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Your Rotten Monetary Policy Is Destroying This Country by Ron Paul.

Your Rotten Monetary Policy Is Destroying This Country

by Ron Paul

Before the United States House of Representatives Committee on
Financial Services, Hearing on 'Monetary Policy and the State of the
Economy,' 2/29/2012

Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing on monetary policy
and the state of the economy. I believe that now, more than ever, the
American people want to hold the Federal Reserve accountable for its
loose monetary policy and want full transparency of the Fed's actions.

While the Fed has certainly released an unprecedented amount of
information on its activities, there is still much that remains
unknown. And every move towards transparency has been fought against
tooth and nail by the Fed. It took disclosure requirements enacted
within the Dodd-Frank Act to get the Fed to provide data on the its
emergency lending facilities. It took lawsuits filed by Bloomberg and
Fox News to provide data on discount window lending during the worst
parts of the financial crisis. And it will take further concerted
action on the part of Congress, the media, and the public to keep up
pressure on the Fed to remain transparent.


Transparency is not a panacea, however, as a fully transparent
organization is still capable of engaging in all sorts of mischief, as
the Federal Reserve does on a regular basis. Ironically, one of the
Fed's more egregious recent actions, adopting an explicit inflation
target, was hailed by many as another wonderful example of
transparency. Yet if you think about what this supposed 2% inflation
target actually is, you realize that it is an explicit policy to
devalue the dollar and reduce its purchasing power. Two percent annual
price inflation means that prices rise 22% within a decade, and nearly
50% within two decades.

Indeed, if you look at the performance of the consumer price index
(CPI) under Chairman Bernanke's tenure, prices have risen at a rate of
2.25% per year. Many, perhaps even most, economists would consider
this a modest rise, an example of sober, cautious monetary policy.
Some economists of Paul Krugman's persuasion might even argue that
this is too tight a monetary policy. However, 2.25% is not too far off
from the Fed's new 2% target.


Now look at the performance of the US economy since February 1, 2006,
the date Chairman Bernanke took the mantle from Alan Greenspan.
Trillions of dollars have been wasted on bailouts, stimulus packages,
and other feckless spending. Millions of Americans have lost their
jobs and have lost hope of ever regaining employment. The national
debt has risen to more than 100% of GDP, as the federal government
continues to rack up trillion-dollar deficits, aided and abetted by
the Fed's policies of quantitative easing and zero percent interest
rates. And we are supposed to believe that a 2% inflation rate,
similar to what has prevailed during the worst economic crisis since
the Great Depression, is the cure for what ails this economy.

This explicit 2% target also fails to take into account that whatever
measure is used to determine price inflation, be it CPI, core CPI,
PCE, etc., will always be chosen with an eye towards underreporting
the true rate of inflation and price rises. Pressure will be exerted
on those calculating the price indices, so as not to alarm the public
when prices begin to accelerate. One need only look at what is taking
place in Argentina today, where the government publishes an official
CPI figure that is often less than half that reported by private
sources.

A similar situation exists in this country, where economists
calculating CPI according to the original basket of goods have
determined that price inflation has increased 9.5% per year since
2006, rather than the 2.25% reported by the government. Even the
government's own data reports price rises of nearly 7% per year since
2006 on such consumer goods as gasoline and eggs. Bread, rice, and
ground beef have increased by nearly 6% per year, while bacon and
potatoes have increased nearly 5% per year. This means that in a
little over half a decade, prices on staple consumer goods have
increased 30-50%, all while wages have stagnated and millions of
Americans find themselves out of work and without a paycheck. Of
course, government officials claim that price increases do not affect
the average American because they can always buy hamburger instead of
steak, or have cereal instead of bacon. But the American people can
see how they are suffering because of the Federal Reserve. The
government’s claims that the official statistics show no reason to be
concerned about inflation is Marxist – as in Groucho, who famously
said: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

The Federal Reserve continues to keep interest rates low in the hopes
of boosting lending and consumption. But keeping interest rates at
zero discourages saving, particularly as the rate of price inflation
continues to rise. Why stick money in a savings account earning 0.05%
if it is guaranteed to lose at least 2% of its value every year? And
this is a guarantee, as the Fed has promised a 2% rate of increase in
price inflation, while also guaranteeing a zero percent federal funds
rate through 2014. Retirees living on fixed incomes, dependent on
savings, or on interest income from investments will see their savings
drawn down as they are forced to consume principal. Young people, hard
hit by the recession and struggling to find jobs, will fail to see the
virtue of thrift. Saving or investing is an exercise in futility, as
parking money in the bank or in CDs will guarantee a loss, while
investing in stocks, bonds, or mutual funds will net at best paltry
gains, and at worst massive losses in this continuing weak economy.

The longer the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates low and
discourages savings and investment, the more societal attitudes will
change from being future oriented to present oriented. The Federal
Reserve and its policies already served to stimulate and prioritize
consumption over saving, creating the largest debt bubble the world
has ever known. The extended zero interest rate policy only serves to
promote more consumption and debt now, eviscerating thrift and savings
– the true building blocks of prosperity. This present-oriented
mindset has become pervasive especially among politicians, putting the
government in dismal financial shape as Congressmen and Presidents
over the years have taken to heart Louis XV's famous saying: "Après
moi, le déluge." If the American people follow the same path in their
own lives, this country will be ruined. Capital will be depleted,
infrastructure will fall into disrepair, and the United States will be
a mere shadow of its former self. It is well past time to end the
failed monetary policy that encourages this mistaken preference for
cheap money now.

March 1, 2012

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

Original link at LewRockwell.com: http://lewrockwell.com/paul/paul794.html

Phony gold standard proponents in Utah and Colorado. Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.

Some Colorado lawmakers are considering making gold and silver money again, but there is more than meets the eye going on here in SmartMoney’s article.

http://tinyurl.com/8xcgujd

You will get screwed if lawmakers have their way.  I guarantee that these politicians are not for a private gold coin standard.

If some lawmakers have their way, the future of money might not be a digital wallet, but a clinking gold coin.

How many Colorado state senators are sponsors of this bill?  I’m guessing hardly any.  Utah legalized the payment of taxes in gold coins at face-value.  For example, if Utah claims you owe $500 in Utah state taxes, then you could pay with 10 one ounce gold coins with a $50 face-value each (market value $17,750).  Thanks, but no thanks.

Colorado state senators are considering a bill that would legalize gold and silver as currency, a practice President Franklin Roosevelt banned to prevent hoarding. Currently, the metals are considered property, with capital gains taxes levied on the profits from their sale. Utah passed a similar measure legalizing gold and silver use last year, and a dozen other states are considering it.

There are two gold standards: a government gold standard and a private gold coin standard.  The first barely offers any more freedom than the current system.  The later offers privacy and freedom.

“It’s a message from the grassroots level that there needs to be a change in monetary policy,” says Rich Danker, economics director for American Principles Project, a conservative think tank. Investors often turn to gold as a way to preserve wealth in tough economic times, and supporters of such state laws have cited concerns about the strength of the U.S. dollar and the country’s growing deficit. A return to the gold standard, they say, would result in a stronger dollar.

Mr. Danker is not calling for a private gold coin standard in which prices are expressed in gold and/or silver weights.  He wants the government to control the price of gold like after WWI and before the government confiscation of 1933.  It is a fake gold standard if you can’t redeem dollars for gold at a bank.

Going with gold has its hurdles. “Gold and silver prices fluctuate dramatically throughout the day,” says Jack Plunkett, chief executive of Plunkett Research. “It would be difficult to figure out what your coin was worth at the moment you paid your bill with it.” Finding merchants willing to accept gold as payment isn’t likely to be easy, either. (Utah’s law, for example, doesn’t require merchants accept gold or silver as payment.) Those buyers would need to determine the precious metal content of items such as coins and root out counterfeits, which could cost them money on the transaction, he says.

The same could be said about the dollar.  The dollar’s price fluctuates dramatically throughout the day.  It would be difficult to figure out what your dollars are worth at the moment you paid you bill with it.  The Federal Reserve could by inflating on the day you spend your dollars.  Violently enforced legal tender laws make finding merchants that accept dollars easy, but that isn’t a detractor to gold and silver as money.  Enterprising banks could issue gold/silver debit cards that guarantee the fineness and weights.  Trust would become commonplace if gold was redeemable at any time.  Dollars are counterfeits to gold and silver.  Inflation destroys the purchasing power of dollars.  This dwarfs transaction cost during a transition to a private gold / silver coin standard.

But supporters say those concerns are overblown. For one, they say the new state measures would allow consumers who have invested in gold or silver to spend it directly, rather than selling the metal first and incurring capital gains taxes, says Danker. That’s especially useful for older U.S. coins, which may have a higher value in metal content than their marked face value. It also may not mean walking around with a bag of precious coins, either — Utah Gold & Silver Depository is working on a debit card system that draws against the value of a customer’s deposited gold.

A repeal of legal tender laws would doom the dollar.  People would be free of the politicians and the Federal Reserve.  That isn’t what Colorado state senators want.  They are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

(Thanks to Jim for the link)

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TIP OF THE WEEK: The Federal Reserve Is Not Holding Down the FED Funds Rate, But I Know Who Is.

The Federal Reserve Is Not Holding Down the FED Funds Rate, But I Know Who Is.

Jason Brizic

February 10th, 2011

The Federal Reserve pretends to control interest rates through the use the FED funds rate.  http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/openmarket.htm

I see this all the time in financial articles.  Pick any of these articles (http://tinyurl.com/7vurwdx) and you will see moronic language like this:

“Federal Reserve officials said they expect short-term interest rates to stay close to zero "at least through late 2014." The Fed has been trying to give more explicit guidance on what it expects in the future as part of a broader move to greater transparency.”

The FED claims that it is holding this key interest rate low until at least 2014 using the federal funds target rate.  Here is the definition of the FED funds rate from its Wikipedia entry:

In the United States, the federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions actively trade balances held at the Federal Reserve, called federal funds, with each other, usually overnight, on an uncollateralized basis. Institutions with surplus balances in their accounts lend those balances to institutions in need of larger balances. The federal funds rate is an important benchmark in financial markets.[1][2]

The interest rate that the borrowing bank pays to the lending bank to borrow the funds is negotiated between the two banks, and the weighted average of this rate across all such transactions is the federal funds effective rate.

The federal funds target rate is determined by a meeting of the members of the Federal Open Market Committee which normally occurs eight times a year about seven weeks apart. The committee may also hold additional meetings and implement target rate changes outside of its normal schedule.

The commercial bankers (aka depository institutions) have decided not to loan out all the money the FED created for them during the bailouts of 2008-2009.  They are holding over $1.5 trillion dollars in excess reserves.

Therefore, they don’t need to make overnight loans to one another to satisfy the legal reserve requirements. These bankers are scared to make loans in this horrible economic environment.  I don’t blame them for being scared.  They have decided to park the money back at the FED and the FED is paying them 0.25% interest to store it for them.  This has caused the federal funds effective rate to drop to 0%. 

The FED could get the banks to lend the $1.5 trillion dollars into the economy by imposing a fee on excess reserves.  But that would create hyperinflation in the money supply and prices would rise over 100% in a few months.  The FED doesn’t want that to happen, so they pretend to be in control of the federal funds effective rate when the terrified bankers really are.  The bottom line is that there will be no economic recovery until bankers increase their lending.  That means we will experience a double-dip recession regardless of what happens in Europe or China.  I’m waiting for much lower stock prices to buy high dividend stocks with earning power and strong balance sheets.

For more tips, go here:

http://www.myhighdividendstocks.com/category/tip-of-the-week

Doug Casey on the Collapse of the Euro and the EU

Here are some of my recommended action steps to help you with
implementing Doug Casey's recommendations in his recent article for
LewRockwell.com (http://lewrockwell.com/casey/casey105.html)

1) Buy $10,000 worth of precious metals if you have none. Put 80%
into gold coins from your home country. I recommend tenth ounce gold
coins because they are more tradeable, but they have a higher premium
over the spot price of gold. Go to www.kitco.com or www.apmex.com to
learn the spot price of gold and silver and the associated premiums
for various coins.

http://www.apmex.com/Category/504/American_Gold_Eagles_2012__Prior.aspx

Put the remaining 20% into one ounce silver coins or junk silver
coins. Junk silver is not "junk". That is the name of US dimes and
quarters from before 1965. Their composition is 90% silver.

http://www.apmex.com/Product/27/90_Silver_Coins___100_Face_Value_Bag_.aspx

2) Have printed cash on hand to buy valuable tools of production for
your side business from desperate sellers locally (e.g. Craigslist) or

3) I disagree with Doug Casey that the gold mining stocks are cheap
right now. Visit some of the gold mining stock articles on my blog to
see why I don't think they are so cheap. Here is one to start wiith:
http://www.myhighdividendstocks.com/category/stocks-that-pay-small-dividends/...

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TIP OF THE WEEK - Why MF Global went down and how you can protect your life's savings

December 16th, 2011

Jason Brizic

Investment institutions (like MF Global) can legally steal your assets and use your property for their own purposes.  They can do this because you have agreed to let them do this by consenting to their customer agreements.  Read the article below by Austrian economist, Doug French, for a devastatingly clear explanation of what killed MF Global and it customer’s [victims] savings.

Your savings and investments may not be safe in your brokerage accounts depending on the fine print in the agreements you consented to.  Some financial corporations have agreements that allows them to use your assets as their collateral in their bets in the derivatives markets.  Other financial corporation’s only claim to do this with your margin accounts; therefore, standard brokerage accounts and retirement accounts would remain untouched in that situation.

This means that an investor who had $100,000 in a money market account with MF Global could still be wiped out by the MF Global bankruptcy.  Most people think that their brokerage money is safe in money markets, but that is not necessarily the case depending on the customer agreements you entered into.

Action steps:

1)    Go to Google and perform a search using the name of your financial institution plus the word rehypothecation.  The results might scare you.

a.    For example Fidelity rehypothecation yields the following results: http://www.google.com/search?q=fidelity+rehypothecation&rls=com.microsoft:*&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

b.    Click through a couple of the results until you find someone who dug out the applicable fine print from the customer agreements

2)    If the fine print says anything like what MF Global’s fine print said, then you have a decision to make soon.  You can keep the account or close the account.

“7. Consent To Loan Or Pledge You hereby grant us the right, in accordance with Applicable Law, to borrow, pledge, repledge, transfer, hypothecate, rehypothecate, loan, or invest any of the Collateral, including, without limitation, utilizing the Collateral to purchase or sell securities pursuant to repurchase agreements [repos] or reverse repurchase agreements with any party, in each case without notice to you, and we shall have no obligation to retain a like amount of similar Collateral in our possession and control.”

It isn’t clear to me at this time how the MF Global bankruptcy will be handled by the FDIC and the SIPC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sipc).  There are proposals in congress to change what is covered and by how much.  Regardless of the actions of congress, ultimately the FDIC and SIPC are empty promises because they don’t have enough money to insure the assets they claim to insure.  The Federal Reserve would have to hyper inflate the money supply to back their insurance claims.  Doug French addresses this at the end of his article below.

* * * * * * * * * *

MF Global's Fractional Reserves

by Doug French

Recently by Doug French: Who Serves During Disaster?

 

 

 

Jon Corzine told the House Agriculture Committee, "I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date." The public is outraged that the former CEO of bankrupt global financial-derivatives broker and prime dealer in US Treasury securities MF Global doesn't know where the missing $1.2 billion in client funds went.

Corzine is the member a few exclusive clubs: he is a Goldman Sachs alum, former US senator, and former New Jersey governor. After the incumbent Corzine was beat by Chris Christie in the 2009 New Jersey gubernatorial race, the MF board probably rejoiced, believing the guy to fix their problems was suddenly available. Now he's in the club of taking a mere 20 months to create the eighth largest bankruptcy in history.

As a stand-alone entity, MF Global was born in 2007 when it was spun off from UK hedge-fund giant, Man Group. MF booked revenues of $4 billion that year from interest earned by using its customers' funds, an operation that sounds like fractionized banking: short-term embezzlement used to make profits.

For banks, the practice was sealed in English common law in 1811 in the court case of Carr vs. Carr, where Master of the Rolls Sir William Grant ruled that debts mentioned in a will included bank accounts since the money had been deposited into the bank and wasn't earmarked in a sealed bag. The deposit was thus a loan rather than a bailment.

The same Judge Grant ruled the same way five years later in Devaynes vs. Noble, despite an attorney's argument that "a banker is rather a bailee of his customer's funds than his debtor … because the money in … [his] hands is rather a deposit than a debt, and may therefore be instantly demanded and taken up."

In 1848, in Foley vs. Hill and Others, Lord Cottenham ruled,

"Money, when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal; it is then the money of the banker, who is bound to an equivalent by paying a similar sum to that deposited with him when he is asked for it.… The money placed in the custody of a banker to do with it as he pleases."

It's been clear sailing for bankers ever since. No questions asked.

At the same time, people are surprised that a commodity brokerage firm would misplace client assets. As Christopher Elias explains for Thomson Reuters,

"MF Global's bankruptcy revelations concerning missing client money suggest that funds were not inadvertently misplaced or gobbled up in MF's dying hours, but were instead appropriated as part of a mass Wall St manipulation of brokerage rules that allowed for the wholesale acquisition and sale of client funds through re-hypothecation. A loophole appears to have allowed MF Global, and many others, to use its own clients' funds to finance an enormous $6.2 billion Eurozone repo bet."

Free bankers are always insisting that fractional-reserve banking is A-OK, as long as bankers inform depositors up front that the bank will be using their customers' money to make loans and investments.

That is exactly the case with MF Global. The company's customer agreements included the following clause:

7. Consent To Loan Or Pledge You hereby grant us the right, in accordance with Applicable Law, to borrow, pledge, repledge, transfer, hypothecate, rehypothecate, loan, or invest any of the Collateral, including, without limitation, utilizing the Collateral to purchase or sell securities pursuant to repurchase agreements [repos] or reverse repurchase agreements with any party, in each case without notice to you, and we shall have no obligation to retain a like amount of similar Collateral in our possession and control.

Back in 2007, customer funds held by MF as collateral against commodities trades could be invested in two-year Treasuries earning north of 4.5 percent. But in the wake of the '08 meltdown, the Bernanke Fed has flattened yields to be counted in basis points. With these low rates MF Global revenues fell to $517 million in 2010.

The old bond trader Corzine thought he could juice up MF's earnings with a little financial razzle-dazzle. Thinking outside the box (and off the balance sheet), Corzine moved $16.5 billion in assets into repos. A repo involves putting up assets as collateral, assets to be repurchased later, and borrowing money against those assets. MF used an off-balance-sheet repo called a "repo-to-maturity" where the loan and the collateral in the transaction have the same maturity. US accounting rules consider the transaction a sale and the assets can be moved off the balance sheet.

Most of these assets were bonds from Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, and Ireland, all paying healthy coupon rates that would easily cover the repo interest rate and provide a nice profit. MF Global would have virtually no skin in the game (their customers provided it) and be earning a nice interest-rate spread.

Although things have been rocky in euroland, the collateral value of the short-term bonds appeared safe with the guarantee provided by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).

With the $16.5 billion in assets moved off its balance sheet, MF Global then ramped up a net-long sovereign-debt position of $6.2 billion on its balance sheet – exposure that was five times the company's net worth.

While the EFSF guarantee would insure against the default of the sovereign debt if the bonds were held to maturity, MF was still at risk to make margin calls, if the bonds dropped in price day-to-day. Elias writes,

"Like Wall Street cocaine, leveraging amplifies the ups and downs of an investment; increasing the returns but also amplifying the costs. With MF Global's leverage reaching 40 to 1 by the time of its collapse, it didn't need a Eurozone default to trigger its downfall – all it needed was for these amplified costs to outstrip its asset base."

So while MF Global's eurozone bets had not defaulted, the company's liquidity was drained making margin calls and trying to meet short-term-debt obligations as the euro-crisis news flow out of Europe vacillated.

MF Global was able to leverage up its euroland bets by way of the rehypothecation of their clients' collateral. Hypothecation is pledging collateral for a loan. Like the mortgage on your house.

Customers of MF posted cash, gold, or securities as collateral to backstop their commodity futures and derivatives trading. MF would then take those customer assets to back its own trades and borrowing. Mr. Elias explains, "The practice of re-hypothecation runs into the trillions of dollars and is perfectly legal. It is justified by brokers on the basis that it is a capital efficient way of financing their operations much to the chagrin of hedge funds."

Under US rules, a prime broker is allowed to rehypothecate assets to the value of 140 percent of the client's liability to the broker. The rules are more liberal in the United Kingdom, where there is no limit and in many cases UK brokers rehypothecate 100 percent of collateral value placed in their custody.

Elias writes that by 2007, rehypothecation was half the shadow banking system.

"Prior to Lehman Brothers' collapse, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) calculated that U.S. banks were receiving $4 trillion worth of funding by re-hypothecation, much of which was sourced from the UK. With assets being re-hypothecated many times over (known as 'churn'), the original collateral being used may have been as little as $1 trillion – a quarter of the financial footprint created through re-hypothecation."

All of this churning has created rivers of liquidity, much of it with no asset backing. And what assets do provide backing aren't the quality they used to be. The repo rules were liberalized in the Clinton era. So instead of AAA government paper being required, AA sovereign debt works just fine; after all, as James B. Stewart writes for the New York Times:

"The law also allows commodities firms like MF Global to use segregated customer funds as a source of low-cost financing for their own operations, but they are required to replace any customer assets taken from segregated accounts with supposedly ultrasafe collateral of the same value, typically United States Treasuries, municipal obligations and obligations whose payments of principal and interest are guaranteed by the government." [emphasis added]

Of course all this rehypothecating creates mountains of counterparty risk, all dependent on dubious collateral that has been pledged multiple times. The equivalent of having four mortgages on a house, each having been sold to other parties who have been told their mortgage is in first position. When the property value starts dropping or the borrower doesn't pay, only one lender will get there first and legal fistfights ensue.

This rehypothecation activity may be the biggest credit bubble of all time, according to Elias. J.P. Morgan alone has rehypothecated over half a trillion dollars in 2011, Morgan Stanley $410 billion, Goldman Sachs $28 billion, and the list goes on.

Americans have been told US banks have little exposure to European sovereign debt, but according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), US banks hold $181 billion in the sovereign debt of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. And while Germany is considered the belle of the Continental ball, Grant's Interest Rate Observer reports that Deutsche Bank is levered at 43:1 and the Bundesbank has doubled its leverage since 2007 when it was geared at 75:1 – these days the central bank is levered at 153:1.

Extreme leverage is a problem if the slightest thing goes wrong – anywhere. When the cost of swapping euros for dollars soared at the end of last month, a coordinated central-bank cavalry charged out of nowhere, cutting swap rates and establishing temporary bilateral-liquidity swap arrangements. Nobody but financial news junkies seemed to know or care.

The truth about the financial crash wasn't known until Bloomberg chased its request for information all the way to the Supreme Court to obtain documents that shed light on how much dough the Federal Reserve really provided the banks during the 2008 meltdown.

For instance, it turns out Wachovia shareholders got lucky as the bank was floated a secret loan from the Fed of $50 billion to keep the doors open while a sale could be arranged with Wells Fargo for $7 a share rather than shareholders having to take the buck-a-share offer from the wounded Citibank.

"This deal enables us to keep Wachovia intact and preserve the value of an integrated company, without government support," Wachovia's chief executive Robert Steel said at the time.

Right, no government support at all.

Instead of being among the bailed out, Corzine and MF Global are now joining Lehman, IndyMac, Colonial, and all the small-fry banks lacking the friends in high places needed to keep them afloat. In the fractional-reserve world, markets don't decide the winners and losers; government does.

Stewart writes for the NYT, "SIPC will replace up to $500,000 of securities and cash (but not futures contracts) missing from customer accounts at member firms," and the notion of even covering futures accounts has been floated on CNBC by Senator Debbie Stabenow, just as the FDIC replaces deposits up to $250,000. But covering the losses of clients and depositors is hardly the reflection of sound capitalism and the honoring of property rights.

Murray Rothbard wrote,

"If no business firm can be insured, then an industry consisting of hundreds of insolvent firms is surely the last institution about which anyone can mention 'insurance' with a straight face. 'Deposit insurance' is simply a fraudulent racket, and a cruel one at that, since it may plunder the life savings and the money stock of the entire public."

So it's unlikely Jon Corzine knows where the $1.2 billion in customer money went any more than the president of a failed bank would know exactly where the customer deposits went.

The bigger issue is that, day by day, Mr. Corzine looks to be merely a canary in the fractional-reserve coal mine.

Reprinted from Mises.org.

December 15, 2011

Doug French [send him mail] is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the author of Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Money Supply. He received the Murray N. Rothbard Award from the Center for Libertarian Studies. See his tribute to Murray Rothbard.

* * * * * * * * * *

Link to the article on LewRockwell.com: http://lewrockwell.com/french/french143.html

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Legendary Investor, Jim Rogers, says times are going to get much worse

An excellent, straight shooting article on Jim Rogers thoughts.  Own real assets in times of high inflation.  Central bank money printing will lead to highly inflationary times.
 
 
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Visual evidence of the European soverign debt crisis and worldwide recession.

The New York Times employs a bunch of Keynesian socialists, but they do produce some quality interactive visual graphics.  They recently produced an excellent visualization of the European sovereign debt crisis that you should take a look at.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/23/sunday-review/an-overview-of-the-euro-crisis.html

Italy will defalt along with Greece.  The French banks are doomed without central banker bailouts.  The bailouts will be inflationary.  Europe is back in recession.   The US is next.  Stock markets will fall.  There will be high dividend stock bargains.  Keep your powder dry until near the next bottom.

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Nigel Farage Nails the Eurocrats for the Disaster They Have Caused. He is the Ron Paul of Europe.

The Eurozone will breakup peacefully or there will be massive strife.  Neither outcome is good for the people who live in the USA, Europe, or Asia.  Nigel Farage is the Ron Paul of Europe.  He has been warning the Eurocrats for years about the disaster they are causing just like Ron Paul has in the USA.

There will be opportunities to buy high dividend stocks with safety of principal near the bear market lows.  The Euro will implode and take markets much lower than they are today.  Don’t believe the hype coming from the Eurocrat’s press releases and summits.  Don’t risk your savings on the ex-communist and present socialist pipedreams of a politically and fiscally unified Europe.

http://www.garynorth.com/public/8789.cfm

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Successful investor decimates socialist BBC interviewer

Kyle Bass defends the free market against a hostile BBC interviewer who throws the Keynesian playbook at him.  They debate Europe's soverign debt crisis, Germany's predicament, the role of speculation, Japan's coming crisis, and gold.

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MF Global Heist by Cathy Cuthbert

To: James W. Giddens, Trustee, SIPA Liquidation of MF Global, Inc. and Martin Glenn, United States Bankruptcy Judge

From: Cathy Cuthbert

RE: MF Global Heist

I am a lucky, former MF Global client. Unfortunately, I'm not a multi-billionaire who got the memo. I had a modest account that was supplying me with a modest livelihood, when suddenly one Monday afternoon, my account was frozen, my livelihood was essentially gone, and four years worth of trading profits vanished into cyber space. You might be interested to know that sitting on my desk as I write is an application for a part-time, seasonal position stocking shelves at the local Rite-Aid. Then again, maybe not…

Let's try a thought experiment. Suppose I worked at a little bank in Anywhere, USA and it just so happened that I had a few peccadilloes I needed to clean up. So I borrowed just a tad of money from a few clients' accounts without it showing on their statements or anything -- don't want to alarm the little tykes -- intending all along to of course return the money 'cause ya know, I'm good for it, but somehow I just couldn't come up with the bucks fast enough and somebody found out. Do you suppose I could just resign, go home and suck a sore paw while someone else looked high and low, under my desk, in my filing cabinet, maybe pieced together my shredded docs hoping to find out where, oh where the money went?

Don't be ridiculous. Not only would I immediately be tased, hand cuffed and thrown into the slammer, hard evidence or no, but the money would be very quickly found since there is not one thin dime that passes between accounts in all of the entire USA that isn't thoroughly and incessantly tracked anywhere and everywhere it goes. Not one thin dime. You fellas know it, I know it, but worse for you, the whole world knows it and I don't have to tell you they are all watching.

Should I remind you that the key factor in any financial market is the belief of all the participants that the market is mostly fair? Oh, please, don't call me naïve. I am well aware that futures trading is a negative sum game, and that there are plenty of shenanigans going on with bad fills, running stops and the like. That's ok, though, since it is petty theft and we can figure out ways to stay in the game regardless. But what everybody needs to know is that nobody is going to clean out our accounts. We need to be assured that flagrant grand theft is simply out of the question. If the idea were to become credible that anyone's account -- or, as in this case, everyone's accounts -- can be stolen with impunity and with no recourse for the aggrieved, nobody in his right mind would be in the futures market.

You can obfuscate with legal mumbo jumbo about how depositing money into a futures account makes me an unsecured creditor, but I can assure you that you don't want to go in that direction. Here's why. If you use that excuse to pay off the Big Boys by letting them cut ahead of us clients in bankruptcy due to our status as unsecured creditors, what does that mean for my account at the friendly, neighborhood Bank of America? Steal from us MF Global clients, and the hoi polloi, who are already slowly but surely waking up to the banking scam, just might figure out that they, too, are unsecured creditors every time they deposit their paychecks.

Yes, Jimmy and Marty, you are staring in the face of not just a run on the futures markets, but a run on the banks.

Let's stop pretending that you don't know where the money is. Corzine got a margin call from the Big Boys and paid it. So claw it back. Yes, it's that simple. A mere $600 million is not going to solve their multi-billion dollar problems, anyway. While you're waiting for the clawback, you can make all the clients' accounts whole with funds from SIPC if you have to. Forget this pathetic 60% recovery of collateral. Nothing less than 100% will do. And don't forget to order Corzine his orange jump suit. Either he bunks with Madoff or no one will believe that this can't happen again.

So here's the deal. You can be the heroes or you can be the goats. You can take the high ground, convince the Big Boys that they have gone too far for their own good and return the futures markets to some semblance of reliability, or you could be the ones to kick the last prop out from under the vestiges of capitalism and send the world spiraling at an ever accelerating pace into a fascist future.

Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
 
 
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