Another great “Freedom Watch” show today. Tom Woods, Ron Paul, John Stossel, Gerald Celente, and Peter Schiff joined Judge Napolitano.
Especially interesting was the segment with the exclusive audio of a Campaign For Liberty manager getting detained and harassed at the St. Louis airport seemingly because he had too much cash on him. You can watch that segment isolated here. It seems these guys didn’t get the word that the MIAC document was retracted. Yet more evidence that we live in the land of the unfree.
Ron Paul comes on during the final segment and discussed the G20 meetings and other topics.
[In case you do not yet understand futures markets, "backwardation" means that silver to be delivered today is now being priced higher than metal to be delivered later. This article refers to the LBMA, or London Bullion Market Association's futures market in London, England. For more details on backwardation, please refer to my five-part December series which starts here "The End for the Dollar and all Fiat Currencies (1/5)". Contango is the opposite of backwardation and exists when futures price is higher than the spot price as I explained for those new to futures terminology here "The Money Matrix - What the Heck Are Derivatives? (PART 10/15)". [As you read, please also note that I am NOT a commodities trader, I am just an engineer by trade, so feel free to help me out with my analysis or mistakes.] ( Photo) (2)
Do you know how much gold is exchanged daily in dollars? If not, prepare to be shocked.
by Jake, the Champion of the Constitution Originally published on Sunday, March 29, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article6228.html
While gold trades as a currency (or “medium of exchange”) and also is a “store of value,” and even a “unit of account” for some, and very little is actually consumed. Economically speaking, gold trades even in the modern world as money. Gold is a luxury good with insignificant industrial usage. Its major market as a luxury good is Indian women’s jewelry, but to these women gold is their money or insurance if their mate leaves, dies, or is disabled so the metal is not consumed – it can be easily recovered. ( Photo) (2)
To make my case that gold is money, what seems to be little known is that the gold market is also quite large – the LBMA in 2008 traded about $80 billion USD per trading DAY per the data collected by the IFSL 2009 Bullion Markets Report p3/8 – which I took the time to verify to be correct from its original sources – or $20.3 Trillion in turnover in 2008 and 254 LBMA trading days. However, the IFSL makes a significant note that this volume is quite likely three-to-five times larger since much of the transactions are increasingly netted out and cleared without appearing in the statistics. Please compare this to the 2008 GDP of the United States at $15 Trillion and understand the rough estimate that 75% of the world’s trade in gold (and half of the world’s silver) is traded via the LBMA.
After completing Trace Mayer’s excellent ebook, “The Great Credit Contraction“, I stopped reading and said aloud, “Wow”. I started reading it with the intention of reading a few pages. Much to the detriment of sleep I ended up reading half the book in the first sitting.
The dollar truly is an illusion and gold is real money. Mayer’s book hammers this home in a profound way. One of the great things about the book is that it covers the fundamentals and history of money as we know it. If you ever wondered how the idea of fractional reserve banking came about then you should read this book. If you want an answer to the question, “What is money?”, then this book is for you.
Mayer utilizes several quotes from economists past and present to reinforce his points. He invokes the likes of Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Ludwig Von Mises, Alan Greenspan, and many others.
Yesterday afternoon the Federal Reserve printed over a trillion dollars out of thin air. Gold subsequently shot up about $50 and the dollar tanked. Earlier today Glenn Beck did a wonderful piece on this news.
He picked apart the Fed move and put it in terms anyone can understand. He educated the masses. The lesson was the very same lesson that Ron Paul has been giving for many years.
Watch Beck below sounding very much like Ron Paul. Our children have just been robbed. When our children get mugged like this, our country gets mugged. In the clip Beck claims the Fed wrote an I.O.U.
Judge Napolitano’s show today was another great one. His guests included Alex Jones, Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, Lew Rockwell, Cody Willard, and Mark Skousen.
The show opened with Alex Jones cross-broadcasting the show on his own radio show for the first 10 minutes. The Judge then ranted for about 4 minutes regarding the Constitution and applying it to contract law (posted earlier).
Then Lew Rockwell enters the discussion about AIG and their bonuses. They bring in Peter Schiff and Dr. Ron Paul for the final 30 minutes.
I found the discussion very interesting because they all did not agree about whether or not the AIG bonuses should be returned and/or taxed.
I really hope the show is eventually added to the FOX News TV lineup.
Watch the full hour below.
NOTE: If the playlist doesn’t work properly please go here to watch all 6 videos. Sometimes the embedded Youtube playlist misbehaves.
If you haven’t seen it already, there is an excellent article at FreedomWorks that offers an historical timeline of events that precipitated the current economic catastrophe that began last year:
To understand today’s financial crisis, you must understand the long history of government interference and subsidies for housing and housing debt.
[...]
Since the New Deal, the federal government has passed law after law attempting to shape U.S. housing markets. The U.S. today compels banks to lend to risky borrowers, skews the cost of housing debt and benefit of housing-related capital gains through the tax code, and operates several enormous government lending programs and taxpayer-backed corporations.
The net result is a wild, multi-trillion dollar overinvestment in America’s housing stock, the encouragement of dangerously overleveraged consumers and banks, and a massive new tab for taxpayers. The market is currently trying desperately to correct a government-created housing bubble, but the federal government’s response is to actually expand the government intervention that created the problem.
Here is the timeline of the actions that led to the current crisis.
1913 – The federal income tax is created.
The new law allows taxpayers to deduct their mortgage interest, among other interest expenses. This deduction was capped in 1986 but still exists today. Under the mortgage interest deduction, taxpayers are allowed to deduct interest from their primary residence, their second homes, and most home equity lines of credit. This deduction, which amounted to nearly $90 billion in 2008, increases the value of homes to borrowers by reducing the amount of taxes they have to pay, but also increases home prices, largely offsetting the potential benefit. Still, it creates a strong incentive to buy multiple homes and to use maximum leverage to do so.
I considered calling “Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse” by Tom Woods, your bible for the economic meltdown, but the Bible, although a very interesting read, is littered with ambiguity. There is zero ambiguity in this book. The book is more like a timely and perfect travel guide, full of facts and well-argued opinions covering all of the economy’s hot spots. What Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto” accomplished for political ideas in the wake of his Presidential campaign, this book accomplishes for economic thought in a time of financial turmoil
I would venture to say that the book is the modern day equivalent of “Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlit. While some of “Meltdown” is devoted to our current situation it is also filled with lessons in Austrian economic theory. But it is not written for economists, it is written for you and me.
Ron Paul delivered an excellent speech at CPAC this afternoon. He received a lot of applause and cheering for many of his lines. There were some obvious skeptics and shaking of heads in the audience as well, but overall he was on his game and hit all of his talking points and then some.
He talked about his bill calling for more Federal Reserve transparency. He claims it is getting bipartisan support in the Congress. That would be a great first step. He also spoke about abortion, foreign policy, and individual vs. groups with respect to liberty.
There were a few lines that I loved. It reminded me of the many rallies during his campaign in 2007 and and early 2008.
Ron Paul had a chance to follow up his grilling of Fed Chairman Bernanke earlier this week with another smackdown of Paul Volcker during a Joint Economic Committee hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday.
The video includes Paul’s opening statement followed by his questioning.
Paul again references the move toward creating an international regulatory body to regulate the global economy. He calls it a “Super IMF”. Volcker tip-toes around the question and eventually even admits, perhaps inadvertently, he’s dodging the question.
At the very end Paul attempts to get in the last word after Volcker’s reply with:
“It just may be the death knell of the fiat currency!”
Liberty Maven
While gold trades as a currency (or “medium of exchange”) and also is a “store of value,” and even a “unit of account” for some, and very little is actually consumed. Economically speaking, gold trades even in the modern world as money. Gold is a luxury good with insignificant industrial usage. Its major market as a luxury good is Indian women’s jewelry, but to these women gold is their money or insurance if their mate leaves, dies, or is disabled so the metal is not consumed – it can be easily recovered. ( 
” by Tom Woods, your bible for the economic meltdown, but the Bible, although a very interesting read, is littered with ambiguity. There is zero ambiguity in this book. The book is more like a timely and perfect travel guide, full of facts and well-argued opinions covering all of the economy’s hot spots. What Ron Paul’s “
” accomplished for political ideas in the wake of his Presidential campaign, this book accomplishes for economic thought in a time of financial turmoil
” by Henry Hazlit. While some of “Meltdown” is devoted to our current situation it is also filled with lessons in Austrian economic theory. But it is not written for economists, it is written for you and me.
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