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ECONOMY:

Austrian economists explain that during the boom times, when the central bank is inflating the money supply and interest rates are held artificially low, entrepreneurs and capitalists invest in projects that seem profitable given the phony, low interest rates, but aren't profitable in reality. The Austrians call this malinvestment. Even reading that little bit of explanation is boring, but these pictures of malinvestment in Florida from Google Earth are not boring. They're fantastic examples that visually drive home the abstract premise.

Silver is the poor man's gold. I can attest to that.

TAX AND SPEND:

Back in March of 2008 in America's Looming Debt Crisis I wrote:

"Drastically cutting spending is inevitable. The only questions are when, how we manage it, and how much pain we suffer."

The point I was was making was Federal spending will be cut one way or the other. Either we can do it intelligently or we will suffer a horrific crash far bigger than the fall of the Soviet Union. In what must be an accidental bout of truth-telling, Ben Bernanke is suddenly saying the same thing:

"One way or the other, fiscal adjustments sufficient to stabilize the federal budget will certainly occur at some point. The only real question is whether these adjustments will take place through a careful and deliberative process that weighs priorities and gives people plenty of time to adjust to changes in government programs or tax policies, or whether the needed fiscal adjustments will be a rapid and painful response to a looming or actual fiscal crisis."

Amazing. I bet the aristocrats are livid, but they can't call for his resignation without highlighting this slip of honesty and showing that our government-Fed incestuous system is a scam.

Now that TARP has expired (Yay!), Robert Murphy offers a post-mortem that shows just how bad a program it was.

REGULATION:

Here's yet another powerful reminder that big corporations love regulations. They couldn't exist without daddy government's protection. Since Google is kicking Microsoft's butt all over the internet, Microsoft is lobbying for a regulation requiring computers uses to have a computer health certificate stating their computers are virus-free before accessing the internet. This is just a scam to get people off the internet where Google rules and locked onto their desktops where Microsoft rules.

The EPAs war on chemicals is dragging us back toward the stone age. Government is the enemy of progress. It's the enemy of civilization.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The president of the New York Fed confirms that the Fed will steal more of our money through the inflation tax. They say this is in our economic interest.

"Further action is likely to be warranted unless the economic outlook evolves in a way that makes me more confident that we will see better outcomes for both employment and inflation before too long."

That's Fed double-speak for inflating the money supply. And he's not alone.

"Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans also said today he favors further monetary accommodation as “we still have a long road ahead before we catch up to the level of activity we would have achieved in the absence of a crisis, or any other shock.”"

In fact, the steal is a done deal.

"Purchases of more assets by the Fed are “pretty close to a done deal,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut, and a former Fed researcher. The central bank is making the case that “unemployment is high, inflation is low, we need to start moving the needle in the right direction and even if it doesn’t move it by a lot you just do it.”"

Stealing our money through inflation only makes this depression deeper while creating the illusion of wealth creation.

Peter Schiff responds:

"Seemingly overnight, the Fed appears to have altered its mandate, ditching its former goal of "price stability" in favor of "moderate price inflation." While no one is under the illusion that the Fed has kept prices stable over the last century, it used to be that the governors would at least pretend to fight inflation. Low inflation used to be the aim, now it's the enemy.

Although the inflation being created by the Fed may not be showing up immediately in rising rents or auto prices, it is nevertheless pushing up asset prices in other areas. Many commentators are celebrating the "best September for the Dow and S&P in 71 years," rising 7.7% and 8.8% respectively. Well, it was also a pretty great September for soybeans (up 9.5%), rice (up 10%), oil (up 11%), corn (up 12.2%), orange juice (up 13%), cotton (up 17.5%), and sugar (up 19.3%). In fact, the whole CRB is up 8.7%. The Swiss franc is up 4.6%, the euro up 7%, the Aussie dollar up 9%. Gold is at all-time highs, silver at 30-year highs, and copper at 3-year highs.

In other words, the box of Uncle Ben's in my kitchen cabinet had a better month than the Dow Jones Industrials. The same could be said for the boxer shorts in my dresser. Could it be that the Dow isn't rising, but the dollar falling?"

The Fed has trapped us all in an inflationary depression. It looks like the stock market is rising, but it's not. It's an illusion created by the collapse of the dollar. US bonds are another bubble.

The Fed has no way out. It has to keep inflating to create the illusion the economy is stagnant while in fact it continues to collapse. Private investment is much lower than we're being told. We're cannibalizing our capital which means we're falling back toward the stone age. If the Fed stops inflating, the illusion will collapse, and everybody will see how much damage decades of inflating and government looting has done to our economy. So it continues to inflate because it has no way out. Quantitative easing is a euphemism for inflation. Gary North calls this the powder keg. This is why smart investors are buying gold and silver.

Banks are starting to lend again. Inflation is sure to follow as night follows day.

Another article reports that the Fed is considering inflating even faster than usual - on purpose.

HEALTH CARE:

Democrats get a bunch of 20-somethings to show off the entitlement mentality that is destroying America in a video commercial telling Americans to leave Obamacare alone because they don't want to buy health insurance. This is pathetic. They're parents should ground these children for life.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The ultra-liberal San Francisco Chronicle reports that a green law in California was based on corrupt science. When leftists begin reporting that climate science is corrupt and that policy derived from the corrupt science is corrupt, the green fraud is in real trouble.

POLICE STATE:

For the third time in ten days, TSA and friends shut down an Atlanta bus station for no good reason.

"Federal agents launched a counterterrorism operation in Metro Atlanta for the third time in 10 days, inspecting every inch of a downtown Atlanta bus station.

Bomb sniffing dogs and officers from several agencies searched passengers, baggage and vehicles at the Forsyth Street bus station on Wednesday night.

Officials told Channel 2’s Eric Philips there is no particular threat sparking the surge in activity, just their desire to ward off any potential attacks."

Sounds more like roid rage to me.

WAR:

Contractors hired by the US military to guard bases, apparently the war in Afghanistan is so screwed up that the military can't guard its own bases, hire Taliban to guard them. The US military is sending paychecks to the Taliban. You can't make this stuff up. And people out there think that these central planners can transform Afghanistan into a functioning representative government allied with the US. They're delusional. These contractors are employed to make it look like we have fewer troops in Afghanistan than we actually do. Politics poisons everything government touches.

POLITICS:

Democrats want us to believe that white voters just figured out President Obama was black, so they're fleeing the Democrats now. It couldn't be the policies.

I think Christine O'Donnell was a fool for claiming to not be a witch. She should have come out with a positive response showing she's a Christian or something, not falling for the witch-baiting on the left.

John Stossel says that the people asking for Congress to solve their problems might as well as Congress to fix the weather. Apparently Stossel hasn't heard about tax and trade.

This reality check explains how Republicans work with Democrats to advance the progressive agenda.

"To understand why, we have to set the Wayback Machine to 1912 and meet the progressive tag team of King Roosevelt the First and Woodrow the Evil. Both demons used their position and influence to put progressives into leadership positions in their respective parties. Near the end of Woodrow's reign, the Diabolical Duo realized there was a flaw in their grand scheme: the public so hated progressive policies, they would never vote for a progressive candidate. And so began Operation Wool-Over-Eyes.

Woody’s reign guaranteed certain defeat for Democrats and replacement by a non-progressive party. The Republican Party would pretend to be the anti-progressive party to keep outsiders from rolling back the progressive gains they had made. While the Republicans played "Stupid Party" in office, the Democrats changed their image to "liberal." When King Roosevelt the Second took the throne, it became obvious the Democrats had not changed their progressive goals one scintilla.

To this day, you still see the same pattern. The Democrats are thrown out of office for progressive craziness. The Republicans come in, do nothing to undo the damage and act stupid. The Democrats with a new, improved image replace the stupid Republicans and pass more progressive legislation. The Tea Party Movement is a threat to this whole con game."

He's got it right, but I think he overestimates the influence of the tea party at this time. There was no tea party until the last couple of months of the Bush years, and the tea party will recede, not go away but recede, when Republicans get back in power. Republicans in power will split the tea party just like Obama split the Democrats.

"The Republican Party is really upset about losing Mike Castle (RINO-DE) because as a chairman he could block the new non-progressive representatives from getting anything done in Congress. The Tea Party people are the Barbarians at the gate and Castle was part of the gate."

This is a very entertaining and informative essay.

MEDIA:

Six gigantic corporations own all the major TV, print and radio outlets in America. But they don't own the internet. That's why government wants to control the internet. Government can control a few big corporations but not millions of individuals.

MISC:

Suspicion that the British Air Force personnel coming out about UFOs may be another propaganda effort meant to scare us so we'll give more power to the government. Who is this supposed to scare? The people who aren't scared of Muslims or tea partiers or corporations or global warming?