Liberty Maven

by Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse

With today’s unexpected decline in December payrolls, the cry for more job-related stimulus will grow even louder. But the sad truth is that any new stimulus or jobs bills will ultimately swell the ranks of the unemployed, thereby raising calls for an even bigger federal effort. If we are not careful, government regulations, subsidies, and spending, all designed to fight unemployment, could push the labor market into a death spiral.

Regulation acts like a tax on job creation. By subjecting employers to all sorts of extra expenses when they hire people, regulations increase the cost of employment far beyond the wages employers actually pay their workers. In fact, some regulations are specifically tied to the number of workers employed. This provides some employers with a strong incentive to stay small and not hire.

The minimum wage law, which is really just a very visible workplace regulation, actually makes it illegal for employers to hire certain individuals and destroys entire categories of jobs. For instance, faced with high labor costs, some restaurants will avoid hiring dishwashers by switching to plastic utensils and paper plates. On a larger scale, factories may decide to switch to robotic assembly lines if human labor gets too expensive.

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Senators Judd Gregg and Chris Dodd have announced they are retiring from the Senate at the end of 2010 when both of their terms end. Previously, Gregg said he’d do anything he could to stop Ron Paul’s HR.1207 Fed Audit from passing in the Senate (The Senate version is S.604). Now that Dodd is retiring it appears he can safely join his lame duck peer in this effort to protect the central “banksters”.

The Huffington Post reports:

A House-passed provision to open up the Federal Reserve to an audit by the Government Accountability Office is unlikely to be included in the Senate reform package, Barney Frank told a meeting of House Financial Services Committee members Wednesday, according to people in the room.

Frank, chairman of the committee, told the members that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) told him that he had assured Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) that it wouldn’t be a part of the bill. Gregg has been a strident opponent of the effort to open the Fed to an audit.

It’s time for us Fed audit supporters to wake up again out of our slumber and do what needs to be done to get this audit done. The news Dodd is blocking it is both good and bad. The good is that the amendment was tacked on to a horrible financial regulatory overhaul bill and getting it removed from that bill isn’t such a bad thing.

The bad is that now HR.1207 in the House and S.604 in the Senate needs to be brought to the floor as a standalone bill for a vote. Given the number of non-lame(duck) lawmakers that support the audit, the powers against the audit will do everything to make that vote never happen. John Tate of the Campaign for Liberty gives us something we can do to fight against these powers in the Senate by urging our Senators to block a vote on Ben Bernanke’s re-confirmation until the Fed Audit bill is brought to the Senate floor for a vote. It’s once again time to fight fire with fire.

Contact your Senators today!

Well, he’s actually right about that, but it’s not something you want to hear from the president. And to be fair it’s only by implication:

From The Daily Caller:

Obama, one year to the day after his historic inauguration, argued that when Americans are educated about the details of his plan “those specific provisions are actually very popular.”

“One of the things that I have learned in Washington is you have to repeat yourself a lot because because unfortunately it doesn’t penetrate,” he said.

Yeah, that’s it Barack. It’s because we didn’t hear your side of the health care debate enough. I was sick of hearing about it back in August and here it is January and we still are hearing about it. The truth of the matter is we don’t want your brand of government medicine. We don’t appreciate being placed in a strait-jacket, forcing us to have some form of health care. The government is already way too intrusive.

The more Barack Obama repeats himself the less patience people will have for his agenda. So keep on repeating yourself Obama. You may not get the change you want, but you just might get the change you deserve in 2012.

Congressional Democrats are frantically negotiating the final version of the so-called healthcare “reform” bill. We think they should stop and start over.

Tell Congress we want a real healthcare reform bill.

You may borrow from or copy this letter . . .

I do not believe the healthcare bill is about reform. Reform would change direction in healthcare policy, whereas this healthcare bill continues on the failed path of increased government control.

Government control is actually the cause of our healthcare crisis. Consider that in 1960, the United States had the best healthcare in the world, even though . . .

* 75% of healthcare expenses were paid for privately
* There was no Medicare, no Medicaid, nor Ted Kennedy’s HMO Act.

Since the federal government got more involved in healthcare . . .     Read More »

I spent the holidays reading a wonderful new libertarian-themed novel by first time author James Byrd called, “The Light of Day“. The book explores what could happen if the environmentalist movement is permitted to “run the world”. It’s the future and everyone is required to live underground because living above ground is too environmentally unfriendly.

It is certainly a sci-fi page turner with a fast moving plot and interesting characters. The novel juxtaposes two societies, a society with very little freedom and another that is about as libertarian as you can get. Byrd accomplishes this effort quite effectively without getting overly preachy. There are no multi-page John Galt style speeches. Byrd uses the plot to emphasize the free vs. non-free “fight” in a quite understated way.

I’m sure there are those that will balk that Byrd’s vision of a future where environmentalists control society in such a way, but that’s not really the point here as I see it. The point really is to illustrate that your individual freedom is being assaulted on all fronts, not just the obvious ones.

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Ponzi scheme - a fraudulent investment operation that returns assets to the defrauded from assets they previously loaned to the scheme’s operators or assets paid by subsequent newer “investors” rather than from any actual profit earned

Originally published December 31, 2009 at http://towneforcongress.com/economy/is-the-dollar-a-ponzi-scheme-1

While it is (comparatively) well-known that the US dollar, while a currency, is a solely an instrument of credit issued by the Federal Reserve. All holders of dollars – including myself and most readers of this article – are in debt to the Federal Reserve.  Now, this debt is really phantom debt, but the key really is printed on each dollar, more properly known as a Federal Reserve Note:  ”This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” (1)

The total federal debt issued was $11.933 trillion dollars at the end of fiscal year 2009 in September per the Treasury Department, an increase of $1.9 trillion from 2008. (page 37/123) This debt will continue to increase every year until the monetary system collapses due (just in part) to the compounding “miracle” of interest rates.  Federal debt is bought at auction by primary dealers (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, etc.) and “resold” to the FED, which then inflates the money supply by creating new dollars, or “injecting liquidity.”  The FED can also “inject liquidity” by purchasing assets, such as toxic mortgage debt or even company stock like AIG or GM.  Individual community banks, whether Citibank, Bank of America, or small local banks and credit unions, can also create new dollars with the fractional reserve system, which is can be viewed graphically here.  However, a proof I wrote demonstrates that fractional reserve banking broke down years ago, and can be more aptly named as the “no-reserve lending” system.

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D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Subject: Don’t Despair, Renew Your Resolve to Fight

On Christmas Eve, the cynical Scrooge’s of the United States Senate voted to expand the size of government, as well as its power and reach into the medical system.

Even thought it’s a chilly Christmas, I’m here to tell you, the battle is NOT over.

On a freezing December day, Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller, USMC, during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, told his men,

“We’ve been looking for the enemy for some time now. We’ve finally found him. We’re surrounded. That simplifies things.”

I’ve spoken to and corresponded with DC Downsizers this week who were tempted to despair. They rightly recognize this bill as a dangerous blow, to our healthcare, to our economy, and to our liberty. They saw yesterday’s vote coming, and they see defeat, and worse, the destruction to follow with this tremendously unconstitutional bill.

But I want you to know, “We’ve found the enemy. We’re surrounded. That simplifies things.”

Your enemies are the Democrats who supported this bill. And your enemies are the Republicans, who didn’t bother to fight until Americans showed up at Town Hall Meetings and vented their anger.

Yes, your enemies include the very same Republicans who pushed through a bailout bill, now a little more than a year ago. And, if history is any guide, they will be your enemies when they return to power and refuse to do anything to repeal this so-called healthcare reform . . .

. . . that is, unless you continue to fight, and resolve that you will indeed win.

Back in August, I wrote to you about Admiral James Stockdale, a seven year Prisoner of War (POW) in Vietnam . . . Read More »

by Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse

As business owners undergo the yearly ritual of passing through eye-popping health insurance premium increases to their employees, it’s easy to understand why any attempt at health insurance reform would be met with some degree of hope. Unfortunately, President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are about to take a very bad system and make it unimaginably worse.

While ramming their new legislation through Congress, the Democrats have taken great pains to point out that they do not intend to “socialize medicine.”  But make no mistake, that’s where we’re headed. Even if some naïve centrists believe that their efforts have denied the Left a total victory, the practical implications of the current legislation sow the seeds for complete capitulation.

This first round of reform could be labeled as the ‘neutron bomb’ of the insurance industry: it leaves some of the private apparatus standing, but it irradiates whatever remains of the industry’s market viability.

The bill’s centerpiece is a clause prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on a pre-existing medical condition. However noble and marketable an idea, this proscription removes the very basis upon which any insurance model operates profitably.

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D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Every member of Congress needs to hear your protest, including your House Rep., and all the Republicans too.

Please slam Congress with thousands of letters telling them that this bill does NOT have your consent! You can send your letter using our Educate the Powerful System: https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/114

If you have a Democratic Senator, please call them too. Deluge the Senate switchboard! Our system provides their phone numbers when you log-in to send your letter.

Here’s what I wrote in my letter . . .    Read More »