200 Years Of Dollar Debasement

Everyone has seen the 100-year US Dollar destruction chart; so here is the 200-year... a century without The Fed and a century with... which would you prefer?

Newton’s 3rd law states: To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction. Sounds pretty simple right?

Except in Government, where for every action, the reaction seems to produce catastrophic consequences for such action. Yet inexplicably, the answer these days to everything seems to be more Government intervention and meddling. You would think that at this point we would have learned from our prior mistakes. Yet the meddling goes on and on and on….because it works so well.

Have you ever considered the true cost of all of this intervention? Think about it. Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, we have been in perpetual warfare, we introduced the New Deal which birthed Government programs, we eliminated the gold standard, we flooded the market with massive credit expansion, we accumulated massive amounts of debt and have now seen the Government take over 20% of our economy through healthcare. As if all of the prior interventions were not enough, in just the last 5 years, we have had shovel ready, bank bailouts, trillion dollar stimulus, QE 1,2,3,4, operation twist, unemployment benefits extended, car bailouts and crony capitalism that threw good money after bad. What we have gotten is more of the same. More debt, more political posturing and the complete destruction of the dollar and the purchasing power of it. With it, no one is accountable. Not the Government, not the banks, not the private companies but the citizens whose burden it has become to fund all of this intervention.

With the backdrop of other Governement ventures like the USPS and Social Security Administration, what can possibly go wrong with our latest intervention Obamacare? Whether you are for or against it, you have to recognize that this is and will be the mother of all Government interventions. With a horrific rollout, low enthusiasm and a general public that is either unaware or just ignorant to what is truly coming down the pipe, we can only hope that this time it will be different. But consider, that for every word that defines Obamacare, there are 30 more words that enforce it. With 109 new regulations and counting, you have to wonder if this monstrosity of intervention will finally be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back. It surely has the making for it because we have never seen anything like it.

Cost since 1913? Well, the dollar has lost nearly 90% of its value and the purchasing power of that dollar has been eroded considerably.
Below is a chart that demonstrates the destructive quality of Government intervention to 1819:



Credit to Zero Hedge

Slovenia Says It Can Save Its Banks Alone Without Becoming Euro Zone's Lastest Bailout Recipient

Slovenia's ailing banks need 4.8 billion euros ($6.62 billion) in extra capital to stay afloat, a sum the small euro zone country said on Thursday (December 12) it would raise alone without becoming the bloc's latest bailout recipient.

The figure, taken from the results of an external audit, drew a sigh of relief from the European Union.

After bailing out five euro zone countries over five years of financial turmoil, another aid package, regardless of how small, would have sown doubt about the bloc's insistence it can put the debt crisis behind it.

Even if Slovenia can avert a calamity now, however, it faces a drawn-out crisis as it remakes an economy that has already shrunk 11 percent since 2008.

Banks in Slovenia are saddled with an estimated 7.9 billion euros in bad loans - equivalent to more than a fifth of national output - after the global economic crisis crippled exporters and exposed how far Slovenia had ducked the shock therapy that revived other ex-Communist economies in Europe.

Unveiling the results of an external assessment of how much of the banks' lending has gone sour, central bank governor Bostjan Jazbec said the three biggest Slovenian banks - all wholly or partially state-owned - would need some 3 billion euros ($4.1 billion) in extra capital from the government.

"In that first group of banks - NLB, NKBM and Abanka - recapitalization is needed in the amount of 3.012 billion euros, effective immediately, after European Commission approves it. As for the remaining five banks, the central bank of slovenia will issue a decision giving them time until the end of June, meaning that by then the owners of the banks will need to assure the capital to cover losses," Slovenia's central bank governor Uros Jazbec said.

It will impose 100-percent losses on junior bondholders to reap some 440 million euros.

The rest may come from gains as the banks transfer assets to a bad bank.

Five smaller banks would be given until June 2014 to raise around 1.1 billion euros from private capital

"The state recapitalisation for those three banks is 3 billion (euros), and we agreed that two thirds of that will be paid in money and one third will be paid in bonds," Slovenian finance minister Uros Cufer said.

"What is important to emphasize is that the cleanup and recapitalisation of the banks alone will not lead to economic growth of Slovenia. But the key thing is, like the minister said, is that the government continues with measures needed to enable the normal functioning of Slovenian economy as soon as possible, and then the banking system will start to bring profits, and not only losses," Jazbec said.

"Methodology used in Slovenia will be mostly used in stress tests used for bank assets in euro zone. Oliver Wyman, who did this in Slovenia, will be in charge of coordinating all stress tests in euro zone, so that the methodology will yield comparable results and there is no reason to doubt about these results, " Jazbec said.

The cost of Slovenia's government borrowing fell close to nine-month lows on Thursday after announcement of the stress test results.

But the state remains in control of around half the economy, through a tangled web of ownership that often goes back to the biggest banks.

Politically-motivated lending was rife, and deleveraging the banks could send further shockwaves through the economy, with unemployment already over 12 percent.

The crisis represents a dramatic fall from grace for Slovenia, an ex-Yugoslav republic of 2 million people that for years was viewed as a haven of stability and economic health.

While the rest of Yugoslavia imploded in war in the 1990s, Slovenia took a fast-track to membership of the EU in 2004 and the euro zone in 2007.

"We had it good for some time, but what has happened to our country that it is shaking now. What would happen to this country?," resident of Ljubljana, Marijana Pregalj, said.

"I don't think we have a bright future, we only think about going abroad, I don't see myself in Slovenia," resident of Ljubljana, Barbara Zabota, said.

The government had already received parliamentary approval to recapitalise the banks by up to 4.7 billion euros.

It now plans to ring-fence around 4 billion in a 'bad bank', leaving healthy banks that would be easier to sell. It needs EU approval to begin the transfer of loans.

The measures will take Slovenia's general government level to 75.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). 

See more at: http://www.ntd.tv/en/news/world/europe/20131212/83836-slovenia-says-it-can-save-its-banks-alone-without-becoming-euro-zone39s-lastest-bailout-recipient.html#sthash.fXxFjoTE.dpuf

It Would Take 4.4 Earths To Sustain A World Full Of Americans

It takes the planet 1.5 years to restore what humanity burns through in a year. The silver lining, the US is #1 in something once again - consumption. In fact, it would take 4.4 Earths to sustain the planet if everyone lived like Americans. Rather disappointingly, the USA is 56th in the world for alcohol consumption per capita (though we suspect that will rise).

Credit to Zero Hedge

Director Behind Obama Birth Certificate Dies in Plane Crash

The merger of corporate and state power....

Lets start this all off with the understanding that Corporatism is NOT Capitalism, but in fact the antithesis of!

Anyone who cannot see we live in a world dominated by a Fascistic Corporatocracy is either blind, sound asleep, or complicit and not willing to admit it. When Benito Mussolini was asked in 1932, to define fascism, he stated, “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of corporate and state power”. Look around you and tell me what you see. This my friends is reality plain and simple!

Corruption and cronyism are so blatant in our government today that it is almost looked on as the means of doing business and all who participate, from the most junior congressman to the most powerful corporate CEO benefit in a huge fashion. The only losers … We the people!

The largest banks on this planet such as Chase Manhattan or JP Morgan etc… take your money in a huge Ponzi Scheme and gamble it on ultra risky investments, and when they lose our government bails them out under the insane excuse that they are too big to fail. And who pays for these colossal bailouts trending into the trillions of tax dollars … you and I. All the while their directors earn huge bonuses relaying the message ‘we cant fail no matter how greedy and stupid we get’ and proving once again that our government today exists for the well being and welfare of the mega corporations NOT We The People.

Companies like Monsanto and Merck produce known poisons and force them on a mostly unsuspecting and trusting population to the extreme detriment of our well being. If this danger is known by independent researchers across the globe, then you know our government is aware of it and is complicit. In many cases we don’t even have legal recourse if we are harmed or our loved ones suffer up to and including death, due to government granted legal immunity or corrupt courts. There is resounding proof today that the poisons we are eating, being injected with or the pills we are being encouraged to pop more and more, are causing massive suffering, infertility and even death on a monumental scale … but it continues unabated and is in fact supported by the very government sworn to protect us.

Our national debt is crushing this country and as a result we are told We The People must tighten our belts and do without (or at a greatly reduced level) the safety net we in fact pay for. All the while the monolithic Military Industrial Complex rakes in billions in tax dollars benefiting from global skirmishes we have no business conducting. Almost $1.4 Trillion is spent yearly on the military, or related programs equaling almost half the governments budget annually. This is such a massive number it easily outstrips many of the worlds largest military machines combined! Yet through the massive lobbying of this military cabal and the self proclaimed global elite who own them, we are thrown into one conflict after another thus perpetuating and guaranteeing there political agenda as well as a steady flow of capitol into their coffers.

While you and I suffer austerity in vital social programs such as healthcare, food relief programs for the poor, Medicare and soon Social Security, hundreds of billions in foreign aid are handed out to questionable countries on a yearly basis. Most of these funds never being used to negate the poverty of those nations but instead lining the pockets of corrupt leaders and multinational corporations globally that have lobbied this government with bribes and pressure as compensation for campaign funding or more sinister endeavors.

I could go on for hours but I feel if you have not caught the gist by this point … you are wasting your time reading this. What I will present to you now is the reason and mechanism for this catastrophic mess We The People find ourselves in. As long as there is money in politics and corporate lobbies are allowed influence, We The People will always be the losers and on a monumental scale … Please watch the attached film and an epiphany is all but guaranteed. Then maybe you can answer the question “Is America Terminal?”

The Corporation

This incredibly unsettling film explores the entire history of corporations and how they’ve been allowed to virtually take over just about everything, from our values, to our educational system and even our government. This film is what launched the Kick Them All Out Project. The information in this film is an absolute must for your education. If you truly want to be informed about why the world is as it is, you must watch this film! It’s 3 hours, but I guarantee it will be worth the investment of your time.

Credit to Liberty Beacon

Putin: We won't let anyone achieve military dominance over Russia

Pope Francis: a “Third Way” economic system ruled by experts and people of good will.

The recent economic statements by Pope Francis in his apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium“ (EG) read as a call for a “Third Way” economic system ruled by experts and people of good will. Pope Francis writes:

Growth in justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: it requires decisions, programs, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality.

Pope Francis does not call for the socialization of the economic system and he does not point to any totalitarian country as a model. He states that this is “not a social document” and recommends the “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church” as a more substantial guide for study and reflection.

Pope Francis waves as he arrives for his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013. Pope Francis has been selected by Time magazine as the Person of the Year. In only his first year, the Pope was selected by the magazine’s editors as the person who had the greatest impact on the world, for good or bad, during 2013. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Nevertheless, as he did not include references to point 42 of John Paul II’s seminal encyclical “Centessimus Annus,” which legitimizes a free-enterprise system based on a rule of law respect of human dignity, and as Francis’ language sometimes seems hostile to free markets, many Christian economists, and policy pundits, are alarmed. Several have questioned if the Pope has been negatively influenced by the Peronist culture of Argentina. Peronism has, as one of its pillars, an economic system that falls between socialism and capitalism. Juan Domingo Peron was an early champion of the Third Way.

In “EG,” the Pope reaffirms that the Church does not have a “monopoly on the interpretation of social realities or the proposal of solutions to contemporary problems.” Within the hierarchy of the Church, many different economists are consulted. One economist who has a strong influence on the Vatican is Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, who some credit for dressing the Third Way economic system in academic garb.

There is no doubt, however, that Stiglitz’s writings had an impact on the second most influential Argentine at the Vatican: Monsignor Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Science.

Stiglitz was appointed to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in 2003 and had been chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton. John Allen, a respected Vatican observer, wrote in 2003 that Stiglitz, “in that capacity, will help guide Vatican policy on global economic issues.” Allen also added that Stiglitz was a personal favorite of Sánchez Sorondo.

During a program sponsored by the Acton Institute, I had the privilege of sitting next to Sánchez Sorondo and he told me that Stiglitz was indeed his favorite economist. John Allen further added:

Stiglitz argues that the Clinton team made a mistake by accepting that the government should stay out of economic policy, leaving the finance sector to dictate the rules of the game. Stiglitz is thus likely to bolster what has already been the strong line of John Paul II, that public authorities must intervene in economic affairs to ensure that the benefits of globalization work for the common good.

Most of the statements on economics coming out of the Vatican that disturb free-market champions have been preceded by similar statements from noted economists. Such is the case with Francis’ apostolic exhortation.

Pope Francis delivers his Angelus blessing from the window of his private studio to thousands of pilgrims gathered in Saint Peter’s Square on December 8, 2013 in Vatican City, Vatican. Pope Francis on Friday paid tribute to Nelson Mandela expressing his hope that the late President’s example will inspire generations of South Africans to put justice and common good at the forefront of their political aspirations. Photo Credit: Franco Origlia/Getty Images

The paragraph that has garnered the most critical comments from market-oriented scholars is the one chiding the notion that economic growth will always “trickle-down” and “inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.” It is hard to find an economist who would argue that there are no exceptions to this theory. We can easily find high rates of growth coexisting with injustice and lack of inclusiveness. China and India are good examples.

The use of the word “trickle-down,” difficult to translate and usually used to denigrate the free economy, has opened the door for many discussions. It is likely that “EG” was originally written in Spanish. The Pope used the term “derrame” (spillover). Scottish philosopher and political economist Adam Smith wrote about the “universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people” in a “well-governed society.” When translated, “derrame” has been used for Smith’s word “extend.” Smith never defended “the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation.” He did not have an absolute “trust in the unseen forc­es and the invisible hand of the market” and he understood the importance of a well-governed society.

An incomplete litany of other laments and economic admonitions from the Pope include: “a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system”; accepting “the dominion of money over ourselves and our societies”; the “dictatorship of an imper­sonal economy lacking a truly human purpose”; the “widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion”; and “the invasion of ways of thinking and acting proper to … cul­tures which are economically advanced but eth­ically debilitated.”

Since the publication of “EG,” Catholic economists have been providing answers and criticisms to each of these points. We can note that empirical studies show that economic freedom is the best antidote to corruption. Also notable is the work of free-market scholars of great prestige, such as the late Wilhelm Roepke, who created blueprints for a “Humane Economy.”


Boats and water taxis make their way along Dubai Creek on November 13, 2013 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Dubai is recovering from its slump caused by the the global financial meltdown. The government has recently released figures that show that construction and tourism and the non-oil economy are once again growing. Photo Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The best contribution that free-market champions can make is to become outstanding and convincing economists so that influential leaders incorporate all economic truths into their moral admonitions. A good example to follow is that of Gary Becker, the Nobel Laureate from the Chicago School, who has been a member of the Pontifical Academy of Science since 1997. Becker’s sound economic research and his respectful demeanor during meetings at the Vatican earned him that spot. The writings of Nobel Laureates from other schools of thought sympathetic to free enterprise, such as F.A. Hayek and James Buchanan from the Austrian and Public Choice schools, also deserve more attention from the Vatican.

Juan Carlos de Pablo, one of the best professors at the Pontifical Catholic University in Buenos Aires, where I studied and taught, told his classes that, “if economists do not know economics, how can you blame the bishops for their economics?” Pope Francis has acknowledged the role of the laity in many areas, not only economics. 

Credit to The Blaze