Nelson Hultberg via the Daily Bell:

“The “Two Pillars Strategy” is the foundation of the Conservative American Party.

Pillar #1 is to enact Milton Friedman’s 4% auto-expansion plan for the Fed. This will mandate by law that the Fed can only increase the money supply by 4% every year. Monetary expansion will be taken away from the FOMC’s arbitrary discretion and be computerized, which will keep money supply growth equivalent to the growth of goods and services, which will reduce price inflation to zero. This will end the Fed’s irresponsibility and allow time for the people to be educated as to the necessity for a gold standard and ending the Fed, which might require several decades. Such an auto-expansion plan is not perfect and not a permanent solution, but it will stop the destruction of our currency. It is a vital interim policy until gold money can be re-established. Even Ron Paul himself knows that the Fed is not going to be eliminated right away. Only naïve utopians who don’t live in the real world want to end the Fed today. Good grief! The country would totally collapse. We need a plan to phase out the Fed. This pillar is the first step toward that process. Combine it with Edwin Vieira’s plan to enact gold and silver coin alternatives at the state level, and you have a viable means to rectify 100 years of Marxist / Keynesian monetary insanity.

Pillar #2 is to enact an equal-rate income tax of 10% for everyone (i.e., a genuine flat tax). If we are to uphold “equal rights” in America, then we must have “equal rates” in our tax system. And all citizens must be assessed the tax. No exemptions. Period. Only in this way can we have a responsible electorate. When all people have to pay proportionally for their government services, they will begin to vote for less government every year at the polls. “

I spotted this in the Sacramento Bee:

“Overstock.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: OSTK), today announced that its CEO and Chairman Dr. Patrick M. Byrne, was named the Ernst & Young National Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2011 Retail and Consumer Products Award winner. He was honored at the Entrepreneur of the Year Awards gala, the culminating event of the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum® held in Palm Springs, California on November 12, 2011.

Ernst & Young recognized Byrne for his ability to spot opportunity in the online retail industry, giving rise to the first online site used for inventory liquidations, and for enhancing the online shopping experience. Ernst & Young noted that Byrne was able to weather the storm of the internet bubble and to lead Overstock.com and its sister philanthropic-retail sites, Worldstock.com Fair Trade and The Main Street Revolution, to the top of the industry.”

The award is very prestigious and suggests that premature funeral orations from Byrne’s critics are greatly exaggerated. Those critics, confined to a few mainstream financial writers and their blogger side-kicks, felt vindicated by the decision of a Canadian supreme court to shut down Byrne’s controversial white-collar crime site,  which named corrupt financial players and their media flacks, left and right.

Byrne’s suit against Goldman Sachs, one of many confrontations he has had with the power elites, has a long history, dating back to when Byrne decided not to go the corrupt IPO route, so lucrative for the big banks. Instead, he chose to pioneer the Dutch auction, an alternative that the big banks have long resented, since it denies them their lucrative cut.

It is time someone recognized that capitalists who claim that society can do what the government botches should put their money where their mouth is.  They cannot have it both ways. They cannot claim that voluntary and private actions can outdo the government, and then, when people actually unite to take action, they go silent, because they don’t want to offend their business networks.  Their silence is complicity in fraud. And fraud is coercion. Anyone who coerces another person through fraud is subverting their free will, as I’ve previously blogged.

It is completely anti-market.

Survival Blog, via Lew Rockwell:

“First of all, realize that ALL correspondence done on the “free” email providers is kept in a database indefinitely. Deleting it does not physically remove it. And in addition to that, consumers need to realize that if you choose to use a smart phone to browse the Internet, send/receive emails, send/receive text messages, etcetera, you are also giving out location data and even more precise personal data. ………

The second, and most effective, way to help protect your privacy is to resist the urge to let your browser keep track of all your login information, and make certain all tracking cookies and other data are removed every time you close your browser………

Recently published information revealed that Google is processing large amounts of law enforcement warrants for personal data. Many of the warrants include information about people completely unrelated to any crime – People who have merely corresponded with an individual who is under some sort of surveillance.”

Faux-Capitalist:

“Three prominent hard money advocates have endorsed the temporary issuance of fiat money, with two of them particularly endorsing interest-free fiat money.

On September 18, 2011, Nelson Hultberg of the Conservative American Party outlined one of the party’s primary planks, to “enact Milton Friedman’s 4% auto-expansion plan for the Fed.“

On August 17, 2011, monetary reform activist Kirk Mackenzie outlined his transition period of issuing interest-free fiat money, in moving toward a free market monetary system.

On October 2, 2008, Michael Badnarik, 2004 Libertarian presidential candidate said with regard to issuing interest-free fiat money like Lincoln did: “That’d be a step in the right direction.“

Gary North, prominent writer for LewRockwell.com, has curiously stayed quiet by not smoking out these individuals as alleged false-flag infiltrators according to the same standards he used for taking exception with Ellen Brown advocating (interest-free) fiat money. Could it be that Ellen Brown was an easy target, not having any connections into the social circles he travels in, unlike these three other individuals?”

Comment:

Update (Michael Rozeff critiquing Ellen Brown):

“According to Margrit Kennedy, a German researcher who has studied this issue extensively, interest now composes 40% of the cost of everything we buy. We don’t see it on the sales slips, but interest is exacted at every stage of production. Suppliers need to take out loans to pay for labor and materials, before they have a product to sell.”

Brown’s bottom line proposal is that the government create money instead of the banking system. She wants the government to set up its own banks. She says that this would bypass “the interest tab”. We have seen that this doesn’t bypass the cost of capital at all, not when that capital comprises real resources and the government absorbs these resources. But Brown has another fallacy in mind which is that fiat currency will eliminate the capital cost. She wants the government banks to issue fiat currency which is non-interest bearing and in this way fund projects at what she thinks is a zero capital cost.

Picture a government printing press for currency. Citizens are required to accept the newly-printed paper in payments for goods. Obama’s lieutenants take the paper currency and spend it for their favorite projects. All this amounts to is a different kind of taxation scheme by which the government absorbs (seizes) resources that are in limited supply. The opportunity costs of these seized resources still do not vanish no matter whether the resources are seized directly, taxed through the IRS, or obtained by spending new pieces of green paper.

Brown is committing the same fallacy as the Communists who attempted in vain to get rid of interest. It is an impossibility. The interest measures the postponement of consumption and arises because of it. If there are to be any production processes, they require capital and non-consumption. There will have to be interest. If interest is forcibly suppressed, capital will flee and people will engage in greater consumption. Capital will be consumed and the economy will go downhill. Government printing presses amount to taxes on capital. They will have the same results.”

Lila: 

Frankly, I have had this conversation with Ms. Brown many times on this blog. Ellen Brown has the establishment’s ear and thus one must suppose that this is what is in the works.

However, my point is different. I am not suggesting that this is a proposal that would be viable long-term. I am just broaching the possibility that some compromise might work as a temporary fix at the local level. 

If it were left to me, I’d decentralize banking, require gold reserves, cut taxes across the board to one number, says 10-15%, lift all subsidies, send most of the funding of universities and related programs to the states or to private hands, free up licensing in healthcare, teaching, and law, and ease legal immigration. 

That would take care of the problem of monitoring tax-shelters and money-laundering. It will not happen. We are going to get printing one way or other. That being the case,  it seems moving to a decentralized banking system (much lower than the level of state banks) might be a start.  We are talking about temporary measures here.  And yes, it is communistic. But so is everything else going on.

Is Rozeff suggesting that whole-sale looting of the treasury by the state and its clients is capitalistic? So, when everything is completely corrupt and collectivist, a small amount of collectivism on behalf of local communities, through a decentralized system, is not bad.

Ellen Brown doesn’t understand economics, true. But she does get one thing many free market economists don’t seem to get.

We don’t have a free market. We are already communist/collectivist. Already. Thus redistributions within this system are only a matter of supporting one power bloc over another, fighting for the spoils of savings. The financiers have been looting so far. Now the populace wants a bit.  My thinking is, yes, it’s wrong, but it might shift the power-balance a bit temporarily.

In any case, there are people who think similarly, with more cogent arguments, like Bill Still or Nelson Hultberg, and it seems that at least some experimentation in thinking in that direction might be helpful.

ORIGINAL COMMENT

I should quickly state that I read and like the writing of both North and Brown and think there is room for a via media, if we pay attention to language. So my question, before everything else, is this: Is interest-free money  the same as interest-bearing credit (which is not money, although the piece doesn’t make the distinction)?

The simple anwer is no. See here for some interesting ideas for community banking and decentralized use of money, that might be a temporary fix for some communities.

Will it be inflationary in the same way. The likely answer is not quite. Will it be completely non-inflationary? Not likely. But it will depend on how it enters the market, what other adjustments are made, whether the economy grows, and whether we also cut spending so we can service previous debt.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

“New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the move to evict the protesters and tear down their tent city.

“Unfortunately, the park was becoming a place where people came not to protest, but rather to break laws, and in some cases, to harm others. There have been reports of businesses being threatened and complaints about noise and unsanitary conditions that have seriously impacted the quality of life for residents and businesses in this now-thriving neighborhood,” Bloomberg said in a statement.

The protesters had set up camp in Zuccotti Park on Sept. 17 to protest a financial system they say mostly benefits corporations and the wealthy. Their movement has inspired similar protests against economic inequality in other cities, and in some cases have led to violent clashes with police.

The mayor said protesters and the general public can return once the park is cleaned, but would have to abide by rules banning items like tents, tarps and sleeping bags.

“Protesters have had two months to occupy the park with tents and sleeping bags. Now they will have to occupy the space with the power of their arguments,” Bloomberg said.

Protesters vowed that the eviction from the park that had become the epicenter of their movement would not deter them and several hundred congregated at another lower Manhattan square.”

A harsh criticism of Noam Chomsky by Syed Saboor:

(Chomsky is mentioned by John Coleman, a well-regarded writer, as deep-cover intelligence). although Chomsky himself has written a great deal about the CIA and its operations to subvert democracy.

 “He attacks the present “system” in America, but really does not go into depth about what that “system” is. Like most leftists of his persuasion, Chomsky is preoccupied with anarchism, socialism, and Communism. If the Soviet Union were committing the same crimes, and did commit the same crimes in the past, Noam Chomsky would most probably not be as hard on them……

….Politics is way too complicated to circumscribe them into a “left” or “right” political camp. However, Chomsky constantly goes on the offensive against what he sees as “right” wing establishments and think tanks.

But, in essence, the real “red herring” that proves Chomsky’s worth as a dupe for the powers that be is the very fact that the mainstream media, far from vilifying him, have actually gone to great lengths to support his agenda and his aims.

On the back of literally every book he writes nowadays, a host of establishment publications applaud his “erudition” and “brilliance” as a political writer and commentator.”

Pat Buchanan succumbs to a severe case of White Man’s Blues, often found among people who don’t get out enough.

“Can Western civilization survive the passing of the European peoples whose ancestors created it and their replacement by Third World immigrants? Probably not, for the new arrivals seem uninterested in preserving the old culture they have found. ” he asks.

Those who hold the white race responsible for the mortal sins of mankind – slavery, racism, imperialism, genocide – may welcome its departure from history. Those who believe that the civilization that came out of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and London to be the crowning achievement of mankind will mourn its passing.”

(I use the terms “white” and “brown” facetiously)

Never mind that those dreadful changes that so terrify Buchanan are laid at the door of colored immigrants, who actually had very little to do with bringing them about.

You thought all these bizarre changes in in the way we live today were a result of a million things, say things like militant atheism (mostly white), anti-Christian activism (usually white), Darwinism (white), and Radical Communism (created and led by whites).

To that, we can add radical gender feminism (created and led by the West), the militant gay lobby (created and led by the West), global pornography (dominated by the West), the Cold War (created and dominated by Western ideologues), Rockefeller social engineering (Western), Pentagon militarism (Western), Hollywood violence  (Western), the Wall Street criminal cabal (mostly Western), the military-industrial-intelligence leviathan (Western); university and establishment liberal activism (dominated by the West); the global drug trade (managed by Western intelligence), and Democrat and Republican policies (the creation of the Western establishment).

And all of this was financed by the hollowing out of the economy, the bloated, cancerous growth of the financial industry, and the ravages of international speculators, operating through the poisonous mechanism of the Federal Reserve system and central banking. Also, created in the West.

No, no.

This guy did it.

Not these guys.

Of course, if we really wanted to be picky, we’d ask Buchanan if he thought Jesus Christ was “white”

or  closer to this?

(Actually, Palestinians can be very fair too…and this forensic recreation seems to have been done to shock, but the historical Jesus was Semitic, probably sunburned and muscular, and had reddish brown hair. He didn’t look like like a Swede or a German).

And we’d ask whether a large part of Christ’s teaching derives originally from Greece or from the Near East, which is not European.

And we’d like to add too that without Muslim civilization (non-European), we doubt if the Greco-Roman heritage, which owed much to the Egyptians (non-European), would ever have passed on to the Europeans, in the first place.

And without the Jewish (which Buchanan appropriates as European, whereas it is Middle Eastern genetically geographically, and culturally), we doubt modern Europe would have ever come into being.

Europe’s Pagan, Judeo-Christian and humanist civilizations are things I greatly admire and have studied for a life time. I am their beneficiary and their defender. But they were equaled more than once on the Indian subcontinent, in the great civilizations of the Indus Valley, in the Maurya, Gupta, Chola, Chera, Pandya,  Pallava, Vijayanagara, Bahmani, Mysore, Maratha, and Moghul kingdoms, about all of which, Buchanan, a man born into the most affluent country in the world, with a voice in major media, with political connections, with access to every kind of book and the whole internet, has not a clue. Even a quick Google would have unearthed a list which substantiates India’s claim to be the mother culture of Asia and to have made notable contributions in every field, most influentially in mathematics , religion, sculpture, architecture.

“If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India!” said the French scholar Romaine Rolland.

“India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most astrictive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only!” wrote none other than Mark Twain.

It was the philosophical fountainhead of the German romantic movement, the American transcendentalists; it gave us the neo-Hindu revival of the arts and mind-sciences, alternative health and medicine (much of it appropriated and repackaged as Western) ,as well as the marvelous compendium of religious and scientific thought of ancient and medieval India, hitherto unappreciated or plagiarized by Europeans. It is at least the equal of the Greco-Roman and it was so for much longer.

And when it was ruined, it was ruined first by the depredations of Islamicist invaders, but then by European merchant-adventurers and colonial rulers, who looted it for at least two hundred years, and finally by  Fabian socialism, a doctrine born from the British empire and calculated to maintain it.

I am amazed and baffled by the small horizons of a man I have long respected for his unabashed love for his traditions and people.

Indeed, I think the West is only kept alive at all by the misplaced adulation emanating from its global mercantilist plantation. The problem is actually a fawning servility to American culture of the wrong kind.

Recently, I thought about this when I had the good fortune to walk through  Vizcaya, the estate of one of the richest men in America in the 1920s. I spent a day enjoying his art collection, amassed from Europe during the years after World War I.

Europe’s glory, at least measured in terms of art, was five centuries. Rising with the late middle ages and setting in the nineteenth century, where, already, the forces of decline were evident.

That would be a long time before those barbarians Buchanan deplores came upon the scene. If America is dying, and it is, don’t blame the crowd gathered around the body.

Blame the children of the house, who in broad daylight, with weapons forged under their own roof, rose up and slew their own father.

Only to find they had not yet learned to live without him.

 

“Ellen Brown (via Max Keiser) on the need for an Economic Bill of Rights (this was also posted at OccupyWallStreet):

[Hat-tip to Anthony Wile]

“Congress is powered to “coin money,” and the Constitution sets no limit on the face amount of the coins. Congress could issue a few one-trillion dollar coins, deposit them in an account and start writing checks. “