View Full Version : The Federal Reserve Is Evil and Run by Traitors. Need Proof? Here you go!
variablebinary
12-03-10, 02:45
The Federal Reserve is an evil organization filled with traitors that Jefferson and Washington would have had shot.
If you need proof that there is in fact a coordinated globalist movement to strip America of wealth, and throw us into a tyrannical oligarchy with an elite ruling class that are our masters, here it is.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This shit is real! Wake Up! All this is from the last 48hrs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120106870.html
Fed aid in financial crisis went beyond U.S. banks to industry,
The financial crisis stretched even farther across the economy than many had realized, as new disclosures show the Federal Reserve rushed trillions of dollars in emergency aid not just to Wall Street but also to motorcycle makers, telecom firms and foreign-owned banks in 2008 and 2009.
The biggest users of the Fed lending programs were some of the world's largest banks, including Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Swiss-based UBS and Britain's Barclays, according to more than 21,000 loan records released Wednesday under new financial regulatory legislation.
More: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-02/federal-reserve-may-be-central-bank-of-the-world-after-ubs-barclays-aid.html
How the hell can we afford to give anyone $3.3 Trillion dollars
Federal Reserve May Be `Central Bank of the World' After UBS, Barclays Aid
Federal Reserve data showing UBS AG and Barclays Plc ranked among the top users of $3.3 trillion from emergency programs is stoking debate on whether U.S. regulators bear responsibility for aiding other nations’ banks.
UBS was the biggest borrower under the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, with $74.5 billion overall, more than twice as much as Citigroup Inc., the top U.S. bank recipient, according to the data released yesterday. London-based Barclays Plc took the biggest single amount under another program that made overnight loans, when it got $47.9 billion on Sept. 18, 2008.
Pissed off yet? Wait, there's more! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-01/taxpayer-risk-impossible-to-know-for-some-fed-financial-crisis-programs.html
Fed Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in Financial-Crisis Loans
The Federal Reserve withheld details on individual securities pledged as collateral by recipients of $885 billion in central bank loans, denying taxpayers a measure of the risks they faced from its emergency aid.
The central bank yesterday released data on 21,000 transactions from $3.3 trillion in emergency lending to stem the financial crisis. July’s Dodd-Frank law required the Fed to disclose the names of borrowers, the size and interest rates of loans, and “information identifying the types and amounts of collateral pledged or assets transferred.”
For three of the Fed’s six emergency facilities, the central bank released information on groups of collateral it accepted by asset type and rating, without specifying individual securities. Among them was the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, created in March 2008 to provide loans to brokers as Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.
And it doesn't matter if you boot Obama in 2012. The same ruling class power brokers behind the scenes will still be in place, raping the United States for everything it is worth.
Like most Americans, I have no clue how anything works in this country and it really makes it difficult to give a crap.
We constantly see news stories as being just a flavor of the day. We listen, we shake our fists, then we dose off for tomorrows flavor of the day. The cycle continues and nothings gets done to fix anything.
Why is this anything different?
Rmplstlskn
12-03-10, 06:37
Roger that, VB...
Like most Americans, I have no clue how anything works in this country and it really makes it difficult to give a crap.
We constantly see news stories as being just a flavor of the day. We listen, we shake our fists, then we dose off for tomorrows flavor of the day. The cycle continues and nothings gets done to fix anything.
Why is this anything different?
Bingo...
Variable, please take a minute and explain exactly how any of this has affected you. Please try and keep your answer under a thousand words.
Magic_Salad0892
12-03-10, 06:57
WOW. I said these guys were dicks four years ago.
BOOM. I IZ RIGHT.
Do a bit of research.
Like most Americans, I have no clue how anything works in this country and it really makes it difficult to give a crap.
And that's why we're screwed.
ForTehNguyen
12-03-10, 07:21
they will lose their credibility in the next collapse, too bad it will be a collapse where we will feel some huge pain and will take the US down with it.
Gutshot John
12-03-10, 07:22
So the allegation is that because we gave money to foreign banks that operate in the United States the Fed is run by traitors?
Interesting assessment, deeply flawed, but interesting. As for it being "proof"...no sorry it's nothing of the sort.
I understand calls for an audit, or even that the financial crisis should have been allowed to continue without any intervention, but even an audit it came back and confirmed everything you say (doubtful), that's a pretty far cry from treason.
How about we rely on facts and logic rather than emotional hyperbole?
Thank God we were smart enough to assist foreign banks or we would have been in even worse shape. We don't live on an island and issues impacting us tend to reach foreign shores more and more. I think this speaks directly to the strength of the U.S. Dollar and the U.S. economy. Even during a economic collapse we have the power, both in capital and will, to support a world-wide economy. I believe that in the long run such actions only help us and make us stronger. Also, by shoring up the financial engines of Europe we preserve our trading partners and our allies from collapse. Sliding from recession to depression on a world-wide level does nothing to help us. Acting to prevent it is the smart thing to do.
thopkins22
12-03-10, 09:58
I find it interesting that people who would normally describe themselves as being from the right, in favor of free markets, and against central planning, would defend the biggest central planning scheme in our nation's history.
I do think people get put off by wording like you see in the title though. I don't think they're traitors, I think the problem is that they honestly believe they wield enough brain power to fix things...as opposed to just enough to screw things up.
It is worth noting that the standards of living and economic prosperity of the average American had the biggest gains during the 19th century between central banks and without a federal income tax.
Sliding from recession to depression on a world-wide level does nothing to help us. Acting to prevent it is the smart thing to do.
Then you don't understand what the problems were...If something has been proven time after time to not work(and usually make the problems worse,) then I'm supposed to believe that doing the same thing on a grand scale will fix the problem?
A recession/depression is exactly what would have helped us clear out our bad debt and investments, and start anew. Instead, there will surely be another recession/depression, but it will be much worse for far more Americans, and if we don't drastically change course it will likely be inflationary. Won't that be fun.
What this means to me is that my government used our money to prop up foreign banks; which I disagree with.
thopkins22
12-03-10, 10:08
Bingo...
Variable, please take a minute and explain exactly how any of this has affected you. Please try and keep your answer under a thousand words.
I'm not VB, but it has directly stolen value from his savings/investments if he has any. It has seriously reduced the ability of smaller banks and businesses who had a good and ethical business plan in the first place to grow, provide employment, and better more honest loans to VB. You don't have to be an economist to grasp what is happening.
Banks have gone bankrupt since there were banks to go bankrupt. The world didn't end.
Thank God we were smart enough to assist foreign banks or we would have been in even worse shape. We don't live on an island and issues impacting us tend to reach foreign shores more and more. I think this speaks directly to the strength of the U.S. Dollar and the U.S. economy. Even during a economic collapse we have the power, both in capital and will, to support a world-wide economy. I believe that in the long run such actions only help us and make us stronger. Also, by shoring up the financial engines of Europe we preserve our trading partners and our allies from collapse. Sliding from recession to depression on a world-wide level does nothing to help us. Acting to prevent it is the smart thing to do.
^Complete and utter BS^.
Instead of doing the actual RIGHt THING; feeling the pain and having the market correct itself, we send ourselves further down the path of self destruction by further manipulation.
The free market is dead and you love it? For chrissake...
ForTehNguyen
12-03-10, 11:08
the free market died in 1913
Belmont31R
12-03-10, 11:51
Something I don't see brought up often is some banks were allowed to go under or be bought out by other banks. Some banks got straight up cash from our gov.
Funny Goldman Sachs was given money but Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers were not. Those assets were swallowed up by banks our government gave money to.
So if letting banks fail is not good why did our gov let several of them go, and give money to other banks to buy them on the cheap for something like $10 a share? Now there is less competition and the guys like Goldman have more share of the market.
What happens the next time? Half as much competition as there is now so theres only a few big houses in the world who are in bed with the governments?
Business_Casual
12-03-10, 12:21
Just az with gold thread - you people continue to think that money has some meaning or value that it doesn't have. It is merely a way to keep score during exchanges. How do you think those BMWs and scotch whiskey maker exchange their labor for yours?
Plus it was our banks that spread the virus of CDS on mortgage paper, so we were to blame, regardless of how right or left the Fed mortgage giants were. Shrug.
B_C
Something I don't see brought up often is some banks were allowed to go under or be bought out by other banks. Some banks got straight up cash from our gov.
Funny Goldman Sachs was given money but Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers were not. Those assets were swallowed up by banks our government gave money to.
So if letting banks fail is not good why did our gov let several of them go, and give money to other banks to buy them on the cheap for something like $10 a share? Now there is less competition and the guys like Goldman have more share of the market.
What happens the next time? Half as much competition as there is now so theres only a few big houses in the world who are in bed with the governments?
Geez it almost seems like someone wanted that to happen...
Just az with gold thread - you people continue to think that money has some meaning or value that it doesn't have. It is merely a way to keep score during exchanges. How do you think those BMWs and scotch whiskey maker exchange their labor for yours?
Plus it was our banks that spread the virus of CDS on mortgage paper, so we were to blame, regardless of how right or left the Fed mortgage giants were. Shrug.
B_C
Care to explain this assessment in greater detail in specific regards to this thread...?
thopkins22
12-03-10, 12:37
Just az with gold thread - you people continue to think that money has some meaning or value that it doesn't have. It is merely a way to keep score during exchanges. How do you think those BMWs and scotch whiskey maker exchange their labor for yours?
Plus it was our banks that spread the virus of CDS on mortgage paper, so we were to blame, regardless of how right or left the Fed mortgage giants were. Shrug.
B_C
Yes, money is a way to keep score during exchanges. But if I put $10 in the bank at X%, the federal government and the Federal Reserve, have in effect stolen purchasing power from me, and the ability of BMW and various distilleries to sell their goods to as many people. You're a smart guy, maybe we're just operating on different wavelengths here.
If we had a truly free market, interest rates would be much higher rewarding people for saving. Once there is plenty of savings, rates will drop, telling people it's safe to make some capital investments. As it stands, it's not safe...but the folks from the big investment houses have convinced our politicians that they must keep the train rolling full steam ahead.
LegalAlien
12-03-10, 15:44
For the posters here who believe that past and current Fed actions are acceptable and does not hurt each and every individual here, do yourself a favor and spend some time on Karl Denninger's Blog - "The Market Ticker"
For your amrchair convenience, here is a link:-
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker
After reading that blog, come back again and tell me it is OK for the FED to bail out every Tom Dick and Harry.
The Federal Reserve is an evil organization filled with traitors that Jefferson and Washington would have had shot.
If you need proof that there is in fact a coordinated globalist movement to strip America of wealth, and throw us into a tyrannical oligarchy with an elite ruling class that are our masters, here it is.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This shit is real! Wake Up! All this is from the last 48hrs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120106870.html
More: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-02/federal-reserve-may-be-central-bank-of-the-world-after-ubs-barclays-aid.html
How the hell can we afford to give anyone $3.3 Trillion dollars
Pissed off yet? Wait, there's more! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-01/taxpayer-risk-impossible-to-know-for-some-fed-financial-crisis-programs.html
And it doesn't matter if you boot Obama in 2012. The same ruling class power brokers behind the scenes will still be in place, raping the United States for everything it is worth.
Roger that, variablebinary. Eustace Mullins wrote an excellent book titled Secrets of the Federal Reserve.
For the posters here who believe that past and current Fed actions are acceptable and does not hurt each and every individual here, do yourself a favor and spend some time on Karl Denninger's Blog - "The Market Ticker"
For your amrchair convenience, here is a link:-
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker
After reading that blog, come back again and tell me it is OK for the FED to bail out every Tom Dick and Harry.
Amen on this, too, LegalAlien!
Belmont31R
12-03-10, 16:20
For the posters here who believe that past and current Fed actions are acceptable and does not hurt each and every individual here, do yourself a favor and spend some time on Karl Denninger's Blog - "The Market Ticker"
For your amrchair convenience, here is a link:-
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker
After reading that blog, come back again and tell me it is OK for the FED to bail out every Tom Dick and Harry.
I just don't think its smart long term to have a few big banks in bed with the governments, decides who fails and who doesn't based on who knows who, and have the majority of the population at these people's mercy.
The banks and gov ****ed up but its not them paying the price. Its the guys like us who have to deal with 17% unemployment, devalued dollars, ect. They ones making the decisions are rich enough, and in the right spots little of this will effect them. They'll still walk away millionaires no matter how bad they **** the rest of us over.
Letting some banks and smaller nations go under might sting but putting us all together in the same rowboat is going to have far more drastic consequences. Countries and politicians can make poor choices, promises, ect without reprecussion because the rest of the nations cant afford to do without them. Its like giving a teenage kid a credit card, and then when they can't pay the bill you pay for it them. What did they learn? They can rack up debt, and someone will be there to fix it for them.
I started that thread about global socialization, and thats what this BS is. Just like within a society one person makes a ****ed up decision, and we get to pay for it. Get a welfare queen popping babies out, pay for their care, ect, and they never quit. Now we just have entire countries acting as the welfare mama's.
What this means for us, and just like the "rich" tax payer in the US is our wealth gets to get sent overseas because the bankers and governments have tied us all into the same row boat.
Gutshot John
12-03-10, 16:42
I just don't think its smart long term to have a few big banks in bed with the governments, decides who fails and who doesn't based on who knows who, and have the majority of the population at these people's mercy.
Agreed but that's not the purpose of the Fed...actually it's the exact opposite. The Fed is supposed to be independent of political control though in recent years this line has become blurred.
Love or hate the Fed, those pundits that glibly go about and claim it's either "evil" or "socialism" are engaging in the most simplistic form of rhetoric.
Economic problems will always exist and worse economic catastrophes have occurred in US and world history independent of the existence of the Fed or any other central banking body. Some central planning of the economy is not only necessary but also desirable and has been so since the founding of this Republic.
It's very easy to believe that if the Fed would disappear all of our problems would also disappear. Such a line of reasoning is woefully misinformed at best and disingenuous at worst.
The Fed was designed to encourage stability and while it's certainly failed in recent years to live up to all of our expectations no one can know what would and would not have happened without it.
It's very easy to make such claims in hindsight but I'm betting anyone here would be singing a different tune if it was their job at stake or their savings that went up in smoke.
I'm not defending the Fed or any of its actions only that many people here (not to mention online pundits) don't have the answers that they claim to. If they did it wouldn't even be subject to debate. EVERY decision has consequences, EVERY choice has a cost. This is as immutable a law of economics as anything else.
Belmont31R
12-03-10, 16:58
Central planning actually requires the planners to do their job with the country and long term economic health in mind not advancing political ideology for short term gain or their buddies banks make money at the cost of the rest of us.
One of those things that works in theory but when you introduce people into the mix things down turn out so well.
Gutshot John
12-03-10, 17:08
One of those things that works in theory but when you introduce people into the mix things down turn out so well.
If it weren't for "people" economics wouldn't be a problem at all, that's my point - economics isn't physics.
Why do you think politics interjects itself? Strictly for personal or political gain? Or because the people expect their government to do something about their problems?
Politicians interject themselves in these decisions because the people expect them to.
You might not like their choices, you might not agree with their politics, but the problem is psychological, not economical or even political.
Belmont31R
12-03-10, 17:37
If it weren't for "people" economics wouldn't be a problem at all, that's my point - economics isn't physics.
Why do you think politics interjects itself? Strictly for personal or political gain? Or because the people expect their government to do something about their problems?
Politicians interject themselves in these decisions because the people expect them to.
You might not like their choices, you might not agree with their politics, but the problem is psychological, not economical or even political.
Im talking about the "everyone gets a home" and keeping interest rates extremely low to ensure this happens. That is where putting politics ahead of long term viability comes into play because its proven to be a disaster economically. Then since a global economy has been developed what happens one singular country trickles down to the rest of us.
With the housing bubble there were more more mortgages available for the bankers to trade around, and make short term profits off of. Even one of Obama's cases as a lawyer involved suing CitiBank to force them to give more mortgages out.
I think the EU has been a good example of this tying everyone together thing....I think its smart to keep things somewhat independent so if one fails it doesn't drag down the rest as much. If this the precendent we are setting its going to be nothing but bad decision making being bailed out so we all don't go under. The end result is we are all going to go under because there isn't enough money in the world worth a shit to pay for all the obligations and decision making that has been, and will keep going on at this rate. Our own country is over 100T in future liability we have no way to pay for.
Before everyone gets their shorts in a twitter you need to know that foreign commercial banks doing business in the US have to have a US banking charter. They are regulated by US regulators, have mostly US customers and employees, and the deposits are insured by the FDIC, which they pay for just like all US banks do.
For example, UBS AG, headquartered in Zurich, has a US banking charter - UBS Bank USA.
And ING Groep N.V., headquartered in Amsterdam, has a US bank charter - ING Bank, FSB.
There are many more.
Gutshot John
12-03-10, 18:09
Im talking about the "everyone gets a home"
That's been a goal of American society since Thomas Jefferson.
Should interest rates have been kept so low? No of course not but nonetheless it started because of a psychology of the American people who wanted their politicians to intervene in Fed policy to make that happen.
The EU is not the United States, any comparisons between the Euro and the Dollar are deeply, deeply flawed.
Wouldn't any public company that received money have to had reported in on their 10Q and 10K filings with the SEC and to shareholders? My company is a financial information company and we have entire database tables on TARP and who got what.
It would see to be highly illegal for a public company to keep that information from shareholders.
^Complete and utter BS^.
Instead of doing the actual RIGHt THING; feeling the pain and having the market correct itself, we send ourselves further down the path of self destruction by further manipulation.
The free market is dead and you love it? For chrissake...
Yeah, thank God we were smart enough to print or borrow more money to give away to other countries that should have printed or borrowed their own damn money.
To hell with the world. When are we going to do what's right for our country? All this "we're all in this together" globalization crap is part of the problem. I don't give a damn if someone in Nigeria steps on a butterfly and my 401k shouldn't either.
Yeah, I know - I just don't understand. If I was one of dem there educated fellas I'd "get it". :sarcastic:
The ability to do anything useful about it was taken from us long ago.
As individuals all you can do is protect what is yours to the best of your ability when the option exists.
And until the shooting actually starts, that is what I'll be doing. And IF the shooting actually does start, you will wish your biggest problem was the country was run by thieves.
RancidSumo
12-04-10, 00:38
Like most Americans, I have no clue how anything works in this country and it really makes it difficult to give a crap.
We constantly see news stories as being just a flavor of the day. We listen, we shake our fists, then we dose off for tomorrows flavor of the day. The cycle continues and nothings gets done to fix anything.
Why is this anything different?
This is more of a self assessment than one regarding our political system. You've just admitted to being willfully uninformed.
You are in fact exactly what the problem is in this country. You don't understand something for which there is plenty of information available, you're just too lazy to go read and learn it. Then you say that because you've decided to be uninformed, you don't give a crap. What kind of logic is that? Just because you don't understand something doesn't make unimportant. I don't understand quantum mechanics yet that doesn't change its impact on the universe. The difference is that with political and economic subjects, your understanding can actually change something if you would put in some effort.
As to the part in bold, it is yet another self assessment and does not apply to myself or, I would bet, many of the other posters here on this forum. Hell I'm only 18 and I'm pissed off about government policies that were implemented fifty or more years before I was born, many of which aren't ever in the news because people like yourself have given up on them.
The question is now that you have admitted this fault in your own behavior, are you going to take corrective action or simply continue with your day to day actions and watch the US slide even deeper into oblivion and take away more and more of your rights?
Belmont31R
12-04-10, 01:36
Just one example of why we are ****ed...
I hate Alan Grayson with a passion, and hope he is on UI which gets cut off soon...but I would give him a pat on the back for this.
With that said FF to about 1:10.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NYBTkE1yQ
500B and the chairman has no idea where it went.
variablebinary
12-04-10, 03:15
Like most Americans, I have no clue how anything works in this country and it really makes it difficult to give a crap.
We constantly see news stories as being just a flavor of the day. We listen, we shake our fists, then we dose off for tomorrows flavor of the day. The cycle continues and nothings gets done to fix anything.
Why is this anything different?
Your response disgusts me on levels I can't begin to describe
You don't see a problem that a group of men who are not elected having the ability to dish out $3.3 trillion dollars to organizations secretly and without the approval of congress or the President.
That isn't a problem in you world? Are you sure? You don't see a problem where sovereignty, freedom and fiscal policy having been completely ceded to a secret society filled with back room globalist deals, who are propping up the ruling class and consolidating wealth and power into the hands of the few.
How about the ability to print money out of thin air? Do you think that affects you, your net worth, and your ability to provide for your family and community. You think the demise of the middle class, and stagnant wages are an accident?
K, answer this; Who has ****ed this country up more:
A: Osama Bin Laden
B: Adolf Hitler
C: Saddam Hussein
D: The Federal Reserve
Before you answer, do your homework and think long and hard about what is happening to this nation, where we were, and where we are going...
This is more of a self assessment than one regarding our political system. You've just admitted to being willfully uninformed.
You are in fact exactly what the problem is in this country. You don't understand something for which there is plenty of information available, you're just too lazy to go read and learn it. Then you say that because you've decided to be uninformed, you don't give a crap. What kind of logic is that? Just because you don't understand something doesn't make unimportant. I don't understand quantum mechanics yet that doesn't change its impact on the universe. The difference is that with political and economic subjects, your understanding can actually change something if you would put in some effort.
As to the part in bold, it is yet another self assessment and does not apply to myself or, I would bet, many of the other posters here on this forum. Hell I'm only 18 and I'm pissed off about government policies that were implemented fifty or more years before I was born, many of which aren't ever in the news because people like yourself have given up on them.
The question is now that you have admitted this fault in your own behavior, are you going to take corrective action or simply continue with your day to day actions and watch the US slide even deeper into oblivion and take away more and more of your rights?
Your response disgusts me on levels I can't begin to describe
You don't see a problem that a group of men who are not elected having the ability to dish out $3.3 trillion dollars to organizations secretly and without the approval of congress or the President.
That isn't a problem in you world? Are you sure? You don't see a problem where sovereignty, freedom and fiscal policy having been completely ceded to a secret society filled with back room globalist deals, who are propping up the ruling class and consolidating wealth and power into the hands of the few.
How about the ability to print money out of thin air? Do you think that affects you, your net worth, and your ability to provide for your family and community. You think the demise of the middle class, and stagnant wages are an accident?
K, answer this; Who has ****ed this country up more:
A: Osama Bin Laden
B: Adolf Hitler
C: Saddam Hussein
D: The Federal Reserve
Before you answer, do your homework and think long and hard about what is happening to this nation, where we were, and where we are going...
It appears you two have all of the answers. An 18 year old who has never paid a net dime in taxes and a serviceman of some sort with his tinfoil hat on a bit crooked. Unless either or both of you have a degree in macro economics, you may want to shut your pie holes. Kal pegged both of you. Neither could explain on their best day how the Fed works but you know its the greatest evil the US has ever faced. Do us all a favor and just shut up. The black helicopter, Obama is not a US citizen, 9/11 was an inside job stuff is getting old..
:big_boss:
Business_Casual
12-04-10, 07:58
Yeah, thank God we were smart enough to print or borrow more money to give away to other countries that should have printed or borrowed their own damn money.
See, here is a perfect example of what I alluded to earlier - this belief that money is a zero-sum game if you disagree with the policy. It isn't and there are plenty of interests in competition as well as policies that could easily reverse the current trends, one of the good things about the Fed system. For instance, the Currency guys and import related interests might want a strong dollar and the manufacturing and export interests might want a weak dollar. The point is that with our system either condition can be achieved and/or reversed.
The guys that work in money are no different than the guys that work in shoes or furniture, they do their job and then go home to their families and pet the dog. Just because their business card says lower Manhattan it doesn't mean they are part of some evil cabal to steal a percentage of your wealth or something.
B_C
thopkins22
12-04-10, 09:25
See, here is a perfect example of what I alluded to earlier - this belief that money is a zero-sum game if you disagree with the policy. It isn't and there are plenty of interests in competition as well as policies that could easily reverse the current trends, one of the good things about the Fed system. For instance, the Currency guys and import related interests might want a strong dollar and the manufacturing and export interests might want a weak dollar. The point is that with our system either condition can be achieved and/or reversed.
The guys that work in money are no different than the guys that work in shoes or furniture, they do their job and then go home to their families and pet the dog. Just because their business card says lower Manhattan it doesn't mean they are part of some evil cabal to steal a percentage of your wealth or something.
B_C
And you've illustrated what I alluded to earlier when I mentioned central economic planning. The belief that a bunch of unelected bureaucrats are capable of making the right choices...when time after time they have proven that they are not. It's the complete antithesis of trusting the marketplace.
And while I agree that there isn't a bunch of shady meetings between Ben Bernanke and Goldman Sachs executives, it's clear that a small portion of Americans have learned to take advantage of the Fed's policies that generally hurt the rest of us. It's not evil, but it's not exactly on the level either.
Hell, keep the Fed going strong. Legalize competing currencies and see which wins.
As to the part in bold, it is yet another self assessment and does not apply to myself or, I would bet, many of the other posters here on this forum. Hell I'm only 18 and I'm pissed off about government policies that were implemented fifty or more years before I was born, many of which aren't ever in the news because people like yourself have given up on them.
The question is now that you have admitted this fault in your own behavior, are you going to take corrective action or simply continue with your day to day actions and watch the US slide even deeper into oblivion and take away more and more of your rights?
I admire you enthusiasm and your desire to understand the world around you. Certainly, that's an exercise that will keep you busy until your last breath.
But age tends to soften the sharp edges whether one wants it or not. Even if you were to understand everything about government, finance, human nature...then what? You and your one vote will be cancelled out a dozen times over by fraud, ignorance, greed, envy, on both sides, a hundred times over.
Yes, this stuff is important, yes, it affects us, but when I have to choose between studying the federal reserve, understanding esoteric financial investments, judging cultural trends and listening to my 6 year-old son explain his view of the world, helping my teenage daughter study her Latin, or enjoying a glass of wine with my wife at the end of the day, I know what I will choose every time.
Life, love, friendship, faith...someone said life is what happens when you're making other plans.
Best of luck to you.
Gutshot John
12-04-10, 11:57
And you've illustrated what I alluded to earlier when I mentioned central economic planning. The belief that a bunch of unelected bureaucrats are capable of making the right choices...when time after time they have proven that they are not. It's the complete antithesis of trusting the marketplace.
The marketplace can't always be trusted. That's been shown time and time again. Derivatives anyone? If everyone was perfectly rational and could see the bigger picture than it MIGHT be possible but that's not reality and while the market place on balance tends to mostly work, misguided faith in markets is as bad as misguided faith in politicians. The Fed's mission is stability and no one has come up with any kind of viable alternative. It's very easy to say that the Fed should go away, but no one acknowledges that some central planning of the economy has always been necessary, that was as much a reason for the Constitution as anything else.
The market is driven by psychology. Frenzy as well as Fear, Greed as well as Conscience, and while everyone bitches about the Fed's current actions, which may indeed be wrong in retrospect, no one was saying that 10-15 years ago when the problems were starting to build. Further no one has provided any kind of viable alternative. Whole governments have fallen because they were too fragmented to survive and take account of comparative advantages working together. Does the Fed make mistakes? Absolutely, they're human and as long as we have human beings in charge of government shit will always happen.
Do I think that Goldman Sachs, BoA and others should have gone the way of AIG and Lehman Brothers? Sure but that's very easy to say, not so easy to do when there are real consequences.
EVERY choice has consequences. NO choice is perfect and TANSTAAFL still applies.
It appears you two have all of the answers. An 18 year old who has never paid a net dime in taxes and a serviceman of some sort with his tinfoil hat on a bit crooked. Unless either or both of you have a degree in macro economics, you may want to shut your pie holes. Kal pegged both of you.
As you may have noticed, I've also expressed "frustration" with some of the excessive tin-foil hatness that has seemingly escalated a bit here recently. Great we have folks looking out and all, but...
That said, you're backing the wrong horse endorsing Kal's comment to any degree. Nothing to respect about that statement in the least. He may have been honest, but that doesn't mean he's a great guy for not caring enough to educate himself about issues directly or even indirectly relevant to his life and the state of his nation.
Do I think that Goldman Sachs, BoA and others should have gone the way of AIG and Lehman Brothers?
Lehman died - AIG didn't and is still an operating company as are GS and BOA.
Gutshot John
12-04-10, 12:40
Ok, AIG only almost went bankrupt, Lehman went byebye. Doesn't change the underlying premise.
I'm not at all happy that these companies were spared, but it remains a very sanguin choice to presume that the loss of these companies, along with the loss of jobs and savings of everyday Americans could be so glibly done away with or that they would have come back overnight.
No one can know what would or would not have happened had they died or if the Fed simply disappeared...only what did happen.
It's very easy to talk about in abstract, ideal-world terms, not so much when real people/voters are involved.
The marketplace can't always be trusted. That's been shown time and time again. Derivatives anyone?
Sure it can.
It cannot always be entrusted to always produce the heavenly paradise result, but over time, it can be trusted to produce the best result realistically possible.
The market self corrects. When the market goes in a certain direction that over time shows itself to be a bad direction, it self corrects and learns from the experience.
When the bureaucrats and people interfere, they get rid of the self correction and no one learns anything and we make the same mistakes over and over again.
And, the market eventually finds a way around the interferences of the bureaucrats and proceeds anyway. The bureaucrats can influence the markets over the short term but cannot grossly change or shape the market over the long term. But they CAN eliminate valuable market feedback so that the market takes a lot longer to learn about bad things and has to keep retrying them before it learns.
Did GS, AIG, etc learn what they needed to learn from the most recent economic hard times? Probably not. They learned that they are too big to fail and that they can make the risky choices and get away with it.
As an example: govt raises taxes. People send commerce underground. The market steers around it. The taxes influence the market but in the end the market works around the taxes.
Actually, in hindsight, Lehman going down appears to have panicked the global markets more than otherwise would have occurred had they been bailed out, not that I was for the bailouts at the time and still have very mixed emotions about them. Edited to add: But we will never know for sure because what was done is done.
A very detailed book on the whole progression of events is The End Of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein.
Gutshot John
12-04-10, 13:34
Sure it can.
It cannot always be entrusted to always produce the heavenly paradise result, but over time, it can be trusted to produce the best result realistically possible.
Economic positivism/optimism "all is for the best in the best possible of worlds" is not the same thing as working. A few thousand years of economic history disputes that assessment.
Who said anything about "heavenly paradise"? I certainly didn't but political and social upheaval caused by economic instability isn't something that people should just leave to the markets to sort out.
Markets don't (and probably never have) rewarded those who "play by the rules" anymore than it "punishes" those who don't. The market mostly is a function of emotion and luck. In aggregate, over decades, it may be better than the alternatives but that doesn't mean that instabilities shouldn't be addressed.
Do I think that much more wealth needed to be destroyed? Yes but that's easy to say in hindsight and it's very difficult for politicians to simply accept in a cold-blooded manner when there are real consequences, for real people, who played by the rules and had nothing to do with what got us into this mess. Sure life is tough but the reality is that human beings will ALWAYS expect their leaders to try and fix economic problems and they don't all have economics degrees that allow them to realize that life's a bitch.
Business_Casual
12-04-10, 13:34
The marketplace can't always be trusted. That's been shown time and time again.
Exactly - the whole point of the Fed is that it is a system. In the early 90s it became an international system and we are now interconnected with all the other banking systems.
People here seem to think money is something it isn't, that it has some existence outside of whatever authority issues it. How else would it work? Will you have 50 states issuing currency? Who's going to take California dollars knowing how shitty their debt crisis is?
All you monetary purists and free market saints need to tell us how your system would work and how you would manage a credit crisis or a liquidity problem?
B_C
RancidSumo
12-04-10, 13:41
It appears you two have all of the answers. An 18 year old who has never paid a net dime in taxes and a serviceman of some sort with his tinfoil hat on a bit crooked. Unless either or both of you have a degree in macro economics, you may want to shut your pie holes. Kal pegged both of you. Neither could explain on their best day how the Fed works but you know its the greatest evil the US has ever faced. Do us all a favor and just shut up. The black helicopter, Obama is not a US citizen, 9/11 was an inside job stuff is getting old..
:big_boss:
Once again, just because YOU don't understand the Federal Reserve doesn't mean nobody does. I'm not going to waste my time writing a full length paper to explain it to you when that is easily available to you already so I'll sum it up. By expanding the monetary base like the fed is doing, more dollars are now in circulation. Increased supply means a lower value. As a result, every dollar is now worth slightly less and in the long run will be worth considerably less (compare the dollar ever twenty or thirty years ago to today's dollar). That doesn't just mean the freshly "printed" dollars but EVERY dollar. Any money that you have saved is now worth less than when you put it away.
How is it not a problem that the Fed is able to take away a portion of your saved purchasing power whenever they feel like it?
Oh and none of this has anything to do with "The black helicopter, Obama is not a US citizen, 9/11 was an inside job stuff", this is all sound economic principles. So until you can make a real argument, you may want to shut your pie hole.
RancidSumo
12-04-10, 13:47
Business_Casual,
This discussion has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not money has intrinsic value. It is about the fact that because the Fed can increase our monetary supply at the drop of a hat, the bills, or "ones and zeros" as I believe you put it, are worth less now then they were before the Fed's actions. This is a fact. Your money can now purchase fewer things then it could when you put it in the bank or under your mattress originally.
Economic positivism/optimism "all is for the best in the best possible of worlds" is not the same thing as working. A few thousand years of economic history disputes that assessment.
Who said anything about "heavenly paradise"? I certainly didn't but political and social upheaval caused by economic instability isn't something that people should just leave to the markets to sort out.
Markets don't (and probably never have) rewarded those who "play by the rules" anymore than it "punishes" those who don't. The market mostly is a function of emotion and luck. In aggregate, over decades, it may be better than the alternatives but that doesn't mean that instabilities shouldn't be addressed.
Do I think that much more wealth needed to be destroyed? Yes but that's easy to say in hindsight and it's very difficult for politicians to simply accept in a cold-blooded manner when there are real consequences, for real people, who played by the rules and had nothing to do with what got us into this mess. Sure life is tough but the reality is that human beings will ALWAYS expect their leaders to try and fix economic problems and they don't all have economics degrees that allow them to realize that life's a bitch.
The problem is that next time it happens even more wealth will be destroyed, and it will be harder to clean up after, all because we did not let the market run its course this time. These big companies learned one thing -- they can run to daddy and get bailed out. So they are more apt to game the system and take risks they otherwise would not take if they had to back up their failures.
You can build a mighty nice house out of cards, that on the outside looks nice and well built. But the bigger you make it, the greater the chance of it falling. And when it falls, it is a doozy.
Gutshot John
12-04-10, 14:04
The problem is that next time it happens even more wealth will be destroyed, and it will be harder to clean up after, all because we did not let the market run its course this time. These big companies learned one thing -- they can run to daddy and get bailed out. So they are more apt to game the system and take risks they otherwise would not take if they had to back up their failures.
You can build a mighty nice house out of cards, that on the outside looks nice and well built. But the bigger you make it, the greater the chance of it falling. And when it falls, it is a doozy.
I'm not disputing that assessment (in fact I mostly agree with you) nor do I think getting bailed out was the appropriate solution but that's a different argument/debate as to whether there should be a Federal Reserve or that there should be some attempt by government to set a sustainable monetary policy or stabilize economic upheavals. Leaving it to the whims of the market is a recipe for chaos.
Gutshot John
12-04-10, 14:14
Business_Casual,
This discussion has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not money has intrinsic value. It is about the fact that because the Fed can increase our monetary supply at the drop of a hat, the bills, or "ones and zeros" as I believe you put it, are worth less now then they were before the Fed's actions. This is a fact. Your money can now purchase fewer things then it could when you put it in the bank or under your mattress originally.
Yes and no. Relative to 10-15 years ago, indeed your money purchases less today than it did then, much of this has to do with petroleum pricing but some of it has to do with monetary considerations. Relative to 50 or 100 years ago, goods that would have cost your great grandfather months or even years of salary (say a computer or a toaster or refrigerator or a suit) can be had for significantly less money.
Has the dollar weakened because of government policies, sure but thats not all bad either, a strong dollar was also a big reason why trade deficits were significantly higher as a percentage of the economy.
So again there is always a trade off and nothing comes for free. Every choice has a cost.
The_War_Wagon
12-04-10, 14:20
Two words for ya' -
"GOLD"...
"STANDARD"...
The Fed can't print it, the Fed can't debase it, and the Fed can't screw YOU, if you own it!
Gutshot John
12-04-10, 14:28
Two words for ya' -
"GOLD"...
"STANDARD"...
The Fed can't print it, the Fed can't debase it, and the Fed can't screw YOU, if you own it!
And the economy can't grow any faster than you can mine it.
Again no easy answers.
Leaving it to the whims of the market is a recipe for chaos.
When have we tried that? Leaving it to the whims of the politicians bureaucrats, and the Fed have been pretty chaotic! I am not seeing how the market could be worse.
Gutshot John
12-04-10, 14:53
When have we tried that? Leaving it to the whims of the politicians bureaucrats, and the Fed have been pretty chaotic! I am not seeing how the market could be worse.
The flaw in that premise is that there is no "market", there is certainly a market, the Fed simply flattens the peaks and valleys associated with emotion.
That said I'm not sure what you're arguing? That our economic policy has worked? or that it hasn't? By and large economic policy has worked because there has been a Fed. (the Fed board isn't made of bureaucrats, it's made of bankers) and that relative to other countries, we've enjoyed significant stability and growth.
Since the Fed was created in 1913, the last 100 years have seen the largest growth in American fortunes. Accounting for more recent history, I'm not seeing how you view 20 years of single digit inflation, single digit unemployment and single digit interests rates not to mention the most significant growth in wealth in American history as chaotic?
ForTehNguyen
12-04-10, 14:53
recipe for chaos huh, how on earth did we survive the 1800-1913 when it was true free market in our country :rolleyes:
Too bad it was greatest economic growth period in our history, because you didnt have some bank trying to centrally plan the economy by messing with its foundation: the money supply and interest rates. The dollar has lost 97% of its value in terms of gold thanks to the Fed
thopkins22
12-04-10, 15:17
I'm not disputing that assessment (in fact I mostly agree with you) nor do I think getting bailed out was the appropriate solution but that's a different argument/debate as to whether there should be a Federal Reserve or that there should be some attempt by government to set a sustainable monetary policy or stabilize economic upheavals. Leaving it to the whims of the market is a recipe for chaos.
For nearly a century after Jackson, there was no central bank. We've now had a central bank for nearly a century. Let's compare the two.
Granted, there was no official CPI during the 19th century but we still have decent records of what goods and services cost. Wholesale prices were nearly the same in 1814 as they were in 1914. Since then? The CPI has grown by ~2000% since the creation of the Fed. I think we can deduce that they have failed to maintain stable prices.
In the panics of 1878, 1893, 1896, and 1907, only a few hundred banks went under. Compare that to THOUSANDS of banks during the Great Depression and the 1600 banks that failed during the S&L crisis. I suppose you could say that the Fed has condensed pain, but they certainly haven't erased or decreased it.
So let's forget the 70's and how the Fed jacked up the money supply in an attempt to help Nixon at the cost of the American people, and roll straight into 2008.
Certainly there had been a large monetary expansion from mind numbingly low interest rates(Greenspan's legacy of trying to make us forget the tech bubble...also funded by low interest rates,) which of course led to a rapid rise in prices primarily in the housing market. You can call it too much investment, or if you like Hayek you can call in mal-investment...but either way it happened. None of these things would have happened under an asset based currency, as you cannot simply create more hard assets on a whim.
So what would I do in the face of a liquidity crisis? Jack. That's my whole point, one person(or even a thousand,) is not smarter than the collective market. Mind, I'm not saying that doing nothing is a wonderful solution that makes everything awesome...but that it's less harmful particularly in the long term, than anything the Fed has shown us it can do. And I believe history is on my side when I say that.
"The central bank is like an arsonist watching a fire he set, expressing amazement at how such an event could have happened. The Fed created a moral hazard by first, implicitly, then explicitly promising to bail investors out of risky commitments. [Former Fed Chairman Alan] Greenspan promised to 'mitigate the fallout' from asset deflation. How does a central bank do that? By reflating asset prices, or, as Greenspan euphemistically put it in his 1999 testimony, 'ease the transition to the next expansion." Gerald P. O'Driscoll Former vice president and economic adviser at The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, former vice president and director of policy analysis at Citigroup.
thopkins22
12-04-10, 15:47
And the economy can't grow any faster than you can mine it.
Again no easy answers.
Sure it can. It's the monetary base that's restricted.
Business_Casual
12-04-10, 15:58
Two words for ya' -
"GOLD"...
"STANDARD"...
The Fed can't print it, the Fed can't debase it, and the Fed can't screw YOU, if you own it!
Two words for you:
Won't
Work
B_C
thopkins22
12-04-10, 17:00
Two words for you:
Won't
Work
B_C
Why not? It would seem that you're falling into the trap you accused others of earlier, that of assigning money some meaning it doesn't have. What the currency is doesn't effect how it's used. All it does is restrict the government.
Business_Casual
12-04-10, 17:42
Look, the solution to all these problems is the same - men. Men that make decisions based on professional, knowledge skill and experience. Good decisions made by good men is all that is needed. We could use bubble gum as the monetary unit as long as the people governing the scheme are good. What we have now are political hacks and morons running the show.
B_C
thopkins22
12-04-10, 17:48
Look, the solution to all these problems is the same - men. Men that make decisions based on professional, knowledge skill and experience. Good decisions made by good men is all that is needed. We could use bubble gum as the monetary unit as long as the people governing the scheme are good. What we have now are political hacks and morons running the show.
B_C
Hard to argue with that...I completely agree.
Gutshot John
12-04-10, 21:24
Sure it can. It's the monetary base that's restricted.
Actually it's both and more significantly you've destabilized your economy. If you can't control deflation and inflation than you have hugely variable periods of inflation/deflation. What happens when you don't have enough gold in reserve to fully back the currency? What happens when the value of gold suddenly drops with the discovery of new methods for extraction? What happens when commodity supply grows more slowly than an economy?
There were pretty sound reasons for going off the gold standard. It wasn't just done for shits and giggles.
Gutshot John
12-04-10, 21:25
For nearly a century after Jackson, there was no central bank. We've now had a central bank for nearly a century. Let's compare the two.
Which period had the larger increase in prosperity and personal wealth? Which period saw the largest growth in the middle class and standards of living?
Give you a hint it wasn't before 1913.
Gutshot John
12-04-10, 21:27
recipe for chaos huh, how on earth did we survive the 1800-1913 when it was true free market in our country :rolleyes:
Too bad it was greatest economic growth period in our history, because you didnt have some bank trying to centrally plan the economy by messing with its foundation: the money supply and interest rates. The dollar has lost 97% of its value in terms of gold thanks to the Fed
Flatly incorrect. The US was an agricultural economy well into the twentieth century. The largest growth in economic activity, personal incomes and standard of living occurred as it shifted to an industrial than technological economy.
Much of American fed policy was not the result of chaos that occurred in the United States but in watching what occurred in other countries.
Flatly incorrect. The US was an agricultural economy well into the twentieth century. The largest growth in economic activity, personal incomes and standard of living occurred as it shifted to an industrial than technological economy.
.
Yeah, but...
The US had several unique historical advantages that benefitted that growth.
I would contend that those advantages, accidents of history, are far more responsible for that growth than any sober, dispassionate management of our finances.
thopkins22
12-05-10, 00:43
Which period had the larger increase in prosperity and personal wealth? Which period saw the largest growth in the middle class and standards of living?
Give you a hint it wasn't before 1913.
That's debatable. In 1861, the Confederate States of America ranked as the fourth wealthiest nation in the world. You're taking external factors like industrialization and what it's done for the standard of living, and crediting central banking.
Actually it's both and more significantly you've destabilized your economy. If you can't control deflation and inflation than you have hugely variable periods of inflation/deflation. What happens when you don't have enough gold in reserve to fully back the currency? What happens when the value of gold suddenly drops with the discovery of new methods for extraction? What happens when commodity supply grows more slowly than an economy?
There were pretty sound reasons for going off the gold standard. It wasn't just done for shits and giggles.
You absolutely can't control inflation and deflation...that's true. But in the long run it didn't matter, as it largely evened itself out. In the 1800's they were selling 100 year bonds. Seen one of those lately? Ballsy enough to buy one if you saw one?
The notion that we've seen stability as a function of the Fed is mind blowing.
But I understand now. Jefferson and Jackson abolished the central bank for shits and giggles...they were such jokers.
ForTehNguyen
12-05-10, 01:01
The Fed is nothing but economic central planning. We all know what kind of fun things result when they are centrally planned. They try to micromanage things that cant possibly understand - the marketplace. The collapse of these fiats will basically prove these central banks were nothing but a gigantic scam.
There were pretty sound reasons for going off the gold standard. It wasn't just done for shits and giggles.
like what? so govt can spend its way into oblivion and create inflation for its own gains? One of the benefits of a gold standard was the govt cant spend more than what it had in the vault and it cant print money to steal from those who have saved. You can never believe in a free market if you cannot understand golds role in it. The Feds printed so much money that it became irredeemable in gold which is why Nixon pulled us off. That was basically us declaring bankruptcy. The Fed is trying to play god with the economy, it cant possibly work. What is one thing the Fed got right? It is nearly wrong about everything it has forecasted.
Just look at who wrote the Federal Reserve Act...all the wealthy bankers of the time. Yea Im so sure they were doing it for the interests of American citizens and not their own.
variablebinary
12-05-10, 04:16
The Fed is trying to play god with the economy, it cant possibly work. What is one thing the Fed got right? It is nearly wrong about everything it has forecasted.
Just look at who wrote the Federal Reserve Act...all the wealthy bankers of the time. Yea Im so sure they were doing it for the interests of American citizens and not their own.
The Fed has zero interest in protecting the American economy. It's all about shoring up the interest of very powerful banking cartels, and various other globalist entities.
Example: Why did Greenspan and Ben Bernanke keep interest rates so low when common sense economics says you only have rock bottom low interest rates during periods of high savings because there is plenty of real money to lend; you have high rates when there is too much credit because there is less real money to lend without resorting to printing and inflating the currency.
However, the fix is in, and the Fed doesn't care about inflation or the bubbles it birthed. The Fed kept artificially low interest rates because it can lend to all its big banking cartel cronies here and in Europe so they can get fat and spend themselves into the ground, because at the end of the day they can just print money to bail them out. When it all goes to hell, they select their cronies to survive, thus consolidating wealth and power, which was the goal to begin with.
In simple terms, they steal from you and I, and give welfare to the biggest baddest bankers
The_War_Wagon
12-05-10, 05:34
And the economy can't grow any faster than you can mine it.
Again no easy answers.
It's your Bolshevik central economic planners, who LOVE fiat currency, because it CAN be manipulated, and 'the economy' - whatever sectors of it best beneift themselves and cronies - can be "grown" to suit them.
Why do you think WE now have a bubble-based economy since the mid-'90's, when Greenspan decoupled HIS 'economic planning' (the fed setting interest rates) from a psuedo-gold standard (it is well known, that until 1995-96, Greenspan kept the interest rates contray to the price of gold, to hold inflation/deflation in check. At KLIN - TON I's urging, he decoupled that in fiscal year 1995-96, and thus was born the 'bubble' economy - computer stocks, housing, etc., in successive waves, since then)?
On a gold standard, a $25k a year job might drop back to $5k, but then, a cup of coffee also would drop back to $.15 (with tip!) as well! Gold might more appropriately (based on its actual scarcity) rise to $50k an oz., but everything else would naturally balance out as well, meaning we COULD make do with LESS money, because the money we had, would be WORTH more (i.e. buying POWER).
I've seen what Keynsian asshat economic planners can do, and it suck diddly-ucks! :mad: I'll trust gold & silver, LONG before I trust some toad with an economics degree from 'Hah-vud.' :rolleyes:
Gutshot John
12-05-10, 07:32
That's debatable. In 1861, the Confederate States of America ranked as the fourth wealthiest nation in the world. You're taking external factors like industrialization and what it's done for the standard of living, and crediting central banking.
It's absolutely not debatable, the amount of capital of today's economy is exponentially greater than it was then by several orders of magnitude. You're talking about a time when agriculture was the economic basis of not only America but the rest of the world. Agricultural economies tend to be stable except when you're talking about droughts/famines etc however those conditions have irreversibly (one would hope) changed. When you need capital for an industrial base that changes the needs for monetary control significantly. If you're arguing that America should abandon industry and capitalism, then make that case.
You absolutely can't control inflation and deflation...that's true. But in the long run it didn't matter, as it largely evened itself out. In the 1800's they were selling 100 year bonds. Seen one of those lately? Ballsy enough to buy one if you saw one?
During the 1800s you basically had no inflation, why? Again because it was an agricultural economy that was growing very very slowl. When economies grow, inflation is an inevitable result. Why because the amount of money in the economy grows. For an example see China.
The notion that we've seen stability as a function of the Fed is mind blowing.
Really? You don't view the largest economic growth ever seen in the history of the world, the largest growth in standards of living (we don't live in mud huts anymore, even the poorest of Americans can afford refrigerators, cars, computers and even the occasional satellite dish)? Do you really think that would have happened anyways? Without a central bank that provided capital for businesses to grow, that controlled inflation/deflation?
But I understand now. Jefferson and Jackson abolished the central bank for shits and giggles...they were such jokers.
Wow that's your answer? Because Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans they knew what they were doing from the perspective of economics? Seriously?
First Jefferson and Jackson were hardly economists and had no understand and indeed a deep distaste for commerce/trade/industry. They had a vision of America as an agricultural economy, mostly because of their background. They lacked a significant economic vision. More significantly Jefferson and Jackson didn't abolish the central bank and they certainly didn't do it because of economic principles, they did it for political reasons based on a deep distrust of commerce, they certainly faced significant opposition.
In short they didn't know what the hell they were doing. Jokers? Economically I'd call them dipshits.
Gutshot John
12-05-10, 07:38
It's your Bolshevik central economic planners, who LOVE fiat currency, because it CAN be manipulated, and 'the economy' - whatever sectors of it best beneift themselves and cronies - can be "grown" to suit them.
Bolshevik? Seriously bring the argument back down to earth. All currencies are subject to swings. All currencies can be "manipulated". The business of America is business. If you actually believe in economic principles than what's good for business, is good for its employees. It provides them income, it provides them with stability. Of course we should do what's good for business. So what's your quibble? Do you really think the policies of Fed only benefit some business at the expense of others? Seriously? Give me one case where that's happened? That doesn't mean there aren't criticisms to be made of the Fed, but that doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater either.
Why do you think WE now have a bubble-based economy since the mid-'90's, when Greenspan decoupled HIS 'economic planning' (the fed setting interest rates) from a psuedo-gold standard (it is well known, that until 1995-96, Greenspan kept the interest rates contray to the price of gold, to hold inflation/deflation in check. At KLIN - TON I's urging, he decoupled that in fiscal year 1995-96, and thus was born the 'bubble' economy - computer stocks, housing, etc., in successive waves, since then)?
Uhm no. Bubbles have existed since the dawn of man. It's a function of emotion in the market. See the Great Tulip Depression. Greenspan and Clinton had vastly divergent economic principles.
On a gold standard, a $25k a year job might drop back to $5k, but then, a cup of coffee also would drop back to $.15 (with tip!) as well! Gold might more appropriately (based on its actual scarcity) rise to $50k an oz., but everything else would naturally balance out as well, meaning we COULD make do with LESS money, because the money we had, would be WORTH more (i.e. buying POWER).
Uhm no. That is wrong on sooooo many levels. You're making several key assumptions and stating them as tautologies. Wishing it were so does not make it so. How is that all going to happen? Explain it to me. Unless you believe that we can magically flip some switch to seamlessly turn back to a gold standard (which would be laughable), explain what you view as the inevitable problems/difficulties with implementing it and how you would address them?
I've seen what Keynsian asshat economic planners can do, and it suck diddly-ucks! :mad: I'll trust gold & silver, LONG before I trust some toad with an economics degree from 'Hah-vud.' :rolleyes:
You can trust whatever you'd like, it still doesn't change the problems inherent in a gold standard. Answer the questions I asked thopkins above.
Economic planning predates Keynes by millennia. That said have you actually read Keynes? Because what's happening in government now (especially by Obama) would horrify Keynes.
Gutshot John
12-05-10, 07:44
like what?
Like that government could minimize the effects of panics with sudden spurts in supplies and shortages of gold. Like the economy could grow without the need to back up every dollar with the reserve in gold. Like the economy could grow faster than the amount of gold in reserver. Like the instability caused by inflation and deflation could be minimized.
Gold has no inherent value, it's simply a unit of measurement like anything else. It is as much a fiat currency as the dollar ever was as to make the gold standard function as proponents want it to you'd have to arbitrarily set the value of a gold dollar with each fluctuation in the economy and hope that the market price of gold agreed with that assessment.
There are a lot of problems with going back on the gold standard that no one is addressing.
thopkins22
12-05-10, 09:31
And it really returns to an issue that you and I debated long ago. Maybe we can agree on this, unless you're making the argument that the Fed has made correct decisions. I doubt you will though, since you seem to have a problem with competitive currencies.
Congress should
● amend the Federal Reserve Act to make long-run price stability
the primary goal of monetary policy;
● recognize that the Federal Reserve cannot fine-tune the real
economy but can achieve long-run price stability by its control
over the monetary base (currency held by the public plus
bank reserves);
● hold the Fed accountable for safeguarding the purchasing
power of the dollar;
● abolish the Exchange Stabilization Fund—the Fed’s role is to
stabilize the domestic price level, not to peg the foreign
exchange value of the dollar; and
● repeal the tax on privately issued bank notes and allow digital
currency and other substitutes for Federal Reserve notes to
emerge, so that free-market forces can help shape the future
of monetary institutions.
It is as much a fiat currency as the dollar ever was as to make the gold standard function as proponents want it to you'd have to arbitrarily set the value of a gold dollar with each fluctuation in the economy and hope that the market price of gold agreed with that assessment.
That's exactly why gold failed us before. You cannot peg the value of gold. It's also the whole point though...you would still have government regulate the value of currency rather than the marketplace.
The "Federal Reserve" is neither Federal or a Reserve of gold bullion. It's extra-constitutional.
Where is Andrew Jackson when we need him?
All of the "pro-Fed" talk is rubbish. Look to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Also keep in mind it wasn't "taxation without representation" that initiated the war with the British Crown but the war for economic control (coining our own money is how I believe it was phrased by some at the time). The Fed is "run"/led by the NY branch. You might wish to research who has the most stock in it. Until the Fed is banished we will remain enslaved - and some slaves, apparently.
Over and out.
P.S.
Gold has been the stability of currency since the time of Egypt - and probably Sumeria. In fact, I'm correct: from the time of Sumeria. Only recently has it been proposed by the eggheaded, Bolshevik-influenced Elitists to use a fiat currency. Most of the CORE of these Elitists are in Europe. Yet we hog-tie ourselves (AGAIN) to the source of what was to become Americans fled the damned place.
How far we have fallen....
Gutshot John
12-05-10, 09:47
The "Federal Reserve" is neither Federal or a Reserve of gold bullion. It's extra-constitutional.
It was created by an act of Congress unless you're saying Congress doesn't have the power to create it. If that's your argument you're going to have to explain your reasonsing because if that doesn't fall under the commerce clause nothing would. Moreover since it doesn't create law, enforce law or interpret law it doesn't need to be expressly spelled out in the Constitution, moreover many founding fathers wanted a central bank.
The rest of your conclusions are colored by an obscure political perspective that is shared by conspiracists and no credible economic theory or school I can identify and so remain somewhat dubious.
Gutshot John
12-05-10, 09:53
And it really returns to an issue that you and I debated long ago. Maybe we can agree on this, unless you're making the argument that the Fed has made correct decisions. I doubt you will though, since you seem to have a problem with competitive currencies.
What????? You're putting lots and lots of words in my mouth.
I'd say in balance over its lifetime the Fed has made more correct decisions than bad ones. That doesn't mean that manmade institutions can and do make mistakes. That said most inflation over the past 100 years has been the result of economic growth, not Fed mismanagement. Some inflation is a good thing. My biggest complaint is that politicians have interfered in Fed decisions when the Fed should remain wholly independent of political considerations.
Currencies, like commodities are valued based on the market. I have no problem with that. Would I like to see people be able to exchange goods/services in whatever medium they might chose as a matter of freedom to contract? Sure that would be fine but that still requires a significant change in our monetary policy that wouldn't be without consequence. Ultimately however that requires a standard currency with which those could be valued/exchanged to assess value. Than you have problems of fraud, counterfeiting and other issues that were raised when the US engaged in free banking. It's no coincidence that free banking ended before most of the economic growth of the industrial era.
That's exactly why gold failed us before. You cannot peg the value of gold. It's also the whole point though...you would still have government regulate the value of currency rather than the marketplace.
In order for the gold standard to have a hope of working while growing an economy you would have to peg the value of gold somewhere. In order for the economy to grow at a comensurate rate you would have to periodically redeclare the value of gold by fiat.
It's not me that's arguing for pegging the value of gold, actually I'm arguing the exact opposite which is why the gold standard won't work.
Business_Casual
12-05-10, 10:16
Dudes, forget the gold standard, it is as out-dated as buggy whips. It existed to serve the physical and economic realities of the centuries past. When you had to pay the vice Roy in India and you had to deliver a tangible payment via sailboat, you used gold. That is no longer necessary. I can go to an ATM in London and withdraw cash from a bank in the USA, all electronically and no Dutch frigate is going to try to take it away.
B_C
ForTehNguyen
12-05-10, 13:11
how do you expect a group of people to coordinate and centrally plan an entire economy. So the Federal Reserve board is more wise than the market that has the combined wisdom 100s of millions of participants? This is blatant economic central planning to benefit a cartel of bankers at the rest of the economy's expense. I cant believe there are people who are in support of that.
it didnt work for the Soviets
Gutshot John
12-05-10, 13:24
how do you expect a group of people to coordinate and centrally plan an entire economy. So the Federal Reserve board is more wise than the market that has the combined wisdom 100s of millions of participants? This is blatant economic central planning to benefit a cartel of bankers at the rest of the economy's expense. I cant believe there are people who are in support of that.
it didnt work for the Soviets
It's a false comparison and logical fallacy called reductio ad absurdum. You're saying that because communism failed, and communism engaged in heavy central planning that all central planning will fail.
The Fed isn't communism. State ownership of the means of production and micromanagement of every aspect of the economy will fail in ways large and small but that's not what the Federal reserve does. The Soviets economic policies failed for many reasons but in the case of the economic mix (capital, labor, raw material) they tried to replace the lack of capital with (slave) labor in the mix and that eventually leads to diminishing returns.
Some amount of central policies have always been used in both America and throughout world history. Indeed lack of central policies have proved to be even more problematic. Some succeed, some fail but just because they've failed due to political meddling in Fed policy doesn't equate to the Fed system being responsible for our current policies. The Fed facilitates the acquisition of capital that businesses can use to employ people, using raw materials to produce goods that can be sold. Agriculture doesn't require as much capital as industry, we've long since done away with an agricultural economy and so you need som form of central bank that helps smaller banks finance capital investment.
If you're expecting a group of people to be flawless in their execution of economic policy than your expectations are unreasonable.
Business_Casual
12-05-10, 13:27
I don't think you know what centrally planned economies are actually like - the Fed is one aspect of our economy and standing alone does qualify as central planning. They have tools to influence the direction for example, that inflation or employment goes, but absent fiscal policy and the rest of world, that doesn't qualify as central planning does it?
B_C
Gutshot John
12-05-10, 13:29
I don't think you know what centrally planned economies are actually like - the Fed is one aspect of our economy and standing alone does qualify as central planning. They have tools to influence the direction for example, that inflation or employment goes, but absent fiscal policy and the rest of world, that doesn't qualify as central planning does it?
B_C
Exactly!
ForTehNguyen
12-05-10, 13:56
I don't think you know what centrally planned economies are actually like - the Fed is one aspect of our economy and standing alone does qualify as central planning. They have tools to influence the direction for example, that inflation or employment goes, but absent fiscal policy and the rest of world, that doesn't qualify as central planning does it?
B_C
what does manipulating the money supply or interest rates have anything to do with employment?
Tools to influence the direction of? - hello central planning! Who are they to direct something they cannot possibly understand nor control. The money supply and the interest rate dictate the entire economy that is the primary market signal - it is economic central planning aka playing God. What is more important to an economy than the money supply and the interest rate? And they are directly fudging with these. By dictacting this power to this group of people you are saying this board of directors is more wise than the marketplace. A small group of people dictating something so massive and complex is central planning.
What predictions has the Federal Reserve ever got right? Yet you trust them to play God with the economy. Then people wonder why we are in such a huge mess.
Gutshot John
12-05-10, 14:19
what does manipulating the money supply or interest rates have anything to do with employment?
You call it "manipulation" which implies chicanery, deception and dishonesty which you've failed to prove. There is certainly management of the monetary supply but there isn't a country in the world (or in history) that doesn't do this. If you don't like the Fed, please enlighten us as to how you'd manage it. Simply saying "I wouldn't" isn't a sufficient answer.
That said you don't think inflation and deflation have anything to do with employment? If you don't than there is little point in going any further because there is little point in trying to educate you. If you do, than the answer to your question should be obvious.
What predictions has the Federal Reserve ever got right? Yet you trust them to play God with the economy. Then people wonder why we are in such a huge mess.
Once again we're in a downturn now, but after we enjoyed a 30 year period of stability, growth and prosperity. There is a reason it's called the business "cycle" downturns are inevitable, but that doesn't mean they haven't gotten anything right.
This notion that the Fed has destroyed this country's economy is demonstrably absurd.
The_War_Wagon
12-05-10, 15:43
Gold has no inherent value, it's simply a unit of measurement like anything else. It is as much a fiat currency as the dollar ever was as to make the gold standard function as proponents want it to you'd have to arbitrarily set the value of a gold dollar with each fluctuation in the economy and hope that the market price of gold agreed with that assessment.
Ok - PRINT some more, then.
Look at gold's "fluctuation" over the last 2,000 years. EVEN when the Spainiards discovered the gold of the new world, it barely made the one and only appreciable dent in the value of gold... until ALL world gummints went to completely fiat currencies in the late 20th century.
I STILL trust gold & silver to fluctuate LESS, than I trust 'Hah-vud' economists' ability to throw darts at a wall, and come up with a new daily value for the dollar. :mad:
Gutshot John
12-05-10, 15:51
Ok - PRINT some more, then.
I presume you know what I'm talking about. Gold would be completely valueless in a barter economy. That's what inherent value means. You have to have some form of monetary exchange/trade for it to be worth anything. If for instance the S ever does HTF bullets are going to be far more valuable. Why? Because you can't eat gold, you can't make clothes with it, you can't shelter yourself. Any value of gold is what the market places on it. If there is no market to speak of, your gold is about as valuable as lead.
Look at gold's "fluctuation" over the last 2,000 years. EVEN when the Spainiards discovered the gold of the new world, it barely made the one and only appreciable dent in the value of gold... until ALL world gummints went to completely fiat currencies in the late 20th century.
Really? do you have a source for that? That would make for a fascinating read. Who has measured gold's fluctuation over 2K years? Did it account for the times when governments (e.g. the Roman or Spanish empire) reduced the amount of gold content in their coins? What about when people would shave off gold coins and give less than what they claimed?
I STILL trust gold & silver to fluctuate LESS, than I trust 'Hah-vud' economists' ability to throw darts at a wall, and come up with a new daily value for the dollar. :mad:
The value of the dollar is determined by the currency markets and always has been. It has never been determined by Harvard economists. At best the Fed can do things that INFLUENCE the price of the dollar. They do not directly control it.
Business_Casual
12-05-10, 15:58
In 2010 gold is used for things like air bag terminals and rappers' teef. Not currencies. It would make more sense to use oil.
B_C
ForTehNguyen
12-06-10, 08:10
In 2010 gold is used for things like air bag terminals and rappers' teef. Not currencies. It would make more sense to use oil.
B_C
oil is not portable, it does not have value density, it is heavily consumed in industry. Gold has none of these drawbacks. Have fun carrying around the weight of 15.86 barrels to match the value of 1oz of gold.
ForTehNguyen
12-06-10, 08:16
You call it "manipulation" which implies chicanery, deception and dishonesty which you've failed to prove. There is certainly management of the monetary supply but there isn't a country in the world (or in history) that doesn't do this. If you don't like the Fed, please enlighten us as to how you'd manage it. Simply saying "I wouldn't" isn't a sufficient answer.
That said you don't think inflation and deflation have anything to do with employment? If you don't than there is little point in going any further because there is little point in trying to educate you. If you do, than the answer to your question should be obvious.
Once again we're in a downturn now, but after we enjoyed a 30 year period of stability, growth and prosperity. There is a reason it's called the business "cycle" downturns are inevitable, but that doesn't mean they haven't gotten anything right.
This notion that the Fed has destroyed this country's economy is demonstrably absurd.
we dont need a central bank, I want competing currencies. The market would chose what currency it wants to deal in. And I want the market to set interest rates not what some wisemen committee thinks they should be. Is that too much to ask for? I would go to prison if I wanted to transact in gold/silver. How is this a free market? If we were allowed to have competing currencies, the Fed Reserve system would be destroyed by market forces. Who in their right mind would chose a paper currency vs a gold backed currency if they had the choice? But we cant since it is by govt decree that we have to accept this fiat paper. We will die by govt mandate when this paper goes south, and its been on the decline for many years.
The Fed has never gotten anything right and it continually fails its mandate for monetary stability and "full employment. When you compare the dollar to commodities over time it has been losing value heavily. The Feds can wish all day what the interest rates will be, eventually the bond market forces will determine the interest rate. It is happening already.
Not to mention how do you account for what the Constitution says what legal tender should be? You can never come close to believing in the free market if you cannot get past fiat currency, what the Constitution states should be legal tender be, and what gold's role is in a free market. Where is Congress authority to create a central bank? It was explicitly stated Congress has the power to coin money. Where is its power to defer this power to a 3rd party? The Founding Fathers despised central banks for a reason because its system is based on fraud. So it was good that the Fed printed up $3-4 trillion to inject into the market, all of your dollars will eventually devalue and this is great for everyone? If a company doubles the amount of stocks, nobody is any richer than what they were before.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs --Thomas Jefferson,
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 08:36
The Fed has never gotten anything right and it continually fails its mandate for monetary stability and "full employment.
Demonstrably incorrect. Inflation has been in the low single digits for the better part of 3 decades. Unless you believe "full" employment means "zero" (which no credible economist believes is even possible) than the US enjoyed "full" employment for the better part of a decade until the most recent recession. Again NO ONE can assure that recessions don't occur. If that's your benchmark than it's completely unreasonable.
The rest of your assumptions are accordingly flawed. There are multiple countries that enjoy full employment (Switzerland) and also have central banks. If you want to complain that the Fed should limit itself to monetary policy instead of fiscal policy, than I'd agree. If your complaint is that the Fed has never done anything right than you've set the bar impossibly high for yourself.
Care to try again?
The gold standard in theory and history By Barry J. Eichengreen, Marc Flandreau
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=rb0iPXX7o1QC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&ots=BVLNqflECW&sig=-2kuHeMYeE9bmW9PshJ57SCWN1w#v=onepage&q&f=false
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 08:41
oil is not portable, it does not have value density, it is heavily consumed in industry. Gold has none of these drawbacks. Have fun carrying around the weight of 15.86 barrels to match the value of 1oz of gold.
Incorrect on several counts.
First gold is heavily used in industry. The computer you're using is a prime example.
Second while gold is more portable than oil, but than oil and/or gold certificates would solve that problem. A commodity is a commodity for a reason.
Third there is a lot more oil in the world than there is gold and so you're less likely to run out of reserves if you were to use it to guarantee a currency. All the gold ever mined in the history of the world would easily fit in a large American home.
All this argument for the FED, and no one cares that it is unconstitutional in the first place? No one cares that this is exactly one of the things our forefathers tried to keep from happening with some very specific wording in the constitution?
Gentelman, we have huge problems when an organization can hack our constitution to pieces, steal from us whenever they see fit, prop up unviable corporations/copuntries instead of letting them fail and allowing the market to adjust; and you are FOR IT?
It is tantamount to being friends with a man who robbed your house, argueing for a criminals right to confiscate your money, with no real reason at all as to why it is okay to confiscate the money...
Its REDICULOUS!
It is quite perplexing to me that you can sit behind your computer screen and spew this vomitous crap, and actually believe in it. WHen it goes against your very constitution for chrissake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If the fedremained within its constitutional limits, and had any interest in keeping America strong/Soverign; I would herald it as such and be all for it. That is fiction, pure and simple, save the negative nomenclatures most would aplly to the fed (Socialist, evil, traitors, etc...); the fed is a gross, unviable, unconstitutional, machine of thievery that needs to be reigned in quickly!
Everything isn't going to be solved by regining in the fed alone, we have many more challenges than that; but it would be a great ****ing start to say the least.
All this talk of tin foil. WHo has the tin foil on when they beleive the fed can do any good being an unconstitutional money robbing machine? You allow this orginzation to devalue your moeny, you allow this orginization to control the market without any true "regulation", you allow this orginization to sell off our soverignty; and yet you claim those that abhor it have tinfoil on???!!!?!?!?!?!?!!
Seems the tin foil is thick indeed...
By the way BC; by your own argument "Money is nothing more than keeping score in exchanges..."; why not use gold as the score keeper? Seeing as its track record in history is amazing/much more positive compared to central banking/fiat? Please by all means explain the assessment that a fiat currency that has been awful throughout history; no matter what political/economical/social beliefs are held is better to a gold currency that has been much more stable, much more reliable/viable throughout history to me, I am all eyes/ears.
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 10:18
All this argument for the FED, and no one cares that it is unconstitutional in the first place? No one cares that this is exactly one of the things our forefathers tried to keep from happening with some very specific wording in the constitution?
Really? What wording are you referring to? Where does the Constitution prohibit a national bank? Many prominent founding fathers were explicitly in favor of one to facilitate loans/capital for the promotion of business/commerce...i.e. the Commerce clause is pretty much an explicit endorsement of the principle.
Really? What wording are you referring to? Where does the Constitution prohibit a national bank? Many prominent founding fathers were explicitly in favor of one to facilitate loans/capital for the promotion of business/commerce...i.e. the Commerce clause is pretty much an explicit endorsement of the principle.
This part:
"To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures..."
"The only substances ever declared as m-oney within the U.S. were gold and silver, in coin form, with copper/nickel serving in token capacity only. See: 12 USCA 152 re. "lawful m-oney" and Coinage Act of April 2, 1792, at Sections 11, 16, & 20; re. copper/nickel tokens, see Sec. 9, and 31 USCA 460."
Original U.S. Constitution
Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 5
[Congress shall have Power ...] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, ...;
Art. I Sec. 10 Cl. 1
[No State shall ...] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; ...
Note that there is no such prohibition against Congress, or any delegated power to make anything legal tender. Congress was originally understood to have no power to make anything legal tender outside of federal territories, under Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17 and Art. IV Sec. 3 Cl. 2, but in 1868 a Supreme Court packed by Pres. Ulysses S. Grant, in the Legal Tender Cases, allowed Congress to make paper currency issued by the U.S. Treasury, backed by gold, legal tender on state territory, a precedent that remains controversial to this day, when courts allow paper currency not backed by anything to be considered "legal tender".
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It is quite obvious the original intent of our constitution did not favor such a system of fiat currency and cantral banking.
"The founding fathers were concerned about the unrestrained control of the money supply. One thing they all agreed upon was the limitation on the issuance of money,
Thomas Jefferson warned of the damage that would be caused if the people assigned control of the money supply to the banking sector, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. This issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of the moneyed corporations which already dare to challenge our Government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country" Thomas Jefferson, 1791
Many of the founding fathers experienced the damage caused by fiat currency. Most of the revolutionary war was financed by worthless currency called "Continentals".
# The Continental Currency ("Not worth a Continental") that American colonists issued for the Continental Congress to finance the Revolutionary War was replaced by the US Dollar in 1785 when The Continental Congress adopted the dollar as the unit for national currency. At that time, private bank-note companies printed a variety of notes. After adoption of the Constitution in 1789, Congress chartered the First Bank of the United States and authorized it to issue paper bank notes to eliminate confusion and simplify trade. The U.S. Constitution (Section 10) forbids any state from making anything but gold or silver a legal tender. The Federal Monetary System was established in 1792 with the creation of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. The first American coins were struck in 1793. The U.S. Coinage Act of 1792, consistent with the Constitution, provided for a U.S. Mint, which stamped silver and gold coins. The importance of this Act cannot be stressed enough. One dollar was defined by statute as a specific weight of gold.
# The Act also invoked the death penalty for anyone found to be debasing money.
# President George Washington mentions the importance of the national currency backed by gold and silver throughout his initial term of office and he contributed his own silver for the initial coins minted.
# The purchase of The US Mint in Philadelphia, was the first money appropriated by Congress for a building to be used for a public purpose. It was purchased for a total of $4,266.67 on July 18, 1792.
Link
Here's the Coinage Act so you can read it for yourself
"SEC. 19. And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same ought to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, and if any of the said officers or persons shall embezzle any of the metals which shall at any time be committed to their charge for the purpose of being coined, or any of the coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of the said offences, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death."
Having said all this, fiat currency has unfortunately always been legal, but only in very limited, defined circumstances. The Founders believed:
(1) It should be done only in FEDERAL TERRITORIES and not in the STATES
(2) It should be done ONLY if absolutely necessary and if there was no other option
(3) It should be done ONLY in WAR TIME and NEVER in PEACE TIME
(4) It should ONLY be done TEMPORARILY and NEVER permanently
(5) That it promoted INSTABILITY and not stability
(6) And James Madison said it was still EVIL even if used in this temporary manner
(7) And Jefferson once asked if a Constitutional veto could be put on fiat currency even in this limited usage
The bottom line is that FIAT CURRENCY WAS NEVER INTENDED TO BE LEGAL TENDER. It was never the intention of the Founders to allow the government to force fiat currency as legal tender on the American people. If they wanted to do that, they could have easily done so. Instead, they demonstrated their true convictions by making it illegal to remove gold/silver backing from legal tender and invoking the death penalty for anyone who violated this.
Good articel:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/brimelow3.html
Good books to read:
Milton Friedman:
-Capitalism and Freedom
-Why government is the problem
-Free to choose: A pesonal freedom
G Edward Griffen:
-The creature from jekyl Isaland
Business_Casual
12-06-10, 10:50
I'm not a lawyer but I think you are conflating the need to keep the mint employees from jacking all the silver with what money is.
b_C
Lewis v. United States, 680 F.2d 1239 (1982)
the court ruled that the Federal Reserve Banks are "independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations", and there is not sufficient "federal government control over 'detailed physical performance' and 'day to day operation'" of the Federal Reserve Bank for it to be considered a federal agency:
Otherwise it is acting outside of the constitution limits; or UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
I'm not a lawyer but I think you are conflating the need to keep the mint employees from jacking all the silver with what money is.
b_C
Nope.
Business_Casual
12-06-10, 11:00
Lewis v. United States, 680 F.2d 1239 (1982)
the court ruled that the Federal Reserve Banks are "independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations", and there is not sufficient "federal government control over 'detailed physical performance' and 'day to day operation'" of the Federal Reserve Bank for it to be considered a federal agency:
Otherwise it is acting outside of the constitution limits; or UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
Again I'm not a lawyer but the "power" to do something includes the power to delegate it unless specifically proscribed - which it isn't.
B_C
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 11:00
This part:
"To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures..."
"The only substances ever declared as m-oney within the U.S. were gold and silver, in coin form, with copper/nickel serving in token capacity only. See: 12 USCA 152 re. "lawful m-oney" and Coinage Act of April 2, 1792, at Sections 11, 16, & 20; re. copper/nickel tokens, see Sec. 9, and 31 USCA 460."
Original U.S. Constitution
Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 5
[Congress shall have Power ...] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, ...;
Art. I Sec. 10 Cl. 1
[No State shall ...] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; ...
Note that there is no such prohibition against Congress, or any delegated power to make anything legal tender. Congress was originally understood to have no power to make anything legal tender outside of federal territories, under Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17 and Art. IV Sec. 3 Cl. 2, but in 1868 a Supreme Court packed by Pres. Ulysses S. Grant, in the Legal Tender Cases, allowed Congress to make paper currency issued by the U.S. Treasury, backed by gold, legal tender on state territory, a precedent that remains controversial to this day, when courts allow paper currency not backed by anything to be considered "legal tender".
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It is quite obvious the original intent of our constitution did not favor such a system of fiat currency and cantral banking.
Uhm no, you're either misreading or misunderstanding what the Constitution said. None of those prohibit a national bank.
Art I Sec. 8 explicitly gives Congress that power. By definition Congress delegates this power by statute. See the 1913 Federal Reserve Act, which is wholly constitutional.
Art I Sec 10 restricts the powers of the individual states not the Congress/National Government. In other words the states are prohibited from coining money, not the national government.
Try again.
Business_Casual
12-06-10, 11:05
Ok dude - try this on for size: let's say you are right, that only gold and silver are money. Then you go to Paul Revere's shop and want to buy a candle stick - but wait you can't because it is made of silver! And that's money! You can't exchange money for money. Except it isn't money until it has been minted. Just as paper isn't money until it is "minted" either. See?
B_C
Gutshot:
Lets look at the 10th amendment for some help here...
The powers not delegated specifically to the Fed Govt. Are reserved respectively for the states or the poeple.
Tell me where the formation of a national/central bank is specifically delegated to the feds in the consittution?
The 10th killed the feds ability to enact a central bank, yet they did so anyway.
The constitution did not specifically grant the power, therefore it is a moot point to argue any further.
The fed and central banking is unconstitutional.
Ok dude - try this on for size: let's say you are right, that only gold and silver are money. Then you go to Paul Revere's shop and want to buy a candle stick - but wait you can't because it is made of silver! And that's money! You can't exchange money for money. Except it isn't money until it has been minted. Just as paper isn't money until it is "minted" either. See?
B_C
Sidestepping much? :rolleyes:
Again I ask you BC; why go with fiat/central banking, instead of gold if it is just keeping "score" of exchanges?
Gold has been shown to be much more reliable/viable throughout history, and fiat central banking ahs been shown to NEVER be sustainable. NEVER!
So tell me why fiat over gold?
Federal Reserve Notes do not conform to Title 12, United States Code, Sections 411 and 418. Title 31 USC, Section 462 (392), insofar as it attempts to make Federal Reserve Notes and circulating Notes of Federal Reserve Banks and National Banking Associations a legal tender for all debts, public and private, it is unconstitutional and void, being contrary to Article I, Section 10, of the Constitution of the United States, which prohibits any State from making anything but gold and silver coin a tender, or impairing the obligation of contracts.
They are not among the powers specially enumerated...
II. Nor are they within either of the general phrases, which are the two following:-
1. "To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States." ... The [Congress] are not to do anything they please, to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose... It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers, and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect...
2. The second general phase is, "to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution the enumerated powers." But they can all be carried into execution without a bank. A bank, therefore, is not necessary, and consequently not authorized by this phrase.
It has been much urged that a bank will give great facility or convenience in the collection of taxes. Suppose this were true; yet the Constitution allows only the means which are "necessary" not those which are merely "convenient," for effecting the enumerated power.
I could go on and on...
It is very easy to see national banks and fiat currency are completely and utterly unconstitutional.
RancidSumo
12-06-10, 11:33
Ok dude - try this on for size: let's say you are right, that only gold and silver are money. Then you go to Paul Revere's shop and want to buy a candle stick - but wait you can't because it is made of silver! And that's money! You can't exchange money for money. Except it isn't money until it has been minted. Just as paper isn't money until it is "minted" either. See?
B_C
You can do whatever the hell you want. If I want to buy a one dollar bill off of someone with a ten dollar bill I can. The difference in your example is that the candle stick has additionally been worked by skilled hands which has increased the value that the current owner prescribes to it, if you agree with the increase in value then you can choose to pay it.
The_War_Wagon
12-06-10, 11:55
Hey GSJ - I thought of you today! I was over in Dormont, and bought some more gold and silver! :D
Some quotes by some pretty intelligent people concerning the Fed...
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford
"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. ... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." - Alan Greenspan
"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of the people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests." - John Sherman
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation." - John Adams
"Federal reserve banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of a Federal Tort Claims Act, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations in light of fact that direct supervision and control of each bank is exercised by board of directors, federal reserve banks, though heavily regulated, are locally controlled by their member banks, banks are listed neither as "wholly owned" government corporations nor as "mixed ownership" corporations; federal reserve banks receive no appropriated funds from Congress and the banks are empowered to sue and be sued in their own names." - Lewis vs United States, 9th Circuit
"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operations of the international moneylenders... the accounts of the Federal Reserve have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and ... manipulates the credit of the United States." - Barry Goldwater
"We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it." - Congressman Louis T. McFadden
"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." - Woodrow Wilson
"I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, ... The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply." - Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." - Mayer Amschel Rothschild
Great Quotes Irish.
I cannot fathom how any sane liberty loving free American man could argue for an unconstitutional mechanism of such destrutive force and manipulation such as the FED and National/Centralized Banking.
It is killing America & our soverignty from within, and is the most dangerous encroachment of our freedoms yet.
I cannot fathom how any sane liberty loving free American man could argue for an unconstitutional mechanism of such destrutive force and manipulation such as the FED and National/Centralized Banking.
That's what I was trying to point out and I may be a bit late to the conversation but it's still relevant. Everybody here can argue their own thoughts about the Fed, gold, etc and what's happened to our country but I for one value the quoted words of the people who are DIRECTLY involved more than just us gun nuts on this forum.
If you want to see what inflation's done since 1913 look here: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 13:03
Gutshot:
Lets look at the 10th amendment for some help here...
The powers not delegated specifically to the Fed Govt. Are reserved respectively for the states or the poeple.
Except that the power is specifically delegated to Congress, See Art. I Sec 8 so the 10th doesn't apply.
You're quoting the Constitution but you're not actually reading/understanding it.
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 13:05
Hey GSJ - I thought of you today! I was over in Dormont, and bought some more gold and silver! :D
Good for you though I'm curious if you think gold is going to keep rising forever...just like people used to think housing prices were going to keep rising forever.
Some might consider the price of gold to be a "bubble" but you probably know better than they do.
I genuinely hope it works out for you. I don't own gold and have no plans to in the near future.
ForTehNguyen
12-06-10, 13:07
Uhm no, you're either misreading or misunderstanding what the Constitution said. None of those prohibit a national bank.
Art I Sec. 8 explicitly gives Congress that power. By definition Congress delegates this power by statute. See the 1913 Federal Reserve Act, which is wholly constitutional.
Art I Sec 10 restricts the powers of the individual states not the Congress/National Government. In other words the states are prohibited from coining money, not the national government.
Try again.
It gave it away to a private bank where is their constitutional power to give away their enumerated powers. First of all it says COIN money, they can only stamp gold and silver coins, they were not allowed to print paper bills. Who made the paper bills? It was the state banks that issued the gold and silver receipts. Congress was only allowed to make pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, and dollar coins.
Incorrect on several counts.
First gold is heavily used in industry. The computer you're using is a prime example.
Second while gold is more portable than oil, but than oil and/or gold certificates would solve that problem. A commodity is a commodity for a reason.
Third there is a lot more oil in the world than there is gold and so you're less likely to run out of reserves if you were to use it to guarantee a currency. All the gold ever mined in the history of the world would easily fit in a large American home.
gold is not consumed in large amounts, the worlds gold supply actually goes up every year because it is horded in banks aside from the use in jewelry and the tiny amount used in electronics. A huge percentage of the gold ever mined by humans for the past several thousand years is still above ground and has not disappeared. Not to mention gold is heavily recycled due to its value. Gold used in jewelry isnt consumed either. People keep it, its not thrown away never to be seen again. Gold is a far better currency than silver, which is consumed in heavy amounts a year, hence why world silver inventories have been falling for decades. Gold is less of a commodity than silver is, and thus is suited better as a true currency. Less susceptible to consumption.
The Constitution even explicitly states the death penalty for anyone who ever debased the currency. Guess what the Federal Reserve is doing?
Ok dude - try this on for size: let's say you are right, that only gold and silver are money. Then you go to Paul Revere's shop and want to buy a candle stick - but wait you can't because it is made of silver! And that's money! You can't exchange money for money. Except it isn't money until it has been minted. Just as paper isn't money until it is "minted" either. See?
B_C
you do realize what they did someone wanted to make a silver spoon and wanted to pay in silver coins? They melted the coins down to to make the spoon. Not complicated. BTW I learned this on Pawn Stars when someone had a silver spoon to try to sell. The historian said what I just said.
This is a horrible argument for a fiat system. What is wrong about letting us use whatever currency the market chose? Why is it better that we are forced to use a single currency? The market did not chose fiat currency, govts did.
This article called "illusions of freedom" changed the way I view the government. I encourage everyone to take the time and read the entire thing. http://www.rense.com/general90/illus.htm
The_War_Wagon
12-06-10, 13:26
Good for you though I'm curious if you think gold is going to keep rising forever...just like people used to think housing prices were going to keep rising forever.
Some might consider the price of gold to be a "bubble" but you probably know better than they do.
It's NOT an investment, like stocks and bonds - it's a hedge against inflation. Just like a black rifle isn't an "investment" - it's PROTECTION.
It's NOT an investment, like stocks and bonds - it's a hedge against inflation.
I bought gold about 6 years ago and everyone I talked to about it swore I was crazy. Needless to say their opinions have changed rather abruptly after seeing the price of their house, investments and gold these days.
Except that the power is specifically delegated to Congress, See Art. I Sec 8 so the 10th doesn't apply.
You're quoting the Constitution but you're not actually reading/understanding it.
Where in article I sec. 8 does it say that the power is delegated to a private organization acting outside of the constitution?
Are we reading the same constitution GSJ?
UNCONSTITUTIONAL. PERIOD.
I bought gold about 6 years ago and everyone I talked to about it swore I was crazy. Needless to say their opinions have changed rather abruptly after seeing the price of gold these days.
I have a lot of relatives eating their words now-a-days, when they used to tell me gold was for idiots and airbags and I would lose big on gold investments.:D
I started buying gold when I was 13 years old (1993); and didn't stop until last year; I am just about to unload a good clip of it and I am excited to physically show my relatives how "foolish" my investment was...
They are all getting a SA krugerrand in their stocking this year, and I bet they are all happy as effing clams when they get it. And I bet none of them say: "Ahh shucks I wanted some paper currency that will have less buying power tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day..."
Some might consider the price of gold to be a "bubble" but you probably know better than they do.
I honestly read that some dope analyst thinks it's headed to $8,000 an ounce soon. :rolleyes:
I did buy several ounces of bullion and almost 5 ounces of raw nuggets at or below spot when it was hovered around the $300-$350 mark. Also had a bunch of gold Francs and other coins that I could buy for peanuts back then. Hell, .10 oz Golden Eagles were a whopping $35, now they are usually about $145.
Sold almost all of them out of necessity, but also for substantial profit, shortly after I lost my job in '06. At least doubled my money on every transaction, which helped ease the pain a bit.
They are all getting a SA krugerrand in their stocking this year, and I bet they are all happy as effing clams when they get it. And I bet none of them say: "Ahh shucks I wanted some paper currency that will have less buying power tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day..."
Can I hang my stocking at your house?!?!? :sarcastic: I invested in quite a few MS64 St. Gaudens that have done very well in the past couple of years.
RancidSumo
12-06-10, 13:56
They are all getting a SA krugerrand in their stocking this year, and I bet they are all happy as effing clams when they get it. And I bet none of them say: "Ahh shucks I wanted some paper currency that will have less buying power tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day..."
I'm with Irish on this one. Should I send the stocking to your house or will you send the stuffer to mine :laugh:?
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 16:11
Where in article I sec. 8 does it say that the power is delegated to a private organization acting outside of the constitution?
Are we reading the same constitution GSJ?
UNCONSTITUTIONAL. PERIOD.
Powers of Congress
Article I, Section 8:3
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
(if the Federal reserve doesn't fall within the Commerce clause than nothing does)
Further...
Article I, Section 8:5
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
Article I, Section 8:17
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And
Article I, Section 8:18
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 16:19
I honestly read that some dope analyst thinks it's headed to $8,000 an ounce soon. :rolleyes:
Yeah that's pretty dopey. At that value the total amount of gold ever mined would exceed the total value of currency in the world.
I did buy several ounces of bullion and almost 5 ounces of raw nuggets at or below spot when it was hovered around the $300-$350 mark. Also had a bunch of gold Francs and other coins that I could buy for peanuts back then. Hell, .10 oz Golden Eagles were a whopping $35, now they are usually about $145.
Sold almost all of them out of necessity, but also for substantial profit, shortly after I lost my job in '06. At least doubled my money on every transaction, which helped ease the pain a bit.
Nothing wrong with that.
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 16:22
It gave it away to a private bank where is their constitutional power to give away their enumerated powers. First of all it says COIN money, they can only stamp gold and silver coins, they were not allowed to print paper bills. Who made the paper bills? It was the state banks that issued the gold and silver receipts. Congress was only allowed to make pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, and dollar coins.
Reread it, it also says to "regulate the value thereof" and to make "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers". Of course it depends on what your definition of "All" is. To me it means all, any, total. It doesn't mean "some", "with these exceptions" or "but".
The rest of your conclusions are accordingly flawed.
Gutshot John - I'm curious to know if you believe that the Federal Reserve is part of the federal government or is in fact a private financial institution? From a lot of things I've read and studied I've concluded that the Fed is as much a part of the .Gov as Federal Express is.
I just ordered The Creature From Jeckyll Island. http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 17:28
Gutshot John - I'm curious to know if you believe that the Federal Reserve is part of the federal government or is in fact a private financial institution? From a lot of things I've read and studied I've concluded that the Fed is as much a part of the .Gov as Federal Express is.
It doesn't matter. Congress can create anything it wants by statute. So long as the resulting body doesn't have the power to create law, enforce law or interpret law.
There is a stronger case for saying that Executive branch regulatory agencies are extra-Constitutional though SCOTUS has said that they are not.
Business_Casual
12-06-10, 19:09
I'm not pro-Fed at all, and I'm not a money guy either. But here's where I diverge from you flat-earth gold standard types: tell me how you would design a bank and currency scheme, run by congress, that wouldn't turn into a pig trough? Do you want Nancy in charge of the budget AND the currency?
B_C
http://rense.com/general92/feds.htm
It's wholly ignorant to attempt to defend the "constitutionality" of the federal reserve, the federal reserve board and the "owners" of the NY Fed Bank which controls the others. SIMPLE research will prove (provide substantial prima facie evidence) that the Fed Reserve *must* be abolished if the US is ever to regain it's sovereignty - despite the Sanguinoids who seem to swallow whatever the Fed regurgitates.
The article above does not go into detail but that detail can be obtained with only a fairly detailed search.
thopkins22
12-06-10, 19:15
I'm not pro-Fed at all, and I'm not a money guy either. But here's where I diverge from you flat-earth gold standard types: tell me how you would design a bank and currency scheme, run by congress, that wouldn't turn into a pig trough? Do you want Nancy in charge of the budget AND the currency?
B_C
Congress should
● amend the Federal Reserve Act to make long-run price stability
the primary goal of monetary policy;
● recognize that the Federal Reserve cannot fine-tune the real
economy but can achieve long-run price stability by its control
over the monetary base (currency held by the public plus
bank reserves);
● hold the Fed accountable for safeguarding the purchasing
power of the dollar;
● abolish the Exchange Stabilization Fund—the Fed’s role is to
stabilize the domestic price level, not to peg the foreign
exchange value of the dollar; and
● repeal the tax on privately issued bank notes and allow digital
currency and other substitutes for Federal Reserve notes to
emerge, so that free-market forces can help shape the future
of monetary institutions.
The part that really concerns gold and other hard assets is in bold. I don't know that gold would be better, but I think having the choice would at the very least make the Fed behave a little better.
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 19:28
http://rense.com/general92/feds.htm
It's wholly ignorant to attempt to defend the "constitutionality" of the federal reserve, the federal reserve board and the "owners" of the NY Fed Bank which controls the others. SIMPLE research will prove (provide substantial prima facie evidence) that the Fed Reserve *must* be abolished if the US is ever to regain it's sovereignty - despite the Sanguinoids who seem to swallow whatever the Fed regurgitates.
The article above does not go into detail but that detail can be obtained with only a fairly detailed search.
Really? That's an odd claim seeing how your link doesn't even reference the Constitution. How do you explain the plain wording of the Constitution? That's all I've used to make my case. No fancy legalese or even SCOTUS decisions...just the document itself.
Others (disregarding the tin foil nonsense provided in your link) has jumped through hopes to claim unconstitutionality, but you've yet to explain how Article I, Sec 8 can be so casually tossed aside. More reasonable people don't dispute Constitutionality only the choices the Fed has made and whether it's worth having.
Please enlighten us as to your Constitutional interpretation. Address the issue directly and without tin foil mumbo jumbo and using the Constitution.
How about Article 1 Section 10?
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 19:38
How about Article 1 Section 10?
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
What about it? Section 10 refers to the powers prohibited of the States. The Fed isn't part of State governments it was chartered by Congress. No state can nor does make tender. Nor does the Fed make money.
ForTehNguyen
12-06-10, 19:42
The part that really concerns gold and other hard assets is in bold. I don't know that gold would be better, but I think having the choice would at the very least make the Fed behave a little better.
currency competition would literally destroy the Fed, they dont want this to happen in anyway (hence why gold/silver transacting is illegal). You dont even need to repeal the Fed, just allowing competing currency will kill it through market forces.
I only see coin referenced in Section 8 as well, which has a tangible value in and of itself, not fiat paper currency anywhere.
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 19:47
I only see coin referenced in Section 8 as well, which has a tangible value in and of itself, not fiat paper currency anywhere.
Currency is currency. The US has printed paper money since 1776 and no one said boo about it.
Some quotes by some pretty intelligent people concerning the Fed...
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford
"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. ... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." - Alan Greenspan
"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of the people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests." - John Sherman
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation." - John Adams
"Federal reserve banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of a Federal Tort Claims Act, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations in light of fact that direct supervision and control of each bank is exercised by board of directors, federal reserve banks, though heavily regulated, are locally controlled by their member banks, banks are listed neither as "wholly owned" government corporations nor as "mixed ownership" corporations; federal reserve banks receive no appropriated funds from Congress and the banks are empowered to sue and be sued in their own names." - Lewis vs United States, 9th Circuit
"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operations of the international moneylenders... the accounts of the Federal Reserve have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and ... manipulates the credit of the United States." - Barry Goldwater
"We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it." - Congressman Louis T. McFadden
"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." - Woodrow Wilson
"I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, ... The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply." - Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." - Mayer Amschel Rothschild
Nothing more to add at this time. Gotta throw some salmon on the grill :D
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 20:16
Nothing more to add at this time. Gotta throw some salmon on the grill :D
I'm not sure I understand the relevance of these quotes. Perhaps if you put them in their proper context and added a bit of analysis.
thopkins22
12-06-10, 21:18
I'm not sure I understand the relevance of these quotes. Perhaps if you put them in their proper context and added a bit of analysis.
I can't speak to all of them, but Alan Greenspan's essay Gold and Economic Freedom can be found in Ayn Rand's book Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal. I'm not sure any analysis is necessary, it reads pretty bluntly to me.
"An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense-perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire -- that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.
In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society.
Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium of exchange, is universally acceptable to all participants in an exchange economy as payment for their goods or services, and can, therefore, be used as a standard of market value and as a store of value, i.e., as a means of saving.
The existence of such a commodity is a precondition of a division of labor economy. If men did not have some commodity of objective value which was generally acceptable as money, they would have to resort to primitive barter or be forced to live on self-sufficient farms and forgo the inestimable advantages of specialization. If men had no means to store value, i.e., to save, neither long-range planning nor exchange would be possible.
What medium of exchange will be acceptable to all participants in an economy is not determined arbitrarily. First, the medium of exchange should be durable. In a primitive society of meager wealth, wheat might be sufficiently durable to serve as a medium, since all exchanges would occur only during and immediately after the harvest, leaving no value-surplus to store. But where store-of-value considerations are important, as they are in richer, more civilized societies, the medium of exchange must be a durable commodity, usually a metal. A metal is generally chosen because it is homogeneous and divisible: every unit is the same as every other and it can be blended or formed in any quantity. Precious jewels, for example, are neither homogeneous nor divisible. More important, the commodity chosen as a medium must be a luxury. Human desires for luxuries are unlimited and, therefore, luxury goods are always in demand and will always be acceptable. Wheat is a luxury in underfed civilizations, but not in a prosperous society. Cigarettes ordinarily would not serve as money, but they did in post-World War II Europe where they were considered a luxury. The term "luxury good" implies scarcity and high unit value. Having a high unit value, such a good is easily portable; for instance, an ounce of gold is worth a half-ton of pig iron.
In the early stages of a developing money economy, several media of exchange might be used, since a wide variety of commodities would fulfill the foregoing conditions. However, one of the commodities will gradually displace all others, by being more widely acceptable. Preferences on what to hold as a store of value, will shift to the most widely acceptable commodity, which, in turn, will make it still more acceptable. The shift is progressive until that commodity becomes the sole medium of exchange. The use of a single medium is highly advantageous for the same reasons that a money economy is superior to a barter economy: it makes exchanges possible on an incalculably wider scale.
Whether the single medium is gold, silver, seashells, cattle, or tobacco is optional, depending on the context and development of a given economy. In fact, all have been employed, at various times, as media of exchange. Even in the present century, two major commodities, gold and silver, have been used as international media of exchange, with gold becoming the predominant one. Gold, having both artistic and functional uses and being relatively scarce, has significant advantages over all other media of exchange. Since the beginning of World War I, it has been virtually the sole international standard of exchange. If all goods and services were to be paid for in gold, large payments would be difficult to execute and this would tend to limit the extent of a society's divisions of labor and specialization. Thus a logical extension of the creation of a medium of exchange is the development of a banking system and credit instruments (bank notes and deposits) which act as a substitute for, but are convertible into, gold.
A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus to create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the production requirements of the economy. Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits (which means that he holds claims to gold rather than gold as security of his deposits). But the amount of loans which he can afford to make is not arbitrary: he has to gauge it in relation to his reserves and to the status of his investments.
When banks loan money to finance productive and profitable endeavors, the loans are paid off rapidly and bank credit continues to be generally available. But when the business ventures financed by bank credit are less profitable and slow to pay off, bankers soon find that their loans outstanding are excessive relative to their gold reserves, and they begin to curtail new lending, usually by charging higher interest rates. This tends to restrict the financing of new ventures and requires the existing borrowers to improve their profitability before they can obtain credit for further expansion. Thus, under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy's stability and balanced growth.
When gold is accepted as the medium of exchange by most or all nations, an unhampered free international gold standard serves to foster a world-wide division of labor and the broadest international trade. Even though the units of exchange (the dollar, the pound, the franc, etc.) differ from country to country, when all are defined in terms of gold the economies of the different countries act as one -- so long as there are no restraints on trade or on the movement of capital. Credit, interest rates, and prices tend to follow similar patterns in all countries. For example, if banks in one country extend credit too liberally, interest rates in that country will tend to fall, inducing depositors to shift their gold to higher-interest paying banks in other countries. This will immediately cause a shortage of bank reserves in the "easy money" country, inducing tighter credit standards and a return to competitively higher interest rates again.
A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World War I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.
But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing a business decline-argued economic interventionists -- why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely -- it was claimed -- there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913. It consisted of twelve regional Federal Reserve banks nominally owned by private bankers, but in fact government sponsored, controlled, and supported. Credit extended by these banks is in practice (though not legally) backed by the taxing power of the federal government. Technically, we remained on the gold standard; individuals were still free to own gold, and gold continued to be used as bank reserves. But now, in addition to gold, credit extended by the Federal Reserve banks ("paper reserves") could serve as legal tender to pay depositors.
When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates.
The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market -- triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's.
With a logic reminiscent of a generation earlier, statists argued that the gold standard was largely to blame for the credit debacle which led to the Great Depression. If the gold standard had not existed, they argued, Britain's abandonment of gold payments in 1931 would not have caused the failure of banks all over the world. (The irony was that since 1913, we had been, not on a gold standard, but on what may be termed "a mixed gold standard"; yet it is gold that took the blame.) But the opposition to the gold standard in any form -- from a growing number of welfare-state advocates -- was prompted by a much subtler insight: the realization that the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state). Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.
Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy's tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government's promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds which -- through a complex series of steps -- the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual deposit, i.e., as the equivalent of what was formerly a deposit of gold. The holder of a government bond or of a bank deposit created by paper reserves believes that he has a valid claim on a real asset. But the fact is that there are now more claims outstanding than real assets. The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion.
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard."
Alan Greenspan Gold and Economic Freedom
Business_Casual
12-06-10, 21:30
No one has answered my question - whonis going to run this new bank and how will your scheme prevent all the problems you ascribe to the Fed? Where will the gold, for instance, be obtained?
B_C
thopkins22
12-06-10, 21:38
No one has answered my question - whonis going to run this new bank and how will your scheme prevent all the problems you ascribe to the Fed? Where will the gold, for instance, be obtained?
B_C
Why does it matter? Why does it have to be run by the government? It would be very simple to legalize competition, and see what the market comes up with.
Gutshot John
12-06-10, 21:52
I can't speak to all of them, but Alan Greenspan's essay Gold and Economic Freedom can be found in Ayn Rand's book Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal. I'm not sure any analysis is necessary, it reads pretty bluntly to me.
I've actually read it but I hate having things taken out of context and argument by simple quotation. That said having been written in the 1960s when Greenspan was a devotee of Rand and his subsequent appointment as Chairman of the Fed points to a disconnect between ideology and practicality which hit home 40 years later.
This disconnect became abundantly clear when Greenspan admitted that free-market (and by extension laissez-faire economic) principles failed in the 2008 economic crisis. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/i-made-a-mistake-says-greenspan/story-e6frg9mf-1111117848644
This was always the problem with Rand (whose intellect I admire greatly) while she makes for a nice philosophy, practically there are always problems, addendums, corollaries and exceptions.
Come on, article I Setion 8 does not ever state that congress can give the power to coin money to a private company. It never states that PAPER can be used; only coin. By the very wording in Article 1 Section 8 the FED is unconstitutional.
IF you can see art. 1 sec. 8 as congress has the power to give coinage of moeny to a private orginization; what is stopping you from interpreting any other clause in the constitution as such. So congress can give the ability to wage war to a private oprginization if they so choose?
Whats the difference, the consitution says that coin the money, and you are okay with them giving that power to a private institution, so why not waging war by extension of your interpretation?
IF article 1 section 8 says that a private central bank can print fiat money, then I guess this:
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions
Could be interpreted as the congress could give this delegated power to a private company right, since it is okay to do so with other clauses even though they say nothing of the sort?
Having a bank is not NECESSARY to lay and collect taxes, sure it may make it easier, but it is not necessary. No where in the clauses you speak of is a bank delegated, no where in the claues you speak of is the power to coin money given to a private company. No where in the clause you speak of does it say fiat paper money is acceptable?
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 09:13
Come on, article I Setion 8 does not ever state that congress can give the power to coin money to a private company.
Ugghhh one more time, it doesn't have to explicitly spell it out.
Article I, Sec 8:18
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Read up on the "necessary and proper" or "elastic" clause and McCulloch v. Maryland.
More to the point the Fed doesn't coin or print money. The Treasury does.
You're selectively ignoring parts of the Constitution that you don't like or fundamentally don't understand what you're reading. Either way there is little point in trying to argue the point with you. Believe whatever you'd like, you're demonstrably wrong but you're free to believe as you wish.
We can agree to disagree than, but you are the one that is wrong.
IF our forefather sintended to have paper money as our legal tender, and a privatized central bank controlling it all; they could have written it directly into the consitution, but they didn't they wrote COIN, GOLD, SILVER, and punishable by death. How you can interpret this as Fiat Paper money not backed by anything is beyond me GSJ.
The viewpoint that the fed is consitutional is laughable and a smack in the face of the American people and our ancestors who fought for this country. It is very easy to see that our founding fathers did not want:
1) A national or central Bank.
2) A fiat currency that could centralize power.
3) Any currency other than coin (Struck by CONGRESS only) backed by gold and silver.
4) A mechanism by which money could be confiscated without raising taxes.
To argue otherwise is just insane to me.
Take it easy GSJ.
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 09:45
We can agree to disagree than, but you are the one that is wrong.
IF our forefather sintended to have paper money as our legal tender, and a privatized central bank controlling it all; they could have written it directly into the consitution, but they didn't they wrote COIN, GOLD, SILVER, and punishable by death. How you can interpret this as Fiat Paper money not backed by anything is beyond me GSJ.
The viewpoint that the fed is consitutional is laughable and a smack in the face of the American people and our ancestors who fought for this country. It is very easy to see that our founding fathers did not want:
1) A national or central Bank.
2) A fiat currency that could centralize power.
3) Any currency other than coin (Struck by CONGRESS only) backed by gold and silver.
4) A mechanism by which money could be confiscated without raising taxes.
To argue otherwise is just insane to me.
Take it easy GSJ.
I'm taking it perfectly easy, you simply refuse to read what is put in front of you and persist on ignoring the plain language and meaning of words. If you want to bend-over backwards to dispute semantics when there is no semantic dispute than you're not arguing in good faith and there is little point in continuing. If you wish to believe that McCulloch v. Maryland and the Elastic clause is "insane" than your argument would be at least partially correct but since they you refuse to listen to reason why continue?
Take it up with the Constitution, Founding Fathers and Supreme Court. They all dispute your assessment. You might not like it but that doesn't change anything. You don't get to pick and choose which parts of the Constitution are valid. You take all or nothing.
I'm taking it perfectly easy, you simply refuse to read what is put in front of you and persist on ignoring the plain language and meaning of words. If you want to bend-over backwards to dispute semantics when there is no semantic dispute than you're not arguing in good faith and there is little point in continuing. If you wish to believe that McCulloch v. Maryland and the Elastic clause is "insane" than your argument would be at least partially correct but since they you refuse to listen to reason why continue?
Take it up with the Constitution, Founding Fathers and Supreme Court. They all dispute your assessment. You might not like it but that doesn't change anything. You don't get to pick and choose which parts of the Constitution are valid. You take all or nothing.
I said take it easy as a "good bye", you know like: "hey have a good day and take it easy..."
I don't see how MCcolough Vs. Maryland means that a central/national bank is "Necessary" and "proper" to laying and collecting taxes. For it to be ratioanally thought that a mechanism of theft is necessary to our laying and collecting of taxes, is not reality to me. The FED doesn't fascilitate collecting taxes, they irk them and steal out of our pockets through back door mehcanisms. To say that is necessary and proper to lay and collect taxes is just insane to me. Regardless of supreme court decisions, how does the bank and fed help collect taxes? They do more to help politicians to not have to lay and collect taxes, and just collect them illegaly. How is that necessary and proper?
This is where our point of view differs the most it seems. It makes laying and collecting taxes easier, yes; however it is by no means "NECESSARY" and I could never see how one would consider the fed or central banking "PROPER" by any stretch or loose interpretation of the word. Take care GSJ.
I'm not sure I understand the relevance of these quotes. Perhaps if you put them in their proper context and added a bit of analysis.
This thread is titled "The Federal Reserve is evil and run by traitors..." and I was providing quotes that are directly attributed to the Federal Reserve, gold and our monetary system as a whole. I don't have time to break every single quote down but you're an intelligent guy and I'm sure you see the relevance if you look at who I'm quoting and what they're referring to. Lots of work and not a lot of free time today... Have a good day gentlemen.
The Chinese regard gold as real money and are buying it up as fast as they can. http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page33?oid=116272&sn=Detail&pid=102055 - http://hken.ibtimes.com/articles/89600/20101207/gold-price-hits-new-dollar-euro-and-sterling-records-silver-very-bullish.htm
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 10:33
The Fed isn't reliant on the power of taxation, the Fed is "necessary and proper" to "regulate commerce" and to "coin money and regulate the value thereof" (money) per Article I Section 8:3 and 8:5. The language is so plain it's hard to work around. Does the Commerce clause go too far sometimes? I'd agree with that but the Rehnquist court has said as long as an activity lays "within the stream of commerce" than it is permissible. Banking is clearly within the stream of commerce.
McCulloch v. Maryland says that Congress has the power to pass any law that is necessary and proper for the execution of their powers or any powers of the government spelled out in the government
Again this isn't what I'm arguing, this is what the Founding Fathers (Hamilton, Madison) argued when the First (in 1791) and Second (in 1816) Banks of the United States were created by Congress and McCulloch v. Maryland subsequently upheld that creation.
You may view it as insane and you may disagree with it but that doesn't change that in more than 200 years no successful argument has been made in support of your perspective.
You can either accept conditions as they are, or wish they were different. In either case the Fed has long been accepted as Constitutionally permissible.
ForTehNguyen
12-07-10, 11:57
necessary and proper only applies to the specific items in Article 1 Section 8. Where is their authority to establish a central bank? You dont need a central bank to coin money. Where is there authority to legislate away their own powers.
You clearly do not understand the Constitution. "Regulate interstate commerce" was meant so states dont put up trade barriers against other states possibly causing conflicts. Interstate means between the states. How does printing paper
Not to mention the definition of regulate meant to "make regular" back then, not to control like it means today.
Another thing you got wrong is you assume this paper we use now is "money" It isnt, it is bill of credit, an IOU. Why do you think it says "Federal Reserve Note" on it? It is a bank note, it is not true money. A1 S8 says COIN money, printing bills is not coining money. Congress was only allowed to make coins
Business_Casual
12-07-10, 12:03
So you are seriously proposing a coin-based currency?
B_C
ForTehNguyen
12-07-10, 12:21
So you are seriously proposing a coin-based currency?
B_C
Obeying the Constitution? What is that? :rolleyes:
So you are seriously proposing a coin-based currency?
B_C
He doesn't have to propose it, the consitution and our founding fathers already have. Just reinforcing the fact that the constitution specifically says "COIN", "GOLD" and "SILVER". Since the consitution seriously proposed, and advocated the use of coins ONLY, heck, even made a penalty if not followed; punishment by death.
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 12:27
necessary and proper only applies to the specific items in Article 1 Section 8. Where is their authority to establish a central bank? You dont need a central bank to coin money. Where is there authority to legislate away their own powers.
I've been over this ad nauseum. No it doesn't, see McCulloch v. Maryland.
If you can't read than I can't help you.
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 12:30
Obeying the Constitution? What is that? :rolleyes:
There is no deviation from the Constitution. But let me know how well it goes when you have to carry around sacks of coins to pay for shit.
You can make all the bizarre esoteric arguments you'd like but there is nothing in the Constitution endorses them, SCOTUS has rejected them and you're not suddenly going to apply them without facing extreme ridicule from your fellow citizens.
ForTehNguyen
12-07-10, 12:31
I've been over this ad nauseum. No it doesn't, see McCulloch v. Maryland.
If you can't read than I can't help you.
necessary and proper only applies to those powers explicitly stated Article 1 Section 8. Where is the explicitly stated that they can create a central bank?
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 12:32
He doesn't have to propose it, the consitution and our founding fathers already have. Just reinforcing the fact that the constitution specifically says "COIN", "GOLD" and "SILVER". Since the consitution seriously proposed, and advocated the use of coins ONLY, heck, even made a penalty if not followed; punishment by death.
Where in the Constitution does it say only coins. By any reasonable interpretation "Coining" money refers to creating legal tender. Paper money is legal tender. Only the states are restricted to gold and silver money.
Paper money was issued during the American Revolution. If they didn't want it, they would have specifically forbid it.
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 12:37
necessary and proper only applies to those powers explicitly stated Article 1 Section 8. Where is the explicitly stated that they can create a central bank?
Again I've been over this, you're flat wrong and obstinately so. SCOTUS has rejected that argument since McCulloch v. Maryland. Moreover the first bank was created in 1791, that's within 4 years of the Constitution. The Second Bank was signed into existence by James Madison (you know the founding father who pretty much wrote the Constitution?).
You insist on taking "necessary and proper" out of context. Your interpretation doesn't matter. You're not a constitutional branch of government.
It says "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper "
What does "all" mean to you?
If you insist on this argument, please explain why you know more than the Founding Fathers, James Madison and where McCulloch v. Maryland was overturned by the courts.
Until then you're in the land of goofball.
ForTehNguyen
12-07-10, 12:40
There is no deviation from the Constitution. But let me know how well it goes when you have to carry around sacks of coins to pay for shit.
You can make all the bizarre esoteric arguments you'd like but there is nothing in the Constitution endorses them, SCOTUS has rejected them and you're not suddenly going to apply them without facing extreme ridicule from your fellow citizens.
how the hell do you think people in the 1800s-1900s did it? They used bank receipts that could be redeemed for those coins minted by Congress that those banks had on deposit? So you're willing to bypass the Constitution because its too inconvenient to carry coins? BTW back then you could buy a LOT of stuff with a $1 coin. You don't exactly need to carry around a lot of metal to buy a lot of stuff.
Its even better with paper, you just add a few zeroes on the end of it. What a great system.
How is it necessary to create a central bank to execute these powers? It is not necessary to need a central bank to coin money, it is not necessary to need a central bank to regulate interstate commerce. To you "necessary and proper" means a blank check for the govt to do whatever it wants.
Enumerated powers
Main article: Enumerated powers
Congress' powers are enumerated in Section Eight:
Section 8: The Congress shall have power To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;—And
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
ForTehNguyen
12-07-10, 12:43
Again I've been over this, you're flat wrong and obstinately so. SCOTUS has rejected that argument since McCulloch v. Maryland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCulloch_v._Maryland
This fundamental case established the following two principles:
The Constitution grants to Congress implied powers for implementing the Constitution's express powers, in order to create a functional national government.
State action may not impede valid constitutional exercises of power by the Federal government.
How am I wrong, this is exactly what I had said earlier. Necessary and proper grants implied powers for Congress to implement its expressed powers.
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 12:45
How is it necessary to create a central bank to execute these powers? It is not necessary to need a central bank to coin money, it is not necessary to need a central bank to regulate interstate commerce. To you "necessary and proper" means a blank check for the govt to do whatever it wants.
Dude I can't help you if you can't read or refuse to understand basic english. Just because you refuse to understand how it works doesn't make it wrong. Your interpretation is not only contradicted by the plain language of the Constitution but also entirely irrelevant.
The Fed doesn't "coin money" only the treasury does that it regulates its value.
Congress can create any law it sees fit to accomplish these goals. It doesn't matter that you don't see its necessity...CONGRESS DID!
Clear enough?
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 12:48
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCulloch_v._Maryland
How am I wrong, this is exactly what I had said earlier. Necessary and proper grants implied powers for Congress to implement its expressed powers.
You said:
necessary and proper only applies to those powers explicitly stated Article 1 Section 8
The quote you provided said:
The Constitution grants to Congress implied powers for implementing the Constitution's express powers
What is the difference between "implicit" and "explicit"?
Moreover you read that far in McCulloch v. Maryland but overlooked the part where SCOTUS endorsed Congress' actions? How do you miss that?
ForTehNguyen
12-07-10, 12:55
both of those sentences that I posted have the exact same meaning and youre the one that says I cant read basic english?
You still haven't explained how the Fed was necessary to implement Congress coinage power. The Mint had been created to do that with the Coinage Act of 1792. Coinage power taken care of. Yet 220 years later it was necessary to create the Fed? Lets not forget "only gold and silver can be legal tender" something you like to ignore.
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 13:05
both of those sentences that I posted have the exact same meaning and youre the one that says I cant read basic english?
Explicit and Implicit have the same meaning? Really? That's a new one. Moreover you overlooked the part where McCulloch v. Maryland said Congress did have that power.
You still haven't explained how the Fed was necessary to implement Congress coinage power. The Mint had been created to do that with the Coinage Act of 1792. Coinage power taken care of. Yet 220 years later it was necessary to create the Fed? Lets not forget "only gold and silver can be legal tender" something you like to ignore.
I don't have to explain it. Congress did and McCulloch v. Maryland endorsed that explanation. And for the 1,256,238th time...the FED DOESN'T LITERALLY PRINT OR COIN MONEY. It manages the money supply by ordering new currency from the Treasury. http://www.aleablog.com/the-fed-does-not-print-money/
You can dance around it all you want. You're floundering badly.
GSJ;
You can see the difference between implicit and explicit; but not "Coined" and "printed"?
Since when does the term "Coined" mean "printed" paper fiat money?
They could have written "Printed" paper money in teh const. yet they explicitly used "Coined". They could have said "To create legal tender" bu tthey did not, and "Coined" is pretty easy to understand as making a coin, not printing paper.
Wonder why...
coin (koin)
n.
1. A small piece of metal, usually flat and circular, authorized by a government for use as money.
2. Metal money considered as a whole.
3. A flat circular piece or object felt to resemble metal money: a pizza topped with coins of pepperoni.
4. Architecture A corner or cornerstone.
5. A mode of expression considered standard: Two-word verbs are valid linguistic coin in the 20th century.
tr.v. coined, coin·ing, coins
1. To make (pieces of money) from metal; mint or strike: coined silver dollars.
2. To make pieces of money from (metal): coin gold.
3. To devise (a new word or phrase).
You say the "All laws" wording is to be taken literally, as in ALL. But coined is to be interpreted loosely as printing paper? Not taken Literally as "Coined" (See definition above...)
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 14:31
GSJ;
You can see the difference between implicit and explicit; but not "Coined" and "printed"?
There is a slight difference but the power to "print" money is implied.
Since when does the term "Coined" mean "printed" paper fiat money?
Since when does it not? Coined money can also be of "fiat" (do you think the quarter in your pocket is actually worth $0.25 in metal) hence the clause "regulate its value."
They could have written "Printed" paper money in teh const. yet they explicitly used "Coined".
Wonder why...
Not really, then why give them the power at all? Moreover in Article I Section 10, why limit the states to coining only in "gold" and "silver" and not do the same for Congress?
Of course all of this is entirely irrelevant, my opinion and your opinion bear no force of law.
Congressional Statute, affirmed by SCOTUS does.
There is a slight difference but the power to "print" money is implied.
.
I guess it depends on your interpretation, correct? Since I do not interpret the word Coined as implying "making any money, be it paper, metal or plastic"; but interpret it as literally "Coining" money from metal.
SCOTUS is infallible with its interpretations right?:rolleyes:
I hear what youa re saying, but I do not loosely interpret the consitution to include powers not SPECIFICALLY delegated to the govt., I take it at face value.
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 14:42
I guess it depends on your interpretation, correct? Since I do not interpret the word Coined as implying "making any money, be it paper, metal or plastic"; but interpret it as literally "Coining" money from metal.
Tender is tender...coin or printed.
SCOTUS is infallible with its interpretations right?:rolleyes:
Infallible or not isn't the point. Their opinion is the one that matters and the issue was decided almost two centuries ago and has yet to be overruled.
I hear what youa re saying, but I do not loosely interpret the consitution to include powers not SPECIFICALLY delegated to the govt., I take it at face value.
James Madison said that if that were the case than the Constitution would be a "dead letter." (Federalist #44)
The plain language of the elastic clause implies broader powers to do what is necessary. That's what "all" means. It did not say "only" or "some" or "specifically" it said "all."
Tender is tender...coin or printed.
Infallible or not isn't the point. Their opinion is the one that matters and the issue was decided almost two centuries ago and has yet to be overruled.
James Madison said that if that were the case than the Constitution would be a "dead letter." (Federalist #44)
The plain language of the elastic clause implies broader powers to do what is necessary. That's what "all" means. It did not say "only" or "some" or "specifically" it said "all."
YEah tender is tender, but "COINS", are "Coins"; not paper.
So then with the "All" taken into consideration, you would agree that it would be constitutional to have a private company that congress empowers, be in control of waging wars for this country?
Gutshot John
12-07-10, 14:54
YEah tender is tender, but "COINS", are "Coins"; not paper.
So? "all laws necessary and proper"
So then with the "All" taken into consideration, you would agree that it would be constitutional to have a private company that congress empowers, be in control of waging wars for this country?
No for several reasons but starting with the fact that Congress doesn't wage war, it only declares war. Could Congress authorize private companies to wage war on behalf of the Executive branch? Absolutely, the US Constitution authorizes letters of marque which are then signed by the Executive.
If you all get a chance you might want to see the movie "Inside Job".
I doubt that it is fair and equal in throwing around blame but it does give a pretty good idea of some of the things that are wrong.
So? "all laws necessary and proper"
No for several reasons but starting with the fact that Congress doesn't wage war, it only declares war. Could Congress authorize private companies to wage war on behalf of the Executive branch? Absolutely, the US Constitution authorizes letters of marque which are then signed by the Executive.
Where do they EXPLICITLY obtain this bogus authority? With your loopy logic they could authorize the UN to castrate all non-White males btwn the ages of 16 and 45... :rolleyes:
The law of the land is the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Where there are "concerns" or "quetions" about the validity of claims of absolute lawfulness Common Law/God's Law rules. Of course, it requires Common Sense to comprehend this so most "legal-types" will have apoplectic fits at the very mentioning of this.
And then we wonder why/how the nation has fallen...
RancidSumo
12-11-10, 14:43
Again I've been over this, you're flat wrong and obstinately so. SCOTUS has rejected that argument since McCulloch v. Maryland. Moreover the first bank was created in 1791, that's within 4 years of the Constitution. The Second Bank was signed into existence by James Madison (you know the founding father who pretty much wrote the Constitution?).
You insist on taking "necessary and proper" out of context. Your interpretation doesn't matter. You're not a constitutional branch of government.
It says "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper "
What does "all" mean to you?
If you insist on this argument, please explain why you know more than the Founding Fathers, James Madison and where McCulloch v. Maryland was overturned by the courts.
Until then you're in the land of goofball.
I haven't been following this thread for about five pages now but thought I'd drop by to address this little bit. People in power, including the SCotUS have agendas whether you want to believe it or not. I do not believe that there has EVER been a Supreme Court that was completely unbiased and just interpreted the Constitution as it was actually written. With that in mind, lets take a look at what the clause in question actually says,
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
See that part in bold? That kinda goes against what you put in bold and how you interpreted it in your post. You have to actually read the whole thing for it to make sense. Remarkable concept isn't it?
Gutshot John
12-11-10, 17:45
Where do they EXPLICITLY obtain this bogus authority? With your loopy logic they could authorize the UN to castrate all non-White males btwn the ages of 16 and 45... :rolleyes:
Pure horsepuckey. That logic is the same as those who think that if the GOP had its way black people would go back to being 3/5ths citizens. It's transparently false.
How about we keep this conversation confined to planet Earth where most of us live?
Gutshot John
12-11-10, 17:52
I haven't been following this thread for about five pages now but thought I'd drop by to address this little bit. People in power, including the SCotUS have agendas whether you want to believe it or not. I do not believe that there has EVER been a Supreme Court that was completely unbiased and just interpreted the Constitution as it was actually written. With that in mind, lets take a look at what the clause in question actually says,
So what you're saying is that the Supreme Court, the body vesed with the power to interpret the Constitution, itself is extra-constitutional? Interesting argument. I don't know anyone that agrees but I suppose you're entitled to your opinion.
Ultimately however it misses the point...No one but you cares about your opinions on the Supreme Court and whether they're "unbiased" or not. You don't get a say except once every 4 years. By all means vote for people who will change that, but it still amounts to change. The Supreme Court has ruled on the issue and the country has gone on for two centuries with that ruling. I'm not asking you to like it. I'm simply telling you that this is the situation that you have to address.
See that part in bold? That kinda goes against what you put in bold and how you interpreted it in your post. You have to actually read the whole thing for it to make sense. Remarkable concept isn't it?
Not at all...
for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
The problem is that you're selectively pretending certain words don't exist. It doesn't say "only" or "some" or "insert limiting modifier here"...it says "foregoing" (including commerce, money etc.) and "all other powers" which gives it even further latitude.
It seems that most people here are missing the point and confusing their interpretation/wishes with what actually is.
I'm not asking you to like, I'm not asking you to accept it (go ahead and try to change it if you can), I'm not even asking you to completely agree with the Fed (I know I don't), I'm simply pointing out that in 200+ years, this interpretation has existed and governs current actions. That's reality, deal with that reality rather than talking some pie-in-the-sky fantasy of some idyllic Constitution that you think should, but never has, existed.
RancidSumo
12-11-10, 18:07
So what you're saying is that the Supreme Court, the body vesed with the power to interpret the Constitution, itself is extra-constitutional? Interesting argument. I don't know anyone that agrees but I suppose you're entitled to your opinion.
Ultimately however it misses the point...No one but you cares about your opinions on the Supreme Court and whether they're "unbiased" or not. You don't get a say except once every 4 years. By all means vote for people who will change that, but it still amounts to change. The Supreme Court has ruled on the issue and the country has gone on for two centuries with that ruling. I'm not asking you to like it. I'm simply telling you that this is the situation that you have to address.
Not at all...
The problem is that you're selectively pretending certain words don't exist. It doesn't say "only" or "some" or "insert limiting modifier here"...it says "foregoing" (including commerce, money etc.) and "all other powers" which gives it even further latitude.
It seems that most people here are missing the point and confusing their interpretation/wishes with what actually is.
I'm not asking you to like, I'm not asking you to accept it (go ahead and try to change it if you can), I'm not even asking you to completely agree with the Fed (I know I don't), I'm simply pointing out that in 200+ years, this interpretation has existed and governs current actions. That's reality, deal with that reality rather than talking some pie-in-the-sky fantasy of some idyllic Constitution that you think should, but never has, existed.
Actually you are ignoring the rest of that sentence,
all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
If it isn't granted by the constitution, it doesn't fall under this clause.
As to my argument about the SCotUS, I'm saying that it is and has been made up of people with agendas.
Gutshot John
12-11-10, 18:17
Actually you are ignoring the rest of that sentence,
If it isn't granted by the constitution, it doesn't fall under this clause.
As to my argument about the SCotUS, I'm saying that it is and has been made up of people with agendas.
That's your opinion/interpretation. Unfortunately for you that opinion/interpretation is irrelevant.
That said what does "To make all Laws...and all other powers" mean to you? Does that mean only? Does it indicate any attempt to limit?
Article I Section 8 explicitly vests them with the power to regulate commerce and the value of money...as such it grants Congress the ability "to make all Laws...and all other powers" necessary to achieve those goals. It doesn't have to say "to create a central Bank."
I'm not sure why it's so difficult to grasp but even still your comprehension isn't required. If you don't believe me, oh well, take it up with your Congressman and see how far you get.
RancidSumo
12-11-10, 22:25
I don't see how you can read the first half of the sentence just fine but you for some reason have problems with the part right after the word "powers" which says,
vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
RancidSumo
12-12-10, 03:12
Article I Section 8 explicitly vests them with the power to regulate commerce and the value of money...as such it grants Congress the ability "to make all Laws...and all other powers" necessary to achieve those goals. It doesn't have to say "to create a central Bank."
It grants CONGRESS that power. Congress does not have the power to pass its duties off on some outside agency without a Constitutional amendment. Unfortunately the vast majority of Congress doesn't care what the Constitution says and we have had, and still have, a Supreme Court that doesn't seem to care either so long as what Congress does fits their agenda.
Pure horsepuckey. That logic is the same as those who think that if the GOP had its way black people would go back to being 3/5ths citizens. It's transparently false.
How about we keep this conversation confined to planet Earth where most of us live?
Congress cannot abrogate it's powers to a private company [with majority stock holders of the controlling bank being the very interests the American colonists chose to escape from, no less... :rolleyes: ] to do what Congress cannot lawfully do. That logic is "at the core of the earth". Sarcasm and snippety remarks do not conceal the lack of understanding what this form of gov't is and what the Founders (most of them anyway) intended.
The description you outlay has led us to exactly what we have: Federalism.
The Anti-Federalists had it right: their goal was to keep the federal gov't SMALL.
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 10:13
Congress cannot abrogate it's powers to a private company [with majority stock holders of the controlling bank being the very interests the American colonists chose to escape from, no less... :rolleyes: ]
It can make any law, create any company or do any such thing it wants that allows it fulfill its duties to regulate commerce and/or regulate the value of money.
McCulloch v. Maryland decided that 200 years ago.
Since you seem unable to accept that your interpretation of Congress' powers isn't sustained by 200+ years of law, jurisprudence and tradition (dating back to the founding fathers) you're intent on making this personal.
You don't like it, I get that.
You can accept that or not. Either way I don't care and until you have something interesting or new to add to the debate, I'll bid you a good day as I have better things to do then beat my head against a wall trying to make someone understand something that they're clearly unable or unwilling to understand.
In short I don't care what you believe. Whether you like it or not is immaterial, one way or the other you're wrong.
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 10:23
I don't see how you can read the first half of the sentence just fine but you for some reason have problems with the part right after the word "powers" which says,
It is vested...how many times do I have to explain this to you people? "regulate commerce" "to coin money and regulate the value therof" - The Fed regulates the value of money on behalf on Congress. Otherwise these decisions get made by every half-assed huckster politician who wants to make every man a "millionaire."
The Supreme Court decided that it did have that power. You don't like the Court? Fine but you have to deal with what it said.
All branches of government have biases, they all have a perspective and they all have a say in the laws of this country. You can't just willy-nilly ignore one branch in favor of the others if you really believe in the Constitution.
"Regulate commerce" and regulate the value of money and the ability to "create all laws" - not "some", not "only", not even "everything but". ALL LAWS. The Fed was created by statute.
Again there are lots of criticisms to be proffered against the Fed, I have many myself, mostly that they have allowed themselves to be governed by politicians and their political concerns. But only a tin-foil hatter believes that they aren't Constitutionally permissible. Until the SCOTUS rules otherwise, they are permitted and this debate is not only tedious, it's also moot.
RancidSumo
12-12-10, 14:12
Again there are lots of criticisms to be proffered against the Fed, I have many myself, mostly that they have allowed themselves to be governed by politicians and their political concerns. But only a tin-foil hatter believes that they aren't Constitutionally permissible. Until the SCOTUS rules otherwise, they are permitted and this debate is not only tedious, it's also moot.
Like I've said time and time again, I believe they are wrong on that issue. Believe it or not, citizens are allowed to disagree with the Supreme Court on Constitutional matters. After all, the Court is biased just as much as any other branch. There have been so many perversions of the Constitution by the Supreme Court that it gets hard to take them seriously, just like Congress.
As to the part in italics, that is simply not the case because if people don't continue to argue that the Fed is unconstitutional, then there could never be a SC ruling saying so.
The part in bold is an argument from intimidation. Fortunately I don't think anyone here cares what you think of them so that tactic isn't going to work. Maybe you could try it on some people who's self esteem rests in what others think of them and then you might win some over.
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 14:21
The part in bold is an argument from intimidation.
Nonsense. If you're allowed to hold your opinions than I'm allowed to have mine. Those that argue that the Fed or even the IRS are somehow an unconstitutional breach of Congressional authority, flatly ignore those parts of the Constitution that are inconsistent with their views in favor of a fantasy-land approach to Constitutional law.
You're allowed to disagree with their choices (so too does every minority opinion ever written) the problem is that your disagreement is moot...literally...and has been so for centuries.
Congress is taking no power from the states or from the people in creating a national bank. More importantly the creation of such a bank was a power that many of the founding fathers not only found constitutional but explicitly endorsed. In particular Madison whose opinions are far more relevant and far more telling than yours relevant to the creation of the Constitution and as the President who signed into existence such an institution.
You can make the argument all you want, but the Fed will NEVER be ruled unconstitutional for the main reason that it is constitutional.
RancidSumo
12-12-10, 14:30
Nonsense. If you're allowed to hold your opinions than I'm allowed to have mine. Those that argue that the Fed or even the IRS are somehow an unconstitutional breach of Congressional authority, flatly ignores those parts of the Constitution that are inconsistent with their views in favor of an fantasy-land approach to Constitutional law.
You're allowed to disagree with their choices (so too does every minority opinion ever written) the problem is that your disagreement is moot...literally...and has been so for centuries.
Congress is taking no power from the states or from the people in creating a national bank. More importantly the creation of such a bank was a power that many of the founding fathers not only found constitutional but explicitly endorsed. In particular Madison whose opinions are far more relevant and far more telling than yours relevant to the creation of the Constitution and as the President who signed into existence such an institution.
You can make the argument all you want, but the Fed will NEVER be ruled unconstitutional for the main reason that it is constitutional.
I'm not sure you understand what an argument from intimidation is but I can say that what I put in bold was one whether you like it or not.
There is a certain type of argument which, in fact, is not an argument, but a means of forestalling debate and extorting an opponent’s agreement with one’s undiscussed notions. It is a method of bypassing logic by means of psychological pressure . . . [It] consists of threatening to impeach an opponent’s character by means of his argument, thus impeaching the argument without debate. Example: “Only the immoral can fail to see that Candidate X’s argument is false.” . . . The falsehood of his argument is asserted arbitrarily and offered as proof of his immorality.
As to the rest we have been over it and disagree so there isn't much more to say.
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 14:37
I'm not sure you understand what an argument from intimidation is but I can say that what I put in bold was one whether you like it or not.
Well if you felt intimidated by little old me than I apologize. I don't see how, but if that's how you actually feel than I'm sorry.
My sense though is that you've mistaken disagreement with intimidation. That said if it is intimidation it's far less so than calling the Fed "traitors" or "evil."
It's one thing to criticize the Fed, it's another thing altogether to say that several Founding Fathers and any number of others in the past 200 years are wrong and that your argument is correct.
As to the rest we have been over it and disagree so there isn't much more to say.
RancidSumo
12-12-10, 15:11
Well if you felt intimidated by little old me than I apologize. I don't see how, but if that's how you actually feel than I'm sorry.
My sense though is that you've mistaken disagreement with intimidation. That said if it is intimidation it's far less so than calling the Fed "traitors" or "evil."
It's one thing to criticize the Fed, it's another thing altogether to say that several Founding Fathers and any number of others in the past 200 years are wrong and that your argument is correct.
You still don't understand what an argument from intimidation is. I quoted an explanation of it in my last post. Go back and read it again. I don't have to be intimidated for it to fit the description of an argument from intimidation. You can beat around that bush all you like but it won't change anything.
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 15:14
I don't have to be intimidated for it to fit the description of an argument from intimidation.
Really? In that case than your argument was equally one of intimidation. I just never complained about it.
You can beat around that bush all you like but it won't change anything.
Oh well than that's just too bad.
RancidSumo
12-12-10, 15:21
Really? In that case than your argument was equally one of intimidation. I just never complained about it.
Oh well than that's just too bad.
Alright I've got to ask, do you have serious issues with reading comprehension or do you just prefer to ignore things that you don't like? I honestly cannot think of any other way that you can continually make statements like this when I posted what an argument from intimidation is just a couple posts ago. I'll quote it again so you don't have to strain your eyes looking for it.
There is a certain type of argument which, in fact, is not an argument, but a means of forestalling debate and extorting an opponent’s agreement with one’s undiscussed notions. It is a method of bypassing logic by means of psychological pressure . . . [It] consists of threatening to impeach an opponent’s character by means of his argument, thus impeaching the argument without debate. Example: “Only the immoral can fail to see that Candidate X’s argument is false.” . . . The falsehood of his argument is asserted arbitrarily and offered as proof of his immorality.
This applies to your, "anyone who disagrees is just a tin foil hatter" comment.
It seemed to me that, although on the opposite side of this issue from me, you were at least making an attempt at civil debate and supporting your arguments. These last few posts though have led me to have much less respect for you than I originally had. It really is pathetic.
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 15:24
Believe whatever you want.
RancidSumo
12-12-10, 15:40
Believe whatever you want.
Lol alright well at least you've stopped trying to support that nonsense that you've been spouting these last few posts.
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 15:50
Lol alright well at least you've stopped trying to support that nonsense that you've been spouting these last few posts.
I tried to treat your absurdity with an appropriate degree of absurdity. Fight fire with fire, or nonsense with nonsense as the case may be, but I should have known irony would be lost on you.
Have a nice day.
It can make any law, create any company or do any such thing it wants that allows it fulfill its duties to regulate commerce and/or regulate the value of money.
McCulloch v. Maryland decided that 200 years ago.
Since you seem unable to accept that your interpretation of Congress' powers isn't sustained by 200+ years of law, jurisprudence and tradition (dating back to the founding fathers) you're intent on making this personal.
You don't like it, I get that.
You can accept that or not. Either way I don't care and until you have something interesting or new to add to the debate, I'll bid you a good day as I have better things to do then beat my head against a wall trying to make someone understand something that they're clearly unable or unwilling to understand.
In short I don't care what you believe. Whether you like it or not is immaterial, one way or the other you're wrong.
Only a pinhead would accept the fact that all Congress does is LAWFUL (not the same as LEGAL). I suppose then you support all Anti-Gun legislature as well since, after all, Congress passed it... :sarcastic:
I'm done with you on this. :p
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 16:26
Only a pinhead would accept the fact that all Congress does is LAWFUL (not the same as LEGAL). I suppose then you support all Anti-Gun legislature as well since, after all, Congress passed it... :sarcastic:
That old saw?
Only a pinhead could not see the huge difference between Congress passing laws that allow them to exercise powers explicitly granted to them by the Constitution (Art I Section 8) and those which the BoR explicitly prohibits (RKBA). If you want to show me in the BoR where it says Congress can't create a private institution/business I'd agree with you.
If I applied your goofball logic, Congress couldn't create any law not explicitly spelled out by the Constitution....in which case why have a Congress anyway?
SCOTUS did in fact take up the issue of a National bank created by statute and did in fact rule it Constitutional per Article I Sec 8.
I'm done with you on this. :p.
You were done a long time ago, you just didn't know it.
RancidSumo
12-12-10, 16:47
I tried to treat your absurdity with an appropriate degree of absurdity. Fight fire with fire, or nonsense with nonsense as the case may be, but I should have known irony would be lost on you.
Have a nice day.
More like you fundamentally misunderstood what I said the first time when pointing out your method of "debate" and didn't want to admit it so you just kept on going down that road. I enjoy debate, I don't enjoy having to put up with logical fallacies and arguments thats sole purpose it to distract from the actual debate.
RancidSumo
12-12-10, 16:50
That old saw?
Only a pinhead could not see the huge difference between Congress passing laws that allow them to exercise powers explicitly granted to them by the Constitution (Art I Section 8) and those which the BoR explicitly prohibits (RKBA). If you want to show me in the BoR where it says Congress can't create a private institution/business I'd agree with you.
If I applied your goofball logic, Congress couldn't create any law not explicitly spelled out by the Constitution....in which case why have a Congress anyway?
SCOTUS did in fact take up the issue of a National bank created by statute and did in fact rule it Constitutional per Article I Sec 8.
.
You were done a long time ago, you just didn't know it.
:laugh: What is that even supposed to mean? Sounds cool though I guess.
Belmont31R
12-12-10, 17:51
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYNVNhB-m0o&feature=player_embedded
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 18:04
More like you fundamentally misunderstood what I said the first time when pointing out your method of "debate" and didn't want to admit it so you just kept on going down that road. I enjoy debate, I don't enjoy having to put up with logical fallacies and arguments thats sole purpose it to distract from the actual debate.
Oh is that what you were saying? Silly me what was I thinking? I take back everything I said. You're completely right, I was completely wrong. I made up everything I said and have absolutely no basis, either by the Constitution or hundreds of years of Court precedent to back me up.
My bad. :sarcastic:
RancidSumo
12-12-10, 18:08
Oh is that what you were saying? Silly me what was I thinking? I take back everything I said. You're completely right, I was completely wrong. I made up everything I said and have absolutely no basis, either by the Constitution or hundreds of years of Court precedent to back me up.
My bad. :sarcastic:
Oh look, another attempt to distract from the debate. You are good at that you know it?
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 18:08
Oh look, another attempt to distract from the debate. You are good at that you know it?
Oh look another attempt at irony lost on you. Alas.
RancidSumo
12-12-10, 18:10
Oh look another attempt at irony lost on you. Alas.
Its not irony, its you being an idiot.
Gutshot John
12-12-10, 18:28
Its not irony, its you being an idiot.
Considering the source, I remain unimpressed.
But since you've obviously decided to take things personally and are intent on trying to get me to do the same I'd submit you're not worth wasting any more effort.
Have a good night.
Belmont31R
12-13-10, 01:59
More info is coming out that puts the few trillion mentioned earlier to shame. That was just the paper loans. Now its become apparent they have lent out over 12 trillion. The 3 trillion mentioned before is what they have on the books. The other 9 in the video I linked to before makes up the rest of the 12 trillion +.
How anyone can not think this isn't right is beyond me. The obama stimulus is really just a drop in the bucket compared to what the gov has been doing behind the scenes.
Anyone still think the gov is working for the people? Trillions for the bankers who **** us anyways at every chance they get...but for the average American we are told its patriotic to pay whatever taxes they decide for us.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/01/news/economy/fed_reserve_data_release/index.htm
The_War_Wagon
12-13-10, 08:05
Why use gold AS money.
http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/why-use-gold-as-money.html
ForTehNguyen
12-13-10, 08:22
Actually you are ignoring the rest of that sentence,
If it isn't granted by the constitution, it doesn't fall under this clause.
As to my argument about the SCotUS, I'm saying that it is and has been made up of people with agendas.
And this is what I have been trying to say the entire time to GSJ, yet I am the one that cannot read basic english :confused:
Gutshot John
12-13-10, 09:38
And this is what I have been trying to say the entire time to GSJ, yet I am the one that cannot read basic english :confused:
Ugh how obtuse can you people be? I understood your argument it was just wrong. You're of course free to believe whatever you'd like but it doesn't change the fact that the Fed exists and virtually no one (except for some bizarro types) challenge its Constitutionality nor Congress' power to create it. Your belief, flawed as it is, doesn't make a bit of difference to anyone but you.
Apparently you can't read basic english...what about "regulate commerce", "and regulate the value thereof"(money) and "make all laws necessary and proper" isn't granted by the Constitution? It's in there in plain english you just refuse to understand. More specifically the Courts have disagreed with you for centuries and even more importantly the Founding Father who pretty much wrote the Constitution and BoR single-handedly disagrees with you saying that if that were so than the Constitution would be a "dead letter". If Madison believed Congress didn't have this power why would he have signed a bill creating a central bank into law? Why would he have lobbied for its statutory creation? How many times do I have to explain this rather simple principle?
Congress has made thousands of laws that aren't explicitly granted in the Constitution. If they had to be explicitly granted in the Constitution than the document would be thousands of pages long and you wouldn't even need a Congress because the Constitution would have created all the laws.
Have you actually ever read the Federalist Papers? If you had you would see that they address this issue directly. This is exactly the reason the Articles of Confederation were supplanted by the Constitution.
The notion that Congress can make only laws that are explicitly spelled out in the Constitution is completely goofball and indeed worthy of tin-foil hat nonsense. I shudder to think that this is what passes for strict constructionism today. How can you claim to support it and then selectively chose which parts you're willing to apply? It's no different than liberal attempts to change the original meaning of the words.
There is ample opportunity to criticize the actions of the Fed and to a great extent their recent incompetence in bowing to political pressure which got us into this mess. Lord knows I have my own criticisms but the notion that the Constitution doesn't even allow Congress to create a central bank is nonsense.
thopkins22
12-13-10, 14:28
This is exactly the reason the Articles of Confederation were supplanted by the Constitution.
And the reason I liked the Articles of Confederation better.:p
Gutshot John
12-13-10, 14:35
And the reason I liked the Articles of Confederation better.:p
It was a valuable document and worthy experiment and instructive in how NOT to structure a government.
Too bad it didn't actually function and almost ended the United States before it began...which is why it didn't even last a decade.
thopkins22
12-13-10, 14:45
It was a valuable document and worthy experiment and instructive in how NOT to structure a government.
Too bad it didn't actually function and almost ended the United States before it began...which is why it didn't even last a decade.
Sure. But I sure do like the notion of an impotent congress.;)
ForTehNguyen
12-13-10, 14:53
The Federal Reserve's nightmare has arrived. Ron Paul will be the Committee Chair on Domestic Monetary Policy
Gutshot John
12-13-10, 14:54
Sure. But I sure do like the notion of an impotent congress.;)
Totalitarian dictatorships also have impotent legislatures.
It should be noted that the Constitution was as much to limit the power of the executive lest he become a Caesar as it was to limit the power of Congress. Instability leads to dictatorship.
thopkins22
12-13-10, 14:58
Totalitarian dictatorships also have impotent legislatures.
It should be noted that the Constitution was as much to limit the power of the executive lest he become a Caesar as it was to limit the power of Congress. Instability leads to dictatorship.
I understand...I was just making light of our current situation with senators, congressman, and presidents overstepping their bounds.
Gutshot John
12-13-10, 15:00
I understand...I was just making light of our current situation with senators, congressman, and presidents overstepping their bounds.
You'll get no argument from me there.
This will prove to be very interesting... Representative Ron Paul has been named chairman of the House subcommittee on domestic monetary policy, which oversees the Federal Reserve as well as the currency and the valuation of the dollar. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/us/politics/13paul.html?_r=1
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