FedUpUSA

Archive for December, 2011

The end of debt-based affluence: welcome to The Last Christmas in America (TLCIA).

Almost 35 years ago, as unemployment rose toward 10%, the January 1975 cover of Ramparts  magazine blared: The End of Affluence: The Last Christmas in America.(TLCIA)

The article wasn’t referring to the religious celebration; it was referring to the postwar concept of Christmas as the frenzied, exhausting  year-end pinnacle of our one true secular faith, Consumption, a final orgy of   buying and binging.

It is instructive to recall how the Federal government responded  to unemployment, high inflation and rising  budget deficits in the early 1970s: it began fudging numbers, manipulating data to mask the politically inconvenient realities of rising inflation, unemployment and deficits by playing switcheroo with Social Security Trust Funds, inflation data, etc.–games it continues to play in 2011 to cloak reality from the media-numbed public.

The market was not so easily fooled. The Bear market, reflecting the “real”  recession, lasted 16 years, from 1967 to 1982. Now statistics are echoing that last great recession: rising prices for essentials, systemically high unemployment and stagnant wages while the corporate media and the organs of statistical manipulation (a.k.a. the sprawling, putrid public-private cesspool of the Ministry of Propaganda) trumpet “the return of growth” and skyrocketing corporate profits.

(Today’s propaganda:housing starts blip up due to statistical noise, and though starts are less than half pre-recession levels, this is heralded as “evidence” that “strong growth is back.”)

The difference between the postwar boom of 1946 and the boom that followed 1982 is the last boom was based on the explosive expansion of debt.People didn’t save and invest in productive assets; they went into debt to consume more and to become a “bigger” persona via the miracle of credit.

I often use this chart to make this point: if credit had expanded along with GDP, then we’d be considerably less indebted.  Instead, it required a vast expansion of debt–some $30 trillion more than the rise in GDP–to fuel the 1982-2000 boom.

A funny thing happens when you depend on expanding debt to fund your consumption:eventually the cost of servicing your rising debt reaches the limit of your income, and you can’t borrow any more, unless interest rates decline so you can leverage your income into higher debt.

Here’s a chart of household debt: that little reversal in debt expansion sent the economy into a tailspin.

Lowering interest rates extends the era of debt-based consumption, but it only puts off the inevitable crash when the ability to borrow runs out. Eventually the cost of servicing this lower-interest debt absorbs all your disposable income, and the borrowing skids to an abrupt stop.

Two other bad things can make this dominance of debt servicing worse:your income can decline, and the value of your assets can decline.  In this unfortunate situation, you’re ability to service your existing debts is crimped by a loss of disposable income, and you’re paying for assets whose worth has fallen below the  debt taken on to buy the assets.

Income has declined significantly in the wake of the 2008 crisis/recession:

And here’s the key asset of the middle class, housing:

This double-whammy of lower income and lower asset valuations is exactly where we are now.This is why the Fed’s campaign to lower interest rates to zero and make it easy to borrow more have been as successful as pushing on a string; the economy is choking on over-indebtedness and overleveraging of stagnating income. There is no escape from this vortex except refusing more debt and writing off existing debt, wiping it off the balance sheets as an asset, driving lenders, banks and those holding debt as assets into insolvency.

As we saw yesterday, the velocityof money–that is, money actually being borrowed and spent or invested in the real economy–has plummeted to zero.

We all know the 16-year recession/malaise back in 1967-1982 had a “happy ending”:  huge new oil fields were discovered in Alaska, the North Sea, West Africa and elsewhere, ushering in a renewed era of cheap, abundant petroleum. President Reagan “saved” Social Security for a generation by raising contributions paid by employer and employees, and he heralded a “lower taxes, higher permanent deficits” ideology that is now accepted as the norm: deficits don’t matter, even when they reach the trillions, because our good friends the Gulf Oil Exporters and Asian exporters will buy all our debt forever, keeping interest low forever.

(And if they drop the ball, then the Federal Reserve will print money and buy the Treasury bonds. Sweet! We don’t need any external buyers, just the  Federal Reserve.)

Then the U.S. created and launched two revolutionary technologies which both created new wealth around the globe: the personal computer (microprocessor and cheap RAM) and the Internet (TCP/IP, Ethernet, and the commercialization of Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web with free browsers) spawning the generation-long boom of the 1980s and 90s.

Beneath the surface of this innovation-driven boom, however, the real engine of growth was debt and the financialization and globalization of the economy.

But when the wheels fell off that debt-fueled boom in 2000, the U.S. did not create a new engine of wealth: it opted instead for a devilishly insidious simulacrum of wealth: debt which rose at an exponential rate throughout the economy.

Borrowed money and phony financial legerdemain (mortgage-backed securities, derivatives based on the MBS, etc. etc.) from 2000-2007 created what I have  termed a “bogus prosperity”: no actual new wealth was created, only a brief and doomed bubble of debt-based housing valuations was inflated which followed the classic model set down by the Tulip Craze in Holland hundreds of years ago: insane boom, crushing bust.

We have to revisit the early 1970s for a reality check.  In post-industrial America circa 1970, a huge surplus of food was grown by a mere 2%  of the workforce. The cornucopia of manufactured goods was produced by about 20% of  the workforce (hence the phrase “post-industrial”), and other than essential government services like the Armed Forces, police and the courts, the rest of society’s work was either service-oriented paper-pushing relating to affluence (insurance), do-good selfless work (Peace Corps, churches) or leisure-related: entertainment, films, travel, amusement parks, stereos, etc.

This was not all fantasy.A friend of mine supported an entire  house of hippies in  late-60s Pittsburgh on his union steelworker job, and had plenty of money left to save for his trip to San Francisco. (As I recall, the rent for the big old house was less than $200 per month.) Hippies were the first ardent dumpster-divers/scavengers, driven not by poverty but by the idea that since that our society generated so much waste and surplus, why bother working?

As noted here many times before, the purchasing power of American wage-earners reached a plateau around 1973 and has been declining ever since.

One key point which is usually overlooked when comparing “The Last Christmas in America” circa 1974 and TLCIA circa 2011: the wealth distribution in the U.S. was much flatter then.CEOs of financial institutions did not earn $10 million each; there were no hedge funds with chiefs pulling down $600 million each (yes, that was the average “compensation” for the top ten fund managers at the hedgies’ glorious peak), and even minimum wage ($1.60/hour in the late 60s, I know because my wage stub recorded it) bought far more goods (purchasing power) then than minimum wage does now.

Not only was gasoline cheap, but housing was far and away cheaper than it is today. Just about any G.I./Vet could buy a house with his/her V.A. benefits (3% down), and anyone else could scrimp and save for a few years and then buy a house for 2 or 3 times their annual wage at an interest rate around 6%.

Meanwhile, in TLCIA circa 2011, obscene “compensation packages” are defended as “free enterprise.” Well, what did we have in 1973? Unfree enterprise?Amidst all the ideologically convenient defenses of heavily skewed “compensation,” we have to admit that the dream of affluence combined with leisure was based on the presumption of society’s wealth being distributed somewhat evenly, not by a Communist central state but by the “free enterprise” system and modest common-sense government regulation  (limited work hours,  minimum wage, etc.) which protected employees from the excessive exploitation of the late 19th century and early 20th century Monopoly Capitalists.

That dream seemed at hand in 1970. Now, after “the limits to growth” were mocked by those expecting ever larger oil fields to provide endless abundant cheap oil, we find that Peak Oil was merely put off a generation; there have been no new discoveries of super-massive oil fields since the early 1970s, and the supposedly abundant alternative petroleum sources like shale oil are horrendously costly to exploit, for they require vast quantities of energy (mostly natural gas at the moment) to be consumed to extract the oil.

Now we face a future which might well be called the End of Work for up to a third of the current workforce.Since agriculture employs about 2% of the workforce, industrial/factory production about 11%, essential transportation and essential government each a bit more, we have to ask: in an economy in which 70% of GDP is consumer spending, how many jobs are actually essential? How much actual wealth is being created/produced in the U.S. and sold overseas? Is giving people with Medicare coverage handfuls of costly and often ineffective medications and endless MRI  tests actually creating wealth, or it mostly squandering it?

We might also ask: how much of the consumer economy is superfluous if wage-earners shift values and decide saving is more important than consuming? How many malls, storefronts, internet retailers, restaurants, fast-food joints, etc. can a newly-frugal economy support?  How many dog-walkers, derivative salespeople, nail shops, carpenters, financial planners, realtors, etc. does an economy need if the FIRE economy (finance, insurance and real estate) is shrinking?

Based on the tremendous size of the service economy, construction, finance and government, I have estimated that 30 million jobs out of the current 139 million-strong workforce are superfluous.  Many government positions are essential: police, meat inspectors, rangers, tax collectors, meter maids, etc., but as Mish so thoroughly illustrated in his detailed analysis of the California state budget ($120 billion or so), dozens of State agencies could be eliminated without any visible effect on the economy except to the wage-earners who lost their jobs.

If 20 million jobs disappear (7 million have already vanished since 2008), so do all the taxes  those wage-earners paid; if 5 million homes go through foreclosure, the inflated property taxes the owners once paid will disappear, too. Once businesses close, it’s not just wages which disappear: all the junk-fees governments levy disappear, too: the business taxes, the licensing fees, the permits, transaction fees, etc.

Does anyone think all these taxes and levies can fall and government employment will be funded by some other source?  Yes, the Federal government can borrow apparently limitless sums  at low interest rates; but soon, the surplus money which has piled up in exporters’ accounts will be gone, and the  endless borrowed trillions will actually start costing real money–money that will be diverted from government employment to pay the interest on all that wonderful debt everyone loved when they got a piece of it.

So how does a society deal with the End of Debt-Driven Consumerism, the End of Cheap Oil  and the End of Work when it also means The End of Affluence, even for many of those with jobs?  How does government deal with declining tax revenues and rising interest rates?

The death throes of the debt-based consumerist lifestyle are already visible beneath the glossy propaganda of “rising revenues this Christmas season.” Those revenues were obtained by selling goods at below cost, in the absurd hope that income-strapped, over-indebted consumers would make profitable “impulse buys.” As Mish has documented, the “impulse buys” are being returned even before Christmas to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Fed is desperately attempting to re-inflate the debt bubble by lowering interest and mortgage rates and buying up all sorts of semi-toxic/impaired  debt. What the Fed dreads is the reality we all feel and see: fear of the future  due to diminished wealth and insecure incomes.If your assets have fallen in value,  you feel poorer because you are poorer. Borrowing more at any interest rate will not make anyone feel wealthier.

People who fear their income may plummet due to layoffs or their hours being cut are not in the euphoric mood to borrow more, and banks which cannot dare to lose more money loaning to people who will default have cut off credit to millions of  previously rabid consumers of debt.

Ask yourself this simple question: how much stuff could people buy if they could only spend surplus cash, after all their expenses and debt servicing payments were paid in full?

And let’s not forget that much of what is purchased in this consumerist frenzy is needless, superfluous crap.  My wife saves the most egregiously gift-buying-frenzy advertising circulars, and one from Bed, Bath & Beyond caught my eye.

There is no difference between this “1001 Best Gifts” from BB&B and a parody of consumerist excess.Hmm, how about an “executive standing valet” rack of wood and plastic for $99.99?

To make this poor-quality contraption, a forest somewhere in a Third-World kleptocracy  was cut down and precious, irreplaceable oil was burned shipping the lumber to China and from that factory to the U.S. across 6,000 miles of Pacific Ocean.

We know this spindly piece of garbage will break in a matter of days, weeks or maybe if the owner is especially careful, months; then the legs will break loose of the base, the towel bar will pull out, etc. and the “we cut down a priceless rain forest to make this” piece of human handiwork will be put on the curb where a diesel-burning garbage truck will haul it to the landfill along with all the spoiled food Americans throw out.

The 16-bottle wine cellar/cooler from China (labeled Cuisinart for your consuming pleasure) for $199.99 might come in handy storing something once it’s unplugged–but a cardboard box will probably do just as well.

I for one will not mourn the last debt-consumerist Christmas in America. Good riddance to the flaunting of borrowed money and the heedless, desperate purchase of valueless “goods” as gifts for an insolvent nation awash in too much of everything but common sense, integrity, gratitude, accountability and healthy living.

Charles Hugh Smith – Of Two Minds

There are times that one looks to bad reporting as an accident, and then there are times when one has to call it what it appears to actually be — hacksterism:

The title over at EPJ is “Libertarian Party Greenbacker Alert” and the first actual sentence from Robert is:

Still is very confused about economics if he thinks the government can just print money (or what he calls “U.S. notes”) to pay off its debt, without causing serious inflation, if anyone would accept the notes in the first place.

Oh really?  As opposed to “borrowing” money you have no intention of ever repaying, nor any mathematical ability to pay?

Never mind that Robert doesn’t understand Bill’s position and didn’t bother to ask him first before publishing that nice little hit piece, nor did he reach out to anyone in the campaign committee (including me) who happens to know what his position actually is.  I would have been happy to explain it in as much detail as Robert would like (and so, I suspect, would Bill) and that offer remains on the table and has been communicated to Robert.

But let’s presume for a moment that the charge “as leveled” is true, although it’s not, and contrast it with what we’ve had for the last 30 years.  We’ll use my favorite chart again:

Borrowing money against nothing but the promise that the citizens will be wage slaves in the future in amounts that cannot possibly be paid along with escalating expenditures (e.g. Medical care in the US Federal Budget going up 9+% annually since 1980!) isn’t identical in form, substance and effect to unbacked emission of money in an uncontrolled fashion and thus doesn’t produce inflation?

The hell it’s not.  In fact it’s even worse — from a mechanical perspective what has been done is equivalent to issuing a naked short on the currency of the United States!

Evidence?  Right here:

That’s not inflation eh?  Hmmm… the actual peak was in roughly 2000, which would mean we actually saw about 14% inflation.  Then we rattled around for 10 more years trying to figure out how to prevent the deflation of that bubble through various forms of scams and frauds (Internet and housing bubble anyone?)

I can find plenty of other examples of course. You could look at debt in the system too – according to The Fed Z1 it was $4.4 trillion all-in — Federal, State, Local, personal, business, etc — in 1980.  Today it’s about $53 trillion, which happens to be about an 8.5% inflation rate annualized.

See, this is the problem with the BS and games — you don’t change the outcome, you just hide the ugly somewhere.  In this case where it was hidden was in a series of Ponzi-style economic bubbles.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s a duck.  In this case since money and credit spend the same monetary inflation has to be measured against money and credit in the system compared to output.  By that standard guess what — we’ve had lots of inflation.

This is the point and purpose of returning the money power to Congress, incidentally, beyond the Constitutional imperative.  The Ponzi games all come about because Congress wishes to overspend — that is, it wants to make political promises but it doesn’t want to pay for them by taxing someone.  To do that it must have someone under the current system to buy all of its new debt at an attractive price.  To do that the banksters must generate monetary velocity so that the pretty primary dealer network can absorb and then regurgitate out into the market the emission of debt paper that Treasury has to spew to fund the overspending.  Corporate America loves this too, at least in the short term, as the trade imbalance that this overspending and credit emission permits allows offshoring production as the capital that drains out of the country is replaced by credit money — not the same, but it spends the same and nobody’s the wiser — at least not up front.

Thus the handmaidens of The Fed, Congress and Wall Street all march along arm in arm patting each other on the back while the common man gets fleeced with Ponzi-style games and does not recognize what’s going on until all the jobs are gone, replaced by slave labor in China, housing prices are jacked to the moon and unpayable and fraudulent mortgages are the only way to “buy” a house.  Stock scams and schemes along with various derivatives products become the final orgy of leverage upon leverage — which is really, when you boil it all down, debt being issued to simply pay the interest on old debt.

In the long run of course this can never work and doesn’t — when the consumer is no longer able to take on more debt they collapse and then government steps in and borrows even more to make up the so-called “demand deficit” and the “monetary authority” (in this case The Fed) plays financial repression games to again prevent the market from revolting and calling down the curtain on the scam.  But there’s no stimulative effect that can come of this, since in order to actually make that stimulus “work” each dollar of additional deficit spending must generate roughly six of economic activity just to be tax-revenue neutral (assuming the government is about 18% of GDP.)  It never is, and thus the hole gets deeper and deeper until finally there is a revulsion for the debt of the nation involved and/or a sovereign default.

Suddenly the truth dawns on everyone at once — that wasn’t money that “filled the hole” in the budget and trade deficits — it was credit and while it spends the same it isn’t the same thing.  One is economic surplus from past labor and the other is a promise to perform labor tomorrow.  The problem of course is that it’s entirely possible — and not even difficult — to promise more than can be performed when tomorrow comes, and invariably that’s exactly what happens.

Oops.

That’s what’s happening in Greece and the rest of Europe and it is also what will come here if we don’t cut this crap out!

So what if Congress just emitted raw currency, as it is entitled to do under The Constitution?  Why then there would be immediate inflation, and the people would see the damage right up front.  There would be no Ponzi to be blown, as the people would have the harm “in their face” and shortly would, I’d expect, vote those critters out of office.  Heh, there goes the overspending!

Now which is the better system — the one that allows for myriad layers of lies and frauds, not to mention a couple of decades of screwing our youth and the unborn, or the one that exposes the harm immediately and thus has a very nice check and balance against it? 

I say the second. 

How about you?

This, however, is a vision for the future — in other words, it’s an endpoint.  For obvious reasons were we to simply pay off all the debt with issued money in one fell swoop the impact would be insanely disruptive.  But we don’t have to do that — there’s a better way.

Instead, the intent is to run a budgetary surplus, ending new borrowing immediately.  This will mean taking the hard decisions now while we still can instead of pretending we will never have to and that they won’t be imposed on us if we refuse to act on our own.  It is without question that doing so will lead to a short-term economic contraction, and as such repairing our trade, tax, immigration and energy policies along with fixing our medical system must occur at the same time to both blunt the blow where we can and position our nation for the future.

The debt will, in short, be paid down over time from tax receipts.  Until it is, Treasury will have the authority to roll over existing debt, but not issue new debt.  In other words, the budget will run an actual surplus.  To the extent the economy begins to grow once the base adjustment has been taken Treasury can (and will, under Congressional direction) use the privilege of seigniorage to issue currency (as US Notes) in the amount of the economic expansion less the productivity increase, if any.  Some of this will be used to retire more debt while the rest will be used for general spending (above tax revenues), as directed by Congress exactly as the founders intended and authorized in The Constitution.  Over time US Notes will replace Federal Reserve Notes in circulation and they will remain fungible through the transition.

Banks can lend against assets in the ordinary course of business provided the asset is worth more than the loan.  If it’s not they need to go acquire an asset — otherwise known as capital — from someone.  In short, banks should not be permitted to lend against nothing other than a bare promise, because that is inflationary and further it is not their privilege to effectively print money — that privilege belongs to the sovereign!  If a bank wishes to make an unsecured loan it must acquire the capital to be lent first (e.g. by selling stock or bonds in exchange for it.)

In the same vein the statistical data necessary to know where economic balance is with currency and credit must be exposed and calculated in full view of everyone so there are no distortions.  The CPI, in particular, has been ridiculously distorted through both Hedonic Adjustment and monstrosities such as “Owners Equivalent Rent.”  Good policy requires accurate statistics and the only means of stopping these intentional frauds is to expose the entirety of data collection, analysis and methodology to public view at all times.

This change will maintain the purchasing power of the dollar over time and permit the public to keep the benefit of productivity increase (after all, it’s labor that’s working, right?) in the form of a mild deflation — the expected and natural state of all economies.

The national debate over what we want our government to provide in services must be held, and for each of those programs, no matter what they are, we must pay current taxes to fund them, not promise labor to be performed by those not of age and not yet born.

Isn’t this a better view for America than serial ponzi schemes, bubbles and scams at all levels of government and private business?

I think it is, and those who argue otherwise — that the debt-backed system should be maintained — are the ones with the duty to show how the mathematics of exponents make what they propound possible to sustain in the intermediate and longer run.

If they can’t demonstrate sustainability through the hard science of mathematics then these charlatans and their economic claims and policies must be shown the door.

Most Americans have no idea that the U.S. government once issued debt-free money directly into circulation.  America once thrived under a debt-free monetary system, and we can do it again.  The truth is that the United States is a sovereign nation and it does not need to borrow money from anyone.  Back in the days of JFK, Federal Reserve Notes were not the only currency in circulation.  Under JFK (at at various other times), a limited number of debt-free United States Notes were issued by the U.S. Treasury and spent by the U.S. government without any new debt being created.  In fact, each bill said “United States Note” right at the top.  Unfortunately, United States Notes are not being issued today.  If you stop right now and pull a dollar out of your wallet, what does it say right at the top?  It says “Federal Reserve Note”.  Normally, the way our current system works is that whenever more Federal Reserve Notes are created more debt is also created.  This debt-based monetary system is systematically destroying the wealth of this nation.  But it does not have to be this way.  The truth is that the U.S. government still has the power under the U.S. Constitution to issue debt-free money, and we need to educate the American people about this.

Posted below are pictures of the front and the back of a United States Note printed in 1963 while JFK was president….

Notice that there is a red seal instead of a green seal on the front, and it says “United States Note” rather than “Federal Reserve Note”.

According to Wikipedia, United States Notes were issued directly into circulation by the U.S. Treasury and they were first used during the Civil War….

They were originally issued directly into circulation by the U.S. Treasury to pay expenses incurred by the Union during the American Civil War. Over the next century, the legislation governing these notes was modified many times and numerous versions have been issued by the Treasury.

So why are we using debt-based Federal Reserve Notes today instead of debt-free United States Notes?

It seems rather stupid, doesn’t it?

Well, that is what Thomas Edison thought too.

Thomas Edison was once quoted in the New York Times as saying the following….

That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt.

Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 — that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost.

But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good.

Our current debt-based monetary system was devised by greedy bankers that wanted to make huge profits by creating money out of thin air and lending it to the U.S. government at interest.

Sadly, the vast majority of the American people have no idea how money is actually created in this nation.

In a previous article about money and debt, I explained how more government debt is created whenever the U.S. government puts more money into circulation….

When the government wants more money, the U.S. government swaps U.S. Treasury bonds for “Federal Reserve notes”, thus creating more government debt.  Usually the money isn’t even printed up – most of the time it is just electronically credited to the government.  The Federal Reserve creates these “Federal Reserve notes” out of thin air.  These Federal Reserve notes are backed by nothing and have no intrinsic value of their own.

When each new Federal Reserve Note is created, the interest owed by the federal government on that new Federal Reserve Note is not also created at the same time.

So the amount of government debt that is created actually exceeds the amount of money that is created.

Isn’t that a stupid system?

The U.S. Constitution says that the federal government is the one that should actually be issuing our money.

In particular, according to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, it is the U.S. Congress that has been given the responsibility to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”.

So why is a private central banking cartel issuing our money?

As is the case with so many other issues, we desperately need to get back to the way the U.S. Constitution says that we should be doing things.

The debt-based Federal Reserve system is literally stealing the future from our children and our grandchildren.

Back in 1910, a couple years prior to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the national debt was only about $2.6 billion.

A little over 100 years later, our national debt is now more than 5000 times larger.

So why don’t we just admit that this system simply does not work?

Our current debt-based monetary system also requires very high personal income taxes to pay for it.

In fact, it is no accident that the personal income tax was introduced at about the same time that the Federal Reserve system originally came into existence.

Our children, our grandchildren and many generations after that are facing a lifetime of debt slavery because of us.

As I have written about previously, if the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

Neither the Republicans or the Democrats are proposing any solutions to this problem.  Rather, both parties are only trying to slow down the rate at which we are going into even more debt.

But the truth is that the federal government does not have to go into a single penny of additional debt.

How could this be?

It is not too complicated.

If Congress took back the power over our currency and started issuing debt-free money a lot of our problems could be fixed.

A basic plan would look something like this….

#1) The U.S. Congress votes to take back all of the functions that it has delegated to the Federal Reserve and begins to issue debt-free United States Notes.  These United States Notes would have the exact same value as existing Federal Reserve Notes, and over time all existing Federal Reserve Notes would be taken out of circulation.

#2) The U.S. Congress nationalizes all debt held by the Federal Reserve.  That would instantly reduce the national debt by 1.6 trillion dollars.  In fact, there are a few members of Congress that have already proposed this.

#3) A Constitutional amendment is passed limiting future U.S. government deficits to a reasonable percentage of GDP.  Any future deficits would not be funded by borrowing.  Rather, future deficits would be funded by newly created Federal Reserve Notes.  Therefore, the federal government would never again accumulate another penny of debt.

And it would be important to inject new money into the economy from time to time.  When existing money is destroyed or when the population grows it is important to inject a certain amount of new money into the system in order to avoid deflation.

#4) The existing national debt would be very slowly paid off with newly created United States Notes.  The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal year 2011, and over time this expense would go to zero.

If the national debt is paid off slowly enough, it would not create too much inflation.  I believe that it could be paid off gradually over 50 years without shocking the economy too much.

There are some that would object to any measure that would ever cause a small amount of inflation, but my contention is that we have created a $15 trillion dollar debt mess for future generations, and it would be absolutely criminal to pass that legacy on to them.

We created this mess, and it is our responsibility to clean it up.

While there is certainly a danger that we would have a limited amount of inflation under a debt-free monetary system such as the one described above, the reality is that we are absolutely guaranteed inflation under the Federal Reserve system.

Most Americans believe that inflation is a fact of life, but the sad truth is that the United States has only had a major, ongoing problem with inflation since the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.

If you do not believe this, just check out this chart.

Sadly, the U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created.

So, yes, there would be a need for strict monetary discipline under a debt-free monetary system, but it would be hard to do worse than the Federal Reserve has already been doing.

And Congress could always slow down inflation using other methods.  For example, raising the reserve requirements for banks (which should be done anyway) would help keep inflation in check.

If the above proposals were adopted, the end result would be something that we could all live with.  The Federal Reserve system would be abolished, the national debt burden on future generations would be wiped out, the economy would not have to go through a devastating economic collapse that could last a decade or longer, and we could eventually make a fairly smooth transition to “hard money” if we wanted to after the national debt is gone.

Is there any other proposal out there that does all of those things?

There are many out there that would dispute some of the points above, and debate is good.  By engaging in debate, we can hopefully help educate the American people about the nature of money.

The key is to get rid of our current debt-based Federal Reserve Notes and replace them with debt-free United States Notes.

The American people need to understand that it is a lie that the U.S. government “must” borrow money from somebody else.

When the U.S. government borrows money, it slowly transfers wealth from the American people to those that borrowed it.

At this point, we have created a financial nightmare for future generations that is unlike anything the world has ever seen before.  We owe it to future generations to eliminate the debt problem without destroying the United States economy.  Adopting debt-free money would allow us to do that.

But sadly, neither political party is even talking about debt-free money.  In fact, most of the politicians in both political parties probably do not even know what debt-free money is.

So we need to get the American people educated about these things.  Because if we stay on the course that we are currently on, an economic collapse is inevitable.

The Economic Collapse

NOTE:  YOU DO HAVE A CHOICE! Bill Still is absolutely talking about debt-free money.  It is the primary focus of his campaign!  Still2012.com

Aw, Boehner has his panties in a wad!

House Speaker John Boehner said he and fellow House Republicans oppose Senate legislation to extend through February a payroll tax cut and long-term unemployment benefits and will push to continue the measures through 2012.

Congress should “stop, do our work and extend for one year,” Boehner said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” today. He said a two-month addition creates uncertainty for employers as they budget for 2012. A “reasonable, responsible” compromise could be reached, he said, and suggested a formal conference committee between the House and the Senate to resolve differences between the two chambers.

What work is that John?

In all sobriety, you do realize how The Senate proposes to pay for this tax reduction, right?  They have added to Fannie and Freddie a fee increase.  That’s right — those very “middle class tax cuts” will be paid for by people  in the middle class who buy or refinance houses.  See, the rich don’t buy small houses, they tend to buy big houses — ones that don’t qualify for Fannie and Freddie financing.  And the poor don’t buy houses at all.

So this little game amounts to nothing more than sticking of the hand in one pocket and moving a $20 to the other.  Wow man, you got a tax cut!  (Just so long as you don’t notice that we robbed you of the same money at the same time!)

It’s worse, of course.  The Fannie and Freddie surcharge doesn’t sunset when the tax does.  In fact, it doesn’t sunset at all.  So in addition to taxing you to give it back (a worthless exercise) The Senate is further cementing these two broken GSEs into the Federal Government policy system and is creating a forward slush fund that I’m sure they’ll find some use for down the road.

Isn’t that special?  I knew you’d like it.

The bottom line is that apparently some warehouses and bullion dealers are not a safe place to store your gold and silver, even if you hold a specific warehouse receipt.  In an oligarchy, private ownership is merely a concept, subject to interpretation and confiscation.

Although the details and the individual perpetrators are yet to be disclosed, what is now painfully clear is that the CFTC and CME regulated futures system is defaulting on its obligations.  This did not even happen in the big failures like Lehman and Bear Sterns in which the customer accounts were kept whole and transferred before the liquidation process.

Obviously holding unallocated gold and silver in a fractional reserve scheme is subject to much more counterparty risk than many might have previously admitted.  If a major bullion bank were to declare bankruptcy or a major exchange a default, how would it affect you? Do you think your property claims would be protected based on what you have seen this year?

You always have counter-party risk if you hold gold and silver through another party, even if they are a Primary Dealer of the Federal Reserve. As Ben said, the Fed offers no seal of approval.  

If a Bankruptcy Trustee can pool your bullion into the rest of the paper assets and then liquidate it at prices that are being front run by the Street, you will have to accept whatever paper settlement that they give you.

The customer money and bullion assets are not lost, or rehypothecated or anything else.  This is a pseudo-legal fig leaf, a convenient rationalization.

The customer assets were stolen, and given to at least one major financial institution by MF Global to satisfy an 11th hour margin call in the week of their bankruptcy, even as MF Global was paying bonuses to its London employees.

And in an absolutely classic Wall Street move, they are still charging the customers storage feeson the bullion which they have misappropriated from them. lol.

And now that powerful financial institution does not want to give the customer money and metal back.  And they are apparently so powerful that the Trustee and the Court are reluctant to try and force its return to the customers, which is customary in this type of preferential distribution of assets prior to a bankruptcy, much less assets that were stolen.  And keep in mind that in those last days the firm sent checks instead of wire transfers to customers so they could bounce them, and in a few cases even reversed completed wire transfers!

And so in the great Wall Street tradition they are trying to force the customers and the public to take the loss.   The regulators and the exchange are aghast, and are trying to imagine how to resolve and spin this to preserve investor confidence and prevent a run on the system.

‘Let them eat warehouse receipts.’

For many this would have been unthinkable only a few months ago. They had been cautioned and warned repeatedly, but chose to trust the financial system. And now they are suffering loss and anxiety, frozen assets, and the misappropriation of their wealth.

How more plainly can it be said? The US financial system as it now stands cannot be trusted to observe even the most basic property rights as it continues to unravel from a long standing culture of fraud.
Get your money as far away from Wall Street as is possible.  And if you want to own gold and silver, take delivery and store it in a secure private facility outside the fractional reserve system.

BarronsThe Silver Rush at MF GlobalBy ERIN E. ARVEDLUND December 17, 2011
It’s one thing for $1.2 billion to vanish into thin air through a series of complex trades, the well-publicized phenomenon at bankrupt MF Global. It’s something else for a bar of silver stashed in a vault to instantly shrink in size by more than 25%.

That, in essence, is what’s happening to investors whose bars of silver and gold were held through accounts with MF Global.

The trustee overseeing the liquidation of the failed brokerage has proposed dumping all remaining customer assets—gold, silver, cash, options, futures and commodities—into a single pool that would pay customers only 72% of the value of their holdings. In other words, while traders already may have paid the full price for delivery of specific bars of gold or silver—and hold “warehouse receipts” to prove it—they’ll have to forfeit 28% of the value.

That has investors fuming. “Warehouse receipts, like gold bars, are our property, 100%,” contends John Roe, a partner in BTR Trading, a Chicago futures-trading firm. He personally lost several hundred thousand dollars in investments via MF Global; his clients lost even more. “We are a unique class, and instead, the trustee is doing a radical redistribution of property,” he says.

Roe and others point out that, unlike other MF Global customers, who held paper assets, those with warehouse receipts have claims on assets that still exist and can be readily identified.

The tussle has been obscured by former CEO Jon Corzine’s appearances on Capitol Hill. But it’s a burning issue for the Commodity Customer Coalition, a group that says it represents some 8,000 investors—many of them hedge funds—with exposure to MF Global. “I’ve issued a declaration of war,” says James Koutoulas, lead attorney for the group, and CEO of Typhon Capital Management.

At stake is an unspecified, but apparently large, volume of gold and silver bars slated for delivery to traders through accounts at MF Global, which filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 31. Adding insult to the injury: Of the 28% haircut, attorney and liquidation trustee James Giddens has frozen all asset classes, meaning that traders have sat helplessly as silver prices have dropped 31% since late August, and gold has fallen 16%. To boot, the traders are still being assessed fees for storage of the commodities…

Jesse’s Café Américain