Liberty Maven

Earlier we posted Ron Paul’s two question and answer periods during today’s House committee hearing on Federal Reserve Independence. Ron Paul’s opening statement for the hearing is below.

He argues, in a preemptive strike, against what the Vice Chair attempts to use as an argument against Paul’s HR1207 later in the hearing.

An addendum the the previous video posted earlier where Ron Paul asked Fed Vice Chair questions during a Federal Reserve hearing here is the second set of questions from Dr. Paul for the 2nd panel.

He asks Dr. Allan Metzger about the difference between the term “independence” and “transparency”. He then expresses a bit of tongue and cheek shock that James Kenneth Galbraith (also on the panel) brought up the Constitution in his opening testimony, and a few other questions. Galbraith then agrees that he believes Paul’s HR1207 is proper, that members of Congress are entitled to the information an audit would provide.

You can view all the opening statements regarding this hearing at this House Finanacial Services Committee web page.

Watch this latest clip below and look for video of Ron Paul’s opening statement a bit later.

Ron Paul questioned Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors today in a hearing on Fed independence on Capitol Hill today.

It’s now their “official” opinion that auditing the Federal Reserve completely will inhibit their ability to do their job, which apparently is to print money endlessly forcing a hidden tax on every person who trades in U.S. dollars.

Watch the exchange below.

Just more subterfuge in the fight to audit the Fed. Call your Senators and Congress folk about HR1207 and S604!

The bailouts are becoming recursive.  Recovery.gov was created as a “public-facing website to foster greater accountability and transparency in the use of covered funds“.  You know, so they can show us that the money is being used “wisely.”

But now it’s being reported that $18 million in additional funds well be spent to overhaul the recovery.gov web site.

Swell.

Of course it’s being trumpeted as a wonderful thing by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.  Chairman Earl Devaney said:

We are pleased that another major milestone has been achieved.

Another milestone towards what?  Utter bankruptcy?

The Republican National Committee has already put out a mock ad for the new site:

The Senate version, S.604, of Ron Paul’s audit the Federal Reserve Bill (HR.1207) has doubled in cosponsors. Sure it “only” had 3 before today, but now it has 6.

One of the new cosponsors is Sam Brownback (R-KS) who also ran for the GOP Presidential nomination last year along with Ron Paul.

HR.1207 is now up to 254 cosponsors. I wonder if they would bring it up for a vote if the  entire House other than Pelosi and Barney Frank were to cosponsor it. Probably not.

I think this new support for S.604 is due to Jim DeMint starting the fight for it in the Senate the other day. Keep their phones ringing!

Unbelievable action from the Riksbank, Government Sachs, and commentary from Joe Saluzzi of Themis Trading, yet a little funny at the same time. As the Romans would say “Hostem inveni et interfice.”

by Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution

Originally published Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article6604.html

Watch this really short Youtube clip, or read the dialogue for those without speakers:

Swedish Chef, from the Riksbank: “Yum, yum, yum for the Chocolate! Good, good! Chocolate!” (stirs batter)

Swedish Chef: “… And now, the mousse! Moose, moose! Moo, the moose!!” (pulls a moose into the room, pets it)

Swedish Chef: “… And now, the chocolate and the moose!!” (splats some chocolate on the moose’s nose)

Kermit, the Austrian Economist: “Wait a minute!! Enough!! Stop!!!”

Ever see something that is just complete nonsense? From the perspective of the Austrian economist, the below also qualifies.

The Swedish Krona (SEK) is one of the world’s “top” currencies. Along with 5 other currencies, it defines the Dollar Index (see “The Money Matrix – What is a Dollar Bill Worth? (PART 2/15)“). Tomorrow, on July 8^th, the Swedish central bank, the Riksbank will cut the deposit rate to -0.25%. That’s not a misprint. Negative 0.25%. Our central planners, Bernanke, Geithner, Summers and Bair are probably looking on with jealousy.

A negative deposit rate means that for balances held by member banks at the Riksbank, they will lose money over time. The banks may then even charge their customers a negative rate for carrying a balance. This might make some sense, but the banks don’t even have the money to start with!! Just like America’s FED, the Swedes practice fractional reserve banking, which by its very nature is completely fraudulent – the banks have very little of the depositor’s money, about 3-4% for the American banking system as I showed here “Off a Cliff with No Airbags: The FED Banking System Quivers in Fright“.

Why wouldn’t a Swede, say with 20,000 SEK, just take out his money, covert it into paper, and rent a security box at the bank for 50 SEK? If he keeps his currency in electronic form, he will lose about 50 SEK for the year anyways!

The Kermit in me just wants to shout, “STOP, YOU IDIOTS!!!”  This Keynesian stupidity has no apparent end.

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First MSNBC, now Yahoo Finance. Ron Paul’s move to audit the Federal Reserve gets more exposure. Much of this exposure is likely due to the antics on the Senate floor spawned by Jim DeMint trying to get an “audit the Fed” amendment tacked on to an appropriations bill yesterday.

The article is accompanied by a very interesting video where the “experts” discuss the audit and other general economic issues.

Check out “Ron Paul is Right. We Should Audit The Fed!” now.

By John Browne, Senior Market Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital

In economics, as in many other “soft sciences,” facts are often overshadowed by theories. The dominant economic theory currently in vogue is that the massive government stimuli orchestrated by the Bush and Obama administrations would produce an economic recovery by the end of this year.

Thus, it is no surprise that media cheerleaders have seized on the recent steep, but thinly traded, rally to find the facts that appear to fit the theory. From where do these talking heads draw this conclusion?

In recent months, we have allowed for the probability that a bear market rally, driven by seemingly low price-earnings multiples, would take hold for the first half of 2009. Months ago, I had stated that the rally would reasonably last into the summer and that the Dow could reach 10,000 before the next major downturn begins.

In the depths of the stock market crash of 2008/9, buying opportunities certainly arose. By March 2009, stock markets appeared to have been oversold. Certainly price-earnings multiples on many stocks had been compressed to generational lows. Ignoring the fact that these low multiples were underpinned by pre-recession earnings data, investors declared a bottom.

However, as is the tendency with sudden declines, bargain hunters entered the market too aggressively. On relatively thin trading levels, this led to a steep rise in stock prices which, in turn, drew in investors who feared being left behind. A steep bear market rally was in place. This mirrored the pattern of the Great Depression, when the initial crash was followed by a 68 percent rally in 1930. But after that rally had fizzled, stocks then declined by an astounding 86 percent over the two subsequent years.

While we urged caution in this rally by highlighting, among other indicators, a 38 percent decline in corporate earnings, speculative traders made enormous profits as stock markets rose by over 40 percent. But as dismal economic statistics continue to rain on everyone’s parade, the cheers are beginning to subside. Last week, the unemployment figures were released and the Dow slid by some 223 points.

Now, even speculative traders are preparing for a drop. The new-found concern is due to three basic indicators:

First, the U.S. dollar, linchpin of all American (and most global) transactions, is appearing increasingly weak. 10-year Treasury yields, as low as 2.1 percent post-crash, and continuing to stay below 4 percent, indicate a persistent bubble in “safe” U.S. bonds and cash.      Read More »

MSNBC publishes a rather obviously biased piece on Ron Paul’s efforts to bring transparency to the Federal Reserve through his bill HR1207. Perhaps some may not detect the obvious bias. For those allow me to quote a few phrases from the article.

His vendetta is fueled by the belief that the Federal Reserve is unconstitutional

His “belief”? All it takes is a read of the Constitution to know that it is unconstitutional.

It’s an amusing dissonance between the leader of the rebellion and his revolutionaries

The distrust of the Fed has reached a point at which a majority of House members are following a radical into battle.

Using words that paint Ron Paul as a radical for actually believing in following the Constitution is the essence of the problem with America today. Fortunately, the MSNBC writer does counter his own extremist paintbrush with a bit of criticism of Obama.

The Obama administration has offered typical platitudes about accountability but doesn’t have specifics about how it would work.

The article ends with perhaps more of a warning than praise:

Never underestimate Ron Paul.

Read the full article.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Quote of the Day: “Security is mostly superstition.” — Helen Keller

The PASS Act is a fraud. PASS ID is REAL ID by another name. Jim Harper at the Cato Institute has done a fabulous job of dissecting all the frauds involved in the PASS Act. If you care about the details then we highly recommend that you read his short analysis.

We’re going to focus on just one detail here. One fear about REAL ID is that you would need it to have a job, or do anything really. But what if you were denied a REAL ID because of mistaken information or some bureaucratic blunder? Think, for instance, of all the non-terrorists who have ended up on the terrorist watch list. In that case…

You would become a non-person.

To address this concern the PASS Act would enable you to access and change your own personal information. Sounds good, right, but think again…

What you can access to change, others can access to steal.

In fact, a terrorist could probably do it, and maybe even get a PASS ID with which to commit a terrorist act using your identity.

In other words, a REAL ID, or a PASS ID, which we supposedly need in order to protect us from terrorism, could actually become a tool for terrorists.

This is what happens when politicians and bureaucrats try to devise vast, complex, top-down schemes to protect us from every conceivable danger and problem. Such ambitions are utopian and ultimately harmful.

We agree with the late great Helen Keller, who again provides our quote of the day (we have used this one before, and we’ll use it again): “Security is mostly superstition.”

It’s a simple fact — the world is full of dangers, and we’ll never be rid of them all. We must focus our efforts to protect ourselves on the things that really matter. Some dangers are significant, but most are not. We assert that…

The danger posed by terrorism is probably temporary and extremely insignificant compared to other risks we face daily, like lightening strikes, automobile accidents. and warring drug gangs. By contrast…

Huge, and permanent, dangers are posed by centralized, government databases and national ID cards. Any such scheme will ensnare all of us in endless complications, many of which we cannot now imagine.

Tell your congressional employees to repeal the REAL ID Act and reject the PASS Act.

Use your personal comments to point out that the drive for an electronic national ID system is inherently contradictory, because measures to protect citizens from being harmed by the system will make it easier for terrorists to exploit the system, while attempts to protect the system from terrorists will end up harming innocent citizens.     Read More »