Ron Paul spoke yesterday in a Conference Committee hearing regarding financial regulatory reform. I don’t think he could have used his allotted 5 minutes more wisely.
He covered all of the criticisms of the Fed audit and forcefully ended with
What if there was a third choice for reality-seekers? Something other than the red pill or the blue pill. What if there was a purple pill? The purple pill is the gateway drug to liberty for those that aren’t quite ready to have an ice-cold-water-on-the-face wake-up call. It is a soothing alarm clock that gradually opens eyes to the truth. Rand Paul is the purple pill.
He already has his foot in the libertarian door thanks to his father, Ron Paul. This gives him legitimacy and support from many of his father’s more libertarian-minded supporters. Yet he softens what many Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh conservatives would call the crazy edges of his father. Ron Paul is a true red pill. There is no doubt about that.
Rand represents someone conservatives, Republicans, and even neo-conservatives can be comfortable supporting without wounding their own interventionist-minded pride. This becomes a problem for the more steadfast libertarians among the Ron Paul faithful who demand an A+ on the libertarian purity test.
Rand Paul was Walter Williams’ guest as he guest hosted the Rush Limbaugh radio show earlier today. They spoke for about 20 minutes. Listen to it below in two parts.
“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.”
– James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution, 4th US President, Source: “Federalist” # 62
Politicians have a standard cure for every problem — REGULATION. But what happens when there are so many regulations that not even the regulators can know them all, or understand what their consequences are? A case in point . . .
Widespread reliance on credit rating agencies, and a lack of knowledge about how those agencies were regulated, were major contributors to the 2008 financial meltdown.
Just this one example (explained in our sample letter below) is enough reason to reject the so-called financial reform bills being put forward by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Complicated regulations helped cause the 2008 mess, and they are NO part of the solution.
by John Browne, Senior Market Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital
Just a few weeks ago, most financial analysts continued to insist that the road to recovery stretched far into the future. Now, uncertainty has returned with a vengeance and the stock market has booked its first official 10% correction since this tenuous ‘bull’ market began in the spring of 2009.
In recent days, markets have shown signs of life – but nascent rallies have been quickly smothered. I believe there are five fundamental reasons for this persistent uncertainty.
First, the world’s second most held currency, the euro, is threatened with possible extinction. The massive $750 billion bailout package for Greece will not cure Greece’s dependence on entitlements, and will likely only buy time until a debt restructuring.
The world is looking to major nations such as the United States, Germany, and even the United Kingdom to backstop the likely future funding obligations of bankrupt states such as Spain, Portugal, and Italy. However, these so-called ‘major’ nations have little or no money; they themselves have borrowed massively.
by John Browne, Senior Market Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital
The European Union’s debt crisis, the threatened collapse of its fledgling ‘euro’ currency, and the uncertainties created by the UK elections may seem very far removed from the American ship of state, but, in reality, this turbulence threatens to capsize our fragile economy.
Greece is in the most immediate danger of default, followed closely thereafter by Portugal, Spain, and perhaps Italy. As the European Union overrides its own treaty agreements to offer bailouts to these ‘PIGS,’ global financial markets have panicked. Essentially what has happened is that the covenants and assumptions underlying one of the bedrock reserve currencies of international finance – and the presumed successor to the US dollar as primary reserve – have been broken. This requires a global re-rating of purchasing power risk. The problem is today’s investors have few havens left.
Like my liberty-loving brethren I’m ecstatic tonight at Rand Paul completely trouncing Trey Grayson in the Kentucky Senatorial GOP primary, but what about tomorrow?
In between all of the surface-dwellers still attacking Paul because they think he was named after Ayn Rand (he was not), there is a mathematical hard truth that his campaign must come to grips with now that a new campaign is beginning. The numbers do not lie and they can be a bit sobering.
With 99.2% of the precincts reporting a full 167,286 more votes were cast in the Democratic primary than the Republican primary. Rand Paul’s total number of votes were less than the Democratic loser. Does this mean that Paul has an uphill battle for winning the general election against Democrat Jack Conway? Maybe, maybe not.
by John Browne – Senior Market Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital
As the health of much of the global economy weakens on a daily basis, political leadership increasingly ignores the source of the malady and instead focuses on short term “band-aid” remedies. These measures which may buy a few months, or years, of relative well being, will convince the public that problems have been solved and will thereby take pressure off governments to make the needed structural changes.
The recently announced $1 trillion EU bailout is a perfect example of this “band-aid” approach. The just concluded general election in the United Kingdom is another. The inconclusive UK result, which creates a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, will be an unhappy, unquestionably temporary arrangement. Similarly, the EU bailout will continue to infuriate Northern Europeans, who may ultimately push for a breakup of the Union.
NuLabour (what the center-drifting Labour Party of Tony Blair has been branded) took a spectacular beating as a result of the clumsy stewardship of now former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Mr. Brown, whom I knew as a political bruiser in his early days in the House of Commons, had led Britain far down the road to economic ruin. As a very powerful Chancellor of the Exchequer under Tony Blair, he introduced many stealth taxes to finance a wave of high government spending. Seemingly operating as an unelected Prime Minister, he unleashed massive spending programs and interfered with UK banks in ways that worsened the effects of the financial crisis.
Quote of the Day: “No Bill or Joint Resolution shall embrace more than one subject at a time, and that shall be clearly and descriptively expressed in the Title.” – One Subject At A Time Act, Section 3(a)
There are provisions in the bill that will give the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) broad, almost dictatorial powers over the American economy. Wait until you see the list in our sample letter to Congress below.
Your company or job could come under the sway of the FTC’s vast new powers. This could place your economic future in the hands of faceless, unelected bureaucrats in far-off Washington, DC.
Is this the future you want?
DownsizeDC.org’s One Subject At a Time Act (OSTA) was written to prevent outrages like this, because . . .
Empowering the FTC’s authority over most industries has NOTHING to do with Wall Street finance. It’s an UNRELATED subject.
Liberty Maven
by John Browne, Senior Market Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital
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