Posts in "Federal Reserve"

The Federal Reserve and Santa Claus [Spoiler Alert]

Wes Messamore — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:59:37 +0000

Spoiler Alert: If there are any six year olds reading this blog, you can skip today’s post. It’s not written for you. Do the right thing and click the “x” on this tab right now. Santa’s watching.

I believed in Santa Claus a little longer than most children do. For some reason, as long as I couldn’t definitely prove that my parents were the ones leaving presents under the Christmas tree, I wasn’t ready to completely reject the possibility that it really was jolly old Saint Nick riding a sleigh pulled by reindeer and magically shrinking himself small enough to slip under the front door or through the key hole and into my house (we didn’t have a chimney).

And my parents were incredibly sneaky. I never once caught them. But when I finally told my dad I didn’t believe in Santa any more, he said, with a sly grin, “Santa doesn’t deliver presents to kids who don’t believe in him,” and I promptly responded, “I believe! I believe!” The matter was settled. I got some awesome Legos that year.

The Federal Reserve, fiat money, and inflationary stimulus policies are no different than the Santa Claus of our childhoods. The only problem is that so many adults still believe in them.

Twas the Night before Christmas...

Wes Messamore — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:05:49 +0000

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the world
Every heart was stirring, as a nightmare unfurled.
The stocks on the ticker were watched with care,
In hopes that Bernanke soon would be there.

The traders were restless, sprawled out in their beds,
While visions of stimulus danced in their heads.
And those of us who’d already learned history’s lesson,
Bought silver and gold to wait out the depression.

When across the Atlantic there arose such a clatter,
I checked ZeroHedge to see what was the matter.
Away with the Euro they did in a flash,
A modern economy now rubble and ash.

You know more than you think you do

cityoflight — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:28:43 +0000

When it comes to the economy, it’s a good bet that you know more than you think you do.

Many Americans are puzzled when they hear of the proposals put forth by big-government politicians and sympathetic economists. Most of these ideas run completely contrary to common sense, yet they are couched in deceptive jargon (“quantitative easing,” anyone?) and delivered in solemn tones by people who “matter.” It’s hard to blame the average person for simply assuming their own ignorance and putting their faith in the powers that be.

Those who do this are not giving themselves nearly enough credit.

Policies such as creating money out of thin air and attempting to spend our way out of debt are just as harebrained and irrational as they appear at first glance. If you can’t see how printing numerous pieces of paper stamped with “Federal Reserve Note” will increase our productive capacity or augment our physical resources, you are not being naïve -- you are absolutely correct.

No amount of spin and fancy terminology can ever replace key economic truths, such as that wealth cannot be willed into existence by a bureaucrat with a printing press (or these days, a computer).

100 Reasons to End the Fed

Wes Messamore — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:34:15 +0000

This is an important resource I've put together to help educate people about the evils of central banking and inflationary monetary policy. Please share this around as much as you can! Here are the first ten reasons to End the Fed:

1. The Federal Reserve System constantly inflates the value of our dollar by printing money out of thin air.

2. Graph: The value of a $1 Federal Reserve Note in 1913 dollars (the year the Fed was created).

3. The Fed even recognizes its inflationary activity. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston says: “When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money.”

4. American economist Irving Fisher said: “Thus, our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money, but promises to supply money they do not possess.”

5. If you or I did what the Fed does when it prints money, we would be found guilty of counterfeiting and locked up for a very long time!

6. The reason you or I would be arrested for counterfeiting is it’s theft! Every bill you create in bad faith, which doesn’t actually represent the creation of real goods and services, real value that has improved life by directing resources to their most productive uses, is a lie and an appropriation of value from the rest of the world, which gives the counterfeiter goods and services in exchange for nothing, because he or she did not actually create anything of value in return.

7. This is true of what the Federal Reserve does: “Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities, intrinsically, a ‘dollar’ bill is just a piece of paper. Deposits are merely book entries.” – Modern Money Mechanics Workbook, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 1975

8. “The Fed creates absolutely nothing. It does not produce a single grain of wheat to feed people, a single drop of oil to power the engines of an industrial economy, nor a single ingot of metal from the ground to build the products and buildings that improve our lives.” -Wesley Messamore

9. This situation, in which you or I would be arrested for doing something the Federal Reserve does every day, is the hallmark of institutionalized theft and a legal system turned on its head. As French economist Frederic Bastiat said in the 19th century: “But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply… See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

10. The inflation that results from the Federal Reserve’s massive counterfeiting operation steals from hardworking Americans by diminishing the value of the money they earn.

Read the rest here.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Accuses Fed Critics of "Four Misconceptions"

Wes Messamore — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:53:07 +0000

In an anti-Fed rant this week, I criticized Ben Bernanke for saying that any criticism of the Federal Reserve is based on misconceptions. What are these misconceptions? Give me an argument; don’t just say I’m wrong and then rest on the laurels of your credentials and prestige. I wrote:

I would like to hear Bernanke elaborate on his claim. I would like to understand just what it is that I don’t understand when I criticize the Federal Reserve Bank. How are my conceptions actually misconceptions?

What do you know– the very next day, The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston posted the text of a speech that Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren gave today, entitled Four Common Misconceptions About the Federal Reserve. Now I’m not seriously suggesting that The Boston Fed was responding to us, but it’s a pretty cool coincidence, especially since we know they’re reading blogs that talk about them and we’ve actually seen the traces of the Boston Federal Reserve IT department in our analytic logs. Cool, huh? Intentionally or not (again, probably not), The Boston Fed president answered my exact question and I’ve got to give him credit for doing that much. Of course I also have to rebut his answers, because they’re pretty weak.

Read my four rebuttals to the Fed president's four "misconceptions" here.

Occupy the Federal Reserve Notepad Rants

Megan Duffield — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:53:06 +0000

You've seen them popping up EVERYWHERE, and you've read every word. The captivating nature and prime time attention is making notepad rants the viral way to get your opinion across on the Occupy-filled airwaves. Today is the day you can take a swing at this silent protest tactic. Some of our bloggers already have!

So join us by posting your rant here on the YAL blog and sending it to: blog@silvercirclemovie.com (until Nov. 30th).

Happy ranting!

10 Questions with Don Watkins

BrianMUGA — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:30:50 +0000

As liberty activists, we draw from a great number of pro-liberty sources to create our own individualist philosophies. This exposure to different perspectives strengthens us intellectually and helps shape who we are.

In this interview, Slade Mendenhall questions Don Watkins, an analyst for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, about several issues, including the Fed, the financial collapse, entitlement programs and much more.

The Federal Reserve, remember, is in charge of the entire banking and monetary system, which was nationalized a century ago. That’s the lifeblood of the economy. Money is the thread that connects the entire economy, and when you mess with it, you can do incredible damage. In my judgment, that’s exactly what happened last decade to cause the financial crisis. The financial crisis is a complex subject, but as I and many others have argued, the first cause was then-Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s decision in the early 2000s to drive interest rates extremely low–lower than even the rate of inflation. It was those low interest rates that enticed and enabled people to take on huge amounts of debt to buy and invest in homes. You could not have had a housing bubble without the Fed.

Click here for the full interview.

Occupy the Federal Reserve: Boston, MA

Megan Duffield — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:24:50 +0000

Video from Occupy Boston: Police Threatening to Arrest Protesters

kerr.g — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:38:16 +0000

I decided to attend the Occupy Boston student march yesterday to learn more about what was going on and support the notion that banks and the Federal Reserve are some of the most corrupt institutions in this country.

I have footage of the police threatening to arrest protesters at the Charlestown Bridge. This represented a turning point in the days event, whereas there had been no conflicts with the police before that. Around 1:30 AM, about one hundred protesters were arrested and the campsite destroyed by the police. Regardless of what you think, this is extremely interesting to witness firsthand.

Also coming up: A blog post on Northeastern's Constitution Week and our free speech struggles on campus!

YAL@VU: Occupy Nashville Rally

mrbasil0 — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:52:19 +0000

At noon on Oct. 6th, in Nashville, TN, over 200 protestors gathered at Legislative Plaza to hold the first rally of the Occupy Nashville movement, a branch of the Occupy Wall Street movement that has been making headlines in recent weeks. At the rally there was a very diverse crowd of people ranging from libertarians to socialists to anarchists holding signs with phrases including “End the Fed,” “Tax the rich,” and “End corporate welfare,” while chanting slogans such as “We are the 99%” and “The people united will never be defeated.”

At the rally, YAL@VU volunteers distributed copies of The Morality of Capitalism while one member held up this sign about Steve Jobs.

Around 2 PM, the protestors moved to the front steps of the Nashville branch of the Federal Reserve where several members of the crowd began speeches on inflationary tactics used by the Fed to prop up the economy.

Around 4 PM, protestors headed to Centennial Park , where we interviewed some of them:

Occupy LA, October 8, 2011

Dave Scotese — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:45:03 +0000

After a meeting of the Society of Libertarian Entrepreneurs recently, I went to City Hall in Los Angeles to hang out with "the 99%" and talk about what's wrong. Friend Aaron Brown introduced me to SoLE a few months ago at the Campaign For Liberty Book Club, and I decided to follow him to the protest site after our meeting.

I met a friend of Aaron's named Nick who was handing out the End the Fed buttons, one of which is now pinned to my shirt. One woman took one and said "I'll have to educate myself..." That was beautiful. I took a handful and offered them to a few people and some took one, but one guy told me he had a different take. He figures it would be better to nationalize the Fed than to end it.

"But don't you think counterfeiting is a big part of the problem?" I aksed. He thought for a moment, it seemed, and answered with a definite "No." Then he walked away. Quickly. I'm still puzzled about what that means. Is it ego? Is it fear of confrontation? Is it something uglier?

Dear Federal Reserve Bureaucrat,

Megan Duffield — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:46:54 +0000

By Davi Barker

If you’re reading this you were probably recently hired as part of the Federal Reserve’s new social media monitoring program. Chances are you’re part of some make-work federal job placement program. You probably don’t completely understand who it is that you’re working for, and what it is that you’re doing. So, I can’t really hold it against you. I’d like to welcome you to our little corner of the Internet, and offer you some sincere advice.

You’re a bureaucrat now, so it’s important that you learn ways to avoid doing work. Otherwise you’re going to raise the bar for all your new bureaucrat friends, and they won’t like you anymore. I mean let’s face it, you’ve got a pretty sweet gig. Wouldn’t want to mess that up. So, let’s take a look at this recent “request for proposal” your bosses sent out for the creation of a “social listening platform” and see if we can’t find some corners you can cut.

You're looking for a social media monitoring company to design a program for you that can, “gather data from various social media outlets and news sources” to “guide the organization’s public relations group.”

The Fed is Hiring!

Megan Duffield — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:18:26 +0000

I can guarantee the keyword searches of "Federal Reserve," "Fiat money," "printing press," and "scumbags" will deliver the new Fed social media monitors straight to Silver Circle's website and blog. No worries though, we've seen the traces of the Boston Federal Reserve IT department in our analytic logs long before this news was released.

I won't sit here and act disgusted, because that reactionary emotion is comprised of surprise and...I'm not surprised. After the humiliating efforts to gather tips on negative language towards President Obama with AttackWatch.com, starting in December it looks like the Fed will devise a more direct and less public plan. (In case you were wondering, you can still submit suspicious claims and attacks on the President at the Attack Watch site.)

Much like any other company or campaign, the Federal Reserve has an open proposal to hire a social media monitoring company to track the conversation about itself online. They don't seem to be discriminating either...mainstream media sources, personal blogs, Twitter accounts, and Facebooks can appear on the radar according to the monitoring applications they are exploring.

Bernanke is Lost in the Dark

Megan Duffield — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:35:31 +0000

No tallies were added to the job board in August and President Obama will be stepping in to help with a proposed plan of $447 billion in stimulus money. The plan will provide for unemployment benefits, payroll tax cuts, infrastructure, and security cash so teachers, firefighters, and cops don't get laid off -- we can't have employees who aren't economically justified become unemployed!

Let me remind the readers here today that we are currently over $14 trillion dollars in debt and the government has passed numerous stimulus packages that most likely need to be renamed to avoid accusations of false advertising. As all of the failed policies pass us, one by one, the head of our central bank can't even seem to grasp what is going on around him.

Bernanke this week admitted to being puzzled about consumer spending. He stated:

Even taking into account the many financial pressures they face, households seem exceptionally cautious.

Seem? Isn't he supposed to be in touch with the economy and aware of why consumers aren't spending? I hold no PhD in economics, nor have I run any sort of financial institution, but I can say that when I see my personal finances drying up, I save my money. So when Americans see their country's balance sheet reach the height it has, while the government gives us no reason for new confidence in future fiscal conservatism, they protect what they have.

Rick Perry Jumps on "End the Fed" Bandwagon

JohnMcKenna — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:36:16 +0000

Texas Governor Rick Perry, a man who comes from a state with rebellion in its DNA, slammed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke during a campaign stop, calling the relentless printing of money "almost treasonous," and railed against the potential of another massive bond-buying program, which has been growing in likelihood for much of the past year.

Needless to say, his anti-Fed comments have garnered some criticism, particularly from moderate Republicans and the Obama administration. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney even defended the Fed, calling it's independence "important" to the economy. Unfortunately for us, that Federal Reserve "independence" is often used as a justification for trillions of bank loans being made under a cloak of secrecy in the name of monetary stability. Some Republicans have criticized the governor for wasting his energy attacking Mr. Bernanke, since there is little he could do even if his run for president proved successful to halt the Fed's spending spree short of getting rid of it completely.