". . . a republic, if you can keep it."
“Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street leviathan that is heavily invested in the cap-and-trade carbon market scam, has admitted it has developed and used software that can manipulate such financial markets.
The revelation came during proceedings in a legal case with enough plot twists to make even John Grisham proud; it was made, not by Goldman, but by an assistant U.S. Attorney.” (Read more from goldmansachs666.com)
If I understand correctly, the accusation is this: Goldman Sachs’ trading software cheats by doing their own trading split seconds before a client’s big trades go through. That way they profit from the market swings induced by their client’s trades. You can read more about it here.
From 3:20 to about 4:30, this video covers the suspect software:
“The US administration has been saying it sees the first green shoots of economic recovery. However consumer spending remains low in America, and some experts argue the signs are misleading.
What can you get for a dollar? Not much these days.
Its value dropped considerably at the end of June – and this is despite the Obama administration announcing signs of an economic rebound.
Experts think these are false claims of hope. They see a gloomy future for the dollar and say the $787 billion stimulus package passed earlier this year is only making things worse.” (Read more from geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com)
The Obama administration is quickly creating a world in which business success DEMANDS political connections. Here, Congressman Brad Sherman alludes to investors already making business decisions based on which companies have the most political pull.
Jim Rogers on Gold Seek Radio 30 June 2009.
I’ve long been interested in legal tender laws and the notion of competing currencies. Ron Paul gave a great overview before the US House of Representatives, February 13, 2008:
“At this country’s founding, there was no government-controlled national currency. While the Constitution established the Congressional power of minting coins, it was not until 1792 that the US Mint was formally established. In the meantime, Americans made do with foreign silver and gold coins. Even after the Mint’s operations got underway, foreign coins continued to circulate within the United States, and did so for several decades.
On the desk in my office I have a sign that says: �Don’t steal � the government hates competition.� Indeed, any power a government arrogates to itself, it is loathe to give back to the people. Just as we have gone from a constitutionally instituted national defense consisting of a limited army and navy bolstered by militias and letters of marque and reprisal, we have moved from a system of competing currencies to a government-instituted banking cartel that monopolizes the issuance of currency. In order to introduce a system of competing currencies, there are three steps that must be taken to produce a legal climate favorable to competition.
The first step consists of eliminating legal tender laws. Article I Section 10 of the Constitution forbids the States from making anything but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts. States are not required to enact legal tender laws, but should they choose to, the only acceptable legal tender is gold and silver, the two precious metals that individuals throughout history and across cultures have used as currency. However, there is nothing in the Constitution that grants the Congress the power to enact legal tender laws. We, the Congress, have the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, but not to declare a legal tender. Yet, there is a section of US Code, 31 USC 5103, that purports to establish US coins and currency, including Federal Reserve notes, as legal tender.
Historically, legal tender laws have been used by governments to force their citizens to accept debased and devalued currency. . . . If people are free to reject debased currency, and instead demand sound money, sound money will gradually return to use in society. . . .
The second step to reestablishing competing currencies is to eliminate laws that prohibit the operation of private mints. One private enterprise which attempted to popularize the use of precious metal coins was Liberty Services, the creators of the Liberty Dollar. Evidently the government felt threatened, as Liberty Dollars had all their precious metal coins seized by the FBI and Secret Service this past November.
. . . .
The final step to ensuring competing currencies is to eliminate capital gains and sales taxes on gold and silver coins. Under current federal law, coins are considered collectibles, and are liable for capital gains taxes. Short-term capital gains rates are at income tax levels, up to 35 percent, while long-term capital gains taxes are assessed at the collectibles rate of 28 percent. Furthermore, these taxes actually tax monetary debasement. As the dollar weakens, the nominal dollar value of gold increases. The purchasing power of gold may remain relatively constant, but as the nominal dollar value increases, the federal government considers this an increase in wealth, and taxes accordingly.” (Read the whole speech at dailypaul.com)
With Sanford disgraced, and Ron Paul unlikely to run for president again, Senator Jim DeMint may be our best hope for 2012. I hope he runs.
Description from a campaign for liberty email: “Seizing on a chance to take quick action to bring Audit the Fed up for a vote, and with the GAO provisions in mind, Senator DeMint attached the full text of S 604, the Senate version of Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed bill, to HR 2918 as Senate Amendment 1367 before it was considered for final passage.
However, Senate Democrats refused to even allow a vote on the amendment! That’s right. The internationalist, Fed-loving elite in the Senate used a parliamentary tactic to shut down DeMint’s amendment.
After Senator DeMint brought Audit the Fed to the floor, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska raised a ‘point of order’ to prevent a vote, claiming that the amendment violated Senate Rule 16 by ‘legislating’ on an appropriations bill. The Senate president agreed, and the amendment was shot down.
Senator DeMint did not back down, though, and directly challenged Senate leadership by pointing out the other GAO audits contained in the bill. As Senator DeMint listed them off, the Senate president was forced to agree with Senator DeMint that each one he described, all of which would be left in for final passage, also violated Senate Rule 16.
Which tells us at least one thing: the problem wasn’t with ‘legislating’ on the bill or violating Senate Rules (which is commonly done). Shooting down the amendment was about preventing a thorough audit of the Federal Reserve for the first time in its history!”
Toward the end of the discussion, Soltz, who’d been eviscerating Congressman Gingrey, stumbles after the congressman pulled out the old fallacy of the military as a jobs program.
This is a version of the broken window fallacy. Neither the military, nor the industries that support it create jobs. They redirect jobs. The money that fuels them has been taken away from the voluntary (free market) part of the economy. To create these public jobs, private ones need to be destroyed. We need a military, surely, but it should never be viewed as anything other than a sacrifice.
This is fantastic. (Can’t believe it’s on TV.)
pt 1 – Ron Paul
pt 2 – Peter Schiff’s Euro Pacific Capital fined $100,000 for hiring people too quickly, as the world calls for more regulation.
pt 3
pt 4 – Tom Woods & Lew Rockwell on our elected dictatorship.
pt 5 – Banks now required to spy against online gamblers.
pt 6 –
paramedic hurrying to hospital with patient = resisting arrest
flashing of headlights = obstruction of justice
photography = terrorist activity
Such are the miracles of government-run education.
“Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that’s what they want to do.
Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its ‘rubber rooms’ — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.
The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.
‘You just basically sit there for eight hours,’ said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-05.” (Read more from news.yahoo.com)
This post is dedicated to all my Obama-supporting friends who told me we needed to prevent our financial system from collapsing, too big to fail, what about the children, etc . . .
“Recall the number of times that government officials told taxpayers that we would make money on investments in AIG and the like. Well, so far we’ve lost $159 billion dollars across all our TARP investments. The loss is calculated as the difference in funds committed and allocated to securities and the market value of those securities. That loss represents 36% of the funds committed and actually allocated.
Not that anybody in the media or the financial industry would want you to know that.”