PRIDGER vs. The New
World Order

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John Q. Pridger's
COMMENTS ON NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Politics, economics, and social issues, as seen through Pridger's mud-splattered lenses.
Why Pridger writes this Blog

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OUR POLITICAL LANDSCAPE IS AWASH WITH PIED PIPERS

Government is now attempting to create jobs for the jobless. We need more jobs, of course, but not of the nature government is good at creating. Government jobs, of whatever merit or nature, cost us. They seldom produce anything that will recoup expenses. More government created jobs naturally translate to higher taxes or more deficit borrowing – the very things that are killing our economy.

Since the advent of the what we like to call the New World Order, scores of millions of good industrial jobs, along with whole industries, have been exported from our nation. Government did that – it caused it to happen. It is still causing it to happen. Incredibly, it continues to hail its job and industry destroying policies as great successes!

If you don't like the conspiratorial sound of the "New World Order," just replace those words with "free trade", "globalism" or "Global Village." Free trade and globalism are still being lauded by both media and politicians as the most wonderful thing since the advent of mutually beneficial trade. Of course, anything with the word "free" in it is pretty easy to sell to the public.

"Mutually beneficial" is the key that has been totally forgotten when it comes to trade. We don't do that anymore. We've been trading our industries, and American's jobs, for cheap imports, and that hasn't been a very good bargain. Free trade may be very profitable to multinational corporations of every type, and the corporate mercantile classes; it might have been good for entrepreneurs and favored businesses both here and abroad; it may have been good for Wall Street and the GDP; but it certainly was not good for the American businesses that once produced in this country, or the working class people whose labor produced just about everything American consumers consumed.

The cheap imports that have wooed "consumers" and made them believe that free trade was good, have effectively deprived those self-same consumers of the wherewithal to support themselves. The cheap imports we have enjoyed have been incalculably expensive!

We first benevolently opened our markets to the Japanese which soon dominated our electronics markets and finally ended up with half of our auto market too. This brought us a lot of nice Japanese cars, but it took a lot of American jobs. But who cared, the U.S. economy was still productive and booming.

That has changed now, and it changed a long time before we began to seriously suffer from it. Now, with China and a score or more other countries supplying most of our consumer goods, we awaken not only to higher and higher unemployment, but to find that our nation is no longer capable of earning its own way in the world! We don't even come close! It no longer matters what Wall Street or the GDP tell us, they have become false bellwethers of our economic health and national prosperity or lack thereof.

Main Streets and whole once productive urban industrial complexes around the nation have come up croppers. That, my dear friends, is not progress. It's blatant and obvious retrogression, and the policies that have made it all possible have been as criminal as it has been suicidal!

As Pridger has pointed out for years, if a nation does not protect its own owner-operated national marketplace, pretty soon that marketplace will no longer be theirs, and the profits will accrue to others elsewhere. We still have access of an abundant array of consumer products, but our burgeoning store selves no longer stand as evidence of a productive and prosperous economy. Our prosperity, such as it still is, has been purchased on credit, and it is very late in the day to begin to realize the full implications of this.

The great and tragic irony is that at the same time our own policies have been torpedoing our industrial economy, we have progressively become a warring national security state. After losing the USSR and China as our prime adversaries, it wasn't long before we found other handy national security threats. Since 9/11 we have become paranoid about national security, yet our military and political leaders seem to have totally overlooked the national security implications of embracing an economic model that makes us so dependent on a host of potential international adversaries – for raw materials, for consumer goods, for machine tools, heavy machinery, port infrastructure, and more! Not the least is credit!

We need to be largely economically self-sufficient in all essentials to be a secure nation. That is the fundamental key and foundation for both a sound economy and national security. How could they have overlooked that?

Well, maybe they didn't overlook it. Perhaps they just concluded that if we could intimidate and dominate the world militarily – that our gargantuan debtor position position vis-a-vis the rest of the world wouldn't really matter. We could owe any amount – in fact, the more the better! We provide the world with it's reserve currency, which is our debt. If nobody is big and powerful enough to call in the loans or foreclose on the implied mortgage, we're home free! We'd effectively own own the world! Unfortunately, they appear to have miscalculated somewhat.

So, we have the specter of the world's most prosperous and the most militarily powerful nation, in total uncontested possession of one of the richest continental sized nation states in the world, begging China, cap in hand, for credit not only to buy their production with, but underwrite our government and finance our wars. Not only that, but begging them to increase the value of their currency (and effectively devalue our own), so we might be able to afford less of their production and maybe sell them something of ours – so we might be able to compete in the world our leaders have been so instrumental in creating. China! An nation that was a poverty-stricken, backward, Third World, outspoken enemy, only a few short decades ago!

We played major roles in building up many of our major adversaries, and usually managed to come out the stronger for it (or apparently so). But we definitely haven't come out ahead in our role in building up the forces of Islamic Jihad in our efforts to check-mate the USSR in Afghanistan. That was obviously a ghastly mistake. But worse, we went out of our way to put China on the fast-track to economic and military super-power status. That was a brilliant success we will probably eventually regret!

Elevating somebody like Osama bin Laden and a rag-tag band of Islamic extremists to international prominence was bad enough. But helping to elevate China was shear madness. We helped elevate the USSR to super-power status, but it finally fumbled the ball – but China is not the USSR. All other considerations aside, ultimately China has us outvoted and out manned by a factor of four to one!

Most surprisingly, China has taken surprisingly well to the capitalist road, and appears poised to bury us with under our own system in the fullness of time. It has come up from it's dark ages with gang buster speed and is now running rings around us in every significant way.

When the United States can no longer afford to buy China's production, it has the potential of eventually absorbing most of it's own production. Its economy is potentially four times the size of ours. And, in spite of all the fondest hopes of American capitalist dreamers, China won't be importing much in the way of manufactured goods from us. 

All of this can be defined as national madness on our part – and it doesn't even address the compounding criminal shenanigans of bankers, insurance companies, mortgage companies, and Wall Street brokerages that have managed to crash our financial economy.

Remember folks, the whole compounding situation was made possible by our trusty leaders in Washington D.C., all of whom take their cues from lobbyists, think tanks, and all the experts who comprise the great brain trust reputed to be populated by the best and the brightest our culture has to offer.  

If the American government wanted Americans to have more jobs, what it needs to do is to quit doing some of the things it has been doing for the last forty years. It has been obvious for all of these years what has been happening, but the slick-tongued politicians, the mass media, and big PR firms, have convinced the people this is progress and it's all good. But, we were simply being sold down the river while being told we were headed upstream.

JQP

September 24, 2010

TOXIC ASSETS

Mortgage backed securities have been in the news quite a bit these past two years. Witness the death of some of them. Here's the deal. Purchase a toxic mortgage backed security at a 99% discount. What a bargain! And watch your investment disappear!

See how it works here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124491608

What was the big problem in the mortgage business? The problem was a total disregard for common sense and sound business practices. The solution would have required common sense before the fact. After the fact is too late.

The simple truth is, home mortgages should always be strictly between a home buyer and the local banker. Period! Nobody else, and nothing else, has any business being involved.

That, of course, would have been the common sense thing. It always was in times past, during more sane times. Nobody else should be involved. The local banker, using standard banking practices, won't loan money on a house unless he believes the person purchasing the home will be able to pay off.

But the government got involved "helping people" to become homeowners. They inserted new rules and involved a host of other people. And that's where the problem started. Before it was all over, the entire global economy was negatively impacted. Incredible!

"Buy that coveted $300K home today! No money down! No income required – 'don't ask, don't tell!' Make interest payments only! Make payments on your credit card! Take out a second mortgage as soon as a little equity accrues. Think of the tax advantages of being able to deduct interest! Use the house as your bottomless ATM! You can't lose! Sell next year for $400K and pocket an easy $100K if you want to make a quick profit."

Unfortunately, our financial brain trust, with the prompting and assistance of do-gooders in Congress who were responsive to have-nots who wanted, devised a way for anybody to become at least temporary homeowners. McMansions and plush condos were selling like hotcakes as prices rose seemingly without end.

That, of course, was shear madness. But the brains of high finance weren't satisfied. Not only did the encourage this degree of irresponsibility, they packaged those mortgages as securities and sold them around the world at a profit as sound investments! They knew they were not sound investments, but they managed to sell enough of them to bring the entire global economy to its knees. Great thinking!

This business and economic travesty has been the work of our brain trust – the best and the brightest our financial system has been able to produce! Oh the wonders of Voodoo Economics!

The people who did this on such a grand scale are the kind of people who would rule the world. They represent financial capital. The big boys at Treasury and the Federal Reserve could not have been oblivious to what was so blatantly going on and the inevitable consequences. They where not just complacent, but must certainly be active facilitators.

There are undoubtedly plenty of other bubbles out there hiding in the middle of Wall Street. Some have burst and some haven't. If truth were known, the $10,000 DOW is probably worth closer to half its current value, if that. Things are a lot worse than they are being made to appear.

DEFLATION OR INFLATION?

The Washington brain trust has been cranking out debt by the trillions to pump up the wealth supply of the bankers and Wall Street crooks who brought the crisis upon us – in hopes they will be benevolent enough to advance enough credit to prevent their system from crashing into dust fragments. As in the case of everything that has to do with the new international economic order, the prescribed cure for the poison we've been administered is more poison – lots more!

How will it end? That's the sixty trillion dollar question. Pridger doesn't know what the real figures are, but here's the way it appears. (We're talking figures that are actually incalculable.) The world was awash in trillions and trillions of dollars which represents debt that is supposed to be repaid someday by American taxpayers. But the actual "value" of all the mushrooming investments which have become toxic is far beyond the actual international debt money supply, perhaps many times over. Additionally, of course, about a third of the air has been let out of the stock market.

This means that about half of the moneyed wealth in the "markets of the world" has simply disappeared. When money is taken out of circulation, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it's called deflation. Deflation is always devastating to somebody. Usually deflation is caused by bankers who cause loans to be called in and money to be taken out of circulation, and it primarily impacts the general population and businesses, causing a recession or depression. But we have something very new this time around – a different kind of deflation. Money has disappeared first from the books of the biggest banks and wealthiest classes in the financial sector. It could disappear, of course, because it wasn't real to begin with.

The government and the Federal Reserve are now printing money to fill this great void in the super-bankers' pockets. Printing money out of thin air, of course, causes inflation.

But here's the conundrum. They can't print money fast enough to catch up with all the phantom wealth that has evaporated over the last couple of years! And that wealth continues to evaporate as Wall Street's multitudes of bubbles continue to burst or at least deflate.

So we have something very strange in the annals of nation states, central banking, and financial markets. The masses of people – mostly poor and getting poorer – are being called upon to refund the bankers – the very font of "trickle-down" economics! This is about as unjust and ironic as anything can get!

Washington is borrowing money to give or loan to the bankers so the bankers can loan the money to businesses in order to keep the economy from crashing. But the only businesses getting any money are other big banks and mega-investors which have bottomless pits to fill before they can become solvent enough to loan money to any productive enterprise.

Guess what? The economy has already crashed. It had been coming down for thirty years before the housing and derivatives bubbles burst causing the present crisis. Now the ceiling is being propped up by flimsy sticks posing as saviors – bailouts, TARPs, stimulus packages, traps, TRAPS, TRAPS, etc. They call those flimsy sticks "recovery." But they are too flimsy to hold the tent roof up, much less provide time to rebuild anything resembling foundation and walls.

No telling what the end game will be. The foxes are set to rebuild the hen house. Perhaps a Federal Reserve System of the world is in order, and/or much bigger and better wars. War, some facsimile of total war, always allows for changes in the fundamental rules governing the affairs of men. There's not much hope of returning to either sound government or sound economics. Chances of that seem very slim at present. The present corporate rulers will maintain power whatever way the tent roof collapse.

Nobody is seriously talking about monetary reform other than maybe replacing the dollar with something similar, over which we will have even less control than we've had over the Federal Reserve System. And nobody is talking serious economic reform, or rebuilding our industrial base.

THE DIRTY LITTLE BIG SECRET

Everything that has been happening to us has been happening right out in the open. What many of us refer to as a grand conspiracy has been right there in print all along. It's just that most trusting workaday people simply haven't been paying attention – it isn't supposed to be their job. All the plans have been published at every step of the way. Innumerable Books published by the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and allied groups, and their periodical publications such as the CFR's Foreign Affairs, have spelled everything out for the better part of a century. 

For Americans, and those in the advanced industrialized nations of Europe, the most carefully hidden part of the plan has been that of ultimately drastically lower living standards. Globally, the goal is also population reduction. This dual program is being pursued in accord with the North-South East-West paradigms, the haves and have-not. At the core of the humanitarian aspects of the plan are peace, World Order, some approach to global economic equity, and sustainability. This, of course, naturally also means control by an enlightened global authority.

The rationale for the design to lower living standards in the advanced nations is easy to understand. In the case of the United States, the specter of 6% of the world's population consuming a third of the world's resources, while half of the world's population lived in grinding poverty, was seen as the epitome injustice, inequality, and the harbinger of future wars. The solution? A New, and more equitable, World Order.

In 1943, as the Great War was raging, Wendell L. Willkie (a very interesting and enigmatic individual who almost won the presidential nomination in 1940, and ran again in 1944), published One World, which was a significant call for an envisioned post war New World Order under the banner of the United Nations. (The Western allied nations during the war began referring to themselves "the United Nations" years before the United Nations was officially born.)

The necessary machinery to attain global control had been at work for a long time. Carroll Quigley, in his Tragedy and Hope – a History of The World in Our Time (1966), laid it all on the line.

Two other enlightening works in Pridger's library are RIO – Reshaping the International Order, A Report to The Club of Rome (1976), and North-South, A Program for Survival, The Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues under the Chairmanship of Willy Bandt (1979-80). 

These are only a sampling of a host of published works that outline the rationales and plans for the New World Order by the movers and shakers themselves. Another interesting study is found in Rise to Globalism, American Foreign Policy Since 1938, by Stephen E. Ambrose.

For some time among many intellectuals, international socialism was thought to be the political model which would provide the "total control" necessary to change the world. In this line another enlightening work that happens to be on Pridger's shelves is Socialism and International Economic Order, by Elisabeth L. Tamedly (1969).

These are only a sampling of very enlightening works which have spelled out the program during fairly recent decades. As we know, capitalism finally won the war against international communism and socialism. But international capitalism isn't exactly what most Americans think of when they think of American capitalism. It was the financial capitalists, rather than the productive industrial capitalists, that had become the the true embodiment of international capitalism – the same ones that had also helped finance international communism.

With the failure of the international experiment in communism as a vehicle of a New World Order, capitalism became the unchallenged model. It's success stems from the ability of financial capital to make a lot of people extraordinarily rich while harnessing the universal self-interest which makes everybody who gets at least a decent job feel they are viable players and beneficiaries in the game. The capitalist model for international control harnesses both the best and the worst in men to accomplish the goals of the plutocrats who intimately influence policy, and thus have so far proven unstoppable.

But, as all the evidence shows, even among the best and brightest, wealth and power corrupts. It even corrupts the most altruistic. And that is why we find ourselves in the dual economic and political mess we have today. Unfortunately, there are no easy remedies in sight.

The dirty little secret is that the West (North), from the beginning of the present New World Order plan, has been targeted for a great decline in living standards, while the poor in the East (South), are intended to have their living standards only marginally increased. At the same time, however, all the people of the world will become beholden to corporate sources for everything they require for survival and comfort, from housing and consumer goods to every mouthful of nourishment they require. It means the abolition of self-reliance and independence at every level in every nation, and a global corporate economy ultimately under the control of the financial capitalists.

We're there now, but things seem to be going wrong with the New World Order plan. Even this may be part of the plan. Pridger doesn't know it all. Whatever the future may bring, chances are that hard times will be part of the scenario, and now is the time to think about becoming more self-reliant at the individual and community level.

Attractive socialist policies will continue to be instituted to pacify some of the blind and have-nots, to prevent individual initiative from taking hold. However, our rulers seem to have worked themselves into a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. Everything they try to do will cause more serious problems – problems that literally everybody is becoming aware of. Things may not go as planned, and the mega-corporate systems in place are subject to catastrophic failure.

People are beginning to wake up. Unfortunately most wake up confused. But only a certain critical mass is required to bring about change of a nature we should believe in. But beware of those who come from the establishment declaring they stand for "Change we can believe in!"     

WHAT CAN THE AVERAGE JOE DO?

They tell us that the economy is on the mend. But now is not the time to rediscover a renewed trust in "what they tell us." Real jobs are not being created. If anything, they are still being exported or simply crushed. The government no longer knows how to create conditions conductive to job growth in productive industries. 

Not everybody can afford to invest in gold or silver to preserve their wealth – especially if they haven't got much moneyed wealth. Gold is, and always has been, a rich man's game. Silver is called the poor man's gold. But most people can't afford to invest very much in silver either, simply because they need the little money they may have for their merest survival. 

After the crash – the final crash (if it comes, and we hope it doesn't) – there will still be plenty physical cash in all local economies throughout the nation. People will still be able to trade with it if there is anything to trade for no matter what ultimately happens to the "too big to fails." But they should take precautions to have "cash on hand"! Don't depend on being able to get your money out of the bank at the last minute. Squirrel away enough cash and coin to tide you over for a year or so. Start now.

Inflation is inevitable, of course. It's literally built into our present monetary system, and it is certain to get worse. Will we be faced with a Weimar-like inflationary situation because of all the money that is being pumped into the system? Possibly, but not necessarily. It depends on what the government monetary policies become under extremist conditions. The government could easily take steps to insure that the existing physical currency retains some, or even most, of its value in the marketplace. Most of the "money" that is being "printed" now is not in the form of physical cash. Most is digital money that has no physical existence until after it is loaned out or spent. So, it is possible that hyper-inflation would not occur in physical cash. And, as corporate systems break down, much digital money and phantom wealth will continue to disappear. Whether the government will manage the crisis in a way that will prevent too much phantom money from flooding into printed form, of course, remains to be seen.

In the event of hyper-inflation, coined money could become more important and begin to replace paper Federal Reserve cash. By this I mean our present copper-nickel coins, which the Treasury can mint and circulate without going through the Federal Reserve debt money processes. Hopefully this would lead to the Treasury printing United States Notes (greenbacks) again, to bypass and cure the debt money problem. As unlikely as it may seem now, we could be nearing an extremis financial situation that would make it the only rational option.

As our prime supplier of consumer goods, what China does may have a significant impact on our future. If the China trade is ever seriously curtailed, we'll come to know the meaning of scarcities in a whole array of manufactured goods.

A shortage of consumer goods may increase in the next few years and, with a continuing lack of factory jobs, people will once again have to begin manufacturing their own jobs.

As the result of a marked decline in goods available, there will be a host of new self-employment opportunities for those who know how to farm, garden, build, fabricate, repair, and recycle things. So the best thing anybody can do is to invest in themselves. If you have a productive hobby, begin to look at it as a potential future job or business. If necessary, learn a useful trade, buy necessary tools and machines while they are still relatively cheap. Gardens, small farms, and farmers' markets will become important again. For those of us who are not rich, these things may become more valuable than gold. 

JQP

September 21, 2010

HARSH REALITIES – THE FED IS DEFINITELY NOT ON OUR SIDE!

Peter Schiff expounds upon the FED's believe that "Inflation is not high enough!" The FED wants American living standards to go down while funding and freeing up the bankers to loan them money to make ends meet! 

The FED is our worst enemy. It needs to be nationalized, totally divorced from Wall Street and private banking, and, if not abolished entirely, at least made into the "people's bank."

There's no two ways about it. If we're going to have a pure fiat paper money standard (and there's no getting around that in the short term), it needs to at least be "our money," not the bankers' money.

Rather than having the Treasury print bonds which serve as collateral with which to borrow what is supposed to be "our money," the Treasury should eliminate the usurious middle-men and print dollar bills, (United States Notes – "Greenbacks"). Use dollar bills as money rather than bank paper masquerading as greenbacks! Why keep the American people and their government trapped in a giant hundred year old Ponzi scheme? It's not only robbing us blind, but collapsing because of its very nature?

Treasury bonds are only as good as the "full faith and credit of the nation." So what's wrong with dollar bills based on that same thing?

It was totally crazy to replace gold backed money with banker debt money. If our money isn't gold or silver, it at least should not be debt!

JQP

September 19, 2010

HARSH REALITIES

Chris Hedges lays it on the line at the 2010 Veteran for Peace Convention. Noel Paul Stookey (the Paul of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame) follows with some inspiring music. (Be prepared for a nerve-jarring "Google Ad" at the beginning of this video. It will soon pass. The annoying ads at the bottom of the video screen can be turned off by clicking the "close ads 'X'".) 

While Pridger isn't totally in tune with all of the liberal causes that organizations such as Veterans for Peace represent or are allied with, there's very little in Mr. Hedges' speech that Pridger can fault. Hedges paints a bleak picture of the present sociopolitical national and global landscape. Though his message is ultimately intended to be a hopeful one, there is little wonder that it falls somewhat short in that area.

When it comes to war and peace, Pridger comes down on the side of peace almost every time. While there may be such a thing as a just war, we haven't seen one in a long, long, time. There is seldom justice in any war, even when the war can be rationalized as just.

In May 2003, Hedges delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois. Touching upon our invasion of Iraq, he said:

Amen! But large segments of the audience were outraged and Hedges had to cut his speech short and be escorted from the stage. However, his words were prophetic.

Here we are once again seeking an exit strategy from a costly and ill advised seven year misadventure. Yet we seek exit strategies whereby we don't actually have to exit! Again we hope for peace with some kind of honor. But there is no honor in the kind of wars we're engaged in today, regardless of how many honorable men and women have so valiantly served and died.

Mr. Hedges has described himself as a socialist, attacking "global capitalism." Pridger is definitely no socialist but rather an American nationalist and a liberal conservative. But he recognizes international capitalism as the new imperialism – a brand of fascism with the moguls of capital in the driver's seat rather than government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." 

Capitalism – that is, productive industrial capitalism – has been, and can again be, a positive force – but what we need is a nation in which capital is held strictly to the national interests and within rational bounds. By "national interest" Pridger doesn't mean the interests of Wall Street or of American capital abroad, but the actual interests of people of the United States – a nation wherein borders, both physical and economic, should have meaning.

If big capital was once again constrained to help make this a nation of producers as well as consumers, creating jobs in the United States rather than Mexico, China, India and scores of other places, our economic problems could soon be solved. For over fifty years we have been allowing capital to run the show, and it has been taking us in exactly the wrong direction.

Yet socialism is not the answer to that problem. Socialism, by its very nature is destructive to individual freedom and initiative. And it is license for bigger and bigger, all-pervasive, government. That said, however, we need to shed the idea that "privatization" is the magic key to progress and prosperity. Certain things – few in number – should rightly be within the purview of strict public control. Money creation, national defense, and the regulation of foreign trade are the big ones at the national level, but there are many others at the state and local levels – from prisons to public schools and public utilities, that should not be allowed to fall into the hands of private corporations.

This said, however, private schools and certain other "positive" public service enterprises should be able to compete with public enterprises in the public marketplace. The case for such things as private prisons, however, is a horse of a different color. Prisons are not "positive" services, and when private corporations get into the business of imprisoning people, they will enlist all the powers at their disposal to increase business.  

JQP

September 13, 2010

MONEY

Bill Still's "The Secret of Oz" movie. Good video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D22TlYA8F2E

Pridger agrees with Bill's Still's approach to the shape monetary reform should take. We differ markedly from the approach of the Mises Institute, and other advocates of a gold backed currency. Gold and gold monetary standards have always been a bankers' game. Obviously, a gold standard would favor those who have the most gold – and that certainly isn't the average citizen or the working men and women whose labor creates the overwhelming percentage of marketable real wealth in this world.

Naturally, most "gold bugs" have been investing in gold for a long time. They would like to see a gold monetary standard because they know that gold prices would go through the roof. They wouldn't worry, however, because they have had to forethought to accumulate gold, whereas most of the rest of us, mostly out of simple necessity, have muddled through with ordinary money that we can readily spend at the supermarket on a day to day basis.

Gold coin and bullion make wonderful stores of value, but fall short as currency because of their rarity and the massive volumes of liquidity required to sustain modern national economies. This is especially true in the case of gold. The "free market" demonetized gold price has already gone well over $1,200.00 an ounce. Just think where it would go if all of a sudden gold was once again monetized and all of the central banks in the world started buying up enough to back their currencies and place gold coin into everyday circulation!

Silver could perhaps once again serve as our coinage at some point in the future, but only if we have sufficient domestic sources of silver to make it feasible and sustainable. The important thing is that money be sufficiently plentiful to provide the liquidity the modern marketplace requires, and that money be "national money" – "the peoples' money" – rather than bankers' debt money.

In our case, the "national currency" should be the government issued United States Notes which were popularly called "greenbacks." They have circulated to one extent or another from the Civil War period to the present, though they have not been printed since about 1969. 

Gold coin and bullion should still have a major monetary role, of course, but not as national circulating currency. It should be available to individuals as it is today, and probably should serve as the primary international currency of account. Gold coins should be denominated strictly by weight and fineness rather than in terms of any national currency unit.

National currencies should not be international in character, as the Federal Reserve dollar is today. But all currencies should be individually pegged against gold on a daily basis, and travelers in foreign countries would exchange currencies accordingly.

Speculative trading in national currencies should be outlawed, and individuals and institutions that do so (sometimes destabilizing, or even crashing, entire national economies), should be dealt with as international criminals. 

JQP

Now, if Muslims are as hateful and radical as he seems to think they are, he should know that he could be committing suicide. Maybe that's his intention – good old martyrdom. Fortunately, not all Muslims are all that radical. But it takes only one to miss-interpret a fatwa.

Now if the good preacher expects to teach the Muslims a lesson by burning a pile of Korans, just think what the Muslims can do with many more Bibles. They could burn a hundred Bibles for every Koran the preacher could get his hands on. Who would win that race, and what would it prove?

JQP

Didn't our government decree a long time ago that racial, religious, and cultural diversity and multiculturalism were much better than a largely homogeneous Anglo-American identity? Doesn't President Obama proclaim that this is just as much a Muslim land as a Christian one?

America has been gifted to the world by our far-seeing leaders, and now dutifully celebrates it's progressive loss of Anglo-European culture in favor of globalization and all that is supposed to go along with it. Everybody should be happy rather than demonstrating against a mosque built near the WTC complex. It shows that globalization has been working.

At least some of the trappings of the New World Order are making themselves felt in the heart of multi-cultural New York City. But all of a sudden, we've got a lot of people having second thoughts. They're saying, "Maybe somewhere else, but not in my neighborhood!"

They should have thought of it back in 1964 when the immigrations laws were liberalized to bring the rest of the world to the Promised Land. It's a little late now.

Most Americans are appalled to discover that Islam is still very much on the march while almost everybody else has been wooed into a state of materialistic hedonism. Our Crusades in the Middle East ring hollow. Like the original Crusades, our present one is a long, long, way from being Christian.

Those guys who flew airplanes into World Trade Centers One and Two, managed to bring down World Trade Center Seven, and hit the Pentagon with something, could have been hired by professing Christians, Jews, or Atheists. Just because most of us believe the perpetrators were Muslims doesn't make it so – and we certainly can't hold it against all Muslims. There's little doubt that Osama bin Laden and his crew would have done it if they could have, but could they really have done it? That's still a big question in many minds.

Who told us they did it, and what is their veracity track-record? Pridger hasn't got the answers, but there are a lot of things that simply don't stack up properly when it comes to the events of 9/11.

JQP  

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