Ron Paul

Gold hit a 4 month low today despite deepening worries that the political upheaval in Greece may sink the country into chaos and endanger the euro zone's efforts to end the debt crisis – possibly leading to contagion and or a monetary crisis. Some decent demand from South East Asia has been reported at the $1,600/oz level and there are also reports from Reuters of a “semi-official buyer of gold” emerging “on dip below $1,600/oz”.  Gold’s weakness yesterday may have been again due to dollar strength and oil weakness - oil is now below $97 a barrel (NYMEX). It may also have been due to wholesale liquidation which created a new bout of "risk off" which has seen global equities and commodities all come under pressure. However, gold’s weakness yesterday was also contributed to by more unusual trading activity. As trading in New York got underway, there was an unusually large bout of selling with some 6,000 gold futures contracts sold in minutes and this led to gold's initial $10 fall to the $1,615/oz level. Momentum driven algorithm trading may have then led to follow through selling and the initial sell off may have emboldened tech traders to sell more leading to the falls below $1,600/oz. 

We skipped the first part of today's hearing by the Ron Paul-chaired Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee titled “Improving the Federal Reserve System: Examining Legislation to Reform the Fed and Other Alternatives” as one of the two panelists was Barney Frank, which immediately meant it would be a complete and utter waste of time, and everyone would walk away far dumber from it, with god likely not having mercy on anyone's soul. The second part however promises to be far more interesting featuring such names as John Taylor (not the FX Concepts Taylor or the musician), Peter Klein, James Galbraith and Alice Rivlin. While everyone knows wha has to be done about the Fed, the likelihood that this will happen before the Big Reset is zero, but at least people can talk, dream and speculate. Watch the live webcast for more of the latter.

At what price?

Dr. Paul Could Still Win ...

You just have to admire Ron Paul for his non-flip-flopping tenacity.

Bloomberg viewers estimate that Ron Paul was the winner of the clash of the Pauls. But that is very much beside the point. This wasn’t really a debate. Other than the fascinating moment where Krugman denied defending the economic policies of Diocletian, very little new was said, and the two combatants mainly talked past each other.  The real debate happened early last decade.

There is little doubt, even amongst the most uninterested and apathetic of people, that America has reached the threshold of a dangerous new era in 2012.  Economically, the paper thin facade of recovery created by Federal Reserve fiat easing is beginning to fade, and the debt turmoil we currently see in the European Union is beginning to surface right here at home.  Socially, Americans are being subversively divided by the false left/right paradigm and the exploitation of artificially induced race tensions by the mainstream media.  Politically, Barack Obama’s presidential approval rating has hit all time lows, and the approval rating for Congress has hit a historic bottom.  The path our country has been set upon can only lead to disaster; that much is certain. 

Nut cases. That’s what they are. And if you take an interest in them, you are a nut case, too. That’s the consensus among credentialed economists who describe advocates of a return to the monetary regime known as the gold standard. In fact, the economic pack will marginalize you as a weirdo faster than you can say "Jacques Rueff," if you even raise the topic of monetary policy in relation to gold. If we are going to speak of consensus, let’s not forget one that is truly universal: Our economic system stands a good chance of breakdown in coming years. The only way to limit damage from such a breakdown is to ready ourselves to choose other models by learning about them now. Not to do so would be nuts.

Likely glowing from his glorious victory (h/t Trish Regan) over Krugman in Bloomberg's recent Paul vs Paul debate, Rep. Ron Paul destroys the central-planning arrogance of Bernanke and his ilk in an Op-Ed released by the FT today.

Control of the world’s economy has been placed in the hands of a banking cartel, which holds great danger for all of us. True prosperity requires sound money, increased productivity, and increased savings and investment. The world is awash in US dollars, and a currency crisis involving the world’s reserve currency would be an unprecedented catastrophe. No amount of monetary expansion can solve our current financial problems, but it can make those problems much worse.

Bernanke’s legacy is still to be made. But he has put the US economy in a position from which it can succeed. If Europe falls apart, it will be more difficult. If we fall of the fiscal cliff we will have our own Thelma and Louise moment. The Fed Chairman has already said he can’t save us from that shock. It’s really time for fiscal policy makers to step up. As long as they refuse it makes Bernanke’s job all the harder. And the pressure on him is intense.

Bernanke is under a lot of pressure and is given little credit for what have been remarkable achievements. Do risks remain? They sure do. But that result is yet to be decided. Meanwhile risks elsewhere are at least as pressing. Look at his successes...

While Krugman does not by any means endorse the level of centralism that Diocletian introduced, his defence of bailouts, his insistence on the planning of interest rates and inflation, and (most frighteningly) his insistence that war can be an economic stimulus (in reality, war is a capital destroyer) all put him firmly in Diocletian’s economic planning camp. So how did Diocletian’s economic program work out? Well, I think it is fair to say even without modern data that — just as Krugman desires — Diocletian’s measures boosted aggregate demand through public works and — just as Krugman desires — it introduced inflation. And certainly Rome lived for almost 150 years after Diocletian. However the long term effects of Diocletian’s economic program were dire. Have the 2008 bailouts done the same thing, cementing a new feudal aristocracy of bankers, financiers and too-big-to-fail zombies, alongside a serf class that exists to fund the excesses of the financial and corporate elite? Only time will tell.

By way of post-mortem of this afternoon's epic Paul vs Paul Bloomberg TV cage-match, we reflect on the various headlines the two gentlemen made during the event and in the context of the credibility with which one of the gentlemen discusses his ability to manage the world and the 'ease' with which he and his henchmen can control inflation (and yet an unmanaged economy is subject to 'extreme volatility'), we remind readers of the post-WWII years and the extreme swings in purchasing power that their so-called managed economy created. As ever it appears the mutually-assured-destruction fall-back premise of Keynesian Krugman is trumped by the fact-based method of the more Pragmatic Paul.

• *KRUGMAN SAYS UNMANAGED ECONOMY SUBJECT TO "EXTREME VOLATILITY"
• *PAUL SAYS FED IS LENDER OF LAST RESORT FOR POLITICIANS
• *KRUGMAN SAYS U.S. ECONOMY IS "PERSISTENTLY DEPRESSED"
• *RON PAUL: FED HAS DESTROYED 98% OF DOLLAR'S VALUE SINCE 1913

What Would Krugman Do? (obviously, that is rhetorical). Supreme Keynesian Voodoo acolyte Paul Krugman and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul go head to head on fixing the U.S. economy at 4pm ET today on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart.” Watch the live webcast beginning at 3pm ET for Krugman, who will be guest-hosting “Street Smart” until 5pm ET.  On the heels of the recent "controversial" NYT piece, where Krugman called on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to do more for the U.S. economy, Krugman will be asked to explain exactly how more stimulus will create jobs and put the economy back on the growth track. Also just what rug will the trillions in additional debt be swept under.  Then at 4pm, Krugman will face the ultimate debate with Ron Paul, who has called for drastic cuts in spending. Grab your popcorn now.

The US is now about to enter fully-fledged "election mode". With only two candidates left in the "race" for the Republican nomination - only one according to the mainstream media, but more on that below - the "issues" at stake in the upcoming election are now being very carefully tailored for an increasingly unruly domestic US political audience. A less polite way of phrasing this is that the spin is becoming dizzying. The foremost task of preparing for the November vote is to maintain the illusion that any and all economic or financial "hiccups" which might affect the US in the next six months are not home gown. The US establishment has never fooled all of the people all of the time -just enough of them to keep their power. The problem is that this keeps getting harder to do.

In perhaps the most courageous (and now must-read) speech ever given inside the New York Fed's shallowed hallowed walls, Economic Policy Journal's Robert Wenzel delivered the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the monetary priesthood. Gracious from the start, Wenzel takes the Keynesian clap-trappers to task on almost every nonsensical and oblivious decision they have made in recent years. "My views, I suspect, differ from beginning to end... I stand here confused as to how you see the world so differently than I do. I simply do not understand most of the thinking that goes on here at the Fed and I do not understand how this thinking can go on when in my view it smacks up against reality." And further..."I scratch my head that somehow your conclusions about unemployment are so different than mine and that you call for the printing of money to boost 'demand'. A call, I add, that since the founding of the Federal Reserve has resulted in an increase of the money supply by 12,230%." But his closing was tremendous: "Let’s have one good meal here. Let’s make it a feast. Then I ask you, I plead with you, I beg you all, walk out of here with me, never to come back. It’s the moral and ethical thing to do. Nothing good goes on in this place. Let’s lock the doors and leave the building to the spiders, moths and four-legged rats."