Ron Paul 2012!!! Your thoughts on who we should pick for our "Cause"?

[SpasticGramps]

Why does he talk like Nic Cage?

LOL. Right. It sounds weird. Flat and rehearsed.

 

[ShroomDr]

Romney is getting his ass kicked. This primary season will continue for awhile.

 

[SacredBreh]

^^^^^^ I was wishing for better but will take what we got. Even if Ron Paul doesn't win, his ideas are getting through to the people, especially the younger folks. If we hold it together there is hope on the horizon.

Peace

 

[itisme]

FIN- Great Clip.
http://www.freedominfonetwork.org/

Get in on the real information. Help organize and unite.

 

[bentom187]

From the RP forum:

Veterans for Ron Paul ... FALL IN!

Fellow RPF'rs,

If you care about this country, if you care about our Constitution, if you care about freedom, then you already understand the imperative of ensuring that Ron Paul is our next President, and that is the mission that we, Veterans for Liberty Super PAC, have taken on. Mission accomplishment requires that Ron Paul receives the majority of delegates at the Republican National Convention in Tampa Bay, Florida.

In the first round of voting, most delegates are bound by party rules to vote based on the results of their state primary. If there is not a clear winner of the first round of voting, the delegates become "unbound" and a second round of voting is held. The establishment will be hard at work, scrambling to build a coalition around another candidate. The delegates who are loyal to Ron Paul will not be swayed by false promises or handouts, but they will not yet be a majority. The fate of the nation will be in the hands of those several hundred delegate swing voters, who will have to choose between standing with the grassroots of the party, or the establishment that has demonstrated the attitude of Henry Kissinger, who famously said, "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy."

Despite the rallying cry of supporting the troops that unites the GOP, there are many in our party who resist Ron Paul because of his foreign policy. They say it is dangerous, and refuse to listen to the troops who know better, who understand that a foreign policy based on the arbitrary whims of a government run amok is inferior to one based on the moral principles embedded in the Constitution. Like the only veteran in the race and like our nation's founders, we who have demonstrated an absolute commitment to national security understand that our nation is more secure without entangling alliances, and with a foreign policy of friendship, free trade, and allowing relations to be defined by individuals, not governments.

To make the point undeniably clear that Ron Paul is the choice of the troops, we are organizing the largest military lobbying effort for any candidate in American history and invite you to join us for the Veterans for Ron Paul March on the RNC. But this will be more than a march. We will be an undeniable presence at and around the RNC with signs, handouts, and the friendly smiling faces of the passionate men and women who understand that the oath they swore to the Constitution did not come with an expiration date.

We are asking all military veterans and active duty troops (in full observance of military regulations regarding political speech) who can furnish proof of service, to join us at FOB Domestic Defense the week of August 27th where food, campsites, GP tents, and cots will be provided for the entire duration of the RNC. The organization of this event will be fully transparent, and we will make every effort possible to coordinate with local law enforcement agencies, as well as convention security. Our security detail will consist of volunteer police officers and retired police officers and will be led by Constable Robert Pepe. For more information about how to get involved and support this event, please go to ronpaulisthechoiceofthetroops.com.

To our fellow veterans, your oath to the Constitution did not come with an expiration date and your country still needs you. The troops still serving and yet to serve still need you. Ron Paul has stood for the Constitution his entire career and risked his life standing up for your freedom. This may be the last chance you ever get - will you stand with Dr. Paul? The last time veterans marched for Ron Paul, two men raised a brigade in a month and a half. Now we have six months. Will you help us raise a division?

Sincerely,

Adam Kokesh, USMC, Fallujah '04
Nathan Cox, USA, Baghdad, '07-'08
Zakery Carter, USA, Baghdad, '03

To volunteer for this event, please email [email protected] and/or join the conversation here: http://forums.adamvstheman.com/viewforum.php?f=34

Please help share the facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/222975741135078/

 

[whodare]

I hung FEMA tarps after Katrina and Rita.

People were stopping us at gas stations trying to get FEMA tarps. NO ONE ELSE HAD TARPS.

(they only print FEMA on one side of the tarp!)

REAL LIFE, people living through a nat disaster, wanting FEMA's help.



-

The tarps were safer than the poison laden trailers they sent.
And whoopie they sent tarps. It still took private citizens to help pass them out I wonder how much each one costs.


Never mind that FEMA sent multi-thousand dollar bills to survivors because FEMA accidentally mis allocated close to a billion dollars.
And more than once FEMA turned down help from other cities like Chicago or groups like the red cross.

And I never said they didn't want femas help cause they would take any help

I said private citizen, businesses, and non profits do more for disaster survivors than FEMA
Not to mention all the neighboring states that were ready to help.

 

[greenmatter]

headline reads "romney unable to pull away"

grenmatter sees " hard to seperated a peanut from a fuckin' turd .... no shit"


at least RP is a thorn in their side. he does have the rest of the field out classed in the fact that he has some.

 

[whodare]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28254

INTRODUCTION

[scroll down for Reader's Table of Contents]

The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest.

The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously.

The concept of the “Long War” has characterized US military doctrine since the end of World War II. The broader objective of global military dominance in support of an imperial project was first formulated under the Truman administration in the late 1940s at the outset of the Cold War.

In September 1990, some five weeks after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, US President and Commander in Chief George Herbert Walker Bush delivered a historical address to a joint session of the US Congress and the Senate in which he proclaimed a New World Order emerging from the rubble of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union.

Bush Senior had envisaged a world of "peaceful international co-operation", one which was no longer locked into the confrontation between competing super powers, under the shadow of the doctrine of* "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD) which had characterized the Cold War era.


George H Walker Bush addressed*a Joint Session
of the US Congress and the Senate,*September 1990

Bush declared emphatically at the outset of what became known as "the post-Cold War era" that:

“a new partnership of nations has begun, and we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times… a new world order can emerge: A new era freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.”

Of course, speeches by American presidents are often occasions for cynical platitudes and contradictions that should not be taken at face value. After all, President Bush was holding forth on international law and justice only months after his country had invaded Panama in December 1989 causing the deaths of several thousand citizens – committing crimes comparable to what Saddam Hussein would be accused of and supposedly held to account for. Also in 1991, the US and its NATO allies went on to unleash, under a “humanitarian” mantle, a protracted war against Yugoslavia, leading to the destruction, fragmentation and impoverishment of an entire country.

Nevertheless, it is instructive to use Bush Senior’s slanted vision of a “New World Order” as a reference point for how dramatically the world has changed in the intervening 20 years of the so-called post-Cold War era, and in particular how unilaterally degenerate the contemporary international conduct of the US has become under the Clinton, G. W. Bush Junior and Obama administrations.

Bush Senior's "promise" of world peace has opened up, in the wake of the Cold War, an age of continuous warfare accompanied by a process of economic dislocation, social devastation and environmental degradation.

In a bitter irony, this concept of peaceful international co-operation and partnership was used as a pretext to unleash The Gulf War, which consisted in* "defending the sovereignty" of Kuwait and “upholding international law” following the Iraqi 1990 invasion.

Global Warfare

We are dealing with a global military agenda, namely “Global Warfare”. Far from a world of peaceful cooperation, we are living in a dystopian world of permanent wars – wars that are being waged in flagrant contravention of international law and against public opinion and interest.

Far from a “new era more secure in the quest for peace” we may see a world more akin to George Orwell’s 1984, dominated by perpetual conflict, insecurity, authoritarian surveillance, doublethink and public mind control.



A problem for many citizens is that “doublethink and mind control” have become so deeply embedded and disseminated by the mass media, including the so-called quality free press, such as The New York Times and The Guardian.

The Post 9/11 Era: America's Doctrine of Pre-emptive Warfare

Allegedly sponsored by Al Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon played a central role in molding public opinion.* One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to "fabricate an enemy". The "outside enemy" personified by Osama bin Laden is "threatening America".

Pre-emptive war directed against "Islamic terrorists" is required to defend the Homeland. Realities are turned upside down: America is under attack.

In the wake of 9/11, the creation of this "outside enemy" served to obfuscate the real economic and strategic objectives behind the American-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Waged on the grounds of self-defense, the pre-emptive war is upheld as a "just war" with a humanitarian mandate.



"The Outside Enemy" Osama bin Laden, portrayed*by the mainstream
media

From the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in the early 1980s, the US intelligence apparatus has supported the formation of the "Islamic brigades". Propaganda purports to erase the history of Al Qaeda, drown the truth and "kill the evidence" on how this "outside enemy" was fabricated and transformed into "Enemy Number One".

The US intelligence apparatus has created it own terrorist organizations. And at the same time, it creates its own terrorist warnings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself created. Meanwhile, a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program "to go after" these terrorist organizations has been put in place.

Instead of “war” or “state terrorism”, we are told of “humanitarian intervention” directed against "terrorists".

Instead of “offence”, we are told of “defense” or “protection”.*

Instead of “mass murder” we are told of “collateral damage”.

A good versus evil dichotomy prevails. The perpetrators of war are presented as the victims. Public opinion is misled: “We must fight against evil in all its forms as a means to preserving the Western way of life.”

Breaking the "Big Lie" which presents war as a humanitarian undertaking, means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force. This profit-driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.

Spawning Militarism: "War is Normal"*

In truth, as this new Interactive Reader from Global Research will demonstrate, we are living in an era hallmarked by “The Globalization of War” conducted by the very states that proclaim to be defenders of democratic rights and international law.

The chief protagonist of this globalized war is the United States of America. The US, along with its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Britain, France, Canada and Germany among others, as well as an array of proxies – such as the Persian Gulf Arab states – is now emboldened to strike militarily in any region of the world.

It should be noted that on a tour of the Asia-Pacific region in November 2011, US President Barack Obama’s rhetoric was laden with bellicose statements towards China, citing the latter as a military threat to the hemisphere that the United States was ready to confront. Obama’s aggressive rhetoric towards Beijing should have been widely seen as unprecedented and unacceptable. But from a reading of the Western mainstream media, the warmongering by the US president was somehow made into normal, reasonable discourse.

This spawning militarism is rationalized with a variety of seemingly palatable pretexts: securing the world against "Islamic terrorism", as in Afghanistan; securing the world against "weapons of mass destruction", as in Saddam’s Iraq and currently Iran; defending human rights, as in Libya; humanitarian intervention, as in Somalia; and protecting small nations, as in confronting China on behalf of Southeast Asian states, or constructing a Ballistic Missile Defense system along the Eastern European borders of Russia. And again, the Western mainstream media plays a huge role in rationalizing the irrational, normalizing the abnormal, justifying the unjustifiable – akin to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984.

We may accept these pretexts at face value and attempt to “normalize” a world of seemingly chaotic conflicts, as the Western mainstream media would have us. Or we can choose to see the world as it really is, that is, one where such wars and war-making are correctly understood as abominations of international law and human relations.

It is our objective in this Interactive Reader to help citizens free themselves from the indoctrinated doublethink of “wars as normal”. In a global survey, we will show that the US and its allies are fulfilling an agenda of “full spectrum dominance” in which no nation deemed to be obstructing that agenda for domination by the US and its allies is tolerated, and is in fact made a target for war.

The dynamic for globalized war has deep historical roots in the imperialism of capitalist governments. Rivalry for the raw materials of capitalist economies and geopolitical control were at the root of World Wars I and II - See the essays by Jacques Pauwels on the role of corporate America in supporting both Britain*and*Nazi Germany.*The same impetus lay behind countless invasions and proxy wars in Latin America, Asia and Africa by the US since World War II under the guise of “defending the free world from the Evil Soviet empire”.

But with the collapse of the Soviet Union as a countervailing power, the US and its allies have become uninhibited over the past two decades to “go it alone” to assert imperial dominance. This dynamic has only been reinforced by the economic exhaustion of the capitalist powers since the onset of the financial crisis of 2008. Indeed, the rise of militarism can be seen as a compensatory corollary of their economic demise – a demise that is structural and deeply protracted beyond anything that may be deemed as the usual “end of business cycle”. We are perhaps witnessing an historic collapse in the capitalist system far greater in scope than the Great Depression. And with that, disturbingly, the rise of militarism takes on a much greater significance.

Crucial to the global control of resources are the raw materials of energy: oil and gas. Whether it is wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, or confrontation with Iran, China, Russia and Venezuela, the fundamental point of contention is control over this lifeblood of the capitalist economy. All other espoused pretexts are mere window dressing, regardless of what the mainstream media would have us believe.

World War III Scenario

The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran – which has the world’s third largest known reserves of oil behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq – has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since 2005.

If such a war were to be launched, the entire Middle East/Central Asia region would be drawn into a conflagration. Humanity would be precipitated into a World War III scenario.

Incredibly, the very real danger of World War III is not front-page news. The mainstream media has excluded in-depth analysis and debate on the implications of these war plans. The onslaught of World War III, were it to be carried out, would be casually described as a “no-fly zone”, an operation under NATO’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) with minimal “collateral damage” or as “surgical” punitive bombings against specific military targets, all of which purport to support “global security” as well as “democracy” and human rights in the targeted country.


NATO's "Humanitarian Intervention"
Mandate defined*in an ICISS report on*R2P*

Public opinion is largely unaware of the grave implications of these war plans, which contemplate the use of nuclear weapons, ironically in retaliation to Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program. Moreover, 21st Century military technology combines an array of sophisticated weapons systems whose destructive power would overshadow the nuclear holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lest we forget, the United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons against civilians.

Militarization at the global level is instrumented through the US military’s Unified Command structure: the entire planet is divided up into geographic Combatant Commands under the control of the Pentagon. According to former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark, the Pentagon’s military road-map consists of a sequence of war theaters: “[The] five-year campaign plan [includes]... a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.” Like a cancer, the US war unleashed in 2003 on Iraq is mutating into a global disease.

While *The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets hailed 15 December 2011 as marking the “official” end of the nearly nine-year US war in Iraq, in reality that devastated country will remain an American war theater for the foreseeable future. Pentagon military advisers and contractors will continue to reside there and the people of Iraq will for generations be left with a legacy of US-imposed conflict and barbarity. The Pentagon’s “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq may have subsided, but its repercussions and criminal precedents are still very much extant, not only in Iraq but in the wider region and, increasingly, globally.

The 2000 Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was the backbone of the NeoCon's agenda, was predicated on “waging a war without borders”. The PNAC's declared objectives were to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars” in different regions of the world as well as perform the so-called military “constabulary” duties “associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions”. Global constabulary implies a worldwide process of military policing and interventionism, including covert operations and “regime change”.


This diabolical military project formulated by the NeoCons was adopted and implemented from the very outset of the Obama administration. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, Obama has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than his White House predecessor, George Bush Junior, who has recently been condemned by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal for “Crimes against the Peace”.

This continuum of the military agenda testifies to the fact that the two governing parties in the US, Democrat and Republican, are but two sides of a centrally planned military-industrial complex that is impregnable to the opinions, desires and interests of the American electorate.

Military Escalation and Preview of this Book*

Contrary to the myth of “the good war”, we show in this Interactive Reader that the US entry into World War II was a deliberate strategy for self-serving imperialist gains. While the men and women who fought that war may have had moral convictions, the planners in Washington were operating on calculations of geopolitical control that had little to do with morals or legal principles – see the essays by Jacques Pauwels. The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the US in August 1945, obliterating hundreds of thousands of civilians, was an act of heinous barbarity that reflected the callousness of America's*imperial design. The nuclear holocaust also set the nefarious parameters of the subsequent Cold War that gripped the world for nearly five decades following World War II. Essays by Brian Willson, Alfred McCoy and Michel Chossudovsky illustrate how the Pentagon’s genocidal wars in Asia were a continuation of America’s imperialist design – albeit under the cover of the Cold War against the Soviet Union.


Hiroshima mushroom cloud. By executive order of President
Harry S. Truman, the U.S. dropped the nuclear bomb*"Little Boy"
on*Hiroshima,*Monday, August 6, 1945


The fall of the Soviet Union may have brought an end to the Cold War, but soon the US would find new pretexts for waging war on the world and asserting hegemony on behalf of its capitalist allies. These new pretexts included “upholding international law” as in the First Gulf War against Iraq that Bush Senior embarked on in 1990, presaging the Second Gulf War that Bush Junior would reprise in 2003. And the US planners innovated the “humanitarian” pretext for the invasion of Somalia in 1991 and NATO’s war on Yugoslavia – see the essay by Sean Gervasi among others. In many ways, the “humanitarian war” in Yugoslavia served as the prototype for NATO’s 2011 military attack on Libya and what appears to be an imminent onslaught against Syria – see essays by Rick Rozoff and Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya.

To the Pentagon’s silo of propaganda justifying “wars without borders” we have the additional pretexts of* the “global war on terrorism” *and “pre-emptive strikes against weapons of mass destruction”. Fittingly, as Washington’s wars multiply, so too it seems have the phony pretexts for these wars, as the*essays on Iraq and Afghanistan by Felicity Arbuthnot and Jack Smith reveal.

Permanent Belligerence: The Globalization of War

In Part VII,*which also serves as the title of*this Online Interactive E-Reader, The Globalization of War, we show how American-led imperialism has evolved from bloody bouts of episodic militarism over several decades to the present day state of permanent belligerence, with wars or war-making stretching from North and East Africa into the Middle East and Central Asia and beyond to Eurasia (Russia), the Far East (China) and Arctic (Russia again) – See the essays by James Petras, Rick Rozoff,* Peter Dale Scott, F. William Engdahl,*Finian Cunningham, the interview with Fidel Castro, Michel Chossudovsky and Jules Dufour.**

Of most immediate concern are the ongoing American-led war plans within the broader Middle East/Central Asian region involving coordinated actions against Iran, Syria and Pakistan – see essays by Michel Chossudovsky, Tom Burghardt, Rick Rozoff and Mahdi Nazemroaya.*
Were these war plans to be carried out, this would lead to an extended regional war theater. The three existing and distinct war theaters (Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine) would merge into a broad regional war extending from the Lebanese-Syrian East Mediterranean coastline to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with Western China. Israel, Lebanon and Turkey would be engulfed in a conflict that would herald World War III. **

Building an Effective Antiwar Movement

Meanwhile, the antiwar movement is in crisis: civil society organizations are misinformed, manipulated or co-opted. A large segment of “progressive” opinion is supportive of NATO’s R2P “humanitarian” mandate to the extent that these war plans are being carried out with the “rubber stamp” of civil society.

There is an urgent need to rebuild the antiwar movement on entirely new premises.

The holding of mass demonstrations and antiwar protests is not enough. What is required is the development of a broad and well-organized grassroots antiwar network, across the land, nationally and internationally, which challenges the structures of power and authority. People must mobilize not only against the military agenda – the authority of the state and its officials must also be challenged.

Challenging and defeating the US/NATO global war agenda is profoundly predicated on the mass of people in Western countries asserting democratic governance and the genuine “rule of the people”. It will involve the mass of people breaking out of the two-party charade that hitherto passes for “democracy” – not only in the US but also in other Western states *– to form new political organizations that truly represent the needs and interests of the majority of people. War-making, as with servile abeyance to corporate and financial elites, is endemic to the dominant political parties. It must be realized that voting for these same parties has become futile as a means to effect democratic change.

One practical way forward is for citizens to empower themselves legally. It should be understood that whatever its justification, war is a “Crime against the Peace” under Nuremberg. George Walker Bush and former British Prime Minister Anthony L. Blair have been condemned by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal for waging a criminal war of aggression against Iraq. They are war criminals and citizens' initiatives that are growing across the world for the arraignment of Bush and Blair are one practical step towards mobilizing a popular challenge to the war system.



War crimes, however, are not limited to the former US president and British prime minister. There are "New War Criminals on the Block". They include the current president of the United States, Barack Obama, among others. The acting heads of state and heads of government who support US-NATO-Israel wars of aggression are also war criminals under international law. This proposition, which consists in unseating the war criminals in high office, is central to the waging of an effective antiwar movement.

It is also our intention to show citizens that the root cause of war*lies in the prevailing, but failing, global capitalist economic system – the very system that is not only destroying lives in foreign countries but which is destroying the material and moral foundations of Western society.

We hope that this Interactive Reader, The Globalisation of War, will empower citizens to mount an all-encompassing social movement against this diabolical military agenda and for the establishment of real democracy.

Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham, December 2011


In the face of blatant media disinformation, a "Re-Learning Process" must be launched.*

It is our hope that the Interactive Reader Series will become a useful tool for high school, college and university students.

 

[itisme]

Glenn Beck explains why he would support Ron Paul for president over progressive Newt Gingrich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNlNFtC0slQ&feature=related

I predict the ney sayers will call him stupid, warped and try to disregaurd him... Exposed once they do it over and over....We know who you trolls are.

grenmatter sees " hard to seperated a peanut from a fuckin' turd .... no shit"

To funny man...Greeamatter that killed me.

 

[zymos]

Only in Glenn Beck's warped mind would Gingrich be called "progressive"....

 

[itisme]

FEMA - Funerals Every Minute America
FEMA - Financially Enept Morons Advance
FEMA - Federal Evacauation Millions Assasinated

Ron Paul Slams FEMA & Explains Austrian Economics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAGAG26c1NE

 

[SacredBreh]

Excellent Link!

Excellent Link!

. Shroom Doctor calls it "preaching for doom" lol. Sorry sometimes reality sucks.

Her denial is so deep that she absolutely cannot reconcile the fact that he and other prudent investors were/are placing bets on mathematically determined flaws of the Keynesian paradigm using widely accepted investment vehicles. Every crisis has some scapegoat for them. Some evil boogeyman to blame. It can never be that the economic theory is unsound thus making it's failings predictable. The question then just becomes one of timing. And that's why even after a major crisis everything is forgotten and the same eternal optimism is preached by the Wall Street shamans, until the next crisis "unexpectedly" comes that "no one could have seen coming."

Hardtalk: Kyle Bass

What an excellent link Spastic! My degrees are in applied science and certainly not directly related to Economics or Finance but what Kyle says only makes common sense as does Austrian Economics. The more I learn about these subjects the more I agree with the Austrian view points.

Peace

 

[SacredBreh]

This is why we MUST keep the internet free of control!

This is why we MUST keep the internet free of control!

FIN- Great Clip.
http://www.freedominfonetwork.org/

Get in on the real information. Help organize and unite.

At all costs the internet must remain free. It is the last place we can find truely unfiltered information and share ideas. With the new laws and presidential executive orders being put in place, we must have a medium to communicate.

Excellent post Itisme!

Peace

 

[MadBuddhaAbuser]

At all costs the internet must remain free. It is the last place we can find truely unfiltered information and share ideas. With the new laws and presidential executive orders being put in place, we must have a medium to communicate.

Excellent post Itisme!

Peace

Too bad obama already signed acta and took that freedom from us.


Ron paul !!!2012

 

[mrcreosote]

That crazy Peter Schiff...

Everybody knows that if we all take out 10 more credit cards and max em out on Escalades and 72" big screens the economy will turn on a dime and happy days will be back again.

Besides that, look how convenient it would be if Goldman forecloses on Greece and moves the Parthenon to Havasu City next to London Bridge.
You could drive in style and air-conditioned comfort and use those credit cards to pay for your vacation.
Plenty of time since you got laid off anyway. Just temporary though while the economy gears up. Lagging indicators and all that technical stuff. No worries.

Krugmanomics...what could go wrong?

 

[dagnabit]

found an issue where i agree with O and disagree with RP (probably i dont know the doc's exact position)
depending on details of implementation the big O said he would stop foreclosure on active duty service members....

now i have not read the actual plan and it probably does not stop a single foreclosure but the soundbyte sounds nice...

 

[greenmatter]

more soundbytes yeah! and how much is this one gonna cost us? it would be nice if they would help the people they are telling you are being helped as much as every move they make anymore helps the banks

 

[whodare]

http://mises.org/daily/5938/Seventeen-Years-of-Boom-and-Bust

84

The Federal Reserve must bear responsibility for our current recession. The seeds for this recession were clearly planted in 1995 and led to unsustainable booms and busts, and later to high unemployment, increased consumer prices, failed companies, and increased debt. Appropriate at this time is an overview of the Federal Reserve's booms and busts and the shocking similarities with those of the banks before the Federal Reserve was in existence — and a consideration of actions for prevention of these destructive booms and busts in order to establish a more healthy economy.

The Current Economic Problems

Many of today's discussions of our current economic problems begin with the assumption that 2008 was when the problems started. In fact, they started in 1995.

From January 1990 to December 1994 the M2 money supply increased a relatively mild $322 billion. But then, from January 1995 to December 1999, the M2 money supply shot up to a startling $1,140 billion.[1] See the M2 Money Stock (M2) chart below. The result of the increase was the making of the dot-com boom followed by the dot-com bust in 2000.

Some economists did see the dot-com bubble developing. In 1999 George Reisman wrote, "The only thing that can explain the current stock market (dot-com) boom is the creation of new and additional money."

When the dot-com bubble burst in the year 2000, the government and Federal Reserve unfortunately did not allow the economy to heal itself as had been allowed in the earlier bust of 1920/21.

The 1920s bust was actually worse than the 2000 dot-com bust. In 1920 unemployment jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent and GNP declined 17 percent; however

there was no fiscal stimulus,
the budget was cut nearly in half and the national debt was cut by one-third,
tax rates were significantly decreased for all groups, and
the Federal Reserve did next to nothing.
As a consequence, by 1922 unemployment was down to just under 7 percent and declined to 2.4 percent in 1923.

Japan, experiencing similar economic problems, did just the opposite. Thomas E. Woods Jr., in "The Forgotten Depression of 1920," wrote,

The great banks, the concentrated industries, and the government got together, destroyed the freedom of the markets … [and] arrested the decline in commodity prices for seven years. During these years Japan endured chronic stagnation and at the end, in 1927, she had a banking crisis of such severity that many great bank systems went down, as well as many industries.
In this country's 1930s ten-year depression and today's recession, our preferable 1920 model was not followed. Instead, unfortunately, we followed Japan's 1920 model.

More Federal Reserve Failures

To repeat, in 2000, the Federal Reserve and government did the opposite of what was done in the early 1920s. In 2000 the M2 money supply was increased to a damaging $2,834 billion in the eight years from January 2000 through December 2007. The result was the destructive 2008 real-estate bust. The dot-com bust, the real-estate bust, and today's economic mess all originate from the 1995 boom. The M2's money-supply increases over those years by the Federal Reserve did not allow the economy to heal itself. The result was the tying together of all of the preceding mistakes into one large 12-year bust.

From 1995, when the boom-bust cycle started, to today, the M2 money supply increased by $5,553 billion. The result was inflation. Consumer items costing $100 in 1995 cost $148 (according to the federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics) or $403 (according to Shadow Statistics, a private firm) in 2011.

Economist and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman wrote, "Inflation occurs when the quantity of money rises appreciably more rapidly than output, and the more rapid the rise of the money per unit of output, the greater the rate of inflation."[2]

More dangerous than the M2 increases could be the increase in the monetary base of $1,735 billion in the three years from September 2008 to September 2011 (see St. Louis Adjusted Monetary Base chart). The monetary base in the 23 years before 2008 increased a relatively small $668 billion dollars. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, says that the huge creation of excess money will not lead to hyperinflation and that he has the situation under control. And, Bernanke adds,

Congress granted us authority last fall [2008] to pay interest on balances held by banks at the Fed.… Banks generally will not lend funds in the money market at an interest rate lower than the rate they can earn risk-free at the Federal Reserve.[3]
Could this be why small businesses have a problem today getting a loan?

What causes the boom-bust cycles? Clearly, it starts with the increase of the money supply. But what turns the excess money first into the boom and then later into the bust? Roger W. Garrison has the answer.

Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle

Roger W. Garrison, in The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle, explained first how the economy could be stimulated with consumer savings with no following busts. Then he showed how it is that the Federal Reserve's stimulation of the economy creates the boom-bust cycle.

Garrison presented and contrasted the two methods in his 50-minute lecture. The following is my shortened version.

The consumer savings method: Consumer savings do not create new money because they are from reduced consumption. The savings go into stocks, bonds, and so forth, and as a result lower the interest rate and provide increased funds for financing of entrepreneurial projects.

The Federal Reserve method: When the Federal Reserve stimulates the economy, it lowers the interest rate by increasing the money supply. Because it has no savings, it creates new money. Assume the Federal Reserve creates $1,000,000 of new money and with it buys bonds from banks. Banks now have an extra $1,000,000 in their reserves. Banks are required to keep in reserve or at the Federal Reserve only a fraction (10 percent today) of the loans they make from deposits they receive from customers.

The result is that the Federal Reserve and banks can create up to $10,000,000 of new excess money out of thin air. The new money lowers the interest rate, as does the consumers' saving method. However, it is the new money that increases the money supply and inflates wages and prices. The consumer savings from consumption does not increase wages and prices.

Additionally, consumers have not reduced their consumption and the lower interest rate leads them to consume more. This results in the consumers and entrepreneurs being in a tug of war over the limited funds, goods, and services.

Because of increasing wages and prices, entrepreneurs require more money than they originally planned to finish their projects.

If the Federal Reserve decides to rescue the entrepreneurs, it must repeat with the banks another create-more-new-money exercise. Again, prices and wages go up, and again entrepreneurs will need more funds.

Eventually, from fear of creating hyperinflation, the Federal Reserve will stop inflating the money supply. And then businesses fail, and unemployment rises, all resulting from The Federal Reserve's creating new money to lower the interest rate to stimulate the economy.

In summary of his view, Garrison wrote,

An increase in saving by individuals and a credit expansion orchestrated by the central bank set into motion market processes whose initial allocational effects on the economy's capital structure are similar. But the ultimate consequences of the two processes stand in stark contrast: Saving gets us genuine growth; credit expansion gets us boom and bust.[4]
Boom-Bust Cycles before the Federal Reserve

Boom-bust cycles are not new and have occurred since the start of the Industrial Revolution. By the late 1880s, many people in England felt strongly that the cause of the boom-bust cycle was the artificial credit expansion by banks. The banks created the artificial credit by printing bank notes and issuing certificates of demand deposits that exceeded the gold in their vaults.

In 1884, England's Parliament passed the Bank Charter Act to eliminate the banks artificial credit expansion. However, the Bank Charter Act failed to see that actually both the issuing of certificates of demand deposits and the printing of bank notes were the causes of the cycles. The result was that the Bank Charter Act required 100 percent reserves for just the printing of bank notes but not for the certificates of demand deposits. Consequently, banks stopped issuing bank notes and instead made only demand-deposit certificates, which did not have to be backed by 100 percent reserves. This continues today. Therefore, the boom-bust cycles survived and are still with us now.

Preventing Future Boom-Bust Cycles

In the early 1900s, Ludwig von Mises saw the cause of and the cure for the boom-bust cycle. Additionally, he saw the damage done to the economy by the lowering of the interest rate. He wrote,


By limiting the issue of fiduciary media (paper money), … it would no longer would be possible for the credit-issuing banks to underbid the equilibrium rate of interest and introduce into circulation new quantities of fiduciary media with immediate consequence of an artificial stimulus to business and the inevitable final consequence of the dreaded economic crisis.[5]
F.A. Hayek more fully explained the idea in 1933.[6]

Roger W. Garrison, in his 50-minute lecture "The Austrian Theory of The Trade Cycle," brings us the fully developed causes of the boom-bust cycle.

 

[SpasticGramps]

Only in Glenn Beck's warped mind would Gingrich be called "progressive"....

Actually, American's have a warped way of describing their political ideology. Go anywhere else in the world and say you are a "liberal" and it's understood that you believe in small government, individual liberty, and most likely subscribe to free market theory (Austrian Economics). After WWII when "progressive" became a dirty word the left swapped the terms. So now, only in the USA, when one says they are a liberal it's understood that you are a Neo-Liberal or a Progressive (ie Statist). The opposite of what classic liberals are.

Conservatism (post WWI and WWII) was liberal (classic) ideology and a non-interventionist foreign policy (ie conservatives are against war). Progressives are the interventionist (ie support military conflict).

These days everyone call the Republican Party "conservative" which is a joke. They are war mongering big government statists (ie Progressives). Ron Paul is the only true liberal, the only true conservative in American politics. That's why his ideas are so strange and radical to both Republicans and Democrats. Because most everyone in the USA is Progressive. All the bickering and fighting between the two parties is nothing more than inter-ideology squabbling. Liberalism and true conservatism has been extinct in American politics for a long time.

As far as Newt. The biggest laughs I've gotten so far in this Republican Primary is the zombie "conservatives" running around with those $2.50 signs. So Newt is going to set the price of gasoline at $2.50...... forever? Those are state capital controls. And he gets this number by talking to all these "experts." Then he rambles on about how the free market sets the price of gasoline. It's the most bizarre and moronic display of politics I think I've ever seen. Plus he's itching to go to war (interventionist) and build moon bases.

Newt is a Progressive. Regan was a progressive. Bush I and II were progressives. Hoover was a self professed Progressive. You can call them Neo-Conservatives, but that's just another word that describes Progressive ideology. The modern left in the USA like to associate the word Progressive with "good" and justice and Democrats, but that's a fallacy. Progressives are the war mongers. More so in the Republican party, but the Democrats like their wars too.

Ron Paul is the only conservative that we've seen in decades.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

TR was called a progressive because conservatives don't typically preserve things like TR did. Conservatism/ conservativism has nothing to do with conservationism.

Another progressive aspect - pragmatism as opposed to strict, conservative ideology.

Some so-called liberals adopted "progressive" to distinguish themselves from so-called "bleeding heart liberals" who staunchly support conventional safety-net policies. Some progressives are willing to consider alternatives to the conventional safety net approach so long as solutions are pragmatic as opposed to fundamentalist ideology.