely you are to eat it right up.
Cue false flag.
The US Postal System appears to be on the brink:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/business/in-internet-age-postal-servic...
Yet another inefficient government agency...
You're barking up the wrong tree there.
US post was, and still is, pretty damn efficient. They're just outdated.
When automobiles took human transport away from horses, that didn't make horses stupid and inefficent, just no longer essential- it happens all the time, and I guess it's the USPS's turn. But they did it right while it lasted, and they don't deserve to be kicked in the collective nuts for it now.
"... they don't deserve to be kicked in the collective nuts for it now."
Why not?
They signed a contract in March with the Union stating they would not lay anybody off. 80% of the Postal budget is personnel. That's doing it right? When they knew the crunch was coming? Mail volume has been plunging like mad. Of course they have to lay people off.
The constitution calls for a postal service, and I personally am ok with that. It doesn't call for a postal union, high wages, high benefits, a gold plated can't be fired job for life.
Since they won't fix it, let's get rid of it.
"US post was, and still is, pretty damn efficient."
You must be joking. I reside in Texas, and I can send a first class letter from Houston to Austin for the EXACT SAME postage as sending a first class letter from Houston to Portland, Maine... or Portland, Oregon for that matter. That is not efficient. That is absurd. The USPS is inefficient, and it could be much better run as a private corporation.
No private entity ever went bankrupt.
Name even one successful government program. The closest thing is the military, but they're sucking up $650 billion each year to blow up a bunch of cave-dwelling neanderthals
How about head start? School lunch programs? National Parks? How can you call the military a sucessful program when it is the #1 waste of taxpayer dollars?
Headstart = proven fail.
School lunch programs = fail. More nanny state.
National parks = fail. Very bad management at a very high cost.
U.S. Military = fail. We spend as much as the rest of the world combined. For the benefit of banksters and Israel.
The US Highway system and the moonshot come to mind...perhaps you have a dysfunctional definition of 'success'.
US highway system = Do you mean the Interstate Defense Highway System that destroyed the railroads by substitising over the road trucking, perhaps the least fuel efficient system to haul frieght long distances? The one designed for moving the military from state to state if needed to "defend"? What makes more "energy" sense - a train going from city to city, or a ribbon of concrete with millions of cars containing one or two people?
Fail.
Moonshot? If it was so great, why have we not returned? It was kind of pointless, really, wasn't it?
Some say it never even happened. I do have to wonder why, with the over 40 years of advances in technology, why a human can't leave Earth's orbit any more? I mean, if it is so productive and great and all.
actually no goverment entity every went bankrupt if it could print its own money. Argue if you want, but the Postal Service is a government organization and it will not be allowed to go bankrupt. Its gold plated pensions and hiring practices that give bonus points to people who make inferior employees will be subsidized by the American people forever and ever and ever amen, starting about mid november.
Personally I would love to see it shut down. It is just a source of democrat contributions and union muscle.
Of course if that's the case where it's funded, it's due to monetarism forcing it. I say fuck monetarism forcing the USPS onto the dole of the American people. Because it isn't USPS that's causing it, it's MONETARISM.
People keep forgetting this stuff. It isn't actual business decsions deciding anything anymore...it's the rammifications of monetarism one way or the other that is deciding things.
Besides money going to tea, democrats or republicans, is wasted on monetarists. If you want to see anything shut down, it should be monetarism. It'd have a much better effect on prosparity...and on any of the parties.
Honestly, at least where I live, USPS beats UPS hands down. Faster...and they deliver on Saturday more readily. Just saying from my experience. Their service isn't all shitty.
Glass-Steagall
The bankrupt part comes from they have to make a 5.5 billion dollar pension deposit. Where? I guess to the morgue.
<
Mon, 09/05/2011 - 00:13 | topcallingtrollTroll, Read the USPS will be shutting down all winter deliveries as they are bankrupt.(we can only hope)
A private entity, protected by the Federal Gub, and pensions that would choke a horse,and wages to boot.
I hope they stop ALL of it.
PRIVATIZE it, get the Feds out of it altogether, the only thing the US GOV has made a profit on is the US TAXPAYER.....................
Then they just fk off the proceeds, with their FREE shit.
(SS) Is not free................Welfare is free.(to those who receive it off the backs of others labors), that is Communism.
IF you could give me the funds taken from me over my lifetime @ 3% return would be a millionaire several times over.
The post office has been "on the brink" for 50 years.
Stigmata
"You ran out of lies; you ran out of time... Oh you have empty eyes, they tell me nothing, nothing but lies..."
LOL... FDR and the Masonic Pyramid, the Gold tyranny LOL. It sounds like 6 years old children sitting on the edge, at the shalllow end of the pool, with their feet in the water, sipping milk and speaking of the Gold at the bottom of the deep end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQQnti7XKz0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9kkZaQeugM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8C_q4Dy6Zg&feature=related
Did you see "Havana", with Bobby Redford...? Diamonds....! Inplanted under your skin..... I have 6, in my armpits and thighs..... 10 to 20 ct. flawless.. Over 3M at today's value..... Diamond moving up faster than gold..... FORGET ABOUT IT...!
I hope that you speak in jest (of investing in diamonds), as diamonds are only rare and "valuable" due to good PR and constricting supply.
Cecil Rhodes=De Beers= Rotschilds.
pods
Read a book, diamonds are for fools, may as well implant glass..
I hope and pray that my American brother and sisters break this system before it breaks them.
dope hat (pun intended)
Amazingly people still get it all wrong. What happened in the 20's and 30's was monetarism run amok. While much of it was going on here in the U.S., it was London that was pulling the strings above and beyond everything else in a world dominated then as now by monetarism. London and Wall Street funded, backed, and propped up Hitler, because they thought he would give them the best deal, and force harsh conditions to pay off reparations. (just imagine what some banksters must want leading the PIIGS...one can only guess of course)
This is the sort of element that was going on, in the backdrop of a coming war. Even in 1933, it was quite clear a war in Europe was coming.
Social Security has kept old people out of gutters since it was started, but hey that means nothing. Afterall don't you understand welfare is so much strain on the system that it is 1000x the impact of the fraud, dogma, and policy disasters of monetarism that aren't at fault. Wrong. More like it's the fraud, dogma, and policy disasters of monetary ideology (any of them) that are 1000x the impact of welfare in unraveling the system...or causing imbalance. But give a reason to blame another weaker or more 'undeserving', and the fools will buy it every time. It's not the welfare, it's the fraud. 'people won't work if they're getting fed'. What the fuck kind of idiocy is that? It sure ain't reality. Vacuum tube thinking by people easily swayed by propaganda, given to fool fools from noticing the other hand stealing everything.
The funny thing when people say 80 trillion of unfunded liabilities forgets oh so much of the reality of the statement. Monetary metrics mean dick. Especially ones based off bullshit and look forward generations. (what did our founders say about debt between generations?)
One, when you don't put the money in, over time it gets bigger, like Chris fascist Christie of NJ. When you don't fund the pension, then you say it's too much (because you haven't funded them for a year or three), you have to come up with bullshit like 'give up rights' and take cuts on it or else you get huge 'numbers' in forward projections that we can't possibly pay.
Thus this bullshit, self-fulfilling prophecy, loving used by monetary masters to dictate your policy is a complete fraud.
The true crime was starting the aspect of not funding it. Because that gave the ammunition for the next 'policy', all based off bullshit. (same with Wisconsin...because part of the reason they had the whole collective bargaining fiasco was that Wisconsin didn't fund it's pensions and needed a way to squirm out of them...thus what did Wisconsin do? ended collective bargaining rights so they can do all sorts of things, but mainly to curb pensions)
All of course, which came from the constraints state govt's are put under because of Wall Streets grand pump and dump monetarism and the govt's culpability. How did the housing bubble hook like heroin the state govt's? By pumping and dumping property taxes, and construction taxes.
Also don't forget, that in this grand scheme, federal gov't (to aid in the scam) has been pushing more and more 'cost' to the states, thus hiding bigger deficits by way of shifting the costs of programs to states. Because god forbid if we didn't do that, the scam would have unraveled even earlier. While they were going up, they masked the inflation, and even allowed it to make decisions based on false prosperity, that once popped, has begun to destroy the states over the past few years and the upcoming however many.
Then on the back end of all of this, they blame welfare, or social security (which they raided for a quarter century in terms of hundreds of billions a year [to again hide deficits...so they can have big wars and big tax cuts]), also hurt because of things like free trade undercutting the people paying into it, and keeping wage growth low so the amount of people paying, and what they paid in grew at a slower pace than it would sans monetarist policies. But still it wasn't enough to destroy Social Security. Now it is attacked right as we start peaking payouts because of baby boomers, but they pretend that this peaking will happen forever, not 15-20 years like in reality it will. (spin job in other words) In the midst of a greatest depression, brought on by monetarist policy, with those bullshit projections, and still, social security, while not being great, is actually the part of the gov't that is doing best.
As imperfect, and dwindling as it is, social security is the part of the gov't that is in the best shape. That's not to say it is good, that should show you how far off the track MONETARISM has taken us. It can't hide it, it can only try to destroy it, again to HIDE the FACT that monetarism is dooming us. Guess what, ending Social Security won't do jack shit to save our fucktard monetary system. If anything it would speed it's collapse. Sort of like Greek Austerity cuts lead to bigger Greek deficits, but also because whatever is 'saved' would be stolen by our fraudulent structure, not just inherent in monetarism, but in THIS advanced version of monetarism we currently 'enjoy'.
People talk about 80 trillion, as if those projections mean a hill a beans. It'll either be less, or it'll be 80 quadrillion in 1/3 the time. Because monetarism will dictate it so. It'll be a whole lot less if the monetarism doesn't print it's way to 80 quadrillion. It's 80 quad because that's what the monetary experts think it'll be given their monetary tools in the shed. Jump off the monetary bandwagon, and it won't be 80 trillion.
The funny thing also is that when monetarism is believed to be holy, rather than based on complete made up folly, the width of what's allowed to be considered 'true' is so large, it is impossible for gov't NOT to be corrupted. Monetarism, is the leading corrupting influence on gov't. Get rid of monetarism, and gov't while not perfect, will lose the vast majority of its corruptible influences, both in bankster possibilities (doling out printed money), as well as by the axing of whole lines of monetarist thought that have corrupted the parties in full, not to mention just about every form of 'thought' currently in use in America today.
What of any political parties economic ideas are not grounded in monetarist bullshit? Monetarism is based on the belief that bullshit can be whatever it is termed as long as people believe it. Thus the truth under monetarism, is always, whatever people believe, not was is actually true. How can any gov't NOT be corrupted, when it's standard is complete horseshit? As long as monetarism is around, of any form, this bullshit standard will always be there.
I don't dream of a monetarist gov't, I dream of a gov't free of monetary influences. While not all money concerns can be taken out of it, without monetarism you take the vast majority of money concerns out of it, and thus limit it's impacts.
Buckler says the day our republic ended was with 6102? It was already gone long before then. It ended when we became monetarists. When the tyranny became monetary ideologies, we stopped being a republic. I don't fault FDR for doing what he did under horrible circumstances, I can only express that it didn't need to be like that, IF monetarism was crushed earlier. There isn't one path, but many. But where FDR sat, there was only one path (in this regard) out, and overall only a limited number of paths, because America was cornered into a monetary nightmare unfolding upon the world. So while Buckler is correct that is was not the act of a republic, he forgets the most important part of such an observation. We already WEREN'T. Because of MONETARISM. I don't care much if we use such a tool to get at throat of what created the problem. A bit like Pablo Escobar falling into a batch of cocaine and od'ing on it trying to climb out. Or using the knife an attacker wields against you to cut HIM. Either way the point to take home is, we already weren't a republic, and Nixon didn't restore that to us, he hammered the final nail in the coffin returning us from whatever we scraped up because of FDR from WWII. (after all Truman immediately started us down the same monetarist path). Thus we never even got out because of FDR, we just got some protection. Now the monetarists our out after those final protections before utter collapse. But I think the collapse will come sooner than they can destroy these things. Also unswayed by monetary dogma I realize that even if they get what they want, it will only just collapse it faster, and that in some cases, some of the monetarists want exactly that. Especially foreign ones.
Again, when the imbalance is caused by monetarist policy on the way up, something has to end that imbalance, and sometimes, in it, the collateral damage is unavoidable. Which is why you don't let it get to that point. But if it does there are reasons why it should be done.
There is a British gold standard, and an American one. Wall Street favors the British gold standard...gee wonder why.
One of the aspects under the British way (and this isn't the only aspect that differentiates it), which can also be called the IMF way, or the Austrian way. The gold controls the amount of currency one owns. If you sell your gold, you have to pull currency out of circulation constraining everyone else. In a world of expanding ideas and opportunities, fixing our ability to mobilize on these issues because of fixing the exact amount of currency on hand based on gold is asinine. Not to mention then it by it very nature creates select opportunities for the top .1 percent or top .01 percent for them to continue their hegemony over everything else. Since under such a way, you need to attract dollars from someone else, thus creating a middleman where none needs to exist, and of course, the ones providing for it, especially if they are say large gov't projects, would be that top .1-.01 percent. Why?
Under the American Credit System, you do not need to beg the rich to fund projects which can be funded by credit issuance and whose proceeds can RETIRE that debt. Thus adding to the overall wealth of the nation, without benefiting a middleman.
But of course the real 'gold confiscation' order is NOT 6102
It is actually 6260, this is the one that was cleaned up to get at the issue at hand. From wikisource.org
"Relating to the Hoarding, Export, and Earmarking of Gold Coin, Bullion, or Currency and to Transactions in Foreign Exchange"
People may want to read the first paragraph, perhaps then they'll understand WHY this was enacted. Same source.
"By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, entitled ‘‘An Act to Provide Relief in the Existing National Emergency in Banking and for other Purposes,’’ I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do declare that a period of national emergency exists, and by virtue of said authority and of all other authority vested in me, do hereby prescribe the following provisions for the investigation and regulation of the hoarding, earmarking, and export of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates by any person within the United States or any place subject to the jurisdiction thereof; and for the investigation and regulation of transactions in foreign exchange and transfers of credit and the export or withdrawal of currency from the United States or any place subject to the jurisdiction thereof by any person within the United States or any place subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
In other words, it was alright to own gold for jewelry (exempt), for special coins (exempt), and even up to an amount worth 400 hours of minimum wage, or approximately 1600 hours of today's minimum wage (since a quarter then is worth about 30 bucks now..perhaps even 35) for all other investable gold. No, your tooth fillings were fine. Those with 100k+ in tradeable gold, perhaps not. (and really given the run up in price, it may even be higher, 300-500k? after all we've already seen a 900 percent or so runup in the last decade)
Also if you wonder WHY he didn't get it perfect the first time, you might have noticed that this was but one aspect of much bigger plan PUT TO ACTION by FDR. People should bone up on his 1st hundred days to get an idea of how much he got done, by virtue of how busy he was, and to basically see how much a failure NerObama is on changing anything....let alone a little cleanup is a bit necessary sometimes.
Even if you were above the number, you weren't going to get tried. This was an act that was specifically trying to thwart the biggest of hoarders, and by destroying their ability to send gold overseas, the logistics wouldn't work for selling small amounts.
But again, this act was NOT done in a vacuum. You have to understand everything else going on then to fully realize why it was so important to FDR to keep gold in the United States in the time period before WWII.
Sadly, it shouldn't of been necessary for this to occur. But monetarism ran amok, and if this didn't happen. Imagine trying to build a war machine to defeat the monetarist induced war known as WWII.
While it's difficult in hindsight, it is not without reason, that one reason we were able to kick so much ass in WWII, or perhaps even able to build our war machine at all, was because this gold did not flow out of the United States and into the hands of Europe's monetarists. When viewed correctly, this order was not used to limit your rights, it was to limit monetarism's effect on this country and to stop the flow of gold out of the country.
Even beyond this, one must remember what it was like in terms of who owned gold in 1933? And again, who owns gold in 2011? Does 90 percent of people own above the limit gold here? Then or now? Does 50 percent? Does even 10 percent hold over 100,000 dollars of gold today, or 500k? What about 1 percent? Perhaps. I'd say even less.
The vast majority of Americans did not own gold in 1933 beyond the things that were outside of the gold confiscation law. So guess what, rings, collectible coins, jewelry...all exempt. It was gold for TRADING that was confiscated, and even then that is a poor term to use, since confiscation means taken without recompense. Indeed those that had their 'trading' gold confiscated, were paid for it. Even then it was above a certain threshold. People should also look at how many people were prosecuted, and indeed those that were, were legitimately guilty.
People act as if they went door to door and took your gold. No, the only people that did that funded the door to door collection of things, people, etc were our friendly Banksters here and in London.
But it sure is easy to say 'confiscated', when 99.9 percent of people didn't have it apply to them, but benefited from it. Plus it took away London's ability to steal the gold from us to fund their upcoming wars. (or all of Europe to do this). It was their monetary induced ideological wars. Which is why....FDR said...it'll cost you your Empire.
Of course it is also forgotten the only reason this took place is AFTER monetarism placed the world in such bad position or reality. Had monetarism been quelled in the mid twenties would it have been necessary? probably not. I would say definitely not if it was quelled before Weimar had occurred. Had monetarism been curbed in 2005? Probably not. 2011? Probably not. 1999 DEFINITELY NOT (repeal of Glass-Steagall). 2013??? Perhaps.
The key has always been to stop the destruction of monetarism before it becomes necessary to do much rasher acts because the stakes and consequences are bigger. Because as monetarism keeps going, the more it causes what we see only beginning today, and eventually a breaking point is reached. We're not there yet. But since we all know Bernanke and central banksters will print, then we already know this will cause the price to skyrocket so far, the world, the U.S. too, cannot survive 50,000/oz. The trade flows also by policy, will also dictate the flows of gold. (which of course for those holding large amounts of gold here in the west, while everyone else is losing it in the west is a good 'trade' for them)
Perhaps even something 1/10th of that 50,000/oz figure is too much. The point isn't to hit the exact number but know that there is a point that can be reached where the physical economy cannot withstand, know what is causing it (monetarism), and stopping it before it happens.
One could even say, would it be prudent to stop the gold flowing out of the US into China like it was to stop the flow out of the US into London, Germany, and Europe at large before WWII? One might say that. Of course all as a reaction to monetarism, and the need to protect oneself because of the policies of monetarism.
Because if the world says monetarism is the game, then China will play. But if we tell China, that monetarism isn't the game, well then, China won't need to set into motion what it is very close to doing. Or in reality, stop what they have already been doing.
Stopping monetarism doesn't fuck over china. Keeping monetarism, fucks over everyone. I've always been a proponent of in a Glass-Steagall wipe, the Chinese debt is honored with real long term agreements for the knowledge and resources to develop their west. That's what their paper buys them. It's alot better to make that deal with them, then unleash hyperinflation, eventually leading to a new world war (most likely).
Again also, what FDR did is so trivialized by Buckler it makes him look as stupid as Bernanke. So what we got out of FDR was Welfare seen through today's lens? That's an awfully retarded way to look at it, and incorrect. It's pure sophistry, and Buckler should know better. That's like saying...what did we get out of NASA? Tang?
Literally it's as stupid as a comment as that would be.
One would have to be really stupid to see FDR as only giving us 'social security' and then saying he doesn't like drinking tang, or social security, thus he did nothing but steal our gold.
FDR didn't enact the trade policies that weakened the manufacturing base of this country (he actually increased it massively). Which way does what to Social Security's coffers? So we should blame FDR that under this free trade monetarist imperial world that Social Security doesn't work as well? That's a little like blaming Mr. Ford why in 2011 his Model T doesn't run so well using original parts, or in comparison to 2012 models. Because it's 2011 and not 1918. We've fucked up the world so bad, that under a monetarist system, that only benefits the banksters, that gasp, social security doesn't work. Yeah and I'm sure Hummus was a big seller in Germany in 1943. If you change the way things are, and systematically attack social security in every way you can, I'm fucking surprised it still is what it is at all. That shouldn't be a reason to end it, but celebrated. It's a watch that has been dropped 400 times, ran over, throw off a bridge into water, and it keeps on ticking. Although only now it seems the time it keeps is a bit off.
What FDR did was protect the resources of the US in a time when they were going to be 'outsourced'. He didn't destroy manufacturing in the face of war, he grew it. He didn't let the banksters frauds continue to destroy the world, he enacted Glass-Steagall. He didn't let the poor die in the streets, he gave them social security.
What FDR did was create a minimum wage, even if the vast majority of it has been whittled away since it's not 30-35 dollars like it should be...to keep pace with the quarter as in 25 cents it was when it began.
The entire labor movement was given legitimacy, and what we think of a normal work week and all the ways we ARE NOT treated like china (even if we are trending back towards them) were done because of the set of values we learned en masse because FDR gave them legitimacy.
People are spinning FDR with revisionist history so fast that they forget that any record they spin sounds like the chipmunks.
Bill Buckler, a monetarist thinking 'dumbass' who views the world through his rose colored, anti-american monetarist lens. Then somehow blames FDR using monetarist bullshit. Using monetarist metrics, designed in a way that confuses, because they are based on bullshit.
FDR readied us for WWII. Our current monetarist scum are dismantling everything. Anyone ask what Ron Paul's dogmatic Austrian monetarist anti-american viewpoints ask of him in this respect? That's right, they tell him to 'tear it down'.
What's the other idiot monetarist side that predominates monetary thought doing? Well the printing of course. Monetarism is bullshit. Of all stripes. Keynesian, Austrian...doesn't matter. All based on folly.
America will only be destroyed from within...especially when they utilize the monetary dogma which in it's nature is anti-american. Well ask yourself, is the only debate going on a MONETARY debate? Keynesian vs. Austrian. We are so fucked, because both sides that are in the debate, are so rigged against us, its not even funny.
Under the context of all hell breaking loose on a fast track towards WWII, FDR confiscated..ahem...bought (forced yes, but also compensated)...what amounted to the trading gold of all those who had 100,000 dollars of gold (if not multiples of that), to keep it in the country and out of our enemies hands...both directly or ideologically (that's Germany/japan and England respectively), as a result of the hell brought on by anti-american monetary ideology (today the equivalent would be Austrian or Keynesian), which amounted to affecting a small sliver of the population given this shitshow is a small amount of collateral damage next to the nuclear bomb going off as a result of monetary ideology elsewhere in the world. Who played that time period better? Europe's Monetarist? Or FDR? (and no FDR was no Keynesian..he HATED Keynes and his idiotic monetarism)
Yep it wasn't perfect. If monetarism's follies were contained earlier, probably not even necessary. But given the time, it was, and if we don't watch out, as the ill effects of monetarism is again on the march, it may become necessary again. This time, so our gold doesn't end up in China, and the greatest depression of the trans-Atlantic doesn't become a west vs east WWIII. Perhaps another way can be devised to achieve the same effect, but if not, then this one is out there, and it obviously worked before.
But of course the easiest way to prevent all of the above from repeating, is to stop believing monetary bullshit BEFORE we get there. Austrian, Keynesian, etc. It's all bullshit. Time's running out. Destroy the fraud now, or in short order, or the fraud will only be unstoppable by measures than inflict ever more collateral damage. As time goes on, collateral damage increases. You want the least amount? Destroy the fraud ASAP.
America's roots are OUTSIDE of monetarism. Getting back to that, and exporting that to the world (Glass-Steagall and American Credit System), in time would be known as the best export America ever had. Monetarism must be routed, throughout the world, instead of just moving to another land. You also have to understand that Aristottle was full of shit. Because that is where the bullshit is caviar 'belief' started. Where if we decide the truth isn't the truth, a new truth is born.
Monetary economics, Monetary education...they go hand in hand. It makes it easy for people to fall prey to monetary economics, when ones education teaches the foundation for it. Our society must go beyond the bullshit of Aristotle, of Smith, of Keynes, of all monetary schools of thought...whether they are economic, philosophy, or anything in between. Only then can our gov't be what it is supposed to be. What it's mission was at the outset. Finally realized, where it hasn't before. Not fully. Not worldwide.
None of this is world gov't shit. None of this is done without the private sector fully engaged. Nothing is perfect, but Glass-Steagall and the American Credit System backed by our federal constitution is by a long shot, more perfect than anything else ever devised by man. Perhaps we'll exceed it one day. But we haven't yet.
America doesn't need to play by ANY monetary school of thoughts rules based on bullshit. That doesn't mean some small piece also said in some monetary school here and there isn't applicable due to luck or oversight, but generally just bits, not theories. Printing money to pay off debts is bad....says the Austrian school...well that doesn't mean that's a monetary school of thought principle. Increasing the credit supply to lend to businesses is good...says the Keynesian school...well that doesn't mean that's a monetary school of thought principle. It's everything outside of those bits that fuck it all up. Like the Keynesian's creating that debt as money that will always be in circulation, and using a middle man known as a private bank. Or for the former the Austrian's would say that instead that debt must be paid off other ways, including austerity in programs they don't think should exist anyways, and the debt should never of been created in the first place because you cannot expand the money supply you have to coax it from somewhere else and pay someone else as middle man. Forget whether or not the debt is fraud.
The American Credit System way is vastly superior to anything the monetarists can offer. It IS the true American way. It's springs forth from the best of what Hamilton gave us. Last time I checked he actually was a founding father, not Menger/Mise(r)s/Hayek or John Maynard Keynes. I never knew English Baron's and trolls of the Hapsburg monarchy were sooo patr(id)iotic and founding father-ish, and grounded in the constitutional princ(e)iples .
Fuck the tea party monetarists
Fuck the democrat monetarists
Fuck the republican monetarists
Fuck the bankster monetarists
Monetarist ideology is foreign and inherently anti-american
Bill Buckler is flat out wrong with his rose color glasses wearing revisionist history. Not a surprise from someone with utilizes monetary metrics.
Glass-Steagall...and of course I'm just one human being, I'm sure there are others who could say the above much better than I. Or continue to listen to the Monetary Geeks who worship the Three Greeks (and the like).
And FUCK YOU.
Just skip it guys it is not worth reading.
He doesn't even know what the definition of monetarism is. Probably never read any Freidman.
He also says it was right for FDR to confiscate peoples' property. This turdball post that I wasted my time reading actually says that gold confiscation was a good thing.
I did not read it, thanks for letting me know it was worth nothing.
One of the few posters that even make ZH worth reading.
So if the government tells someone to dig holes in the ground and fill them back up, thats creating economic growth, right?
Do they pay them?
Could we find something less useless for them to do?
Does that money get spent somewhere that growth may occur?
Would growth occur if they continued to have no jobs?
Is it better to pay banksters to create bubbles and pop them?
Would it be better if the people who's taxes would be required to do that 'paying' invested in the economy in the first place?
Do they pay them? - Under Keynesianism the government does.
Could we find something less useless for them to do? - We should not centrally plan an economy, "we" should not find anything for "them" to do, except what is practical in economic terms for themselves and others.
Would growth occur if they continued to have no jobs? - Of course, growth always occurs where there is liberty and protection of private property.
Is it better to pay banksters to create bubbles and pop them? - No, what makes you think that I believe that?
Would it be better if the people who's taxes would be required to do that 'paying' invested in the economy in the first place? - Of course capital is best left to the private sector to allocate.
Suppose machines created all of the economic wealth, and individuals could not compete with the machines. What to do with the "surplus" humans? Keep them busy, give them a stipend and keep them confused so they don't try to wreck the machines.
Just a thought exercise. No application to this world or any other.
I disagree with your presumptions:
1) individuals cannot compete with machines.
2) there is a "surplus" of human (labor).
3) that "we" should "plan" for "them", because we know more then they do.
I wanted you to work with the assumptions and see where you landed. I agree humans have a difficult time competing with machines. There is surplus labor, the question is how much and what to do with it. My third sentence should have been a question. I did not say who should actually do any planning.
Four eights. 8888
This might be the best piece I have ever read onZH.
I only say this to give your words the respect thay deserve. The points of view and the history is precisely as I remember hearing and living through, and the US of A was my all-time favorite country in the history of mankinf until the destruction of my country by Reagan and his gang of thieves and other criminals; a mafia that wears all hats in the political arena in order to continue strangling this nation til its last gasp.
We are anochronisms, however, and beyond any great capacity to reach the current crop of ill-educated citizens. Even if we could, we then would have the police state that we have allowed to be wrapped around the country, to deal with. I have not encountered even one person that I would feel safe with on a picket line or in a demonstration in the months I have been here specifically looking for some way out of this trap we have made for ourselves.
I am an old man, but not too old to piss on on the head of a cheney, nixon, reagan, bush, powell, meese, both clintons, obama, and everyone of the mafiosas of the past thirty years. people today do not remember anything better than these criminals, but I do. Glass-Steagal, Wagner Act, Social Security, free education, poor kids getting milk at school, paying fifty per cent to the feds in taxes----------------enough.
I simply wanted to thank you sincerely for a great piece of history from a human perspective om
the price of freedom is eternal vigilance ! (Thomas Jefferson)
Fear is a natural instinct, that protects you from evil predators and killers !
" there are many things you should fear,
but especially those who want to lull you into a false sense of security"
always remember to keep alert, focused and disciplined.
there are plenty of ways to get killed in this world, therefore it is important to keep alert and maintain a healthy fear and respect for all things that could kill you, and even some of those that won't ;)
Come and get my gold bitches, and meet my little friend.
just keep breathing deeply...that's it...<thump>
As is typical of good "news" sources (good articles or well writen stories), this article is about 50% "right" (as in "correct") and about 50% delusion (hog-wash!).
"WITHHOLDING" 15% of a worker's pay (whether the whole amount from a self-employed worker, or half-&-half from employer & worker) for his entire working career HARDLY counts as "WELFARE" - if administered properly, it is a mandatory PENSION AND insurance fund. The operative term here is "IF" - needless to say, "con-servative" political 'leaders', e-con-omists, and business leaders SEE THAT GREAT POT OF savings, as a COW TO BE MILKED... dry, if possible (for them, the elites who have no stake in the mandatory government withheld retirement fund).
And Buckner also washes over a LITTLE problem - "WHAT TO DO WITH THE ELDERLY who can no longer EARN any income?" - put 'em on an ice-flo and send 'em out to sea?!
Given these rather serious flaws, it was informative to learn that EUGENE MAYER was the CHAIRMAN of... the FED (and later, the buyer/OWNER of the... Neo-Con right-wing masquerading as "liberal" Washington Post!)
btw, HENRY MORGANTHAU as FDR's Treasury Secretary may have MISSED being T-Sec during the infamous gold confiscation... but he was certainly a leading force behind today's LOAN SHARKING, "economic HIT MAN" behemoths, the World Bank & IMF... which, along with the Fed itself,are all 3 considered to be wholly owned fronts for the R's Euro/Amerikan money printing cartel - the radical right-wing reactionary, DIAMETRIC OPPOSITE of "Liberal" that so many con-servatives accused Roosevelt - and Morganthau - of being! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgenthau,_Jr.
for more on the "girls will be boys and boys will be girls, its a mixed up, muddled up, shook-up world" http://www.lyricsfreak.com/k/kinks/lola_20079021.html when the dividing line between "LIBERAL" and "CON-SERVATIVE" is at issue (especially in financial matters), see how lawyer and future US Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis was acclaimed as a staunch advocate for "liberal" causes such as public advocacy, labor rights, privacy rights, and... "THE ELIMINATION of MONOPOLIES and TRUSTS" - http://www.law.louisville.edu/library/collections/brandeis/node/191
but! Brandeis' political ally, soon-to-be president Woodrow Wilson (who would nominate Brandeis to the USSC) - would SIGN the HYPER-MONOPOLISTIC FEDERAL RESERVE ACT in to law early in his first term of office! It was a "can't see the woods for the trees" or "win the battles but lose the war" moment for Progressive America - as this (ZH) article suggests, Roosevelt's GOLD CONFISCATION was for the VERY PRIVATE Fed banking CARTEL's benefit, and an argument can be made that it was the END of AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.
If this argument has merit (and it certainly does!) then FAR FROM BEING a "liberal" or "progressive," Brandeis (and Wilson) were REACTIONARY RIGHT-WING republic killing autocrats!
hmm... mayer, brandeis, morganthau... do they have anything else (besides WANTING to CONFISTICATE Americans' gold) in common ??!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Brandeis
authoritarian = (in control of the people) ? ? ?
this is like 2 + 2 = 5
i know you guys love this whole republic not democracy argument, but the problem today is not that, "people" are in charge, but that they are not. our government does nothing that the people want. the people don't want these wars nor would they have wanted the banker bailouts etc etc....its not a democracy what we have now. it's a kleptocracy, oligarchy etc etc....
Any republic OR democracy will spiral into a who-can-give-me-more-cracy within a few generations.
It's funny watching socialists desperately defending their failed polices.