My eight year-old son and I have a business arrangement. He takes out the trash and I pay him a dollar. A couple of weeks ago, he did his job (well, I do have to remind him that it’s trash day, but he eventually empties all the baskets in the house and hauls the containers to the curb), but upon searching my wallet, I discovered I didn’t have any one dollar bills to pay him with. So I had an idea–I could pay him with a copper Liberty Dollar until I got enough change.

Tail-side of the Tea-Party Dollar

Head-side of the Liberty Dollar Tea Party Dollar

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Tags: Economics by dooglio
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SMUD is proposing a major rate hike for electricity, blaming the recession:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29978318

There are those who are quick to blame capitalism, thinking that this is what happens in the free market. The trouble is, this has nothing to do with a free market. Notice that if you live in Sacramento you have only one choice: SMUD. That is because SMUD is a monopoly.

One misconception that people these days seem to labor under is that capitalism promotes monopolies–that they are inevitable and we need the government to step in and stop them. Afterall, we cannot trust a freedom in the marketplace–people are likely to abuse it! The truth is that only the government can create a monopoly. A monopoly is where one company or organization has 100% of the market-share. They only way you can achieve 100% is to outlaw your competition.

I’ve heard arguments to the contrary, and they usually involve Standard Oil and Microsoft. The truth about Standard Oil is that they never had 100% market share. According to Mary Ruwart in her book “Healing our World,” Standard Oil had 90% of the market share for crude oil in 1879. By 1884, their competitors began to eek into their market share. By 1911, Standard “refined only 64% of the domestic petroleum. The competition included Gulf, Texaco, Union, Pure Oil and Shell.” The federal government’s anti-trust suit was too little too late, and, well, pointless as the free market had already cut Standard down to size.

Microsoft is also sited as a monopoly. The truth is, you can run a PC without Microsoft’s OS. Yes it may be difficult, but for example, I can go to Frys and build a computer from scratch (motherboard, CPU, memory, hard drive, a case, monitor, keyboard and a mouse) and install the GNU/Linux or FreeBSD operating systems. I could do this even during the MS heyday when Apple was bust. The point is, you still had a choice, even if it was inconvenient. Now we see the reemergence of Apple, and GNU/Linux’s market-share on the rise. The free market was responsible for Linux–that was the one product Microsoft could not “embrace, extend and extinguish” since it was…free (not “free” as in beer). And this time, the DOJ was completely unsuccessful at doing anything to stop Microsoft. I’m not a bit fan of MS, but the truth be told–people vote with their dollars and buy Microsoft. By choice.

SMUD is a different animal. Like AT&T of old, the government has outlawed their competition.  Where can you go if you don’t like SMUD and their prices? We have the same problem on the other side of the Sacramento River where we’re forced to use PG&E. In a true free market, you would have a choice of power providers. SMUD (and PG&E for that matter) could never price gouge like this because people could switch. This is a built-in regulation in the free market, one that keeps prices down and benefits consumers. But again, we don’t have the benefit of the free market here. So we are stuck with the prices the monopolist decides to set.

Tags: Economics, Economy, Politics by dooglio
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The unchecked issuance of debt by our government, facilitated by Federal Reserve policies since 1971, has brought our great country to the brink of financial disaster. The organization that caused the problem, did not see this crisis looming, and has utterly failed in stemming the damage, is now taking actions completely outside of its mandate, while telling the public they have the answers. They have duped the American public for 85 years through the insidious use of inflation, and now they are trying to dupe the world into keeping their Ponzi scheme going for a while longer.

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/quinn/2008/1224.html

Tags: Economics, Economy, Politics by dooglio
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Tags: Economics, Economy, Housing, Humor, Politics by dooglio
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What an amazing video, chilling, and emotional! Ron Paul and Peter Schiff have been predicting this collapse for years and it seems slowly, dimly, the mainstream media is starting to hear them. Slowly and dimly.

Wake up America!

Tags: Economics, Economy, Politics, Ron Paul by dooglio
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New Credit Crunch Cereal! Sweet with incredibly bitter aftertaste!

Tags: Economics, Economy, Politics by dooglio
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Go figure but it seems Dr. Paul will be asked to co-host soon as much as he has been turning up on Murdock Net. A very good and precise interview of Ron Paul on financial crisis.

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Tags: Economics, Politics, Ron Paul by dooglio
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In his article The Greater Depression and What You Should
Do About It, Doug Casey talks about what a business cycle is and how the federal government distorts the market through regulation, taxes and inflation. This distortion causes mis-allocations of capital, which in turns causes busts. These busts are very important as they cleanse away the bad investments. But our Federal Government, fearing a depression, keeps dumping liquidity into the markets to stave off a downturn. But this is only putting off the inevitable.

From the article:

But, in a nutshell, government intervention in the economy – through taxes, regulation and, most importantly, currency inflation – causes distortions and misallocations of capital that must eventually be unwound. The distortions degrade the general standard of living, and the economy goes into a recession (call that an incomplete cleansing). Or it goes into a depression – wherein the entire sickly structure comes unglued.

This is a message that is sadly lacking in the mainstream news media:

Oddly enough, there’s one glaringly obvious thing that is not in the news today at all. That’s the fact that interest rates – nominal rates too, but especially “real,” after-inflation rates – are close to their lowest levels in history. And in today’s extraordinarily risky environment, they’re artificially low. This, and the reasons for it, should be headlines.

But sadly, not. Most Americans are going to be caught totally off guard. They will march off and vote for Obama’s mislabeled “change,” continue massive domestic spending, and perpetuate the debt-based mentality of the American consumer, taxpayer and voter. Ron Paul’s message of fiscal responsibility seemed to fall on deaf ears–only a few million Americans listened and reacted to the wake up call of Dr. Paul.

Sometimes I wonder why I post these articles and if anyone is even reading them. :/

Tags: Economics, Politics, Ron Paul by dooglio
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Among gold and silver investors there is a common cry to get rid of the Fed and return to the gold standard. However, with the Establishment having controlled our schools and universities for decades, the masses are duped into believing that the money and banking are much too complicated to be understood by anyone…

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Tags: Economics, Politics, Ron Paul by dooglio
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I recommend reading “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg. It really spells out how the modern Liberal Left is actually based on fascism, and how the Conservative Right (I’m talking true conservatives here, or rather, Classical Liberal thinking) is completely misunderstood. The people on the Left are Fascists in American clothing, and most of them don’t even realize it. They have no idea their intellectual heritage comes from the Progressive movement around the turn of the 20th century, inspired by Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin.

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Tags: Economics, Politics, Ron Paul by dooglio
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