Just read an interview with Hank Paulson and how he "rues the shortage of firepower as battle raged". The guy's an idiot....or thinks we are. He whines about how he wasn't able to fix the problems we are having with what he was given. Silly. He was given 700 BILLION DOLLARS and the authority to do whatever he wanted just like he asked. His problem is he asked for the wrong weapons! When a fire is raging out of control, DON'T USE A FLAMETHROWER!!! This is an apt metaphor. The dollar is losing value so fast, the government reporting constantly changes the particulars of what makes up the "core inflation". I don't know about you but when I see food prices jump 6-8% per month for several months running, I really don't care what the so called "core inflation" is. It's blue smoke and mirrors so that more money can be stolen from Social Security recipients by not raising the cost of living adjustment by the original promised calculation because that would be too expensive. You get the drift. Now Mr. Paulson bemoans the need to take equity positions in private banks because it's too much "like the initial UK programme where it was like a nationalisation or it was punitive." Those of us who remember a wonderful Disney animation called the "Song of the South" will remember Uncle Remus (a really neat old guy I wish I had in my neighborhood when I was a kid) told the story of Brer Rabbit who had been caught by Brer Fox and begged not to be thrown in the briar patch. These internationalist clowns are just like that. Hank Paulson wouldn't be the Treasury Secretary if he didn't subscribe to bigger government and his crocodile tears over having to take equity positions in private banks remind me of Brer Rabbit. By the way, don't ever forget that the money was to be used to buy "toxic assets" not equity. How soon they forget. Here in South Carolina our own Bob Inglis and Lindsay Graham voted for this travesty of a bailout and look what it got us! Demands for more bailouts! BIG surprise! Turn up the flamethrower. Let's make sure there aren't even ashes left of our much vaunted banking system so we have to be merged into a nice comfy new world banking system that will "work this time". We need to throw cold water on the central banksters schemes not flames. Private people can use gold and silver and shun the "elastic currency" of the banks. All the term "elastic" means is the banks can steal value from whoever holds the currency by inflating it. Start using only gold and silver produced by the US Mint. It's legal tender. How would you feel if you got paid for a week's worth of work with $50? Not good, huh? What if that $50 was a gold eagle? That's an ounce of gold. Not bad, huh? The IRS recently lost a court case in Nevada when there were no convictions from 161 various counts of fraud against one Robert Kahre and his employees who were paid in US issued silver coins. They declared the face value; the IRS claimed bullion value and reason prevailed. We are a "legal tender" system so the face value not the bullion value rules. We had this scenario during the American Revolution. The funny money was called the "Continental" and the gold and silver was called "specie". Our Continental Congress printed so much of the Continental dollar that within 3 years, you couldn't buy anything with them. Hence the derisive term, "Not worth a Continental". Now the banksters don't even have to run the printing presses; dollars are created as journal entries on computers. The cost: nothing. We, the people, have the advantage that we also have platinum coins that are legal tender at $100 per ounce. Let's start pricing stuff in "ferns" (FRN - Federal Reserve Notes which only have debt backing them) and "specie" which is legal tender US minted gold, silver and platinum. Like it? These coins can be purchased in sizes 1/10, 1/4, 1/2 and 1 troy ounce and I have seen 1/20 troy ounce platinum sold. For smaller transactions, let's use junk silver dated 1964 and earlier. It's time.

Is Gold ever inflationary?

Believe it or not: Gold has been inflationary. Amazing, huh? During the Spanish conquest of South America, the Conquistadors send back so much gold stolen from the Indians, in such a short time, the Spanish economy could not absorb it. In the seaports, a drink that cost a copper peso soon cost an ounce of gold. The reason was that the currency was inflated so quickly from gold gained without actual work. The operative word in my openin statements is, "stolen". You see, when gold is extracted from the ground in the normal manner, it requires a lot of work. When you do your normal work, you make an incremental improvement in society by your work (unless you are a thief). The essence of money is to be able to exchange labor for labor. You don't necessarily want what I do but someone does who does not necessarily want what you do. Money allows us to do business without the third party involved. If someone digs the gold or silver out of the ground and it's used to create money, there is enough work involved to avoid an inflationary impact. In the case of South American gold, the gold was stolen and dumped into another economy suddenly and created inflation. Yes, I know, theft is a form of work but we're talking about money, which should be honest, so we only want the results of honest work. Normally "money" and "currency" are used interchangeably but "money" by recent historical definition has meant something made from precious metals, also known as "specie". "Currency" is a representation of "money" in the form of a receipt. Hence the clause on gold and silver certificates that stated, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury or any Federal Reserve Bank." If a Federal Reserve Note is redeemable in "lawful money", what does that make a Federal Reserve Note?

It's time to fight back

There is a lot of misinformation about the causes of our economic woes in America. The new White House Chief of Staff gloated that the crises (plural) we face are opportunities to increase government control. Great! We've had increasing government control since 1913 when the Federal Reserve System was created and things get worse all the time! The purpose of the blog is to get people participating in the research concerning why things always seem to go against the little guy. It's time for us little guys to fight back and protect ourselves.

First things first, understand that inflation is theft by government. It's like adding water to your favorite soup. Keep adding water and pretty soon all the flavor is gone because there's too much water. It's the same with currency. If you add currency to an economy too fast, the purchasing power (soup) of the economy gets diluted (too much water) so that, finally, each individual has only a few molecules of soup in a lot of water. That's what drives prices up. The correct way to think of things is that the individual dollar buys less and less so it take more and more to get the same goods and services. Even the Federal Reserve System ("Fed" from now on) admits that the dollar has lost 96% of it's purchasing power since 1913. Well, who's been in control of the dollar? They have! Let's start with the position that they either don't have the control they want us to think they have (incompetent) or they are doing this deliberately (insidious). Question: do you want THEM to control the value of YOUR money? Stay tuned for more info.