US FINACIAL MESS

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Dear Friends:
The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary.
The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).

Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."

Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.
In liberty,

Ron Paul
 
I've already invested in land, now I am gonna start a new savings account in ammo.

Bring on the fall!!
 
your smarter than me solitary,
I may buy some land a year from now when it falls another 20%

Well, I bought land in the boonies. Prices are low already and less likely to fluctuate.

But when the big collapse comes, ammunition will become the new big currency.
 
Well, I bought land in the boonies. Prices are low already and less likely to fluctuate.

But when the big collapse comes, ammunition will become the new big currency.
Yeah, I plan on buying more land with some ammunition... ;)
 
There are issues involved than just the bad loan issue that is impacting the US economy.
The bailout will not really fix anything. And if regulations are not put back into place the bailout will just be pouring more money down the drain.
 
Well, I bought land in the boonies. Prices are low already and less likely to fluctuate.

But when the big collapse comes, ammunition will become the new big currency.

With Obama sure to be elected I have been stock piling ammo also. I have quite a bit stored up right now but will be getting more, as well as more components to re-load.
 
I already have enough that if I got busted I would be listed as one of those gun nuts.
esp if they count each .22 round. I must have about 5,000 of those.
 
I have been tinkering with a .22 rimfire gatling for years. Works pretty good, just a bit slow firing. only about 900 rpm.

Have to have someting to do with my machine shop tools. :D

edit: chain gun actually. electric powered.


good for shooting trap ;)
 
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Straight to barbarism and violence.

How proud you must be.

You betcha! I am proud as I can be. I enjoy living in the boonies and I enjoy shooting and hunting. Having a stiockpile of ammunition can either be seen as being frugal (as prices rise) or being prepared. Pick one.


USC, if they count .22 ammo, I am totally screwed.

A .22 gatlin gun huh? I saw something done with a pair of Ruger 10/22s that was operated with a hand crank. Looked like fun, but not very practical.
 
You betcha! I am proud as I can be. I enjoy living in the boonies and I enjoy shooting and hunting. Having a stiockpile of ammunition can either be seen as being frugal (as prices rise) or being prepared. Pick one.


USC, if they count .22 ammo, I am totally screwed.

A .22 gatlin gun huh? I saw something done with a pair of Ruger 10/22s that was operated with a hand crank. Looked like fun, but not very practical.

This thing finally works pretty well. Lots of fun. will also clear a field of brush. So you can find the dead rabbits easier.

Had to make a sorter feeder device which was about as hard to do as the rest of it. Have to handle those rimfire shells just right or they tend to get excited. It is actually a pretty slick device. but I have no plans to market or go public with it. only a handful of people know about it.
And now half the net :D

Of course it would be handy if I am ever rushed by a pack of Majorities or dixies.
 
This thing finally works pretty well. Lots of fun. will also clear a field of brush. So you can find the dead rabbits easier.

Had to make a sorter feeder device which was about as hard to do as the rest of it. Have to handle those rimfire shells just right or they tend to get excited. It is actually a pretty slick device. but I have no plans to market or go public with it. only a handful of people know about it.
And now half the net :D

Of course it would be handy if I am ever rushed by a pack of Majorities or dixies.

Oh well, we won't hunt you down and steal your patent :)......but it does sound cool. I love to tinker with 22's.
 
Oh well, we won't hunt you down and steal your patent :)......but it does sound cool. I love to tinker with 22's.
I have a moral quandry there, I would destroy it before I contributed to the arsenal of death. But I do like to shoot guns, just do not like killing.
Already had far too much of that.
 
This thing finally works pretty well. Lots of fun. will also clear a field of brush. So you can find the dead rabbits easier.

Had to make a sorter feeder device which was about as hard to do as the rest of it. Have to handle those rimfire shells just right or they tend to get excited. It is actually a pretty slick device. but I have no plans to market or go public with it. only a handful of people know about it.
And now half the net :D

Of course it would be handy if I am ever rushed by a pack of Majorities or dixies.

I would imagine that the sound would run most marauders off, even if they had bigger guns.

It sounds like a lotta fun to shoot. I love taking our .22s to the range, or just out plinking.

Don't worry about killing anything. Just shoot for the fun. Its easier to hit.
 
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