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Saturday, 28 March, 2009 AN EMBARRASSING SITUATION It can only be considered somewhat embarrassing to us Americans when the probable solution to the global monetary crises comes from Communist China rather than from the brain trust of the great bastion of freedom and democracy the U.S. Government or at least from some other major player of the traditional western international establishment. But the sad truth is that our brain trust, and that of the international bankers, have been found sorely lacking, if not criminally negligent. Pridger is certainly not a globalist, and readily recognizes the danger of an super-national monetary authority with control over the world. But, at the same time, there's no doubt that an international trade currency of some sort must replace the international (U.S.) Dollar. If we have been incapable of running the world's reserve currency without ruining our own economy, what alternative is there to some centralized international system. "Owning" the world's only reserve currency has proven a disaster for the United States and this would be the case whether it be a debt system such as we have, or a national "value" system based on domestic raw materials commodity prices. We cannot run or maintain control of our own domestic economy with an international dollar system most especially one that is a debt dollar system rather than a value dollar. Our present system has already run itself into the ground. Lacking sufficient global gold or silver supplies to facilitate global exchange on a stable basis (if that indeed be the case), a global trade currency must come about through international agreement and cooperation. And that currency cannot be a debt-based currency (which has bee preposterous from the onset). The international trade currency must have a stable market-based value, perhaps in terms of an array of internationally traded commodities, including gold and silver. Unfortunately, this means a supra-national body must be formed to manage the system. But this is unavoidable. Whether an existing body, such as the International Monetary Fund, or World Bank, should serve this purpose is debatable, given their relationship to the present status-quo and their history of an activist track record in the gross mishandling of Third World aid, development, and debt. Such a body should be operated much less as a monetary "Power" than an international custodian/manager of the world's trade currency which is given value and volume based one international trade needs, with its value based on the major tradable raw materials. The important thing is that the international currency be a essentially a "trade currency," rather than a "reserve" currency. National governments must retain the sovereign right and duty to provide their own national currencies so they can provide the liquidity to facilitate national economic goals and maintain monetary and economic stability. In other words, though we may have an international currency, that fact should not in any way constrain national economic sovereignty. The strength of individual domestic currencies would be predicated upon the strength of domestic economies, regardless of the international monetary system. National currencies, of course, would periodically be given a value in terms of international trade currency (based on the actual performance of those local currencies and economies), but local currencies should not be required conform to the international currency in any way detrimental to local economic realities. National investment in the global currency, as a reserve currency, would be strictly voluntary and geared to the best interests of the nations involved according to their government or its peoples. What follows is a statement by Zhou Xiaochuan, of the People's Bank of China released on March 23rd (emphasis added).
Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), once referred to as "paper gold," are now valued on the basis of a basket of the world's predominate currencies. Pridger thinks they, or any alternative international currency agree upon, should be valued in terms of a basket of tradable commodities, including gold and silver. This is the only way to give them something close to a stable value in global markets. They should be totally independent of national currencies, which will stand or fall according to the way they are managed in their several countries. Gold and silver bullion and coin should also play a role, of course, valued in terms of weight units against the trade currency units, as well as national currencies, periodically market adjusted according to actual supply and demand considerations. Such a system must not be managed as is done by our present central banking systems. Central banking systems, should strictly be publicly owned as part of the national treasuries and their primary purpose would be to manage the domestic currency, and interactions with the global trade currency. Securitization of both national and the international currencies should be discouraged, lest the new currencies begin to resemble the debt money and speculative system that finally torpedoed the system we now have. Speculation should be confined to private parties, and private contracts, which are always subject to the price that is paid when wagers go bad. John Q. Pridger Friday, 27 March, 2009 CONFUSIONATION, OBAMANATION AND CHANGE WE CAN'T BELIEVE IN It's pretty disheartening to find at this early date of his administration, President Obama has become a supporter of NAFTA and an open apologist for the outsourcing of American jobs. But Obama is clearly just another New World Order political front man. Pridger hoped this was at least one area where Obama would actually shine, but that was a false hope that we shouldn't have believed in. Nor should we have believed he would end the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan Obama is just another New World Order warrior. We shouldn't be surprised, of course. From before the beginning his hand-picked team has been made up of allies of, and transplants from, Wall Street and financial capital interests, with almost no representation for labor or productive industries. Obama has begun speaking the same old language we've been hearing since the de-industrialization of the nation began in earnest in the 1980s. "We've got to educate and train Americans to fill the smart, high tech, jobs of the future," Pridger paraphrases. Those high tech jobs have been here and gone. Some were never really here, as American technology was merely exported to cheap labor countries to develop the industries they promised. Millions of actual jobs and scores of industries have been exported. And more jobs are being outsourced now, by some of the companies who are receiving bailout money. During the twenty-five years during which production jobs have been one of our major exports, we've heard about being trained or retrained for all the high tech and financial jobs. Americans were going to get the "knowledge work" while the poor developing nations would get all the hard or tedious labor. But it hasn't worked that way. Both knowledge work and production jobs were, and continue, to leave the country. It's certainly true that we need to start educating the American people a little better. If we had been doing that we'd have much better politicians and representation in Washington. But the idea that all Americans must be educated and trained for high tech and "knowledge worker" jobs is ridiculous. What we need are productive industries that can not only employ plenty of high tech workers and knowledge, but millions upon millions of plain old high school graduates and dropouts too. The idea that any productive industrialized economy will produce millions and millions of jobs that require a "higher education" is totally devoid of reason. Even in the highest tech industries, it's only the top tears of management that is likely to require a college level education. The great majority of production workers only need willing and able hands and enough brains and education to use them. It may take a highly skilled team to figure out how to make wind turbines, and how to design, set up, and organize, the factories, but it will take an army of ordinary workers, capable of learning a production job, to build the thousands of them that may be needed. And this is true in literally every productive industry. It may take rock scientists to devise factory computer systems and robotics, but it doesn't take rocket scientists actually build or operate them. We have millions of unemployed workers that are plenty smart, and perfectly capable to learn the ropes of any and all of the production jobs this country needs. What we don't have are the politicians with the vision required to put them to work. For the last three decades our politicians have been devoted to globalism and the subsidizing of the export of all that work our own workers used to do. Mexico and China should not be producing for us they should be producing for themselves, just as we should be producing for ourselves. If we were producing for ourselves, we'd have all the employment our workers need. Somehow, our political leadership completely missed the point. They totally lost sight of what an economy is and how one should function. They totally dropped the ball. And it appears that the Obama administration is going to play right along with the idea that "our function" is to provide the brains, and its others elsewhere who are supposed to provide the brawn to produce for us. We've got the brains, but unfortunately, too few of them ever get elected to high office. Those who do, have an agenda that is totally alien to our national interests. And too many of our brains in private industry have been focused on short term profits and long term neglect completely overlooking the catastrophic consequences of what they have been an eager party to. Now the remnants of the middle class, which, along with everybody else, has been betrayed by the politicalfinancialindustrial combine, is being compelled to bail out the consequences of the folly they wrought and this folly will lead to many more dire consequences. We've truly reached a point in our national history where it seems impossible for our leaders to determine, much less act, in "the best interests of the American people." Since everything has been rearranged and set up wrong, upside down, or backwards, everything we are likely to try, using cock-eyed machinery, is bound to be wrong. The only sane and right thing to do would be to ditch the failed policies and revert to what worked so well in the past. But by now our leadership and the nation's capitalist machinery have so much vested in everything that has been destroying our economy, that our politicians dare not do what is right even if they knew what it might be. Most of them don't know what the right thing to do is, and most of the rest insist on doing the wrong thing. We have had an educational deficit for so long that practically the entire Washington establishment is suffering from an acute form of the disorder. Those that aren't are paid by the opposition. A HUNDRED YEARS DOWN THE WRONG TRACK Obviously, our nation has been on the wrong track for a long time, and the mega-systems and mass dislocations that have been set in place during the era of globalization are breaking down. But our nation has actually been on the wrong track for much longer than just during our twenty-five years of rampant globalization. We have to look to at least a century of wrong policy, and go back at least a few years before the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. We could easily go back the the Civil War looking for the first major symptoms of our current malaise, but we'll stop at the Spanish American War in 1898. That war, more than anything that had happened before, transformed us into an imperial colonial power. That constituted a major course change in our nation. But no less of a corner was turned in 1913, with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, and the Income Tax Amendment (XVI). These three major things totally changed the complexion of the nation. They played a major role in paving the way that we would follow. What followed was World War One, the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression of the thirties, World War Two, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and the many other lesser wars and policies that have led to Iraq, 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq again. All of these wars, and the policies that brought them about, have constituted an ongoing disaster for our nation and the world in general. An all of these wars have been unnecessary wars every one of them. In short, what is being called the "American Century" 9/11 (if it wasn't actually an "inside job"), was totally unnecessary, since it was the result of years of erroneous foreign policy activities. We went wrong in 1898, 1913, 1917, 1933-1939, 1940-1941, and practically every year since then. By the 1960s we were already approaching bankruptcy, and in 1971 we defaulted on Bretton Woods and the gold standard. Still, as the undisputed leader of the Free World, we decided our Federal Reserve Currency would thereafter serve the world in place of gold ultimately a fatal decision. Still, the United States might have reigned supreme for another century or more had not Congress totally lost it's bearings and moral compass. But, freed from gold, Congress proceed to spend as if there would never be a tomorrow. Besides leading America toward consuming and spending far beyond its means, they decided to establish a whole New World Order based on debt finance. The idea seems to be indebt as much of the world as possible on the one hand, and borrow as much as possible on the other. In the end the debt is all ours even those owed to us and there's no graceful way out of the box our sterling leadership has put us in. Empire, through debt and free trade, is backfiring now, as common sense should easily have foreseen. Not only will we end up without the Empire we thought we had, but we may effectively lose control of our nation as a new Superpower arises. We effectively built the Soviet Union to superpower status. And while the USSR collapsed anyway after forty years of Cold Warfare, the Chinese are now on the rise as a military superpower. And they are rising militarily with a first rate industrial economy behind their military power. We were also China's facilitator. We made it all possible. We opened our markets to China while sending them our technology and industry. We helped them perfect their intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities. We have facilitated their rapid economic growth by short-changing ourselves. We owe China close to a trillion dollars, and want them to purchase more of our debt to keep us from economic hardship. We're effectively begging for it. We have come to depend on China for a shocking percentage of our everyday consumer goods the things we have come to take for granted that facilitate the "American way of life." Now Obama is beginning to look as though he thinks globalism is actually a good and necessary thing. This shouldn't surprise us. We elected him without even knowing who he really is or what he stands for. We still don't even know if he was constitutionally qualified to be president. The desire for change was that great. It didn't matter. But we're not getting the change we can believe in. John Q. Pridger Wednesday, 25 March, 2009 ENOUGH OF THIS DOOM AND GLOOM IT'S TIME FOR GOOD NEWS! Reality is becoming so depressing that it's time to start living in a dream world. "Hope! And Change we can believe in," is how President Obama put it. We need some real good news for a change. "Every cloud has a silver lining." Unfortunately, that's the only good news Pridger can think of right now, other than the fact that Ye Olde pension and Social Security checks are still arriving on time. That's certain good news. Knock on wood. John Q. Pridger Monday, 23 March, 2009 GOOD TIME TO DITCH THE DOLLAR? A U.N. Panel says the world should ditch the dollar.
Pridger thinks it's time too. When our dollar became the world's reserve currency, we effectively lost control of our own currency and our own national destiny. Apparently this is beginning to dawn on others too.
We don't have much moral authority to complain about the system we set up. If it meant that "when the world wants to save, it means a deficit" for us, it should have been self-evident that we'd invented a self-destructive system. We need an international currency system for international transactions, and domestic currencies that are totally independent from them except that they might be part of the "basket of currencies" used to determine the relative value of something like "Special Drawing Rights" (SDR), i.e., an international "trade" currency. This would make it possible to have a truly national currency again, such as a commodity based greenback currency (U.S. Notes), anchored to our own domestic economic and monetary needs. Such a currency should be tied to, say, a basket of raw material commodities, in order to maintain a rational exchange value in terms of the "real world" domestic market.
The Chinese yuan, or any national currency, as a global reserve currency would be exactly the same thing as the dollar as a reserve currency, and thus should not be considered. It would eventually have the same negative impacts on the Chinese economy, and the world, as dependence on the global dollar has had on the American and global economy. The dollar experience would become the yuan experience, even if it were somehow better managed. The Chinese would be well advised to think thrice about allowing their currency to playing the role of the global reserve currency. So the "shared reserve currency" concept is the way to go at the international level. Another concern for us, of course, is that the Chinese might just be smart enough to succeed where we failed, and end up ruling the world through their combined financial and military might. However, it's important that major national economies not be any more dependent on the international reserve currency than necessary. No nation should be so wed to the international system as to be crippled in managing it's own domestic economy according to its own unique needs, and for the benefit of its own citizens. An international currency should be aimed at stability of international markets rather than holding individual nations hostage to global systems of finance and unnecessary dependence on foreign trade. Each national economy should stand upon it's own merits and be as independent as its resources allow. Of course, there are many small or resource deficient nations that are inherently unable to be both economically independent and prosperous. Naturally, these nations must depend to a greater degree on the world's many "anchor nations" for the wherewithal for national survival. "Anchor nations" are nations which are large enough, rich enough in natural resources, and ruled well enough, to be both agriculturally and industrially self-sustaining. There should never again be a time when an economic collapse in one "anchor nation" must inevitably result in the collapse of national economies around the world. John Q. Pridger WHAT! UNEXPECTED JUSTICE IN NAZI WAR CRIMINAL CASE? With 88 year old John Demjanjuk facing deportation to Germany because he was a prison guard at a World War Two Nazi "death camp" during his youth, encouraging news comes in the case of another Nazi death camp guard who has already been stripped of his American citizenship and deported to Austria. Unlike Demjanjuk, who has apparently never admitted to killing anybody while he was a guard, 83 year old Josias Kumpf has seems to have admitted that he had the grisly job of "finishing off" prisoners who had already been shot but were still alive this at the Trawniki labor camp in German occupied Poland, where 8,000 Jews were killed.
Imagine that! This must leave our Justice Department in bitter chagrin. Apparently the Austrian authorities still have a heart, or at least a real sense of justice. Kumpf is a free man, and likely to remain so. Austria, it seems, still has a meaningful and forgiving "statute of limitations" for such cases something we once had during a more Christian era of our history. But today, nothing having to do with the Jewish Holocaust seems to come under U.S. statute of limitations. It's ironically that, though Austria became a part of Hitler's Third Reich, it apparently somehow remains much less answerable to the Zionists Nazi hunters and the Holocaust industry, and much more Christian than the United States. See Pridger's comments on the Demjanjuk case below. John Q. Pridger Sunday, 22 March, 2009 LESS THAN OBVIOUS LESSON IN THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN Now that we've seen what the best and brightest in the financial sector can do for us, maybe it's time to think about the fallout that may result from what the best and brightest are currently doing in the realms of genetic engineering and the manipulation of our food supply. It took several decades for the financial debacle to play out it present catastrophic result. We're only about one decade into eating genetically modified foods and destroying natural reproduction in major agricultural commodity crops. We (through agency of our best and brightest), could be in the very act and process of destroying some of the most fundamental natural systems that have thus far sustained us. And this threat could very well overtake the alleged global warming threat and leave it in the dust! Smart pesticides and herbicides may not be all that smart. It took us many decades to realize that we were poisoning our own environment, and ourselves, with industrial and chemical pollutants. We still haven't recovered from this, and perhaps never will. We're still poisoning our soil with industrial agricultural chemical inputs which also degrade the quality of our food supplies. We're still confronted with a massive and growing solid waste problem because of a still growing "throwaway" and "planned obsolescence" consumption model. The continuing rise in food pathogens and instances of cancer and other exotic diseases should constitute sufficient warning. We are working to cut emissions but have not yet begun to challenge the frightful implications of rampant genetic modification of our food supply. Destroying natural crop reproduction, and genetically engineered foods, in the quest of corporate "ownership" of gene pools for corporate profit, are an eighteen hundred pound gorilla in the equation of plant and animal survival. It's time to rethink this potential monster before we experience a catastrophic awakening when it is too late, as we did with regard to the global financial system. Remember, it's conceivable (but highly unlikely) that 99% of genetic engineering is harmless, and some of it even beneficial in some exotic way. But 1% might be all it takes to wipe the race off the face of the earth in the fullness of time. The question is how long will it take us to find out? John Q. Pridger P.S. Congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro, the wife of a Monsanto Franken-food researcher, introduces more draconian Owellian legislation that could devastate small farmers:
Saturday, 21 March, 2009 RON PAUL'S "WHAT IF?" GOOD QUESTIONS. This speech was given on the House floor on February 2nd, 2009. The video below is a re-mastered version, put to music and a stark graphic display, for maximum impact. These are questions every American who has been taken in by war propaganda should ask themselves. The complete text of the speech may be found at: http://www.house.gov/list/speech/tx14_paul/WhatIf.shtml John Q. Pridger Thursday, 19 March, 2009 THE TRAGEDY-COMEDY IN WASHINGTON CONTINUES If it wasn't so pitiful, it would be funny listening to various congressmen and women chastising corporate executives for excesses and bonuses. It was Congress that created the culture. It was Congress that proactively let it all happen. It was Congress that ignored the Constitution on so many levels that it challenges belief. Congress set the example for blatant and ongoing fiscal irresponsibility. This penchant is now on steroids! It was Congress that was always on the take from corporate big boys. It was Congress that pandered to corporate lobbyists. It was Congress that allowed "free trade" fast track, and rubber-stamped all New World Order initiatives. It was Congress that was taken in by "globalism is better than minding our own store" policies. It was Congress that chose to deregulate high finance and set the foxes to guard all the hen houses. It was Congress that allowed and encouraged the de-industrialization of the nation. It was Congress that gave our markets away, then to stem criticism, encouraged foreign corporations to set up shop here. It was Congress that unleashed the era of acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and corporate consolidations that resulted in the "too big to fail" class of companies. It was Congress that allowed our military to be assigned to the impossible tasks of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan unnecessarily destroying and rebuilding for others elsewhere. It was Congress that wanted to make sure all poor Americans could buy "brand new" homes even if they couldn't afford them. It was Congress that bought into the idea that housing prices had nowhere to go but up thus even homebuyers who couldn't rightly afford their homes could at least turn the property over at a profit. It was Congress that made sure banks and Fanny and Freddy would buy into the charade. It was Congress that unleashed companies like AIG onto the global stage, thinking that globalism is the panacea for all the ailed the world. It was Congress that failed to see the many errors of their "far too many ways" over multiple decades of time. It was Congress that ran up the $11 trillion dollar "official" national debt and the accounting fraud that keeps the "real national debt" (which is actually several times that amount), hidden from public view. And it is Congress that is currently engaged in policies that will double these debts within the next few years. It is Congress that is not stopping the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is Congress that is not bringing the troops home from 150 foreign nations. It is Congress that is not coining our money nor regulating the value thereof. It is Congress that has abused almost every other power that it has under the Constitution getting the government into so many activities, and such spending, that it alone accounts for almost half of the GDP while celebrating the success of capitalism. And it is Congress that apparently expects us to believe it is blameless for all of these de facto crimes against the American people. Are we to conclude that Congress is actually powerless and thus blameless? Now they are trying to get tough and plan to place extraordinary special taxes on some of the executives at AIG who don't return their bonuses. We might as well figure they will do that to the rest of us in due time, for they are running up such huge debts and deficits that it will take all of our collective income just to pay the interest on the future national debt. And Congress now has the moral authority to criticize a few corporate crooks from whom they have always been pleased to accept campaign contributions! Congress is responsible for the literal rape of the American people, and the pillage of a once great nation. Our various presidents have played their significant roles too, of course. But it is Congress that makes the laws, and passes the spending bills, and all the legislation that results in public policy. Presidents can be manipulated like puppets by a few un-elected power brokers behind the curtain, but it is Congress that is supposed to represent the best interests of the people and the nation. They have clearly failed to do this. As Pat Buchanan put it, this is a Systemic Failure:
Read the whole article here: http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-systemic-failure-1478 John Q. Pridger IF WE COULD ENVISION THE FACE OF THE PROBLEM... Perhaps it would look something like thus:
The above illustration was one of Pridger's personal attempts to graphically portray what appeared to him as a political and financial conspiracy in the early 1990s. Conspiracy or derivative? It's big. It's complicated. It's gestation has been long and unrelenting. It has a friendly human face. It has wooed us, charmed us, lied to us, and fooled us. It demands our attention and patronization. And it isn't going away. If this monster is the result of some sort of "intelligent design," it must be characterized as a diabolical conspiracy. On the other hand, if intelligent design is lacking, this monster can only be called a derivative of an over-abundance of incompetence, stupidity, greed, and avarice, in multiple high and low places. Either way, it is not good. John Q. Pridger DOLLAR CRISES IN THE MAKING Here is a three part series of articles that will perhaps clarify things (Originally published in the Asia Times). Dollar Crises In The Making
When we went off of the gold standard and the U.S. Debt Dollar took it's place as the world's phony gold standard, we not only lost control of our own currency, but our national destiny. Globalism was part of the program. It was actually supposedly tailored as Empire in disguise, but it is backfiring. The Emperor has no clothes. We could end up as being a vassal state rather than the capital of Empire. Have a nice day. John Q. Pridger FED CHAIRMAN BEN BERNANKE GOES RAMBO We're in a financial situation where every choice is a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" proposition. The inevitable is happening, of course. The money machine is running out of options, so the Fed is obliged to serve as the purchaser of last resort of our Treasuries because foreign takers are beginning to stay out of what is becoming a less than promising investment "opportunity." The Fed is buying our debt so it can print money for the government to spend. If this sounds a little ridiculous, it is. But that's how the system works. It's ridiculous when things are not being done according to Hoyle (as now), and it's equally ridiculous when things are being done "right" according to the book. What is ridiculous about this is the very idea that Treasuries must be purchased by "investors" in order for money to be issued and put into the Treasury's hands. The Treasuries "are" the actual money, so why do we have to incur a debt by selling them to lenders in order to use them? Why don't we just issue non-interest bearing Treasury notes as currency in the first place? That would be too simple, and nobody would make a profit on the issuing of currency. We can't keep to the "orthodox" straight and narrow now because we can't get enough buyers for our Treasuries. So, under this orthodox system, if nobody will take our Treasuries, the government simply can't get any money. But the government has to have the money anyway so it can engage in massive spending in order to save the financial system and the economy. So, lacking buyers for our securities, we are being forced to cheat. The Fed itself has to buy our securities so it can print up the Federal Reserve Cash to hand over to the Treasury. They call this "monetizing debt," but that's exactly what we monetize anyway. But it's "not fair" to monetize debt which is credit that we effectively extend to ourselves. It must be extended by "others elsewhere" in order to be "real" (i.e., anybody domestic banks, institutional investors, or foreign central banks). Naturally, to the rest of the world this "self-dealing" means that we are simply printing money to spend, and thus blatantly inflating the currency. So, foreign confidence in the dollar is plunging. And, naturally, the value of the dollar is plunging in relation to other currencies and precious metals. The trouble with cheating in this way, by having the Fed purchase our Treasuries, we cheating ourselves just as we do when we sell our Treasuries to commercial and other central banks, because the Fed is not really "us" it's a private banking cartel that will profit at our expense just as other creditors would! Any Treasuries that the Fed "purchases" is still debt to the American people. So here's what is happening. The government needs more money than it has, and the only place it can get it is from the Federal Reserve. So, Congress authorizes the Treasury to print up a Billion dollar Treasury Bond. The Treasury sends this Bond to the Fed. The Fed "buys" this Bond with the Federal Reserve money which that Treasury Bond "authorizes" the Fed to print. The Treasury gets a Billion bucks for the government to spend. But the taxpayer is still on the hook for the debt to the Federal Reserve System. In a sane world, rather than authorizing the Treasury to print up a Billion dollar Treasury Bond to use as security for a loan, it would authorize the Treasury to print of a Billion dollars worth of $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills, as U.S. Treasury Notes "greenbacks." The government could then spend them without leaving the taxpayer with a Billion dollar debt, plus interest. Instead, they will print a Billion dollars worth of $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills, as Federal Reserve Notes, and the public will owe that Billion dollars and the tail of interest. The idea that a Billion dollars worth of "greenbacks" would be more inflationary than a Billion dollars worth of Federal Reserve Notes is preposterous. All of the Federal Reserve Notes must be paid back to somebody by the taxpayers. Paying them back, of course, would extinguish them, and this is supposedly the rationale why they would not be as inflationary as simple "greenbacks" which would continue to circulate and don't need to be paid back to anybody. Clearly, we cannot extinguish the money supply by paying the debt off. In fact we always need more money, not less, in circulation. So, since we have to keep the money in circulation and add too it, more and more money has to be continually borrowed and the debt continues in perpetuity plus interest! Think about this. Can our present system stand up to any scrutiny? It's totally self-destructive on the face of it. It's an impossible Ponzi scheme, and it has already played itself out. Read: Rambo Fed Will Buy Treasuries to Combat Crisis (Update2) By Scott Lanman at John Q. Pridger Wednesday, 18 March, 2009 INSTITUTIONALIZED CORRUPTION In 1822, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption." As with so many things Jefferson warned us of, time has borne this out in spades. Our federal system has become so corrupt and inept that there appears to be no hope of fixing it. The situation increasingly appears totally hopeless. Every time we turn around this fact is rubbed in our faces. And we get the bill. No sooner do the American people become aware and outraged by AIG paying big "retention bonuses," we are reminded that some of our elected officials, including the president, accepted bonuses from this corrupt and failing company too in the form of campaign contributions. But such campaign contributions, as we have long known, are perfectly "normal." Business as usual. When a whole system is corrupt, corruption becomes legal. And this instance of AIG is merely one of many examples that have come to our attention in the last several months the tip of the iceberg. In short, corruption is business as usual, because that is how the system has come to function. Is there any wonder that we've arrived at this point of economic collapse? The super-rich have revealed themselves to be so corrupt that they've resorted to openly prevailing upon the poor to underwrite their blatant folly. The very processes by which businesses become "too big to fail" are a form of corruption both political and financial. The result is clear for everybody to see. And Trillions of dollars have to be printed and spent just to keep the whole house of cards from caving in at one time. The situation is so bad that we dare not contemplate the consequences of our desperate actions which are, themselves, the consequences of a long train of equally nefarious actions. American taxpayers will never be able to pay the bills that are now piling up on their backs no longer by the millions or billions, but by the trillions, perhaps destined to reach into the quadrillions. The consequence will be that the whole house of cards is bound to come down later, if not sooner. In fact the cards are coming down now, but smoke and mirrors are being employed in a desperate effort to make it appear that the great edifice is still standing and shining on the hill. The only solution that Pridger can see would be to divorce the real economy from the phony financial economy and start rebuilding on a ground based foundation. But extraordinary measures will have to be taken. If the right measures are not employed, we'll end up with more problems than we could easily stuff into a rusty oil barrel. Some Russian analysts have been predicting the breakup of the United States into about six regional republics. And one wonders whether individual States might be better equipped to govern themselves than the unwieldy federal monolith. Some states are positioned to be self-governing. But many, having taken their lead from Washington, are in such bad fiscal shape that they will have to collapse before they can regroup. So the Russians' prediction must allow for this. Will we have six regional republics where there was once a single federal republic and fifty State republics? The rest of the world is in a quandary. Many nations would be very happy to see the United States fail and break up, of course. Other's, including ourselves, believe the United States is simply "too big to fail." But if we are too big to fail, that means the rest of the world will have to bail us out. We're banking (literally) on China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia mostly. We'll just have to wait and see how this plays itself out. It's a hell of a situation for the greatest, richest, nation in the history of nation states to be in. Will we become the United States of the World, in receivership to others elsewhere perhaps with Chinese overlords? Or will our Washington brain trust wake up in time to salvage what we lost some time back? Perhaps it's time to repudiate all the corruption and let the chips fall as they may. Let the overstuffed "corporate United States of America" go bankrupt, and return to being a simple Constitutional Republic with limited powers. A nation where the federal government adheres to the limitations imposed by the federal Constitution, and the fifty sovereign States govern their own affairs. One of the primary keys to a resumption of national independence will be the resumption of issuing national currency. The Federal Reserve and its notes have finally been discredited. It was a bold attempt to take over the world, but it has failed. Now we have to get back to nation building. Not in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else, but right here in the United States where it will do us the most good. John Q. Pridger Saturday, 14 March, 2009 CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN? Perhaps President Obama and his British counterpart, Gordon Brown, are really going to shake things up. Sometimes we have to look to distance sources to catch the significance of what the president has already said? In this we are quoting Matthias Chang, a former Malaysian government minister, and controversial author of Future Fast Forward and The Shadow Money Lenders and the Global Financial Tsunami, who writes... (from: http://futurefastforward.com/.../1180)
It "is about time that these financial harlots are to be brought under control..." sounds pretty promising. But there's a down side embodied in: "before they wreck the entire global power structure." The global power structure they seek to save is a mega-major part of our problem too for it is is the power structure dedicated to delivering up some facsimile of world government the very New World Order that Pridger and people like Mathias Chang are presently jousting with...
Check out the Chang web site at: http://www.futurefastforward.com/ for some interesting insights as to what is going on the the world from his perspective. John Q. Pridger HERE'S ANOTHER ASIAN VIEW "That Accursed Propensity to Save" by Antal E. Fekete (14/3/09) (emphasis added)
His irony stings. It should. Read it all right "HERE" John Q. Pridger Friday, 13 March, 2009 GULP! IS THE WHOLE WORLD TOTALLY UNDER WATER? Its Friday the 13th. The stock market has enjoyed it's best week since Pridger doesn't know when and President Obama finally agrees with with John McCain pre-collapse estimate, that "the economy is essentially sound." It's good to hear some good news for a change, but what if we find that the entire world of global finance has managed to deep-six itself and can't be fixed in spite of the rosy news? Pridger's first discovery of the day was a blog post alleging the following:
If this is true, it's dooms day stuff. Even if it's only fractionally true we're finally talking big money here. It's no wonder the Trillions of dollars being manufactured, borrowed, and spent, to rescue the global economy especially the amounts going to the financial instituions are simply disappearing into a black hole. They would be the merest drops in the bucket to a single Quadrillion dollars. What is a Quadrillion? Try... 1,000,000,000,000,000 !!!One thousand million million, or one thousand trillion, or a million billion, or a billion million, or a trillion thousand, or ten the the 15th power (1015)! Big number! Now if we have a hidden financial problem based on a hundred and twenty-eight quadrillion dollars, 95% of which is leveraged to unknown degrees, we've got a real problem. Our entire national debt (even the whole real thing!), is but a drop in the pond in comparison! Pridger admits that the blog that is claiming that number is highly suspect, and he hasn't yet been able to confirm anything like that number elsewhere. A cursory browse at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) didn't reveal anything to Pridger. But Pridger is pretty dense. But, even more "reasonable" numbers, such as $1.144 Quadrillion mentioned by By Jim Sinclair (6-10-08) http://www.rense.com/general82/out.htm where we read:
Even a much more modest estimate of $596 Trillion in derivatives, the question can be asked, "How can the derivatives market be worth more than the world's total financial assets?" Good question. Just putting a value on derivatives is very problematical because of the many variables involved such things as futures contract values, and actual future commodity price moves, really muddies the waters. So, even a modest value estimate of $596 Trillion given as "the 'notional value' of the world's over-the-counter derivatives at the end of 2007, according to the Bank of International Settlements," is a mind boggling number. "Over the counter" derivatives refer to contracts that are negotiated between two parties rather than through an exchange" as explained by on Oct. 15, 2008, (http://www.slate.com/id/2202263/)...
This, of course, is from the Explainer, and (as dire as it appears), is aimed at making us feel a little better. See the Wikipedia explaination of derivatives at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivatives_market.
Any way you look at it derivatives have been expanding at an exponential rate. From $298 Trillion at the end of 2005 to $415 Trillion at the end of 2006, is a mind-boggling rate of expansion. So, just for fun, let's look at the the more dire numbers for a moment. Let's see. If the global population (of some 6.8 billion people) had to pay just the principle amount, discarding the total of leveraged indebtedness, how much would each man, woman, and child in the world have to cough up in order to extinguish the debt the rich guys our best and brightest have piled up? Pridger and his calculator have problems with any number with more than nine digits, But if the number were only one Quadrillion, the figure would be around $1,477,978.78! If the number is 128 Quadrillion then the figure is $189,181,200.10! Yes, that means there is enough money obligations, or smoke, in these exotic, and essentially fraudulent, investment instruments to make every man, woman, and child in the nation a multi-millionaire! It takes a multi-millionaire to be millions of dollars in debt (unless he has been sued by his neighbor). When Pridger first heard of derivatives some decade or so ago, and attempted none too successfully to get his mind around the concept, one idea (and only one), came to mind. "Holy smoke! This is the HIV/AIDS of global finance!" Perhaps that turns out to be a gross understatement. Apparently it was much worse than that. Oh, the wonders of modern debt-based finance! The brilliance of the money men! Voodoo economics became the systemic rule back in the 1980s, and it has been carried on to the nth degree. What we are facing today may be Pridger's long predicted "Voodoo Doodoo Booboo" in multiple spades! Now maybe we know why Obama was being conservative and positive in saying that catastrophe is in the offing if we don't do something NOW! even if it's totally wrong! And this is why Warren Buffet has casually mentioned that "the economy has fallen off a cliff." Buffet has been warning against derivatives for some time.
And (from Matthias Chang [Tuesday, 10 March 2009] futurefastforward.com)...
MORE HORROR STORIES (From same source article) Is it possible for the Federal Reserve to go bankrupt like other banks? You wouldn't think so, since it is our almighty central banking system with almost unlimited powers of monetary issue. But... What if the Fed, in its eagerness and haste to bail out the other major banking fraternity members, has exchanged too many of it's Treasuries backing for toxic waste? In this article Chang goes out of his way to explain some of the intricacies of the financial meltdown and what a tangled web it is! What follows is just a short excerpt.
REAL CHANGE IS CALLED FOR Of course, as a functionally illiterate hillbilly, Pridger is a few tip-toe levels out of his depth here, but he'll make some suggestions anyway. Change is called for. NOW! And a lot more radical change than President Obama has as yet envisioned. The problem is at least four-fold (1) The very nature of our debt money system; (2) The fact there there is absolutely no public oversight of the Federal Reserve system; (3) The financial markets that a credit money system facilitated and encouraged; (4) The fact that the mega-systems of the "real economy" are joined at the hip to the financial economy. Additionally, of course, we have the problem that literally everybody in positions of power, including the Secretary of the Treasury, are the product of are wed and devoted to the very system that is bringing their own house of cards down. The big problem now is that the Obama administration, under the concerted and frantic advisement of the very people who caused the problems, is focused on saving a failed system that probably cannot be successfully resurrected. (If it is resurrected, it will probably be the same Ponzi style system under a new name, engineered and operated as a centrally controlled global system by the same people with the same mind-set and the same profit motives.) What kind of change is really needed? We're going to have to make a clean break with the past and the sources of the problem. This means divorcing our money from the private Central Bankers and declaring national monetary independence and encouraging all other nations to do likewise. The Federal Reserve System and its global reserve currency, and other private Central Banks, according to some, are among the walking dead. All exotic financial assets of questionable or negative value must be swept aside and decoupled from the real economy. A lot of debt and implied debt is going to have to be downsized (written down), forgiven, repudiated, and/or re-bundled and launched into deep space marked "Payable on return." This would apply to a lot of derivatives and bad home mortgages that had already been repackaged and sold as speculative, and increasingly toxic, "investments." The home mortgage business should return to local bankers, and mortgages should be required to remain with the original mortgage holder for the life of the mortgage unless it is refinanced by another local institution. In cases where housing values have declined precipitously, mortgage loans should be adjusted downward to actual market values. If the mortgage holder cannot survive such write-downs they should be allowed to fail and the mortgages turned over to receivers. The real nuts and bolts, workaday, economy, including productive industries, wholesale and retail businesses, the various service industries, need to be divorced from the sick financial services economy. They can operate much better on an essentially cash basis. But first they must get clear of onerous and debilitating debt burdens. Many of the largest corporate debts are owed to the very financial institutions that ought to be allowed to fail and go bankrupt. The government needs to begin directly financing the real economy with U.S. Note money treasury notes. This would not mean printing money to give to the bankers and financial shysters, but rather start "loaning" (not giving) money at zero or very small interest to all major employers struggling to make their payrolls i.e., the real economy. This could be done, in part, through making the necessary currency available, though zero or low interest loans, to local banks where the businesses are located. Local banks would become the primary distribution system for newly issued Treasury money, loaning it out at small interest rates. Social Security and other entitlements would be funded by checks issued directly by the Treasury. In addition to providing for Social Security and other entitlement programs, the federal government, through the Treasury, would spend new money into circulation through all legitimate federal payrolls and infrastructure projects, including military and civil service payrolls as well as retirement pensions, the various military procurement programs, and the various existing subsidy programs especially for industries such as the merchant marine (for which there is no other road to a level playing field). During the recovery period, the Treasury itself, as the source of new money, would be the lender of last resort. This role would gradually be diminished as the banking system recovers and works its way toward 100% reserve requirements. Surviving banks, under the new non-interest bearing fiat money system, should be required to maintain reserves of 100%, meaning they could not loan out any money that they do not actually have on deposit. This would tighten up credit, greatly reduce or eliminate inflation, and force businesses to return to classic good and sound business practices. The goal would be to get cash flowing and moving at the grassroots level, rather than working from the top of the financial pyramid with the institutions that have caused the problems and absorb money like an ink blotter. PROTECTIONISM AND EQUITY OF TRADE Our trade policy should be about selling our "excess" production abroad, rather than buying everything we can get cheaper from abroad. A policy based on the latter is nothing short of a swift race to the floor. If we don't produce just about everything we need right here, for our own use, we will soon be incapable of earning the income necessary to buy them from others elsewhere. And we're already there but for the grace of foreign creditors.
A comprehensive program to bring productive industrial production back to our land, enlightened trade protection should be incrementally developed, which would ultimately be aimed at two goals: (1) Eliminating our massive trade deficit, stopping the equally massive outflow of money from the domestic economy; and (2) Equalizing prices at the water's edge so that American industry, paying American industrial wages, can once again compete on a level playing field. With a fiat Treasury money system, protective tariffs would not be necessary as a revenue source for the federal government (though, before 1913 [under a formal hard money system], tariffs were the major source of government revenues.
The institution of trade protection would have to be geared to present realities, and allow for an easy and protracted transition period. Precipitous action would be economically distressing, if not a provocation for war. Using our bi-lateral trade with China as an example, incremented tariffs on imports would have to allow the Chinese to incrementally redirect their production toward their own Chinese market as exports to the United States decrease. This would ideally be done at the same pace we would be reindustrializing and recapturing our own domestic markets. The same would be true of all other trading partners. By the same token, the "American" factories in Mexico would gradually become Mexican factories producing for the Mexican market rather than the American market. This would mean that wages would have to be raised in countries like Mexico and China, so their workers could begin enjoying the full benefits of their own productive labor. Thus, the purpose of "protection" would not be purely selfishly motivated. It would be aimed at raising living standards in poor countries while at the same time retaining, or regaining, our own American industrial economic standards.
INFLATION The great source of inflation is the exponential expansion of the money supply made possible by fractional reserve banking combined with a debt based money system. As is now being made abundantly clear, by far the largest expansion of the money supply is taking place totally outside what is being called the "real economy." For this same reason, business (including a lot of monkey business), has been increasing exponentially also, on compounding credit, in a very finite world. The demise of debt money and fractional reserve banking will naturally slow down all business cycles and put most people back onto much more of a cash basis rather than credit basis. This will be good, because businesses, unburdened by perpetual debt and debt service, will once again find it possible to be profitable without having to expand beyond all reason just to stay ahead of the creditors. Since the source of "honest" money, and the source of real wealth creation, will become much more closely correlated and tied together, it will be possible to have a broad-based prosperity without all the unnecessary exponential expansion of everything from money and debt to totally unnecessary scales of corporate business and international trade. An honest money supply would be expanded scientifically, through real market demands, correlated as a function of all available goods and services in the economy and population growth. There would be a "natural growth" of money rather than the exponential growth of money and debt that we now suffer from which is now threatening hyper-inflation (a crashing dollar), totally enveloped in a gigantic, overpowering and crippling, bubble of debt. John Q. Pridger BERNARD MADOFF KNOWS WHERE HE WILL BE SAFEST Bernard Madoff, who started his jail term yesterday, though still awaiting final sentencing, was merely fumbling around with pocket change, and knew it. That's why his Ponzi scheme had been totally overlooked or ignored. The $50 or $60 billion dollar fraud he admits to is nothing compared to the Ponzi fraud the "system" has perpetrated on an unwary global population. Madoff is happy to be trooped off to prison. He plead guilty happily. He knows prison is probably going to be the safest place to be. John Q. Pridger Wednesday, 11 March, 2009 WE ARE NO LONGER A CHRISTIAN NATION With retired auto worker John Demjanjuk again under threat of deportation for alleged crimes that may or may not have taken place during World War Two. Mr. Demjanjuk has led a perfectly law abiding and productive life in the United States since he immigrated to the land of Freedom and Justice in 1952. He earned his American citizenship in 1958. If this were still a Christian nation, there would be no question. This 88 year old family man with grandchildren and great grandchildren, would be allowed to live out his life in peace whether he was guilty of a war crime or not. We're not speaking of a major player who may have ordered up a war crime here. Demjanjuk is alleged to have been nothing more than a prison guard where such a crime is said to have taken place. After all, the major crime in most warfare is the war itself not the hapless ground-pounder entrapped by it. War always produces heroes, but it also brings out the inner beast in many. And young soldiers, whether their job is to storm a gun emplacement, shell a city full of innocent women and children, or guard enemy prisoners, is first and foremost trained to obey the orders of his superiors without question. We can sit back after the fact and make judgments and split hairs as to what constituted "lawful" and "unlawful" orders, but in the German or Soviet armies of the war years all orders from superiors were undoubtedly considered about as lawful as lawful can be. An attack of conscience would be considered clear evidence of cowardice. Any soldier who failed to obey orders explicitly could expect to be dealt with very harshly, if not shot outright. In any case, men who do despicable things during wartime, just as civilians who make ghastly mistakes during their youth, often repent and lead exemplary lives. And always, under the Christian belief system, everybody can make themselves worthy of forgiveness. One of the main differences between Christianity and, say, Judaism is that Christians are admonished by their prophet to forgive all equally, regardless of their faith or lack thereof. Those of the Hebrew faith are taught to never forget and never forgive those who trespass against Jews. Lest we forget... Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen. (Matthew 6:9-13) Whether we are among the faithful or not, this most recognized of Christian prayers, and the Golden Rule, or the Ethic of Reciprocity, should guide us in the way we look upon ourselves and others. Unfortunately, the present day American Justice system seems to take much more of a Judaic approach than a Christian approach. We tend toward being long on punishment and recrimination, and short on forgiveness. Demjanjuk has already been subjected to plenty of injustice at the hands of the United States Justice Department. Apparently some Nazi hunter group told the DOJ that Demjanjuk was a sadistic guard called "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka "death camp." For that bit of mistaken identity Demjanjuk was erroneously and illegally convicted (without a trial) by the Justice Department, shorn of his American citizenship, and extradited to Israel in 1986 to be tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Demjanjuk spent seven years in custody in the United States and Israel as a consequence. He was sentenced to death. Fortunately, the Israeli high court discovered that Demjanjuk was not Ivan the Terrible before the execution took place. He was released and returned to the United States. His citizenship was reluctantly restored in 1998, but the U.S. Justice Department remained determined that he must be at least some kind of a Nazi beast. So what do they actually have on him? Demjanjuk was a Ukrainian, i.e., a Soviet citizen. Thus he was conscripted to serve in the Soviet Army during the Second World War. Soviet Russia, of course, was our ally during World War Two. But Demjanjuk was captured by the Germans in 1942 and became a prisoner of war. Now the Soviet Union was not exactly a beacon of freedom and justice. In fact, Stalin was arguably several times more ruthless than Hitler, who at least enjoyed considerable popularity among his own people. So a lot of captured Soviet soldiers many thousands of them were eager to change sides and fight against their oppressors. And Germany was happy to allow them to do that. This was apparently what happened to Demjanjuk. Rather than being put into a Nazi death camp himself, he was apparently allowed to join the German army. Incidentally, thousands of those Soviet defectors were captured by the allies and cruelly turned over to the Soviet Union after the war. They went to the Soviet death camps in Siberia, and nobody has been chasing down the guards of those camps where millions perished. Demjanjuk was fortunate enough not to have to go to the front, and ended up as a guard in a prison camp in occupied Poland. Apparently a lot of prisoners died there for one reason or another. According to unclear sources, about 29,000 people of "the Jewish faith" are alleged to have perished there, and apparently this one former guard has been selected to get all the blame. Now there were millions upon millions of prisoners who died in Russian, German, Japanese and allied prison camps during and after the war and there are undoubtedly thousands of living guards that worked in those camps. But only the German camps, in which a significant numbers of Jews allegedly died, have any lasting relevance or significance at this late date. Multitudinous atrocities, even massive genocides, have been forgotten, and everybody who participated has been more or less forgiven, except a few hapless people like Demjanjuk, who perhaps happened to work at a camp where many Jews died. Nobody seems to worry about any other class of people that may have died in great numbers just those of the Jewish faith. After all, that was the Holocaust, and the Holocaust has become the main focus of World War Two history. More than that it has become s sword at the heart of not only Germany, but the whole of western civilization. Merely because Demjanjuk was a guard at that camp he is being charged as an accessory to mass murder. There's probably no evidence that he ever harmed a soul there. He might have even been one of the "good guards," if there were any. But that makes no difference to the Nazi hunters or the United States Justice Department. Jews and the American Justice System never forgive and never forget they are as if one body, and one religion when it comes to anything that touches on the Holocaust. The Justice Department apparently still feels outraged that Demjanjuk failed to fess up to having been a guard at Sobibor camp when he applied for U.S. citizenship back before 1958. Maybe Demjanjuk still hasn't admitted it. After all, of course, this may just be another mistake. But they want to deport him again as if he has already been convicted from their point of view. As far as our Justice Department is concerned, if Demjanjuk is in the crosshairs of Nazi hunters, he's bound to be guilty. This time it's Germany that wants him. Germany isn't the bastion of liberty and justice that the United States once purported to be. "Holocaust Denial" itself is a criminal offense there. Germany is still under indictment for World War Two and the Holocaust, and it intends to serve the cause of the Jewish people from now on in a quest for some sort of final atonement. For all intents and purposes, Germany remains an occupied nation, doing the bidding of the conquerors. Good men and women are doing long, hard, time in German prisons for expressing doubts about the numbers of Jews who died in the Holocaust, or whether they were systematically gassed as a matter of state policy. Presumably Germany authorities must believe they have the goods on this 88 year old guy. But it's pretty difficult to see how they could prove anything specific with regard to this 65 year old case. Apparently all they have to prove is that he was a guard at a camp that is dutifully called a "death camp." That would be evidence that he was guilty of anything that might have occurred there by whoever's hand or order. This would be (or at least should be), a travesty of justice in anybody's book. Munich prosecutors have said Demjanjuk will be formally charged in front of a judge once he is extradited to Germany. The presumption is that he will be extradited. In other words, the American justice system is actively failing him again. It can really hold a grudge and it's least worry would be anything bordering on Christian compassion. "We hope that the process can be expedited to ensure that this Holocaust perpetrator will finally be appropriately punished," Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at Israel's Simon Wiesenthal Center Zuroff told the AP by phone from Jerusalem. "We're on our way to a victory for justice today." It would go without saying that Judaic justice isn't exactly the same as Christian justice and obviously, the United States is no longer beholden to its Christian national heritage. Even if Demjanjuk was guilty of being a death camp murderer, it happened under the most terrible pressures in the long past contexts of the worst, bloodiest, most barbaric, war mankind has ever engaged in. If Demjanjuk is a war criminal, then there are probably tens of thousands of such war criminals at large from World War Two (on all sides), through Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and a host of lesser conflicts, including Israel's most recent indiscriminant exercises in the chastisement against Lebanon and Gaza not to mention its own sixty year history of persecution of the Palestinian people. But nobody is seriously looking for any old scapegoats in any of those conflicts. Few are interested in bringing all war criminals to justice and certainly not the kingpins. If they weren't executed at the conclusion of the war, they've all already done their time or penance. Only those who happen to be associated with the Holocaust that is, the Jewish Holocaust are of lasting concern. The Jews are offended when anybody intimates that perhaps they have gained too much power and influence in the Western World. The least mention of any such thing results in charges of anti-Semitism which (for some odd reason), seems to be the most serious, and most unforgivable, "hate crime" of all. And it doesn't matter how much one might respect and admire the Jews as a people, the crime and the charge is no respecter of persons, and will be pinned on anyone who in the least transgresses. Pridger would like to make it clear, when he uses the word "Jews" in this context of this particular subject, he is not speaking of the "Jewish people" at all. They merely have the misfortune of being intentionally ensnared by association to groups and organizations of great power and little remorse a circumstance for which they, as a people, are not responsible. The "Jews" of which we speak is a generalization that mostly refers to a variety of political Zionist entities and organizations (comprised of both Jew and Gentiles), and dominate international financial interests, (which are also of Jewish and Gentile stripe). Generally speaking these groups comprise what Winston S. Churchill and Henry Ford referred to as "The International Jew." These "powerful forces" take care to make sure that their fate and destiny are unequivocally tied, in the popular mind, to the greater international community of Jews. That is, those "Powers" actively take refuge behind the Jewish masses, readily defining any enmity against them is hostility toward all Jews and defined as anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, the mass mind seldom sees the critical distinctions, and the troublemakers (whether Jew or Gentile), on both sides of the issues, take full advantage of this fact and this has enabled them to become all the more powerful and increasingly untouchable. The Jewish people need to recognize this, and realize that whenever crimes and other injustices are committed, effectively (though fraudulently) in their name, the real culprits never suffer the consequences. The Jewish people are the ones who suffer as they have done, off and on, throughout the history that culminated in the Holocaust in World War Two German. "The Powers" behind the skullduggery, never think twice before sacrificing any number of "their own" but they never suffer themselves. And it is not only "their own" they are ready to sacrifice, it's literally anybody (in any numbers), that happens to get in their way. John Q. Pridger THE INQUISITION MAKEOVER Speaking of the Holocaust, and the crime of Holocaust denial, Pridger took up the subject of Bishop Richard Williams last month. Upon discovering that Bishop Williams is an unrepentant Holocaust denier, the Pope was greatly embarrassed and has since demonstrated that the Catholic church is required to kowtow to the Jews when it comes to opinions on the Holocaust. The Pope, in an act of forgiveness, had rescinded the Bishop William's previous excommunication, and thus set off a firestorm of criticism from the Holocaust lobby, which has become a religion unto itself. This shows how Christendom has been turned upon its head. Jews were once wrongly persecuted for denying the divinity of Christ. Today Gentiles are persecuted for denying the details of the Holocaust story. Being a Holocaust denier or anti-Semitic are about the only cardinal, unforgivable, sins these days. The bishop was even expelled from Argentina for his views! Under pressure from the Pope Benedict XVI (and the Zionists of the world), Bishop Williamson apologized for embarrassing the Church, if not for his personal views on the Holocaust.
But, of course, that isn't good enough. Bishop Williams should have known better. And the Pope should have known better than to show mercy to such a man. Apologies for politically incorrect views on this particular subject simply won't do. He has to totally recant. In other words, the only way to salvation is to betray his own conscience and renounce what he believes to be true. This is exactly what Jews were once required to do during the Spanish Inquisition and throughout much of the Middle Ages. The "Almighty Church" was powerful enough to do this during the days of the Holy Roman Empire and down through the Middle Ages until the age of enlightenment managed to de-fang it somewhat. It persecuted heretics of any gender, background, or faith. Those who didn't recant were subjected to imprisonment and all manner of unspeakable torture. Many were burned at the stake. We need not be sorry that the Church is no longer our master. But, in spite of being in a nation that affords freedom and liberty for all, it appears we have another master one to which the vast majority of us are denied membership while being required to pay homage to. And Jews wonder why many of us cannot totally purge from our mind what conspiracy theorists refer to as the "Jewish Conspiracy." Pridger isn't saying that there is such a conspiracy, but if there is no such conspiracy, why does the United States government, the governments of Europe, and even the Catholic Church John Q. Pridger HOLOCAUST WHEREFORES Whether six million or a lesser number of Jews were killed in the Holocaust, there is never justification for any degree or form of genocide or the wholesale mass killing of any humans regardless of race, religion, or business philosophy. Nor can there be any justification for the persecution of any groups based on race, religion, or national origin. What happened to the Jews in National Socialist Germany was a ghastly tragedy by any measure. In former ages, there might have been some qualifications and exceptions, but as a civilized people we have finally progressed beyond most of them. There are now no legitimate exceptions. "Right of conquest" and "aggressive war" have been outlawed since the last major conquests were legitimatised by the passage of history the United States being the last major conquest nation to make it under the bar. Getting rid of the "heathens" or "savages" through conversion or extermination is no longer supposed to be an option. International law, enacted by the community of "existing" nations (almost all of which went through their own conquest stages during former ages), lay such matters down in no uncertain terms. Ironically, there has been one exception to the rule made during the post colonial era. Only one new nation state has come into existence through the effective conquest of an indigenous people since the United Nations was organized. That, of course, was the state of Israel. The Holocaust, of course, is given as one of several reasons why the creation of the Jewish State was a "necessity." It's quite impolitic to in any way be a Holocaust apologist. In fact, it is also politically incorrect to enumerate the numerous historical contexts that brought the tragedy about. Few Americans are familiar with the progression of events that led to it. Without going into many historical details, here is a short synopsis. The primary precursor, of course, was the historically institutionalized anti-Semitism, essentially on religious grounds alone, that existed throughout the Christian era. Additionally, Jewish business acumen, including their ascendancy and widespread, always growing, influence and near dominance in banking and usury, insured the most influential among them would be powerful, necessary, and broadly despised. The rise of international banking was influenced and finally largely dominated by Jewish bankers, the most famous being the Rothchilds of Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and England. This banking "power," popularly called "International Bankers," figured very largely in perfected fractional reserve banking, "private" central banking, and control of money and credit issue the infamous "money power." These extraordinarily powerful Jewish bankers were not representative of the "Jewish People" at large, but it was impossible for "Jews in general" not to be associated with them in the public mind. Since Jews, as a class, generally tended to excel in all manner of business and trade, there developed a large cadre of Jews who were associated with "bankers." Since Jews in general were always a "suspect group" on both business and religious grounds in most nations in which they had sizable communities, they have always stood out from the majorities of the various host nations as having undeserved advantages over the majority peoples, even though the majority of Jews may have remained poor. Even when religious persecution waned in the West, majorities continued to regard Jews in general as a "suspect," untrustworthy, peoples. In Russia and Eastern Europe where persecution of Jews persisted the longest, they tended to be associated with subversive and revolutionary movements. Literally everywhere, Jews have continued to be regarded as a race and group unto themselves a circumstance they themselves insured would continue, since they clung tenaciously to their own Jewish identity no matter how well they might have otherwise have assimilated into the societies or nations in which they lived. Though overt anti-Semitism declined in the West, Jews nonetheless remained suspect and continued to experience subtle forms of discrimination. The French Dreyfus Affair, in which a French artillery officer was allegedly unjustly convicted of treason in 1894, moved Theodor_Herzl to write The Jewish State (1896) and found the modern political Zionist movement (1897) to solve what he termed the "Jewish question." Herzl felt there would always be a problem of anti-Semitism as long as Jews lived as minorities in the nations of others. The solution was to create a Jewish state where all Jews would migrate and leave the rest of the world in peace. The Jewish question was no more acute in Germany in the 1890s than in other western European nations. In fact, most German Jews, like Herzl himself, were so well assimilated that they considered themselves German above all else, and Germany served as the international headquarters of the Zionist movement. The real problems at this period of history were elsewhere, particularly in Russia and other eastern European countries. Wrote Herzl (emphasis added)...
World War One turned the Jewish Zionists against Germany and Germany against Jews. This came about a matter of British war strategy, in part aimed at getting influential American Jews to support America's entry into the war on its side. The carrot was the promise of a Jewish homeland in Palestine should Great Britain win the war and gain control of Palestine. This understanding was formalized in writing by 1917 with the Balfour Declaration. The Zionist headquarters, of course, was removed to London, as the Zionists had effectively declared war on Germany. From that time on, of course, Germany's relations with Jews deteriorated. Germany lost the war, and was economically prostrated by the conditions of the peace which followed. It has been said that "Hitler was born with the Treaty of Versailles" because of the impossibly harsh terms it imposed on the defeated German nation. Always, the "Jewish question" entails two quite separate Jewish identities the Jewish people in general, who are usually a positive factor wherever they may be found, and what has generally been referred to as the "International Jew" which combines those involved in international finance and international political Zionism. After the war, Jewish banking, financial, and other business interests became much empowered in Germany, and their influence grew as time when on and the Germans associated the Jews with both their defeat in the war as well as their increasing economic hardships and distress, including the the crippling German inflation which shortly followed. (The blame was not with the government, but with the "private bankers" that issued German currency). Complicating and greatly exacerbating the problem was the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, which spawned Bolshevik revolutionary movements in western Europe, and particularly in Germany. And Jews were seen as the primary culprits in this development too. So it is quite understandable that anti-Semitism was becoming increasingly engrained in many Germans. By 1933, the unabashedly anti-Semitic Adolf Hitler, came to power with promises of change.
Our history fails to remind us that predominately Jewish led Bolsheviks had been operating in Germany, and it was principally against these forces that Hitler's Brown Shirts had frequently clashed during his rise to power. Obviously, the great majority of the German people looked up Hitler as a potential savior, otherwise he would never have been able to come to power. Hitler lost little time in putting some anti-Jewish policies into place. Jewish businesses were boycotted and some anti-Jewish violence occurred. International Zionist organizations considered Hitler as somewhat of pushover, and thought nothing of provoking him in hopes of bringing him down. They immediately organized an international Anti-Nazi Boycott_of_1933 practically as soon as Hitler became Chancellor in 1933.
In Germany, this boycott was received as a further declaration of war by Jews against the German people, and it certainly did nothing to alleviate any of the problems of the German Jews. In fact, it quite naturally further inflamed German public opinion against Jews, hardened Hitler's anti-Jewish tendencies and strengthened Hitler's hand from a political standpoint. It was clear to both Hitler and the German people, that Jews were their primary enemy, and the sooner they could be removed from the country the better. One plan that found Hitler's favored was the Madagascar Plan, by which he hoped to establish a Jewish homeland on the island of Madagascar.
Note that the the Nazis wished to send "all Jews of Europe" to Madagascar, and that the estimated total was 4 million, and that deportations to Poland, and construction of the Warsaw ghetto, would be halted. It's also very interesting to note that the Jews in Madagascar "would be used as hostages to ensure the 'future good behavior of the members of their race in America'". Nonetheless, most Jews continued to prosper at least modestly in Nazi Germany prior to the war, as did the German people in general. In fact, Hitler's National Socialist government worked wonders on the German economy, and it grew steadily in prosperity as the rest of the world languished in the Great Depression. Hitler had managed to fix the currency problem by issuing currency something like Lincoln's greenbacks, and his popularity continued to increase as the nation rebuilt into the greatest industrial powerhouse in Europe. Still, the Holocaust was still a decade away, and it required a devastating war to culminate in the massive tragedy that it became. But it can be seen why, for some years after the war long after the grizzly photos of the death camps were released even many prominent Jews and Orthodox anti-Zionist Jews believed "they had brought it on themselves" an opinion that has become historic heresy today. But it wasn't the Jews who suffered who "brought it on themselves," of course. It was "others elsewhere" that brought it on for them. It was the innocent who paid the price, while the (non-German), instigators lived on in comfort. This is not justification for what happened to the Jews of Germany and occupied Europe, of course. It is merely to show that there was cause for the effect that took place, and it was not a "natural process." It was made to happen, whether through actual heartless intent or dreadful miscalculation. There are many valid questions to be asked about the Holocaust. But they are all met with charges of anti-Semitism and the newer pejorative "Holocaust denial." The foremost is, "How is it that the German People of one of the most civilized nations in the world (regardless of having an anti-Semitic leader), could stand by while such a thing as the murder of 6 million Jews proceeded?" Another is, "If there was a well oiled official policy of extermination of Jews, how did so many survive? Clearly, at the very end of the war, when even the German people were close to starvation, the camps were literally still overflowing with emaciated survivors. The most grizzly photos of the death camps clearly show this, along with mass graves and huge piles of obviously very recently deceased emaciated corpses. How is it that so many were kept alive for so long until the very end of the war if there was a long on-going extermination policy? Wouldn't it have been much easier (with German efficiency) to dispatch them long before rather than preserving them?" Another: "How is it that the Germans estimated there were about 4 million Jews that would have to be sent to Madagascar or some other African land and that other estimates of the number of Jews in Europe was about 6 million? How many million survived after six million were killed?" Another: "Obviously, the Nazi concentration camps were 'death camps' during the last years and months of the war simply because there was not enough food or medical resources for the prisoners, and because sanitation and disease had become acute problems. How many Jews died of disease and mal-nutrition?" Interestingly, the allies were criticized by Jewish organizations during the war for not bombing the concentration camps. "Did they expect that would save the lives of the internees?" These are only a few of the questions we aren't supposed to ask. So Pridger won't ask them. But it does make one wonder. Of course, we seldom hear of Soviet Russia's role in the Holocaust. There is no doubt that many thousands of Jewish deaths and disappearances, which were conveniently attributed to the Nazis, actually happened at the hands of the Soviets. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners and refugees were rounded up and shipped to Siberia at the end of the war to provide slave labor for the Soviet's planned economic miracle, and there is little doubt that a significant number of Jews were among them. An "Iron Curtain" quickly descended around the Eastern European nations that came under Soviet occupation. John Q. Pridger Saturday, 7 March, 2009 DUBYA'S AMBUSHMENT AND OBAMA'S OBAMINATION Under no circumstances should the Treasury have handed out as single penny of TARP funds, without two minimal things. (2) A receipt, and (2) A firm commitment to repay the public, plus interest, should recipients survive and once again become profitable. Getting a receipt is probably taught in business kindergarten, if not by parents. The IRS expects taxpayers to save them. It's beyond comprehension that our government, or any government, would give bankers, insurance companies, or large industrial corporations, billions of borrowed taxpayer credit dollars without insisting on a commitment to to repay them whether the money advanced represents a loan, ownership of stock, or a mortgage on corporate assets. Fear of socialism and state ownership is a poor excuse for simply giving borrowed taxpayer money to private corporations. The way our government handed out the first $350 billion of the TARP money insured that the taxpayer remains the sole debtor. If the company survives and becomes profitable again, the public will not benefit or be repaid. If the company finally goes under, the public will not benefit or be repaid. So it's apparently a lose lose gesture for the taxpayer and the nation. The public was told, "you're damned if you don't," and obviously you're damned once you do. To make matters worse, most of the new jobs Obama's economic stimulus package will create will be public sector jobs. So the public has to pay for them from start to finish, with more borrowed money. We supposedly have the greatest capitalist system that the world has ever known. Capitalism is supposed to be based on free enterprise and market forces. So what does it tell us when the public has to bail out the largest, richest, corporate capitalists of all times? It tells us we've been getting something ghastly wrong for a long time. John Q. Pridger THERE ARE THREE WAYS A NATION CAN BECOME WEALTHY
"There are three ways a nation can become wealthy. Since the industrial revolution, we must add something to Franklin's third way, "...it can profit through agriculture, whereby planting a seed we create new wealth as if by a miracle, augmented by industrial production, which reproduces miracles from miracles." Our Washington brain trust meaning our mis-representatives and their "think tanks" started going totally off its rocker back in the 1970s and 80s. Actually, they had been going wrong a long time before that, but that's when they totally started going bananas. They actually began to think that "free trade" trade for trade's sake was somehow a great wealth creator and generator. The few with any sense at all knew better. It was a profit maker for many of the big boys, but certainly not a wealth creator. Trade especially unnecessary trade (which most of our trade is) does not add value to products, it adds costs. Anybody that got past the first grade would know that. It adds big costs. So, were does all the profit come from? As Franklin said, "by cheating." Who has been getting cheated? The American people mostly. Mainly the workers who lost their jobs. And the Mexican, Chinese, and other Third World workers who got the jobs are cheated too. Because they don't get nearly the share of benefits from their labors to which they should be entitled. The difference between the pay of Mexican and Chinese Workers, and the pay and benefits of displaced American workers provide the huge profits the trading (and traitor) capitalists the cheaters have been reaping from the trade. And the cheating has been aided and abetted by our own government. It made it all possible by promoting the phony "benefits" of free trade and globalization. It deregulated the very corporate entities that most needed regulation in order to keep them loyal to the flag and of service to the people. Their flight to runaway flags and false flags was heavily subsidized by American workers (taxpayers). And the subsidies accounted for a huge share of astounding levels of public debt they now shoulder. HENRY FORD MUST BE ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE Few industrialists did more for the American worker, or for the nation, than Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. Ford might even be called the father of the American industrial worker middle class. When Henry Ford first succeeded and became a major industrialist, workers in his plants were paid as industrial workers had always been paid. That is, they were paid just enough to get them to come to work as little as the market would bear. That had always been the rule. All "the company" cared about, was that the worker could earn enough to barely get by. The only requirement was to keep him in need of coming back to work day after day, laboring ten or more hours a day, six days a week, for maybe a dollar a day. Ford was doing very well. His business was thriving, and he was becoming rich beyond his fondest dreams. But one day he had a peculiar insight as to how he could make his automobile empire even larger and more prosperous. How? By making his workers more prosperous! He saw that he could easily pay them more than what he was paying them, and still make a handsome profit. But, he reasoned, if all of his workers were paid enough to be able to buy Ford cars for themselves, he would be able to sell a lot more cars. He raised their wages to $5.00 a day a huge increase! And he went further. He instituted the eight hour day and the five day work week, so his employees would have sufficient leisure to enjoy their automobiles. The rest is history. Though other industrialists thought Ford was crazy, most of them came to his way of thinking in the end. Organized labor came in and helped move the process. And the American industrial worker evolved into middle class status. And most other wages went up too, economy wide, because of the prosperity caused by this industrial progressiveness bled into the rest of the economy. The American middle class expanded, and a broad-based prosperity was made possible. Though the Great Depression intervened to slow things down considerably, that great prosperous middle class continued for three decades after World War Two. The decline of the productive industrial middle class began in the 1970s and 80s, but really hasn't been missed much until last year. Now we are destined to suffer from our national negligence. And we haven't got any Henry Fords left. THE IRONY OF FORD MOTOR COMPANY'S LATTER DAY SUCCESS The Big Three automakers are in serious trouble today. Of the three, Ford Motor Company is in the best fiscal shape. But it isn't due to anything Henry Ford would be proud of. The Ford Motor Company is in better shape than GM because its post-Henry Ford leadership caved to globalism and betrayed the American Worker something that would have been total heresy to the founder of the company. General Motors failed to "adapt" to globalism soon enough, and didn't betray its American workers according the the free trade prescription. This came to Pridger's attention in a recent reprint of an article entitled "Free Trade Violates Constitution," by Gus Steizer, originally published in 1987 by Liberty Lobby. The article was recently reprinted in the February 23rd Issue of the American Free Press, from which the following is excerpted:
From this we can gain an understanding of both the cause and effect of our globalist free trade policy. Twenty-two years down the line the damage caused by globalism is clear. Companies that fell into synch with the government's globalist plan simply had to repudiate American workers in order to prosper. Ford was doing it "right" according to free trade and (NAFTA) policy, by betraying the American economy and American workers, and GM was being "inefficient" by maintaining and expanding it's American operations and providing more work for Americans rather than for Mexicans. GM is being forced by the current economic downturn to abandon many of the plants that it built in this country, along with jettisoning more workers. Among many others, the Saturn plant in Tennessee a great success story is at risk of closure. GM is suffering for supporting American production rather than going south of the border or offshore. Ford is in better shape than GM because it chose not to invest in the American economy and American workers. When a nation willfully promotes suicidal economic and industrial policies, the net result will eventually be successful national economic suicide and our present economic mess is full evidence of this. We've been committing slow but sure economic suicide for well over two decades, and that suicide is finally manifesting itself in a manner that is painfully apparent to everybody. We can't recover because we no longer have the industrial capacity to quickly put Americans back to work, and because of the lack of work in the larger economy (which has become mostly non-productive services and government employment), the few remaining large manufacturers are being forced to cut production, close plants, and lay off workers. This, of course, will make it possible for foreign companies to capture even more of the American market. We've heard a lot about the three million jobs that were lost during the Dubya Bush administration, and even the million or so that have already been lost during the new Obama administration, but the critical losses started during the Reagan administration when our industrial capacity was still at its zenith. And those losses have continued through the present. Five presidential administrations have presided over the economic suicide we call globalism and international interdependence. In the mean time, financial capital invented many new and cleaver ways to "expand the economy" and make it appear that we were prospering under globalization. They expanded it using bubbles, balloons, junk bonds, derivatives, and a host of other things that have come to represent "toxic" investments. Investment firms went totally off of their rockers in an effort to attain continuously increasing profits on the run-up of values on bogus or overpriced capital assets. John Q. Pridger SO NOW WE NEED TO IMPORT 30,000 NURSES FROM ABROAD? The nurse shortage is another story of national economic policy gone bad and education gone bad. We're hearing that we need to import about 30,000 nurses from the Philippines, India, and China each year to meet the demand. This is incredible to the point of absurdity, but nothing more than what we get for being led by totally incompetent people. In a nation of 300 million people, with a huge and growing percentage of them unemployed and desperate for work, it's pretty hard to imagine why we don't have enough nurses to serve our needs. Nurses are people, and we've got plenty of people who need work. Education (or lack thereof), is part of the problem, of course, and Obama is poised to help out on that score. Yet it ought to be more than obvious that our educational system was doing just fine until the federal government first stepped in to help out. Before the federal Department of Education was created in 1980, and the federal government began serving a much greater role in educating our youth, this was one of the most literate nations in the world. That's far from the case today. Scholastic achievement has declined at least since the 1960s. Civil Rights dealt a tremendous blow to educational standards in this country, for this was when the federal government really began to intervene in education. Equity of the races was attained by downgrading the majority rather than insisting on upgrading the minorities. But the decline became more rapid after the federal government weighed in with an even heavier hand. In fact two line graphs showing the decline of educational standards and the rise of federal funding for education, superimposed on one another, would describe a large X, with standards going down and federal funding going up. Thanks, Washington, for actively dumbing down the American people at great and increasing cost.
Unfortunately, the present political leadership is obviously graphic evidence of the results of decline in educational standards. Our best and brightest simply haven't been measuring up in recent decades. The very fact that a novice politician has been elected president tells us something. President Obama, of course, is one of the smarter ones, but how in the world could he be compared to such presidents as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Kennedy or Reagan? Literally all of our previous presidents had rather long resumes of accomplishments prior to being nominated to run for the presidency! Obama was the very first to run on almost no track record of any merit. But, of course, the nation was ready for change. Obama is going to throw more money at education. But if the past three or four decades are a gauge as to what to expect, we can expect educational standards to continue to decline. We may have more and nicer schools, and high sounding programs. But the teachers themselves, as well as the curriculum, are products of the system the government has managed. We're at a point now where it almost takes a college graduate to qualify for a simple clerical job. Military recruits and college freshmen with high school diplomas require remedial reading and math courses before progressing to step one. So we need nurses from abroad. We've been importing doctors and technical professionals for decades already, because Americans just don't seem to measure up any more. And, of course, it has always been difficult for Americans, even well qualified ones, to get into medical school. But we've never failed to increase the numbers of foreign students permitted to go to our universities and medical schools. When they graduate, they usually stay here, where they are both needed and can earn much more than if they returned home where they are usually more direly needed. John Q. Pridger COMMODITY BASED MONEY On January 14th Charles Walters of Acres U.S.A. passed away (1926-2009). He was a brilliant beacon of knowledge in an increasingly barren landscape, and will be sorely missed by admirers and students of his philosophical, political, and economic insights. Walters was not only one of the nation's preeminent advocates for family farmers and sustainable agriculture, he was a spokesman for sound economic and monetary policy. His books on those subjects ought to be required reading for all of our elected representatives. Walters advocated an essentially commodity based monetary system. Not based on gold or silver, but raw materials production predominately storable agricultural commodities. Mr. Walter's last "Newsletter" column in Acres U.S.A. was entitled "Ponzinomics," referring to the way our nation has been conducting business during the last several decades.
Read a tribute to Charles Walters here: www.acresusa.com/.../CW_memorial.pdf Gain a foundation in raw materials economics from the National Organization for Raw Materials (N.O.R.M.), at wwww.normeconomics.com/.
WHAT IS A COMMODITY DOLLAR? In order to have a currency that isn't totally subject to the foibles of the issuing authority, it should be backed by something of real value. Gold and silver are the traditional commodities upon which currencies has been based in relatively modern times. And gold and silver worked well during some periods of history. However, the gold standard that we once had, did not work very long. Three major problems with the gold standard were:
Currency money should maintain a stable purchasing power in the marketplace. Everybody acknowledges this. But it's purchasing power should be stable in terms of the major categories of the things that people actually use money for things they need, like food, clothing, shelter, and essential or common consumer goods or an hour's worth of labor. Not gold or silver. Nobody can eat either, and most people could do very well without them entirely. A dollar that is tied to gold is tied to something that has absolutely no stable market relationship to a bag of groceries, the apartment rent, or the electric bill. What if there were no gold or silver? Would that mean we couldn't have money or a prosperous economic life? Of course not. Money would merely have to be founded on something else. Of course it could be purely fiat currency, with nothing specifically backing it other than the "full faith and credit of the government." That would work if an honest government, or honest government accountants, could be found to issue and manage the money supply. But without a firm benchmark upon which to base the volume of money required to satisfy the needs of commerce, that management would become problematical and too subject to irresponsible manipulation. A currency, of course, must be scientifically managed, but it should also be managed against some specific value benchmark which relates to the basic needs of the people that currency is intended to "serve." Rather than just figuring up the population numbers and trying to ascertain how much money should be needed for them to carry out their market activities, there needs to be a value basis that is easily determined and a distribution system which favors and encourages productive activity. Money should be earned rather than given away or loaned into circulation. It clearly needs to represent value wealth in a manner that everybody can see for themselves. So, perhaps our search should begin at the very source of all initial market valued wealth. "All wealth comes from the soil" the earth the sun being the initial energy sourse. Raw materials production is the source of all wealth. Most people never stop to think of this essential fact of economics. Raw materials, when first grown or extracted from the earth, are new wealth. Grain and other food and fiber crops, coaxed from the soil by farmers, is the nearest thing to creating something from almost nothing mankind has ever devised. Nature does most of the production, and the farmer does the rest with his own labor. Similarly, forestry and fisheries are other means by which raw materials new wealth are extracted from the earth or sea. These sources of wealth, when careful stewardship is practiced, are essentially infinitely renewable. Next in order of new wealth creation are the minerals and hydrocarbons extracted from the ground by the labor of men. This too is initial wealth coming from the earth, though these are not renewable in terms of human life spans, and are thus subject to the laws of diminishing returns. Literally everything else of a commercial nature depends on this initial wealth production. These are the very bedrock and foundation of everything that proceeds upward from those sources and fills out what we know as our economy. This is the initial wealth which multiplies itself as it works its way up the various trade channels, through the many "value added" processes of processing, fabrication, transportation, marketing, and final consumption. Herein we have the initial font of all moneyed wealth, thus we can see that an economy which is truly rational and just would reward, first and foremost, the labor that goes into this initial wealth creation and extraction. Farming is our largest and most important productive industry. It's products are not only the basis for all other wealth creating activity, but any activity at all. Those products are wealth gained directly from the soil as if by magic. And the numbers of people engaged in that activity should be as numerous as the size of the activity would appear to dictate, and farmers should be well rewarded for their production, for it is from farm income that national income initially flows. Short-change production at the source (as we do), and the entire economy is short-changed. Because farmers were short-changed, the corporate collectivization of agriculture was effectively mandatory by errant public policy that told them "get big or get out" of the farming business. So now most of the farmers are gone, along with much of the quality and sustainability of production. But the production continues, and agricultural production remains one of the few remaining American miracles. The problem is that it is under priced and thus the nation is short-changed in its preeminent industry, selling agricultural commodities to the rest of the world at low global prices. And by selling at low global prices, we not only short-change our own economy, but help destroy farmers elsewhere. Be this as it may, agricultural commodities remain our greatest single source of new wealth, and their role has increased in significance as our nation has de-industrialized. So, when we consider which commodities should be used to back our currency, we should favor agricultural commodities above all else. The reason is that agriculture produces renewable raw materials that are not going to be subjected to the long term shortages that might come about in regard to mineral and petroleum commodities. They are grown, marketed, processed, sold, and eventually totally consumed. But production never ceases. Agricultural commodities provide the food we eat, most of the fibers in which we clothe ourselves the most essential items of human survival, and the things that we spend most of our money on throughout our lives. Food and clothing. Literally everybody in the world has to be fed and clothed before they can do anything else. The mine cannot report to the mines until he has been sufficiently fed and clothed to enable him to do the work. Furthermore, miners and other workers have to be fed and clothed for about eighteen years before they can even entertain the thought of going down into the mines or going to work in the processing plant or factory. Doctors and Lawyers have to be fed and clothed for about twenty-five years before entering into practice. So agriculture, in spite of the technical state of the arts we may have attained, remains the most essential of all industries, and the more important source of initial, new, wealth that is always entering into commercial trade channels. It remains our largest industry, and must remain so if we are going to prosper in any degree at all. It is this kind of essential renewable raw materials that should be rightly monetized as the basis of our currency. There is no more "democratic" commodity than agricultural commodities to serve as the launch pad of money. In other words, new wealth from the earth equals new money actual "earned income" coming into the economy. Of course, this is just the basis for monetization and not the whole story. These raw materials, and actually all raw materials, only start their march of value at the farm, mine, lumber mill, or fish market. That march through various levels of value-added activities compounds the value of those initial raw materials several times over. Depending on the state of the arts in the value added processes, the dollar a farmer receives at the elevator might provide the economic power to be transformed into seven or ten dollars by the time a loaf of bread has landed on someone's table. Charles Walters always spoke of seven as the magic number during the time when he received the benefit of dedicated researchers in the field. This "multiplier" changes with increases in industrial efficiency. But the point is (assuming seven is the multiplier), every farm dollar results in seven dollars in national income. And this provides a commodity basis for monetization. The dollar should be valued against a basket of the major storable agricultural commodities. By this primary means, new money would essentially be paid into circulation at the grass roots level of the economy principally at the source of raw material productions and the value of the dollar would be fixed in terms of storable agricultural commodities, for which the government would serve as the purchaser of last resort to keep prices at the desired levels. This system had been carefully worked out in the 1930s. The following is excepted from Unforgiven ... the American Economic System SOLD for Debt and War , 1971 and 2003, by Charles Walters.
. John Q. Pridger Friday, 6 March, 2009 PRIDGER GIVES THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION CREDIT Obama's "change," thus far, isn't all bad. If we look beyond merely our financial woes, at least we seem to be coming down off of our Empire high horse and are beginning to talk to other nations as if we are fellow citizens of the world rather than global dictators. It's beginning to seem like we may even cease and desist from trying to lay the groundwork for war with Russia. This is definitely a good sign. This willingness to engage other countries as equals rather than underlings or enemies, and the announced closing of the Guantanamo terrorist resort, are the only positive developments Pridger has thus far noted since Obama took office. Pridger is all for these things as long as the administration doesn't sell or fritter away a single ounce of American sovereignty in the process (but this is too much to expect). On the other hand, the mantra of "globalization is the solution" to the world economic crisis has reared it's ugly head again. This is about as disheartening and frustrating as Pridger can imagine. Globalization is the Yellow Brick Road toward world government, and has caused just about all of the problems we're facing today, both as a nation and globally. Globalization is the game of international financial capitalists and the big multi-national corporations and the world is their playground. The much sought after "international interdependence" of the globalists is what produced the "when we goof, the whole world collapses" syndrome, that the world is now suffering from. Almost everybody knows this, but the Obama administration is under constraints from the higher ups on these matters, and he has to tow the line. And he will tow the line, because that is the line that brought him to office. It's not just the "higher ups," he's carefully packed his administration with New World Order people. Secretary of Sate, Hillary, is a preeminent "Global Village" person. Her book, It Takes a Village, told us that. Obama is talking serious about health care reform too. And Ted Kennedy proclaimed, "This time we will not fail!" That sounds good to many, but the issue is a thickly planted mine field. The big problem is that our big government is committed to protecting, bailing out, and preserving, the big boys, and this includes the insurance giants that have been such a large contributor to the health care crisis right alongside the medical and pharmaceutical industries. The health care cost crisis is a huge problem, and it is an institutional problem involving a lot more than what immediately meets the eye. This being so, you can bet that any "solutions" the administration is likely to come up with will be wrong. The staggering costs of health care will probably be taken over by making future generations of taxpayers liable to pay national health care premiums to profit-hungry insurance giants. Standby for a further surge of the national debt spike. Speaking of the national debt, Congress is really going to get a workout in managing to keep the debt ceiling raised high enough to accommodate our present deficit spending. Pridger's suggests that they might be leagues ahead by simply removing the darned ceiling completely. What good is it? It's just as obstacle that keeps getting in the way. What most Americans don't realize is that one of the core goals of the New World Order entails a precipitous decline in the American standard of living. We are on the cusp of that process right now. We will become a much poorer nation in terms of the incomes of the vast majority of people. Yet the debts we will be saddled with will be greater than any people has ever faced before in the history of nation states or civilization itself. This debt, in the face of certain and accelerating diminishing returns in the realm of taxability of the people, will become a problem beyond resolution under the current financial system. If you think there is an economic crisis now, just wait until the real crisis develops just a little further down the line. There will be monetary reform and a huge repudiation, or liquidation, of debt. But the question is, will we still be in command of our national destiny after the cards have played out? Right now we're trying to save the financial interests, and get "credit flowing again," but we haven't even begun to save the nation. John Q. Pridger CALIFORNIA'S PROPOSITION 8 It's beginning to look hopeful in the case of the Proposition 8. Gay marriage is ludicrous on the very face of it. The very idea that a small minority of homosexuals has become powerful enough to think it can change the very definition of "marriage" is appalling. The institution of "marriage" or "holy matrimony" has had a settled definition since the dawn of civilization. And a few homosexuals propose to change it? Let them play house with each other if they want to. Let them call it what they like. But if "civil unions" are legalized and licensable for homosexuals, the law should not discriminate against "civil unions" for anybody else that may want them. Two straight brothers, sisters, "buddies," or "best friends," brothers and sisters, should have just as much right to form a civil union as a homosexual couple. Who are homosexuals to expect special, state sanctioned and licensed, privileges? And why limit civil unions to "couples"? What's wrong with group civil unions made up of any reasonable number of related or unrelated parties? What's wrong with polygamy if that is the form of civil union that fits the bill? If the law of the land, or the several States, ever give special privilege and status to homosexuals, calling their cohabitation, friendships, and unions "marriages," it's time for the rest of us to take steps to get government itself out of the marriage licensing business entirely. If homosexual couples become recognized by the state as licensed and legally sanctioned "marriages" that should be the end of state licensed marriages for traditional couples. To marry by sanction and license of the state will become a sick joke. Man and woman couples should simply marry in the church of their choice and cut the state out of it. If the institution of marriage is officially debauched by the state, the state's role has come to an end, and common law marriage should become the rule for "normal" couples. Let the homosexuals get their licenses and support the state. What business does the State have in anything as personal and sacred as marriage in the first place? The rest should revert to an even older tradition of marriage a man and a woman committed to one another, bound by love, with the desire to procreate and have children together. Marriage is a right, as homosexuals keep telling us. As such, there is really no justification for state licensing. You don't license rights. If it must be licensed, arguably, it isn't a right. In fact, marriage licensing came about as the States' statement that marriage is not a right, but a state sanctioned privilege a privilege that it licenses and controls. It also came about at the behest of religious organizations to to give official State blessing to an institution that literally everybody considered sacred and were to be legally binding forever. Law also made it difficult to dissolve a marriage. Not only that. It was intended to prevent marriages that were not specifically sanctioned by the State or the various churches. It was the State's way of preventing under-aged marriages, miscegenation, or the marriage of diseased or undesirable parties. Back when we were still more or less a sane society, nobody ever thought of same-sex marriage, but, of course, it prevented that too. John Q. Pridger Thursday, 5 March, 2009 OBAMA DOING ALL THE WRONG THINGS That's what Pridger thinks, but he isn't alone in this estimation. Establishment types are weighing in, too, with some pretty tough words. Jim Rogers is an old associate and business partner of none other than George Soros is described by Newsweek as having had "an an iconoclastic career as an author, adventurer, and the creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index... He has harsh words for former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, suggests President Barack Obama and his economic team are not up to the task, and thinks tough love is the answer for America." Newsweek's Maria Bartiromo (anchor of CNBC's Closing Bell), had a talk with Rogers and produced an article called "Jim Rogers Doesn't Mince Words About the Crisis" (February 26, 2009), and here's some of the highlights (emphasis added):
Rather than clearing the decks of the impediment and making ready for producers, Obama, like Bush, is propping up failed investment bankers and insurance companies, and concentrating on boosting the public sector wherein all the payrolls have to be met by the taxpayer. Pridger only disagrees with Rogers on only one point. Rogers would let the automakers collapse too. Perhaps the management deserves that, and it would be fair enough. They have made some tremendous mistakes, but many of their mistakes were due to the financial environment in which they operated, and the fact that our trade policy tended to limit their options due to unfair foreign competition. But the industries themselves, and their workers, are nonetheless producers. If American automakers fail, what will fill the void when the economy starts to recover? Foreign automakers, both overseas and on American soil, and they would be in a position to capture the rest of the auto market, making it very difficult for domestic automakers to make a comeback. It is encouraging to think that American farmers may benefit from our economic crises. In spite of all the years that the farming community has been has been downsized and our farms collectivized into corporate sized units, there is no doubt that American agriculture remains the one shining light of American productiveness. It is capable of feeding the nation through the hardest of times, and is positioned to play a major roll in stabilizing the economy. John Q. Pridger STOCK MARKET RESPONDS TO CHINA Obama's stimulus package sent the DOW plummeting well below 7,000. But when China unveiled some sort of a rescue "plan" the market perked up somewhat. (Today, however, it's headed down again.) The market apparently thinks that Chinese economic policy might help us, but but Obama's economic plan won't. This tells us a little about what an incredibly bad situation we're in. And things aren't about to get better very soon. As in the past, the Washington brain trust, with Obama as the head spokesman, is telling us that globalization the solution, when a vast majority of the people recognize that globalization has caused many of our most pressing problems. This goes totally against the "awakening" arm of the Democratic party. Unfortunately, the American people were hoodwinked again in their selection of a president. We never get what we vote for, yet we insist on taking candidates at their word. Of course, the significant "other" choice was obviously much worse. But was that really the case. Perhaps McCain would have made a better president after all. Remember all his campaign rhetoric all the things that convinced the voters that he was just more George W. Bush? Well, maybe they were all lies. Had we elected the war mongering McCain, we'd probably have found out that he was just kidding. That's the way things seem to work in this crazy mixed up country. Of course, Pridger is just being kidding. We didn't really have a choice. Both candidates were just as bad. They had both been selected and promoted by the same establishment. Obama was merely the best crowd pleaser. He didn't promise anything but hope and change. We're certain to get change. Change is definitely coming. It's already here, and there will be a whole lot more of it. As for hope we're getting it in the negative sense. As we plunge into ever-deepening despair, we continue to hope that what we're seeing isn't real. The purpose of all of the bailout money is to save the discredited, even criminal, system that has got us to where we are today. Save the big banks by giving them money. Save the insurance Goliath by giving it money. Get credit flowing again. Bury ourselves in un-payable debt shackle our children and grandchildren to it to revive the very same Ponzi system that has already delivered us up and left us holding empty bags. We're told we have to refill the bags and hand them back to the game managers. After we've saved the biggest bankers and the biggest insurance company, where will we be? We'll be so far underwater that our entire nation will be in a state of foreclosure. We'll effectively be in receivership. Our creditors are going own the good old "land of the free and home of the brave." We can't pay up because we no longer produce what it takes to pay up. What we manufacture here is debt. Yet our leaders cry out for more lending nationwide, freeing up credit, as a panacea for all of our ills. The best and the brightest are telling us as individuals, businesses, and as a nation, that all we need is to go on a credit buying binge so we can recover from our economic woes. They are telling us that we need to borrow and spend more. We need more globalism more trade. They concede that we need more jobs, but the jobs they would save or create are the ones where the taxes and a lot more borrowing are required to meet the payrolls. Nobody in Washington has yet come up with a plan to get America working for itself again in a productive manner that doesn't require borrowing to meet the payroll. In fact obstacles to that end are being hammered into place. In short, we're in a hopeless situation. We're paralyzed because we don't have any money of our own to spend. Everything the government does requires borrowing money to get money to spend. There's no way to fix the problem without fixing the monetary system first. We've already got a cheap fiat money system, but we've contrived to make it the most expensive Ponzi scheme imaginable. It rewards the super-rich at the expense of the citizenry which is plunged into ever-increasing debt. It's time to start producing a cheap fiat money that doesn't cost us our future. It's not time to get credit flowing, it's time to get money flowing United States Notes real greenbacks. It's time to take monetary policy and currency issue out of the hands of private bankers and give it back to the people where it belongs. But where will we find the representatives that will actually represent the people and get the job done? We certainly haven't got them now in this time of crisis. So, we're in for some very hard times. Because our present so-called representatives are endeavoring to purge the poison from our system with ever-greater doses of even stronger poison. John Q. Pridger THE CAPITALIST CONUNDRUM Capitalism has some serious problems. First of all, industrial capital took leave of age-old business practices a long time ago. It became dependent on debt financing whereas the old tried and true method of business was to expand only on savings (profits). It became "good business practice" to expand beyond all reason in a quest for more profits, by financing both expansion and operations. So industrial capitalists have tended to expand beyond all reasonable limits, gobbling up or destroying the small fry all along the way. The small fry do not have access to the levels of credit that the big boy do, and some simply didn't want to go beyond a modest size. Eating the competition was the name of the game, and in the end we have corporations that are "too big to be allowed to fail." General Motors is in trouble now. And look what would happen if they are allowed to fail because they have put themselves and the entire national economy at risk. Imagine what would happen if Walmart failed as it will in the fullness of time. Production efficiency was important to the development of modern production methods to satisfy increasing markets. But there was a point when and where efficiency of production became the enemy of the people at least the working people. Debt financing made the purchase of that efficiency possible, so an ever-increasing number of workers could be dispensed with. Eventually, a point was reached where efficiency became counterproductive. Industry became too efficient and productive for its own good. Take the quandary that General Motors finds itself in. The market is withering at a precipitous rate. Production has to be slowed down. But because of the debt financing habit, the company can't just slow down production to adapt to the shrinking market demand. It can't just slow down the machinery and keep workers and plants going and still hope for a profit because of the huge perpetual debt overhead that has become a part and parcel of doing business. It can't service the debt and pay the help too. The only way for it to save itself is to destroy more jobs, cut wages, and get a bailout from the government all of which is counterproductive to the goal of preserving and creating more jobs. Tuesday, 3 March, 2009 NEVER A DULL MOMENT IN THE NEW WORLD DISORDER Yesterday the DOW dropped to 6,763; Insurance Goliath, AIG, needs additional billions; and Rush Limbaugh, according to media pundits, has assumed de facto leadership of the Republican Party. Well, we've been working toward a major stock market and economic crash at least since President Reagan announced a "new international economic order," stating that ours was to become a post-industrial "service economy." He also began the process of "deregulating" financial capital and and empowering big corporate capital. And, naturally, the corporate movers and shakers were ready and eager to start the march toward a new generation of robber barons this time on a global scale never imagined in the nineteenth century (outside of the colonial system). Reagan probably didn't fully understand the full implications of what he was doing by deregulating big capital and striking for a "service economy." What he actually accomplished was the de-industrialization of a nation that, at that time, was still the most productive in the world. A service economy is a hollowed out economy one that has no mechanism for earning its own keep. A hollow economy, it it prosper at all, evolves into exactly what we have today a bubble economy. We became even more prosperous after the Reagan revolution, but the prosperity was not long prosperity for workers, and a broadening middle class. It was a prosperity for the money men and sharpers those able to figure out how to make money without labor. Reagan institutionalized "trickle-down" economic theory a branch of Friedman-esque, free market economics wherein money sprinkles down from central bankers and financial interests at the top rather than earned on the farms and factory floors. "Voodoo Economics" (George H. W. Bush's term for "Reaganomics")was an apt term whereby government can expand its spending while cutting taxes the theory being that by cutting the taxes of the super-rich, more jobs would be created and thus there would be more trickle down to the people. With more people paying taxes, government revenues would increase. It worked for a while. Tax revenues did increase. More jobs were created. But most were service jobs. Trickle down worked too, but those at the top of the trickle-down pyramid devised such large pockets that not much trickled down. Meanwhile, unleashed by deregulation, and Washington aspirations for a Utopian globalism, international free trade, unheard of profits, and factories started flowing south and east until the hollowed out economy was finally attained. The stock market climbed to new heights as this process of Voodoo economics "matured" rending up a fake wealth bubble that gave everybody the feeling we were indeed headed down the right track. But that shining light at the end of the tunnel wasn't the daylight of the shining house on a hill that Reagan envisioned it was an oncoming express called reality. Yet, while many of us warned that we were on the wrong track every inch of the way, the nation remained jubilant as the economy was systematically plundered and gutted. Congress, and several presidential administrations cheered all the way. And here we are, on the cutting edge of the largest economic catastrophe the world has ever know. It's a global problem because our Washington brain trust paved the way for globalism and more "international interdependence." A corporately administered Global Village was the goal, and that's what we got. It was a ghastly mistake, of course, but almost nobody is Washington is going to admit it. So the biggest insurance company in the world, which (which to hear the talking head explain it), practically insured the whole "New World Order" along with its mind-bending array of toxic waste products is in a little trouble. The working man and woman (principally of the United States), along with their prodigy, are fully expected to bail the entire world out on their already over-extended credit card. The prime minister of the formerly "Great" Britain, is calling on President Obama to initiate a "global New Deal" to be funded, in great part, by credit extended by Communist China and a few other solvent nations. That's what we've come to! Begging credit from former and future enemies to keep our national credit line open. But American taxpayers are the ones who are ultimately liable for that mind-boggling current and future debt. We built a massively complex financial house of cards on shifting sands, and are now struggling to keep it up, though the cards continue to fall around our ears. We inflated arrays of financial balloons and bubbles and struggle to keep as many of them from totally deflating as possible. But they are still just bubbles, and the skins are failing to hold the hot air in. As Pridger pointed out 16 years ago, in Voodoo Economics in One Easy Lesson, the prime product of Voodoo Economics is "Voodoo Doodoo," and thus:
It took a little longer than Pridger expected, but we've finally made it to the booboo stage. But nobody in Washington has a clue as to what to do now. Least of all, the Obama administration. He'll do what the "bankers and liberal think tankers" tell him must be done. In the mean time, the Republicans had thoroughly discredited themselves during the George W. years and now they are totally clueless too. The didn't have enough sense to oppose the Bush TARP (Troubled Associates Rescue Program) program, but now in both the minority and the opposition, they have thought it wise to oppose Obama's TRAP (Troubled Republic Assassination Program). So, "conservative" radio talk show giant, Rush Limbaugh, has emerged as their only viable voice. The trouble with Rush is that he has never got the picture at least not the whole picture. He made a wonderful liberal basher (and they did need bashing Pridger used to enjoy listening to him during the Clinton years), but he didn't get much else right. He was onto family values, of course, but otherwise it became evident that Rush was a bought and paid for establishment Republican, and not a true conservative at all. Of course, the very word conservative has always been somewhat ambiguous, especially since the Reagan administration. Prior to that, there was the "Rockefeller" brand of conservatism which was hardly the brand of conservatism of the ordinary man in the street. During the Reagan years the neo-cons were just becoming into the Republican party in significant numbers. And before we knew it, with the first President Bush, we had "compassionate conservatism." That apparently meant conservatives with a penchant for war as well as bigger government and higher social spending. Rush was exposed early as what is called a "Judas Goat" leading his conservative flock of fans and admires further and further into "non-conservative" mine fields. He hitched his wagon to the neo-cons and followed their line right along with George W. becoming an international interventionist and a major Republican war on terror monger. Like his fellow Republicrats, he even "saw the light" (the wrong light), on deficit spending, concluding that deficit spending was good after all as long as business was expanding. He learned this from a free trade, New World Order, economist, of course. Ronald Reagan is still the conservative Republican's Holy Grail. Few admit that we went wrong on his watch, in spite of his winning ways and pristine conservative message. "Government IS the problem," he said. He was right, but government can also solve problems, if it knows (or admits), what they really are. In the end, Reagan followed the wrong Pied Pipers, and his solutions were not really solutions. Of course, one must consider how a close call with an assassin's bullet can influence the most stalwart of politicians. To be honest, a whole lot of conservatives were off track at that time. Even Pat Buchanan was a free trader in those days. They were under the spell of the global free traders, such as economist Milton Friedman. Friedman was all wet on that, but at least knew that the Federal Reserve System was a serious problem. He didn't speak up loud enough on the most important matter. If he had, he would not have become a Nobel laureate in economics. And, of course, none of his admiring politicians were brave enough to pick up on the subject. The ship of state had already run onto the beach long before Ronald Reagan came into office. It was too late to balance the budget. The Democrats were responsible for that. But rather than getting the ship off the beach, Reagan proceeded to try to get it up onto the mountain. President Bush I, envisioning what he finally articulated as a New World Order, delivered the ship of state onto a precarious plateau further than ever from its constitutional home waters. Clinton navigated it through some of the high passes, and Bush II plunged us down into the dry abyss all with the best of intentions, of course. Now that Obama is in office and seems to be doing all he can to change things (but doing all the wrong things, as he's expected to do), Rush Limbaugh has something to crow about again. And he's crowing raising discomfort levels in Washington. Here's hoping Rush finally gets his compass fixed and starts pointing in the right direction, because no other "Republican" has a clue or a voice yet. But it's unlikely Rush will see the right light. Ron Paul, who was spurned by the Republican Party, has four years to catch somebody's ear. John Q. Pridger All quotations and excerpts are based on non-profit "fair use" in the greater public interest consistent with the understanding of laws noted at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html.
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