I consider myself a fairly suspicious person, so when I’m shown that I haven’t been suspicious enough, I get aggravated!

I’ve written several blogs in the last few months lamenting the U.S. Government’s apparent lack of concern regarding flooding the economy with billions of additional debt while not having the resources to meet already astronomical entitlement obligations.  (Please check out this excellent Website.)  I initially thought maybe the Fed and Treasury were trying to fight a very real deflationary problem and going overboard.  I think I may have been wrong about that and incredibly naive.

After watching the CNBC clip below, I think the real motivation for massive debt that can only be covered by firing up printing presses and selling Treasuries is a deliberate crash of the dollar. Why would the U.S. Government want such a thing?  Massive inflation.  How does this help the U.S. Government?  Please check out the video below for what I consider to be a brilliant analysis by Mr. Jim Rickards of Omnis. My only disagreement with him would be using the example of 4% inflation over the next 17 years.  I think that’s way too conservative.  After all, Jimmy Carter would’ve felt blessed to have that number.

I suspect that there are certain very powerful elements within our government and the Fed who would like to see the dollar replaced as the reserve currency of the world with a global currency of some sort.

Rickards discusses Special Drawing Rights, or SDR’s and how some country or entity must carry massive debt to fuel global growth, but no one country can carry that burden for too long or they’ll go broke.  The U.S. is now at the point where we must bow out of that role and inflate our currency to keep from losing our shirt.

I like Rickard’s analysis and I’ll expand upon it.

Many people believe that the first obligation of any government is to protect it’s people.  However, this deliberate crash of the dollar will be paid for by the citizens of this country and foreign creditors.  If the government says to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security recipients, “There will be a cost-of-living freeze on your benefits,” that doesn’t sound nearly as bad as, “You will be receiving massive cuts in your benefits.”  But that’s exactly what they’ll be receiving through inflation.  I believe that certain elements within the U.S. government have no problem with a massive white collar criminal heist of their creditors and the American people.

To expand upon the example used in the video, if your Social Security benefits are frozen and inflation is at 4%, within 17 years your benefits have been cut in half without the ostensible amount of your check changing one bit.  This is a crooked politicians dream come true and I’m afraid they’re in the majority.  Our system is more corrupt than ever and it’s much easier for politicians to go along for the ride than to try and fight it.

This “free society” we live in, along with a few other western cultures has been a grand experiment in controlling people without force.  Over generations, the elite ask themselves, “How can we have power over the people when we can’t beat them over the head with a stick to get them to do what we want?”  The answer is to control how people think and one way to do that is to crash the dollar instead of cutting benefits!

What’s the takeaway for investors?  Get into gold and silver while being vigilant for the U.S. Government to confiscate it. I’m not kidding.  It’s happened before; in this country! Don’t be naive!  (Ha Ha!)

OK.  I’ll see you all next time.  Hopefully fall will be back by then.  October in the Hills is usually so nice!  I feel like I’m getting gypped, although summer was nice.

Quote of the week: “I don’t like it, but I will vote for it because we need something right now. But this constitution in time will fail, as all such efforts do. And it will fail because of the corruption of the people, in a general sense.”

~Benjamin Franklin on being shown the new constitution of the United States of America.

One of my favorite economists, Peter Schiff, discuses the Demise of the Dollar.  Here’s a link to the article he mentions from the UK paper, The Independent.

My favorite quote is at 6:11: “If they stop pricing oil in dollars, people going to Wal-Marts are going to feel like they’re going into Saks Fifth Avenue or Bergdorf Goodmans.  Prices are going to be through the roof, because the dollar is going to collapse and we won’t be able to afford to import all these cheap products.”

Buried News of the Week

World Central Banks Dumping the Dollar, Feeding Worst Two Quarter Rout in Almost Two Decades

John Quinn’s article in Saturday’s Rapid City Journal (07-11-09) caught my eye, particularly the following quote: “By what twisted logic do elitists think that the solution for too much borrowing and too much spending is even more borrowing and more spending?”

I believe the answer may lie in one of my previous blogs, where I quoted Sen Dick Durbin: “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

Could there possibly be a connection?  Hmmmmm…

Could our representatives, senators and presidents be putting special interests ahead of the American people?

All of this reminds me of one of my older blogs about our national debt.

Yes, our national debt has risen tremendously due to the bailouts, but the real crisis is entitlements.

When Social Security and Medicare obligations are taken into account, our national debt rises to about $65.5 trillion, which exceeds the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the world, according to this previously cited article in World Net Daily.

So, here are two points to ponder: 1. If $65.5 trillion in debt isn’t enough to consider the U.S. bankrupt, how much would it take?  2. If we aren’t bankrupt, then how much inflation are we going to encounter to cover this debt?

Please check out this interview with economist Marc Faber. He sees only 10-20 percent inflation in the next 5-10 years.  (I’m not quite that optimistic, but I can’t quite see a Weimar Republic scenario either.  What do you think?)

I hope everyone’s having a great summer!

Quote of the Week: “We usually meet all of our relatives only at funerals where somebody always observes: ‘Too bad we can’t get together more often.’”

~Bernard Berenson as quoted in the May 25, 2009 issue of Forbes

Digging through Youtube after considering some of these issues, I came across the following documentary about the possibility of hyperinflation in the U.S.  It features some of my favorite economists.

Quirky News of the Week

Gas station charges man $23 Quadrillion for smokes

I realize that Thomas and Matthews aren’t talking about our current economic crisis in this MSNBC clip.

But maybe my fears of runaway inflation due to the overspending of the Bush-Obama years are unfounded.

After all, if Obama can deliver “…the world, once again, from evil” (Chris Matthews of MSNBC) and “he’s sort of God” (Evan Thomas of Newsweek), then perhaps I’m over-reacting.

Maybe we don’t need no stinking capital…we’ll just print more fiat currency and sell Treasuries!

“If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a ’stimulus,’ then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power.”

~Thomas Sowell (as quoted in the May 27, 2009 issue of the Rapid City Journal, and available online here).

Buried News of the Week

Ron Paul Sponsors Bill to Audit the Federal Reserve

Fed Would be Shut Down if it Were Audited, Expert Says

I ran across a couple of interesting articles at WorldNetDaily.com, so I decided to combine them and comment.

In this article by Jerome Corsi, he asserts that the Federal governments “$65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.”

He goes on to say that “the total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.”

He explains that the true budget deficit for 2008 was “$5.1 Trillion,” and not the “$455 Billion” reported by the Congressional Budget Office.

Why the difference?  Corsi reports that “the difference between the $455 billion ‘official’ budget deficit numbers and the $5.1 trillion budget deficit cited by ‘2008 Financial Report of the United States Government’ is that the official budget deficit is calculated on a cash basis, where all tax receipts, including Social Security tax receipts, are used to pay government liabilities as they occur.”

“But the numbers in the 2008 report are calculated on a GAAP basis (’Generally Accepted Accounting Practices’) that include year-for-year changes in the net present value of unfunded liabilities in social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare.”

“Under cash accounting, the government makes no provision for future Social Security and Medicare benefits in the year in which those benefits accrue.”

So in other words, the governments real obligations are hidden by a cash basis while they are revealed by Generally Accepted Accounting Practices.

Here’s another article by Jerome Corsi, this one entitled, “Trillions?  Get ready for quadrillion”

Corsi illustrates the concept of a trillion dollars.

“If you had gone into business on the day Jesus was born, and your business lost a million dollars a day, 365 days a year, it would take you until October 2737 to lose $1 trillion.”

“If you spent $1 million a day, every day since Jesus was born, you would still be only slightly more that three-quarters of the way to spending $1 trillion.”

“Craig Smith, founder and CEO of Swiss America, estimates it would take approximately four generations of Americans to pay off the interest of the U.S. Treasury bonds sold as debt to create the $1 trillion stimulus package, factoring in a 3 percent growth rate in the economy throughout that time.”

Now taking all this into account, do you think the stimulus bill is responsible?

One of my readers says our leaders are incompetent in this department.  I think the movers and shakers know what they’re doing and have no plans for a stable dollar.  We the people are going to pay for this with massive inflation…eventually.

Excess debt helped create our problems.  How is more debt going to solve our problems?

Buried News of the Week

Lawmakers in 20 states move to reclaim sovereignty

After reading this article, ask yourself how long states are going to be able to keep up this level of vigilance.

The Feds could simply say, “Do you want your money or do you want to go broke?  Well then, forget the Ninth and Tenth Amendment!”  I predict this will happen.

Haven’t heard about the states going broke?  Check out this article.

Kansas is already withholding income tax refunds and may miss payroll.  Check out this AP article.

I hope I’m wrong about that, but so far it appears that spewing fiat money isn’t solving our problems.

My position is that this economic crisis was created predominantly by easy money, excess spending and debt.  This situation led to a bubble in housing.  Trying to re-inflate the bubble with more easy money and excess spending is only going to make our problems worse, leading to a collapse of this house of cards economy and another depression (assuming we’re not already in one).

So what is Obama’s plan?  Do more of the same.  This seems like a regular pattern with governments: When something doesn’t work, do more of it.

That being said, we may see an Obama bump in the economy, but I don’t think it will last.  He does have some tax cuts on the agenda which may actually help a little.  But basically, his main plan is to follow Bush’s lead and keep those fake money machines rolling.

My new downside target for the Dow is 5,500 or lower. Does anyone care to make a bet?  (Be forewarned; if you’re an optimist, my portfolio has probably done better than yours, going back to about August of ‘07.)

I saw a funny cartoon the other day.  It showed our major financial institutions on fire while Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson tried to put out the fire with fire hoses.  The only trouble was, a massive stream of cash was coming out instead of water, feeding the fire.  I believe this is an excellent illustration of what is happening.

To avoid making things worse, Obama should be listening to people who saw this crisis coming years ago.

Peter Schiff, former economic adviser to Dr. Ron Paul, was one of those people.

I’ve written in this blog before about Peter Schiff.  He wasn’t the only person to see the credit crisis coming, but he was perhaps the most outspoken and well-known.  Some supposedly very intelligent people ridiculed Schiff for his views, but he pushed back hard. (Here’s an example, from my previous blog.)

My main purpose in writing this blog is to highlight the fact that, according to Schiff, no one in our government has contacted Schiff for his input on how to get out of this mess!  I think that’s nuts, since he was one of the few experts to see this recession coming the way it did!

In the video below, Schiff gives a great summary of why no one listened to him, why we’re in trouble, how to get out of it, and what will happen if we don’t.  He also gives some advice on what to do with your money.

The only thing I disagree with him on is the inflation issue.   I think we’re in for massive deflation for the foreseeable future.

I don’t think we’ll see really nasty inflation and a collapse of the dollar for many months or even years, but I do agree that it will come.  (If I’m wrong about that, I’ll pay for it in my portfolio.)

See you all next time and I hope everyone’s new year is off to a good start!

Money Talks Trader’s Group Update: Tuke and I will be meeting at the Firehouse Brewing Company in Rapid at 3 pm on Saturday, January 17, 2009. Check my last blog to see what I look like.  Everyone interested in investing, trading, or the crazy developments in this world is welcome!  See you there!

Tuke is an excellent technical trader and has taught me a lot already about trading and reading the charts.

Portfolio Update: My ProShares UltraShort Real Estate ETF (SRS) did very well Wednesday.  Then it started up huge early Thursday before dropping like a rock.

I got stopped out Thursday at $65 for a profit of $5.01 per share plus a dividend of .86 and capital gains of $164.40.  This comes out to about 15.6% in 26 days.  (Profit in my second batch of SRS-which I sold first- was much lower.)

I put in a limit order tonight for another dose of SRS at $56.50.  I doubt I’ll get it Friday, but things are really volatile right now so who knows?

Quotes of the Week:

“Reality is a mass hallucination.  We gauge what’s real according to what others say.  And others, like us, rein in their words, caving in to timidity.  Thanks to conformity enforcement and to cowardice, a little power goes a long, long way.”

~Howard Bloom in Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century.

“The Federal Reserve is no more federal than Federal Express.”

~Rep. Dennis Kucinich

See him in action on Youtube!

Note: Mr. Kucinich’s comments on the Fed start at 3:44, while his “Federal Express” comment is at 3:57.

UPDATE: I wrote this blog just last night, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008.  My original headline stating that, “U.S. has pledged $7.76 trillion” for the bailouts was based on information obtained from a Bloomberg.com article from Nov. 24, 2008, just the day before.  Pathetically, this information is already out-of-date, so I’ve changed my headline to  reflect the new “$8.5 Trillion” figure.  My source is this San Francisco Chronicle article.

For this post, I will rely heavily on a couple of excellent articles which I really can’t improve upon.  However, I can link the two articles together in a meaningful way and bring them to your attention.

Both articles are from the mainstream financial press, but the candidness with which the reporters communicate is still relatively rare.  That will change as the seriousness of our financial situation can no longer be denied, covered up, or rationalized away.  Until then, these two articles may be considered aberrations or curiosity pieces by some.  I don’t take such a view and I suspect most of our readers won’t either.

The first article I would like to focus on is from the August 22, 2008 issue of The Wall Street Journal.  The title is, “Washington Is Quietly Repudiating Its Debts.”

The article begins: “Will the U.S. Treasury repudiate its obligations to its creditors, be they citizens or investors around the world?  Most observers would answer ‘no’ without hesitation.  But congress, with the complicity of the White House and the Fed, has arguably embarked on a stealth repudiation.

In his famous treatise, ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ Adam Smith noted there had never been a ’single instance’ of sovereign debts having been repaid once ‘accumulated to a certain degree.’  We may have reached Smith’s threshold.’”

What was that?  Excuse me?  Yes, this mainstream media article said that there is evidence that the U.S. may default on its debt, leaving its own citizens as well as foreigners holding the bag. (Iceland is currently going broke and may be the proverbial canary in the coal mine.  They’re probably headed for a hyper-inflationary depression, so keep an eye on them.  What they experience may give us a hint as to what things may look like in this country.)

The Wall Street Journal article is well done and builds an excellent case that such a scenario is plausible.  However, the article was written before our financial situation became exponentially more serious.  Things have changed, and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Now some might ask, “Why in the world would the U.S. government be considering such a plan?” I hope to illustrate why by utilizing these two articles. Our government can see the writing on the wall, but isn’t telling the American people the full extent of our problems. (Yes, even with all this “depression” talk.)

The second article I would like to highlight was written after the recent Citigroup bailout and is an exclusive report from Bloomberg.com.  This article illustrates the fact that the mainstream media is able to do real reporting and is entitled, “U.S. Pledges Top $7.7 trillion to Ease Frozen Credit (Update 2)”

I will summarize the article as follows: “The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday.  The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.  The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.  Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis.

Bloomberg News tabulated data from the Fed, Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and interviewed regulatory officials, economists and academic researchers to gauge the full extent of the government’s rescue effort” (end quote).

Good thing Bloomberg is doing their job since the full extent of the government’s rescue effort seems to be deliberately obfuscated.  Their investigation gets better.

Bloomberg is suing the Fed under the Freedom of Information Act to “force disclosure of borrower banks and their collateral.”

I suspect some of this collateral is fraudulent, so this will be a big fight.

The Fed will be fighting this lawsuit on the grounds that such a revelation would be “counter-productive,” according to Ben Bernanke.  (I think what he is diplomatically saying is that this information would cause runs on the banks.)

The main point I wanted to make in this blog is that the $700 billion bailout is diverting the American people from the real cost of the bailouts that our government is perpetrating on the taxpayers and our system of capitalism. The following quote from the Bloomberg article illustrates my point.

“Too often the public is focused on the wrong piece of that number, the $700 billion that Congress approved,” said J.D. Foster, a former staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers who is now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.  “The other areas are quite a bit larger.”

These “other areas” bring the total bailout bill to $8.5 TRILLION. This is where the media now needs to focus attention: the real costs of these bailouts. Let’s see how well they do now that Bloomberg has done the legwork. (I did hear Sean Hannity mention the Bloomberg article tonight on Hannity and Colmes.)

Mark Tobin, “principal of New York-based loan-sale consultants and investment bank Mission Capital Advisors LLC,” made one of the most provocative statements in the article.

He said, “’If you mark to market today, the banking system is bankrupt,’” Tobin said.  “’So what do you do?  You try to keep it going as best you can.’”

“‘Mark to market’ means adjusting the value of an asset, such as a mortgage-backed security, to reflect current prices.”

To put this in plain English, “current prices” have tanked, so that means mortgage backed securities have tanked. Our financial system is a zombie; dead but still walking around frightening people who respond by throwing money at it, hoping to make it go away.

Can our country afford to throw 60% of our GDP into these bailouts? I don’t have a PhD in Economics, but that sounds like an INSANE amount of money. I believe we are in fact throwing money down a black hole and only making matters worse, ultimately leading to a complete financial collapse and a new currency.

I know I’m probably sounding like a broken record to regular readers, but I’m not going to stop saying it.  We could be on the road to a Weimar Republic scenario and eventually a North American or world currency.

Once this de-leveraging and deflationary spiral is over with, get your wheelbarrows ready for trips to the store.

I don’t dismiss the possibility that all this was engineered to reach the goal of a one-world government controlled primarily by central banks. Comments, anyone?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Quote of the week: “Someone should submit a proposal to make the paper that the depreciating dollar is printed on softer so it’s more Charmin-like, just in case.”~Anonymous

“You better hope aliens are real.  The United States has borrowed 80% of the capital on earth, so if you need more, you’re going to have to go to other planets.”~Catherine Austin Fitts, on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, quoting an unnamed Brit at an investment conference.

“There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.”
- Irving Fisher, leading U.S. economist, New York Times

“Some pretty intelligent people are now buying stocks… Unless we are to have a panic — which no one seriously believes, stocks have hit bottom.”
- R. W. McNeal, financial analyst

“We feel that fundamentally Wall Street is sound, and that for people who can afford to pay for them outright, good stocks are cheap at these prices.”
- Goodbody and Company market-letter quoted in The New York Times

I’m sure all of this sounds very familiar.  So-called experts have been unsuccessfully predicting a market bottom for months now.

What’s troubling to me is that the above quotes weren’t made recently, but at the cusp of the Great Depression, i.e., Sept. 5, 1929, October, 1929, and October 25, 1929, respectively.

Check out this link which has a 1927-1933 Chart of Pompous Prognosticators. The chart connects quotes like those above with the corresponding value of the Dow.  It illustrates very clearly how wrong intelligent and experienced human beings can be regarding economic predictions.  Therefore, I believe it would be wise to listen to economic experts who saw our current economic crisis coming years ago, especially in the face of harsh criticism.  This is the type of person I would like to see Obama appoint as his economic adviser.

Peter Schiff, former economic adviser to Ron Paul and President of Euro Pacific Capital is one of those people. (The Rapid City Journal ran an interview with Schiff in the Sunday, October 26^th, 2008 business section.)

Schiff wrote a book in 2007 called, “Crash Proof,” which warned of a “coming economic crash.”

Back in August of 2006, Schiff was on CNBC debating Art Laffer, Chief Investment Officer of Laffer Investments and former economic adviser to President Reagan. Schiff believed that a severe recession was coming in ’07 or ’08, and Laffer vigorously argued against this view.

Please watch this CNBC clip of the debate and notice the arrogance with which Laffer operates.  He repeatedly bets that Peter Schiff is wrong about a coming recession and a collapse in housing and stock prices. Laffer hammers home the point that stock and housing prices are “real wealth,” and how wrong Schiff is in predicting the price collapse we now see playing out before our eyes.

Schiff was obviously prescient in predicting our current economic crisis in the face of stinging criticism. Will Obama appoint someone like this as economic adviser?  I would be pleasantly surprised.

Part of the reason people like John McCain and Barack Obama are popular is because they don’t address the painful truths about our economy and our culture that Ron Paul was willing to address during his campaign.

People don’t want to hear that an economy based on borrowing and consuming instead of saving and producing is unsound.  Americans are addicted to borrowing and spending, just like our government. The American people will only be ready to hear this message after a protracted period of suffering unlike anything we’ve seen since the Great Depression.  That will bring about the soul searching necessary to change us as a people in fundamental, positive ways.  Then candidates like Ron Paul won’t have to struggle to get their name on the ballot.

Paul’s lack of success illustrates my point.  If the economy was really the number one issue for voters, then he should’ve won this election.

There has been some talk of Obama naming Warren Buffet as his economic adviser. I would support that move but I would strongly prefer someone more like Peter Schiff.

I’m afraid Obama could end up with an economic adviser like Art Laffer-a Johnny-Come-Lately who still has no idea how to handle the latest collapsing bubble in our economy and can’t see the big picture. I’m sure, though, that he will appoint someone with lots of “hope” and probably an unwillingness to deal with the tough issues Americans don’t want to hear about…yet.

This economic crisis came about partially because of Fed-created, artificially low interest rates and a flood of money which created a huge speculative bubble.

Doing more of the same and throwing fiat money at the problem in an attempt to prevent the bubble from bursting will only make the problem worse.  Since we are spending money we don’t have, we are going to be facing crippling inflation in the next year or so and possibly the collapse of our currency if we keep going down this road.

If that were to happen, I’m sure the government will have a solution for us.  How about a brand new currency backed by silver and/or gold that is legal tender in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico?

Quote of the Day: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
~Albert Einstein

“All government spending represents a tax. The inflation tax, while largely ignored, hurts middle-class and low-income Americans the most. Simply put, printing money to pay for federal spending dilutes the value of the dollar, which causes higher prices for goods and services. Inflation may be an indirect tax, but it is very real – the individuals who suffer most from cost of living increases certainly pay a ‘tax.’”~Ron Paul

“Don’t buy the governement propaganda that inflation is rising prices; it’s a decline in the value of the dollar, brought about by U.S. Treasury Department printing presses producing an excess of fiat currency.”~Aaron Grow

For more information, please check out this previoiusly posted Wikipedia link to see what a currency collapse looks like.  This tells the tale of Inflation in the Weimar Republic during 1921-1923.

If I was writing the news, the title of this blog would be a headline story.

My dad told me he was watching Glenn Beck on CNN the other night when former presidential candidate Ron Paul appeared.

Dad said that Dr. Paul was approached by a member of the U.S. Banking Committee who apparently didn’t know that the U.S. dollar is no longer backed by the gold standard and hasn’t been since 1933. I was dumbfounded and had to see for myself. Luckily, someone posted the clip on Youtube.com.

The entire interview with Paul is a great overview of the risks we face and how most politicians seem to either have little understanding of how serious our current financial problems are, or don’t care.

If you want to skip to the part in the interview where Paul tells the story about the banking committee member, please see the 7:20 mark in Part 1 of the interview.

I believe that the sub-prime mortgage crisis and subsequent government bailouts of the affected institutions could be the tipping point that contributes to massive inflation and economic hardships for millions of Americans. Paul seems to be about the only politician willing to speak honestly about it.

In part 1 of the interview at the 7:03 mark, you will hear Mr. Beck mention Germany’s inflation and “buying bread with a wheelbarrow” (full of currency).

Beck is referring to hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic that took place from 1921 to 1923.

If you click on the previous link, please note the picture of the woman burning German marks instead of firewood, because the currency burned longer than the amount of wood you could buy.

Currently, Zimbabwe is experiencing hyperinflation on a scale of “1 million percent per year. It takes a 50 billion Zimbabwe dollar note just to buy a loaf of bread,” according to an article by John Quinn in the August 4th, 2008 Rapid City Business Journal.

Would it be impossible for a situation similar to the above examples to develop here? It is that sort of attitude that makes such an outcome more likely because if our politicians aren’t pressured by the people to do things differently, they won’t.

Quote of the day: “When a government does something not to the liking of the market, nobody sits down and says, ‘You shouldn’t do this.’ A monetary crisis simply manifests in that currency.” Bernard Lietaer.

Ron Paul on Glenn Beck 07/30/2008 Part 1

Ron Paul on Glenn Beck 07/30/08 Part 2