Si vis pacem parabellum If I agreed with you, we would both be wrong We can thank public education for American gullibility... When did individualism and self reliance come to depend on the government? "A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own." Capital punishment means never having to say, "You again?" Liberals Use Guilt As Moral Weapon Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
Shades of Benghazi: State Department changes story on Afghanistan blast that killed diplomat
Shades of Benghazi: State Department changes story on Afghanistan blast that killed diplomat: The State Department has acknowledged that five Americans killed in Afghanistan, including 25-year-old diplomat Anne Smedinghoff, were on foot when they were caught in the blast of a suicide bomber, and not in an armored vehicle as officials told bereaved relatives earlier this week.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Eye-popper: Is Nancy Pelosi in on eligibility cover-up?
Eye-popper: Is Nancy Pelosi in on eligibility cover-up?
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/14583
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/14583
The Mistake, The Evidence, Obama is NOT a constitutional president
The Theory is Now a Conspiracy And Facts Don’t Lie
 | - JB Williams (Bio and Archives) Thursday, September 10, 2009 | Print friendly | Subscribe | Email Us |
-Please read update at bottom of article
Though we live in an era when all undesirable facts are often blindly labeled “conspiracy theories” by political operatives with an agenda at risk, a very real conspiracy unfolds every now and then.
While it is indeed true that not all theories are actual conspiracies, like when Hillary Clinton developed an imaginary “right-wing conspiracy” out to get her husband, when in fact, the semen stained dress provided all the necessary (but unfriendly) facts and a perfectly logical explanation for all of those nasty rumors – it is also true that some conspiracies are much more than just crackpot theory.
To be a bonafide conspiracy, two or more individuals must knowingly conspire, plot or plan an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious act. In politics or law, an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act, is a “conspiracy.” Not in theory, but in reality.
Such is the case today!
A political national committee, the Chair of the Party convention, the Secretary of the Party, Party offices in each of fifty states, and maybe many – many more, have knowingly and wantonly defrauded the American election system and more than 300 million American citizens.
They plotted and planned an act of evil, unlawful, treacherous fraud in a blind quest for unbridled political power, and they hoped that you would never catch it. They almost got away with it too…
They snuck it past fifty state election commissions, congress, the US Supreme Court and Justice Department, the Federal Elections Commission and countless members of the Electoral College nationwide. Not a single member of the, as Limbaugh says, “drive-by media” caught it either, or if they did, they decided to become complicit for their own political reasons.
But as is always the case with liars, cheats and thieves, they slip up – make a silly mistake – overplay their hand – leave evidence lying around that they had forgotten about. And as with all chronic liars, they eventually get caught in their own web of lies.
Then, one day, someone stumbles into that evidence, and the house of cards comes crashing down around them. It’s almost poetic…
The Mistake
Aware of the fact that Barack Hussein Obama does NOT meet Article II – Section I constitutional requirements for the office of President, what well-seasoned professional politician would be stupid enough to sign their name and stake their personal career upon certifying Obama as eligible?
Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates are nominated at their respective Party Conventions.
Believe it or not, each Party is assigned the duty of vetting and certifying the legal eligibility of their own candidates. I know, like asking the fox to guard the henhouse, right. But hey, we are talking about a country which still thinks there is a separation of powers between the High Court and the Executive branch, which seats that court by way of political appointment, confirmed by congress, which wants a piece of the judge and expects a few political favors too.
The Evidence
In this case, the Democrat Party was responsible for vetting and certifying Barack Hussein Obama as legally eligible to seek the Oval Office. The U.S. Constitution has only three very specific requirements for the job. The proper legal text used on the DNC Party “Official Certification of Nomination” document reads as follows, and I quote;
“THIS IS TO CERTIFY that at the National Convention of the Democrat Party of the United States of America, held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 through 28, 2008, the following were duly nominated as candidates of said Party for President and Vice President of the United States respectively and that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution.”
Yes, I know…. there is a typo in there. Not my typo, it belongs to whoever prepared the official document at the DNC. Did you catch it?
The document is signed by Chair of the DNC Convention and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, DNC Secretary Alice Travis Germond and Colorado Notary of Public Shalifa A. Williamson. It is dated August 28, 2008.
However, this document was never delivered to a single state DNC Office for state certification, and it was therefore, never presented to any state Election Commission as certification of these candidates, although I do have a copy of this notarized document myself.
Instead, a very similar document was delivered to fifty state DNC offices, which those offices certified to each of fifty state Election Commissions, who then date-stamped the document and stuck it in a file cabinet, and proceeded to place these “certified” candidates on the ballot.
The “Official Certification of Nomination” that was presented by the DNC in all fifty states for the 2008 Presidential election, in which Barack Hussein Obama became the new President of the United States, was almost identical, and it too was signed by Chair of the DNC Convention and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, DNC Secretary Alice Travis Germond and Notary of Public Shalifa A. Williamson, dated August 28, 2008.
But this version of the document was missing the following text, and I quote;
“- and that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution.”
The legal certification text on the DNC certified nomination document used for the DNC ticket was limited to, and I quote;
“THIS IS TO CERTIFY that at the National Convention of the Democrat Party of the United States of America, held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 through 28, 2008, the following were duly nominated as candidates of said Party for President and Vice President of the United States respectively:
Oops, another typo? The reference to Obama’s constitutional eligibility was missing… An accidental omission?
The text certifying that Barack Hussein Obama was “legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution” had been removed from the document sent to the states. And yes, I have a copy of this version of the DNC Official Certification of Nomination letter too!
In fact, this version is in Election Commission files of all fifty state Election Commission offices, state DNC headquarters, complete with date stamps, matching signatures, even the same Notary of Public authentication, and absent the constitutional text.
Just in case you are wondering, the answer is yes. This version also includes the same typo present in the version not submitted by the DNC, but including the constitutional text, which means both documents have the same place of origin.
The individual at DNC headquarters who prepared this very important document was not only a poor typist… they were sloppy enough to leave both versions of the signed documents lying around.
Now this is the stuff real conspiracies are made of!
The Implications
Please, allow me to connect the dots here…
- The DNC drafted, signed and notarized TWO slightly different versions of their Official Certification of Nomination documents, not one.
- One of those documents had complete legal language, and one of them was missing the text concerning the constitutional eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama.
- The version which is absent any certification of constitutional standing for the office of President is the version that was filed with every state in the country, and the one used by the DNC to elect Barack Obama President.
Oh, there is one more important document in this story.
The RNC “Official Certification of Nomination” for John McCain and Sarah Palin reads, and I quote:
“We do hereby certify that a national convention of Delegates representing the Republican Party of the United States, duly held and convened in the city of Saint Paul, State of Minnesota, on September 4, 2008, the following person, meeting the constitutional requirements for the Office of President of the United States, and the following person, meeting the constitutional requirements for the Office of Vice President of the Unites States, were nominated for such offices to be filled at the ensuing general election, November 4, 2008, viz;”
The certification of constitutional eligibility is there in the RNC Certification of Nomination presented to the state Election Commissions. It’s there in the document which the DNC had prepared, signed and notarized, but did NOT deliver to the states.
But it is NOT there in the DNC Certification of Nomination that the DNC used to certify and elect Barack Hussein Obama President and Joseph Biden Vice President of the United States of America.
Last, the fact that TWO DNC Certifications exist, both signed, dated and notarized by the same individuals on the same day, means that a very real conspiracy to commit election fraud was underway, and since it took until six months after the election to uncover it, the conspiracy was indeed successful.
Are you still wondering why Barack Obama has spent nearly $1.5 million in taxpayer’s funds to race Department of Justice lawyers around the country to stop all cases questioning Obama’s eligibility before discovery can force Obama to open up his top secret life?
Now I realize that leftists, I mean liberals, no “progressives” – don’t like getting all bogged down in minutia and nit-picky details like the Constitution, but this is actually very serious business here. We are talking about the top-down leadership of the ruling political Party knowingly and wantonly defrauding voters by way of playing monkey business with fraudulent election documents.
As Al Gore once said, the debate is OVER!
There is no honest debate on the matter anymore. Obama is NOT a constitutional president, which is to say, we do NOT have a constitutional federal administration at present and every anti-American policy of the last six months is also, BINGO! – Unconstitutional!
What is still in question however – does any court in America have the backbone to do what must be done? – And what do the American people do, if not one court in the nation has that kind of constitutional backbone today?
Obama’s DOJ has thus far been successful in blocking the people’s access to the courts by claiming that no American citizen, including another presidential candidate, has “proper standing” to demand proof of Obama’s constitutional eligibility for the office he fraudulently holds.
To be very clear, the RNC nomination form filed with the states certifies that John McCain met all constitutional requirements for the Office of President. But the DNC nomination form filed with the states is absent any such language.
I know what I conclude from these facts, but what do you conclude from these facts?
More importantly, what will a court of law conclude? Will they ever even agree to hear the evidence?
The Theory is Now a Conspiracy And Facts Don’t Lie
– Update 09-11-09
First, thank you all for your comments. It is vital to the future of our beloved nation, that every American patriot awaken from apathy and engage in the defense of freedom, liberty and justice. The comments on this story demonstrate that this is happening, none too soon.
I want to respond to several comments regarding this story.
I was first made aware of these two documents when an anonymous reader sent them to me. The documents were posted here — Document #1 and here — Document #2and I provided these proper links in my September 9, 2009 column Tennessee Grand Jury Joins DOJ in Obstructing Justice.
A poster has taken issue with a couple typos in this column. They make a good point, but more importantly, prove a very important point about this story in that process. Typos are more common than not, and that’s why it is significant that the same typo appears in both versions of the DNC Certification document. Like my column typos, which spellchecker missed in both cases, they are a way of identifying the authenticity and place of origin of a document. I usually take great pains to cross all t’s and dot all i’s just to eliminate any opening to discredit a story strictly on the basis of a typo. In this case, the story is of such magnitude, that it was more important to get the word out than to wait for the normal editing process. My apologies for the typos, but they change nothing.
Upon seeing the two DNC documents posted, I contacted several state election offices and requested copies of the DNC and RNC Certifications filed and in all cases, received the DNC version absent the constitutional eligibility reference. Since the RNC document included the constitutional reference in all cases, and the DNC document did not in all cases, I made the assumption that the same documents were fax-blasted to all states. Some states date-stamp and some don’t. I have NOT viewed all 50 state filings. I recommend that each of you contact your state Election Commission office and obtain a copy of the document filed in your state.
It has been posted here that Hawaii received a version of the DNC Certification that included the constitutional text. I have not verified this claim due to time constraints. However, assuming that the “constitutional” version of the document was filed in Hawaii or other states, this only further raises the question - “why two different documents?” Contrary to the assumption made by the Hawaii Cert poster, whether a state requires Article II – Section I text in its certification process or not, the U.S. Constitution requires that all candidates meet those requirements. Further, asserting that only some states require the language in the Certification document explains why the DNC included that text in those certs. But it does NOT explain why the DNC omitted that text from all others. Why two certs?
The good news is – the Hawaii Certification proves that BOTH documents are authentic and official, that all matching signatures on BOTH documents are authentic and that the DNC used BOTH when only the one with constitutional text was necessary. It adds complete credibility to the story as both documents appear to have been not only drafted, signed and notarized by the DNC, but filed differently in different locations. Why not just file one version including the constitutional text?
Last, this story confirms that some form of a conspiracy to mislead and ultimately defraud voters took place at the top of the Democrat Party. No story in recent history is of greater gravity. Yet, some prefer to focus their attention upon John McCain, who was not only a well known war hero from a well known US Military family of distinction, but a Senate confirmed Natural Born Citizen who was NOT elected President. Others prefer to focus attention on a typo missed by spellchecker, and still others hope to derail the story by asserting that Hawaii’s doc changes the only question raised by this report – Why TWO documents? Why eliminate constitutional text from any of them?
This is a very typical strategy of the left, and its purpose is to deflect attention away from the real crisis at hand, and focus attention upon typos, other candidates not elected, and technicalities that change absolutely nothing about the story or the only question of concern, why two different certificates and why omit the reference to constitutional eligibility regarding a candidate who clearly does not meet those requirements?
I reported what I found in a clear factual manner, and even the comments seeking to discredit, further confirm the basis for the story. So, in the end, I must ask, what do you make of all evidence presented?
If I missed any typos here, I apologize!
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Sundown in America - NYTimes.com
Sundown in America - NYTimes.com
State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America
By DAVID A. STOCKMAN
GREENWICH, Conn.
The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market’s last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.
The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market’s last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.
Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later — within a few years, I predict — this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too.
Since the S.&P. 500 first reached its current level, in March 2000, the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve have expanded their balance sheet sixfold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic output has grown by an average of 1.7 percent a year (the slowest since the Civil War); real business investment has crawled forward at only 0.8 percent per year; and the payroll job count has crept up at a negligible 0.1 percent annually. Real median family income growth has dropped 8 percent, and the number of full-time middle class jobs, 6 percent. The real net worth of the “bottom” 90 percent has dropped by one-fourth. The number of food stamp and disability aid recipients has more than doubled, to 59 million, about one in five Americans.
So the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills. By default, the Fed has resorted to a radical, uncharted spree of money printing. But the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble.
When it bursts, there will be no new round of bailouts like the ones the banks got in 2008. Instead, America will descend into an era of zero-sum austerity and virulent political conflict, extinguishing even today’s feeble remnants of economic growth.
THIS dyspeptic prospect results from the fact that we are now state-wrecked. With only brief interruptions, we’ve had eight decades of increasingly frenetic fiscal and monetary policy activism intended to counter the cyclical bumps and grinds of the free market and its purported tendency to underproduce jobs and economic output. The toll has been heavy.
As the federal government and its central-bank sidekick, the Fed, have groped for one goal after another — smoothing out the business cycle, minimizing inflation and unemployment at the same time, rolling out a giant social insurance blanket, promoting homeownership, subsidizing medical care, propping up old industries (agriculture, automobiles) and fostering new ones (“clean” energy, biotechnology) and, above all, bailing out Wall Street — they have now succumbed to overload, overreach and outside capture by powerful interests. The modern Keynesian state is broke, paralyzed and mired in empty ritual incantations about stimulating “demand,” even as it fosters a mutant crony capitalism that periodically lavishes the top 1 percent with speculative windfalls.
The culprits are bipartisan, though you’d never guess that from the blather that passes for political discourse these days. The state-wreck originated in 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt opted for fiat money (currency not fundamentally backed by gold), economic nationalism and capitalist cartels in agriculture and industry.
Under the exigencies of World War II (which did far more to end the Depression than the New Deal did), the state got hugely bloated, but remarkably, the bloat was put into brief remission during a midcentury golden era of sound money and fiscal rectitude with Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House and William McChesney Martin Jr. at the Fed.
Then came Lyndon B. Johnson’s “guns and butter” excesses, which were intensified over one perfidious weekend at Camp David, Md., in 1971, when Richard M. Nixon essentially defaulted on the nation’s debt obligations by finally ending the convertibility of gold to the dollar. That one act — arguably a sin graver than Watergate — meant the end of national financial discipline and the start of a four-decade spree during which we have lived high on the hog, running a cumulative $8 trillion current-account deficit. In effect, America underwent an internal leveraged buyout, raising our ratio of total debt (public and private) to economic output to about 3.6 from its historic level of about 1.6. Hence the $30 trillion in excess debt (more than half the total debt, $56 trillion) that hangs over the American economy today.
This explosion of borrowing was the stepchild of the floating-money contraption deposited in the Nixon White House by Milton Friedman, the supposed hero of free-market economics who in fact sowed the seed for a never-ending expansion of the money supply. The Fed, which celebrates its centenary this year, fueled a roaring inflation in goods and commodities during the 1970s that was brought under control only by the iron resolve of Paul A. Volcker, its chairman from 1979 to 1987.
Under his successor, the lapsed hero Alan Greenspan, the Fed dropped Friedman’s penurious rules for monetary expansion, keeping interest rates too low for too long and flooding Wall Street with freshly minted cash. What became known as the “Greenspan put” — the implicit assumption that the Fed would step in if asset prices dropped, as they did after the 1987 stock-market crash — was reinforced by the Fed’s unforgivable 1998 bailout of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
That Mr. Greenspan’s loose monetary policies didn’t set off inflation was only because domestic prices for goods and labor were crushed by the huge flow of imports from the factories of Asia. By offshoring America’s tradable-goods sector, the Fed kept the Consumer Price Index contained, but also permitted the excess liquidity to foster a roaring inflation in financial assets. Mr. Greenspan’s pandering incited the greatest equity boom in history, with the stock market rising fivefold between the 1987 crash and the 2000 dot-com bust.
Soon Americans stopped saving and consumed everything they earned and all they could borrow. The Asians, burned by their own 1997 financial crisis, were happy to oblige us. They — China and Japan above all — accumulated huge dollar reserves, transforming their central banks into a string of monetary roach motels where sovereign debt goes in but never comes out. We’ve been living on borrowed time — and spending Asians’ borrowed dimes.
This dynamic reinforced the Reaganite shibboleth that “deficits don’t matter” and the fact that nearly $5 trillion of the nation’s $12 trillion in “publicly held” debt is actually sequestered in the vaults of central banks. The destruction of fiscal rectitude under Ronald Reagan — one reason I resigned as his budget chief in 1985 — was the greatest of his many dramatic acts. It created a template for the Republicans’ utter abandonment of the balanced-budget policies of Calvin Coolidge and allowed George W. Bush to dive into the deep end, bankrupting the nation through two misbegotten and unfinanced wars, a giant expansion of Medicare and a tax-cutting spree for the wealthy that turned K Street lobbyists into the de facto office of national tax policy. In effect, the G.O.P. embraced Keynesianism — for the wealthy.
The explosion of the housing market, abetted by phony credit ratings, securitization shenanigans and willful malpractice by mortgage lenders, originators and brokers, has been well documented. Less known is the balance-sheet explosion among the top 10 Wall Street banks during the eight years ending in 2008. Though their tiny sliver of equity capital hardly grew, their dependence on unstable “hot money” soared as the regulatory harness the Glass-Steagall Act had wisely imposed during the Depression was totally dismantled.
Within weeks of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008, Washington, with Wall Street’s gun to its head, propped up the remnants of this financial mess in a panic-stricken melee of bailouts and money-printing that is the single most shameful chapter in American financial history.
There was never a remote threat of a Great Depression 2.0 or of a financial nuclear winter, contrary to the dire warnings of Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman since 2006. The Great Fear — manifested by the stock market plunge when the House voted down the TARP bailout before caving and passing it — was purely another Wall Street concoction. Had President Bush and his Goldman Sachs adviser (a k a Treasury Secretary) Henry M. Paulson Jr. stood firm, the crisis would have burned out on its own and meted out to speculators the losses they so richly deserved. The Main Street banking system was never in serious jeopardy, ATMs were not going dark and the money market industry was not imploding.
Instead, the White House, Congress and the Fed, under Mr. Bush and then President Obama, made a series of desperate, reckless maneuvers that were not only unnecessary but ruinous. The auto bailouts, for example, simply shifted jobs around — particularly to the aging, electorally vital Rust Belt — rather than saving them. The “green energy” component of Mr. Obama’s stimulus was mainly a nearly $1 billion giveaway to crony capitalists, like the venture capitalist John Doerr and the self-proclaimed outer-space visionary Elon Musk, to make new toys for the affluent.
Less than 5 percent of the $800 billion Obama stimulus went to the truly needy for food stamps, earned-income tax credits and other forms of poverty relief. The preponderant share ended up in money dumps to state and local governments, pork-barrel infrastructure projects, business tax loopholes and indiscriminate middle-class tax cuts. The Democratic Keynesians, as intellectually bankrupt as their Republican counterparts (though less hypocritical), had no solution beyond handing out borrowed money to consumers, hoping they would buy a lawn mower, a flat-screen TV or, at least, dinner at Red Lobster.
But even Mr. Obama’s hopelessly glib policies could not match the audacity of the Fed, which dropped interest rates to zero and then digitally printed new money at the astounding rate of $600 million per hour. Fast-money speculators have been “purchasing” giant piles of Treasury debt and mortgage-backed securities, almost entirely by using short-term overnight money borrowed at essentially zero cost, thanks to the Fed. Uncle Ben has lined their pockets.
If and when the Fed — which now promises to get unemployment below 6.5 percent as long as inflation doesn’t exceed 2.5 percent — even hints at shrinking its balance sheet, it will elicit a tidal wave of sell orders, because even a modest drop in bond prices would destroy the arbitrageurs’ profits. Notwithstanding Mr. Bernanke’s assurances about eventually, gradually making a smooth exit, the Fed is domiciled in a monetary prison of its own making.
While the Fed fiddles, Congress burns. Self-titled fiscal hawks like Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, are terrified of telling the truth: that the 10-year deficit is actually $15 trillion to $20 trillion, far larger than the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of $7 trillion. Its latest forecast, which imagines 16.4 million new jobs in the next decade, compared with only 2.5 million in the last 10 years, is only one of the more extreme examples of Washington’s delusions.
Even a supposedly “bold” measure — linking the cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security payments to a different kind of inflation index — would save just $200 billion over a decade, amounting to hardly 1 percent of the problem. Mr. Ryan’s latest budget shamelessly gives Social Security and Medicare a 10-year pass, notwithstanding that a fair portion of their nearly $19 trillion cost over that decade would go to the affluent elderly. At the same time, his proposal for draconian 30 percent cuts over a decade on the $7 trillion safety net — Medicaid, food stamps and the earned-income tax credit — is another front in the G.O.P.’s war against the 99 percent.
Without any changes, over the next decade or so, the gross federal debt, now nearly $17 trillion, will hurtle toward $30 trillion and soar to 150 percent of gross domestic product from around 105 percent today. Since our constitutional stasis rules out any prospect of a “grand bargain,” the nation’s fiscal collapse will play out incrementally, like a Greek/Cypriot tragedy, in carefully choreographed crises over debt ceilings, continuing resolutions and temporary budgetary patches.
The future is bleak. The greatest construction boom in recorded history — China’s money dump on infrastructure over the last 15 years — is slowing. Brazil, India, Russia, Turkey, South Africa and all the other growing middle-income nations cannot make up for the shortfall in demand. The American machinery of monetary and fiscal stimulus has reached its limits. Japan is sinking into old-age bankruptcy and Europe into welfare-state senescence. The new rulers enthroned in Beijing last year know that after two decades of wild lending, speculation and building, even they will face a day of reckoning, too.
THE state-wreck ahead is a far cry from the “Great Moderation” proclaimed in 2004 by Mr. Bernanke, who predicted that prosperity would be everlasting because the Fed had tamed the business cycle and, as late as March 2007, testified that the impact of the subprime meltdown “seems likely to be contained.” Instead of moderation, what’s at hand is a Great Deformation, arising from a rogue central bank that has abetted the Wall Street casino, crucified savers on a cross of zero interest rates and fueled a global commodity bubble that erodes Main Street living standards through rising food and energy prices — a form of inflation that the Fed fecklessly disregards in calculating inflation.
These policies have brought America to an end-stage metastasis. The way out would be so radical it can’t happen. It would necessitate a sweeping divorce of the state and the market economy. It would require a renunciation of crony capitalism and its first cousin: Keynesian economics in all its forms. The state would need to get out of the business of imperial hubris, economic uplift and social insurance and shift its focus to managing and financing an effective, affordable, means-tested safety net.
All this would require drastic deflation of the realm of politics and the abolition of incumbency itself, because the machinery of the state and the machinery of re-election have become conterminous. Prying them apart would entail sweeping constitutional surgery: amendments to give the president and members of Congress a single six-year term, with no re-election; providing 100 percent public financing for candidates; strictly limiting the duration of campaigns (say, to eight weeks); and prohibiting, for life, lobbying by anyone who has been on a legislative or executive payroll. It would also require overturning Citizens United and mandating that Congress pass a balanced budget, or face an automatic sequester of spending.
It would also require purging the corrosive financialization that has turned the economy into a giant casino since the 1970s. This would mean putting the great Wall Street banks out in the cold to compete as at-risk free enterprises, without access to cheap Fed loans or deposit insurance. Banks would be able to take deposits and make commercial loans, but be banned from trading, underwriting and money management in all its forms.
It would require, finally, benching the Fed’s central planners, and restoring the central bank’s original mission: to provide liquidity in times of crisis but never to buy government debt or try to micromanage the economy. Getting the Fed out of the financial markets is the only way to put free markets and genuine wealth creation back into capitalism.
That, of course, will never happen because there are trillions of dollars of assets, from Shanghai skyscrapers to Fortune 1000 stocks to the latest housing market “recovery,” artificially propped up by the Fed’s interest-rate repression. The United States is broke — fiscally, morally, intellectually — and the Fed has incited a global currency war (Japan just signed up, the Brazilians and Chinese are angry, and the German-dominated euro zone is crumbling) that will soon overwhelm it. When the latest bubble pops, there will be nothing to stop the collapse. If this sounds like advice to get out of the markets and hide out in cash, it is.
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