Feb. 25, 2010, 11:24 AM
Should be a must read for all.
excerpt
The cyclical nature of life is reassuring. We are less afraid of the privations of winter because we’re assured the spring will come again.
Similarly, those who claim expertise in such matters — those currently encouraging us to buy stocks and government bonds, for example — insist that the market always comes back. Given a little time, everything will be the same as it was.
Because this is reassuring, we cross our fingers and hope they’re right. But they’re wrong. Not the assertion that some specific companies and stock issues will again prosper and that some people will again grow rich. Of course there will always be “winners” — especially when government bestows on itself the power to choose who shall (their rich friends) and who shall not (you) be “bailed out.” No: I refer to the part about “things being the same.”
A cartel of private bankers was given control over our money in 1913, in defiance of the wisdom of Andy Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Frank “Pal of Stalin” Roosevelt ended the convertibility — heck, the private ownership — of gold in 1933. But everything was fine again in the 1950s and ‘60s, right? Then, after the ongoing devaluation of the dollar by the Federal Reserve forced Lyndon Johnson to also end the convertibility of paper dollars into silver in 1964, we had some tough times in the 1970s, but everything came roaring back in the ’80s and ’90s … right?
Actually, we were lucky that the adoption of new technologies like the cell phone and the personal computer generated new industries and new jobs, helping to replace (and disguise the eclipse of) the old industrial giants: coal, steel, railroads and automobiles. (Note that the declining industries were systematically crippled by the innovation-suppression teams known as “unions”; the fast-rising replacements were not.)
Still, everything was not the same. The vastly greater looting of our paychecks through taxation and regulation after 1964 meant that, where prior to 1960 a single blue-collar wage could support an American middle-class family in a free-standing house, after 1970 it took two incomes — husband and wife — to do that. The hidden but vast social cost of this new arrangement was that the schooling and nurturing of children was now turned over almost entirely to unionized government propaganda officers. The arrogance, the illiteracy and innumeracy, the knee-jerk collectivism and presumption that government can and must step in to solve every problem exhibited by the resulting generation-and-a-half has set the stage for the final decline not just of America, but of virtually all the remaining mighty nation states of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The ruling elite in Washington is going to try to inflate its way out of its debt conundrum, attempting to pay off the government’s foreign creditors with greenbacks which lose value right before your eyes, like an ice cream cone melting on a hot summer day. The process is already well underway. If gasoline used to cost 28 cents a gallon and now costs $2.80, then a dollar is now worth a dime. If you could once buy a silver dollar for one greenback but it now costs 15 greenbacks, then the paper dollar is now worth seven 1960 cents. If gold once cost $35 an ounce and it now costs $1,100 an ounce, than the greenback is now worth about three 1940 pennies.
Americans are told we have too low a savings rate. What are we supposed to save: greenbacks, matchbooks, or Wheaties boxtops? It’s a toss-up which will be worth less in five years.
What are the new technologies that will spark the next American economic renaissance? Not those subsidized by government — they’re losers by definition. Rather, look precisely to those that can escape the crushing mailed fist of the tax man and the regulator.
Read the rest.
http://www.vinsuprynowicz.com/?p=449#more-449
Another reason I really like Vin Suprynowicz and his writings.
excerpt
The cyclical nature of life is reassuring. We are less afraid of the privations of winter because we’re assured the spring will come again.
Similarly, those who claim expertise in such matters — those currently encouraging us to buy stocks and government bonds, for example — insist that the market always comes back. Given a little time, everything will be the same as it was.
Because this is reassuring, we cross our fingers and hope they’re right. But they’re wrong. Not the assertion that some specific companies and stock issues will again prosper and that some people will again grow rich. Of course there will always be “winners” — especially when government bestows on itself the power to choose who shall (their rich friends) and who shall not (you) be “bailed out.” No: I refer to the part about “things being the same.”
A cartel of private bankers was given control over our money in 1913, in defiance of the wisdom of Andy Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Frank “Pal of Stalin” Roosevelt ended the convertibility — heck, the private ownership — of gold in 1933. But everything was fine again in the 1950s and ‘60s, right? Then, after the ongoing devaluation of the dollar by the Federal Reserve forced Lyndon Johnson to also end the convertibility of paper dollars into silver in 1964, we had some tough times in the 1970s, but everything came roaring back in the ’80s and ’90s … right?
Actually, we were lucky that the adoption of new technologies like the cell phone and the personal computer generated new industries and new jobs, helping to replace (and disguise the eclipse of) the old industrial giants: coal, steel, railroads and automobiles. (Note that the declining industries were systematically crippled by the innovation-suppression teams known as “unions”; the fast-rising replacements were not.)
Still, everything was not the same. The vastly greater looting of our paychecks through taxation and regulation after 1964 meant that, where prior to 1960 a single blue-collar wage could support an American middle-class family in a free-standing house, after 1970 it took two incomes — husband and wife — to do that. The hidden but vast social cost of this new arrangement was that the schooling and nurturing of children was now turned over almost entirely to unionized government propaganda officers. The arrogance, the illiteracy and innumeracy, the knee-jerk collectivism and presumption that government can and must step in to solve every problem exhibited by the resulting generation-and-a-half has set the stage for the final decline not just of America, but of virtually all the remaining mighty nation states of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The ruling elite in Washington is going to try to inflate its way out of its debt conundrum, attempting to pay off the government’s foreign creditors with greenbacks which lose value right before your eyes, like an ice cream cone melting on a hot summer day. The process is already well underway. If gasoline used to cost 28 cents a gallon and now costs $2.80, then a dollar is now worth a dime. If you could once buy a silver dollar for one greenback but it now costs 15 greenbacks, then the paper dollar is now worth seven 1960 cents. If gold once cost $35 an ounce and it now costs $1,100 an ounce, than the greenback is now worth about three 1940 pennies.
Americans are told we have too low a savings rate. What are we supposed to save: greenbacks, matchbooks, or Wheaties boxtops? It’s a toss-up which will be worth less in five years.
What are the new technologies that will spark the next American economic renaissance? Not those subsidized by government — they’re losers by definition. Rather, look precisely to those that can escape the crushing mailed fist of the tax man and the regulator.
Read the rest.
http://www.vinsuprynowicz.com/?p=449#more-449
Another reason I really like Vin Suprynowicz and his writings.