From the Comments: The Economic Roundtable.

Greetings!

I received some most excellent comments and questions from my most recent This Week on Wall Street Post. I wanted to take the time to answer them directly, as best I can.

NASCAR said...

Ron Paul had an excellent explantion on what was realy affecting inflation. Monetary Inflation Is the Problem.


The feds are printing money to pay the bills as opposed to raising taxes. Not that I like raising taxes I just think printing money is even more despicable. This all had never occurred to me and it makes perfect sense now that I think about it. Filthy bastards will do anything. Geeez.

You got it!

The government spends trillions of dollars a year, with a lot of it being wasteful, outside of its lawful and constitutional areas of responsibility, and, in some cases, extremely harmful, such as the funding for VAWA, IMBRA, and so forth.

To prevent exactly this sort of the thing, the Constitution of the United States in Article 8 says that Congress has the power to:

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

Section 9 says:

No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

Section 10 says:

No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything 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.

As we can see, the Congress is forbidden to collect direct taxes, make or use money that cannot be coined or measurable (i.e. gold or silver coin), and the States are forbidden to make anything other than gold and silver legal tender, the status which our federal reserve notes enjoy today.

While most would assume that the Sixteenth Amendment gives Congress the power to collect an income tax on personal income, there is a body of research that argues otherwise, but that is another issue for another time.

Basically, in my opinion, all of this was to prohibit the federal government from doing anything like what it is doing today, imposing stealth taxes on the people via inflation and printing money with no gold or silver backing whatsoever.

If the feds wanted to fund something as harmful and unconstitutional as the Office of Child Support Enforcement, under a constitutional system, the government would have to either raise taxes (constitutionally), or undertake some form of activity to raise funds that would force it to seek popular support from the people, a task that would prove to be extremely difficult.

Who in their right mind would willingly subsidize their own destruction, if they had all the facts in their possession?

R said...

I see the end is near, I had not realized we were so close to a hyperinflation event.

Kumo where is a good place to buy gold and silver?

R,

It is getting damn close to all out disaster, but there is still hope that we as a country can straighten up and fly right. It's always better to hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.

For gold and silver coinage, please visit Goldcoins.org. I recommend them as they have a pretty good assortment of hardware, and it should be known that I have no financial interest in this company (full disclosure).

And also, if the shit really hits the fan, scrap gold (such as jewelry) can come in handy as well.

Hope that helps.

TBA wrote,

Kumo, on the question of gold: I watched the Constitution Class videos and I watched the Money Masters videos. Here is my question: I've always known that Libertarians suport a return to the gold standard and that makes sense. But the gentleman in the Money Masters video is AGAINST a return to the gold standard. His reasoning seems sound. The world bank seems to now control all of the gold,a nd a return to the standard may be fruitless. My question is which position do you believe is the correct one? The libertarain position on having a gold standard or the position of the gentleman on Money Standard where he simply wants the Federal government to print money without any interest rates?

I feel where the Money Masters guy is coming from, because in The Case For Gold and in Secrets of the Federal Reserve, they talk about how the gold market was manipulated by major players, especially in London by the Rothschilds and others. The Money Masters guy was thinking that so long as the government printed money in house, it would be safe from manipulation by outside forces. It goes without saying that any future "hard money" system should be set up to keep any outside manipulation to a minimum.

While I haven't finished reading The Case For Gold yet, I am looking forward to the ultimate recommendations that Paul and Lehrman make in the book.

With that said, I prefer a gold standard (as argued in The Case For Gold) because the purpose of such a system is to limit the power of the government to inflate money, which, as history shows, it will do if left to its own devices. As I pointed out earlier, politics and money don't mix well, and the ability to print money to satisfy any and all interest groups goes against the spirit of a republican form of government, which the Constitution guarantees.

Such a system would enable a government to print interest free, but it is very possible that we would end up with the same problems, and spending issues, that we face under the Federal Reserve. Free money is free money, after all.

I believe that the Libertarians, such as Paul and others, seek a hard money standard in order to check the size and spending of the government, and to elevate the people to sovereign status, as the citizen holds REAL wealth, as opposed to funny money, in his possession. If the government wants to confiscate his wealth for feminist pet projects, for example, it would take one helluva stir in order to take it from him against his will.

If the feminists believe that the personal is the political, then maybe Paul and others believe that the gold coin separates personal freedom and wealth from political goals and shenanigans.

And, given the brilliant track record of governments to oppress and violate the rights of its citizens, I tend to side with the Gold is good point of view.

Cause less is more!

Thanks all, for reading my humble blog, and God Bless.

Kumo.