'Considering the horrible damage done by the Austrian Economics Mind Control operation, as witnessed by Ron Paul's ascent, it will no longer do to see them as allies against the Powers that Be.'

---------------------

To see millions of people being educated about freedom - how to opt out of an unfree system and how to live a free life while doing no harm to others - MUST seem 'horrible' indeed to injured control-freaks who want to lay down the law for others in order, perhaps, to compensate for the terrible pain that torments them.

In fact, it would seem much more fun to read your ludicrous tirades at times, if they were not such a crushingly sad testimony of your state of mind.

'Abusive Government is a result of it being subverted by the Money Power. But the Money Power fears Government'

---------------

Nonsense. It is POWER itself, that corrupts the ones who wield it. That's why NO CLASS IS FIT TO GOVERN.

Money Power does not FEAR government, it USES and promotes it, because it NEEDS it for it's survival and expansion.

If there is no government, there are no levers for money power to exercise control. Very simple.

Besides, we would have FREEDOM, again, without government. You don't like people to be free, do you?

'Rothschild DOES own a decisive stake in the World's reserves. And rising prices due to scarcity is his wet dream: he can continue his monopoly pricing operation*

----------------

Gold monopoly? LOL. Why don't you travel to India, or to Turkey, to name just two countries where significant parts of the population hold gold?

Click to view link

As with almost all of your recent "contributions", you start with (false) presumptions and, consequently, arrive at farcical suppositions.

The Great Ponzi Collapse? ... ... ... . Click to view link

Whatever is one to do whenever no one with any greater sense and a mind bent on a better future wants to buy the D Counterfeit rubbish/securities/futures/toxicity which one would be desperately trying to sell as AAA rated ? ... ... .

[blockquote]Conversion software version seven.0
Looking at life through the eyes of a tired hub
Eating seeds as a pastime activity
The toxicity of our city, of our city

Now, what do you own the world?
How do you own disorder, disorder?
Now somewhere between the sacred silence
Sacred silence and sleep
Somewhere, between the sacred silence and sleep
Disorder, disorder, disorder

More wood for the fires, loud neighbors
Flashlight reveries caught in the headlights of a truck
Eating seeds as a pastime activity
The toxicity of our city, of our city
[. From: Click to view link .]

Now, what do you own the world?
How do you own disorder, disorder?
Now somewhere between the sacred silence
Sacred silence and sleep
Somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep
Disorder, disorder, disorder

Now, what do you own the world?
How do you own disorder, disorder?
Now somewhere between the sacred silence
Sacred silence and sleep
Somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep
Disorder, disorder, disorder

When I became the sun
I shone life into the man's hearts
When I became the sun
I shone life into the man's hearts [/blockquote]

Not exactly everybody's cup of tea ... ... http://youtu.be/dUa5yJNaLBs ... .. but there's no denying there is something afoot ... ... ... and spreading ... ... .. Click to view link

And it is such a shame that Respect Party candidate George Galloway's most eloquent victory acceptance speech is denied global sharing because of ... ... .. well, I suppose there must be cross border brainwashing arrangements in place between competing MAD systems of politicised control?

Platinum, Rhodium, Palladium, Silver, Gold all are precious metals. All are industrial commodities. Gold is not an industrial commodity, though a bit of it is used on solar panels for satallites. The gold used for jewelry is actually counted as part of the bullion inventory. Only gold is money today.

For a period of time, it was the premier currency for Britain, Austria, China among others, because it was much more plentiful than gold. Gold as currency started to recede in importance about 800 years ago.

How can you tell that only Gold is money. Very simply. Look at the above round inventory of Gold. It amounts to 80 years worth of annual production. For Platinum it is 2 years worth of annual production.

Gold as Money has no price. That is something almost all people forget when "buying" gold. People can't buy gold. They merely exchange their paper currency for real Money at a market rate. Sometime they get more money, sometimes less for the same amount of paper currency.

The other precious metals have value as industrial commodities. That is something totally different than money.

The other precious metals are commodities the price of which is derived from the value of gold.

There are dozens of great thinkers (not to mention important religions such as Christianity and Islam) that have expressed their disapproval of usury.

It's also interesting to note that the negative effects of compound interest on society (at least in the context of a debt-based currency) have been empirically validated. To be clear, "empirical validation" means data collected in the REAL world (in contrast to an axiom-based theory).

Some relevant insights from Austrian economist Israel Kirzner on the topics of interest and monopoly:

Click to view link

"AEN [Austrian Economics Newsletter]: Among the items integral or incidental to Austrian economics, where does the pure-time-preference theory of interest stand?

KIRZNER: I can imagine an Austrian economist who might not fully accept this theory of the origination of interest. I myself have never understood exactly what Mises meant by giving pure time preference an a priori basis. When I say I don't understand it, I mean literally that, and not that it's wrong. It is a very difficult chapter in Mises.

The pure-time-preference theory I've written about is not based on a priori reasoning. I've merely concluded that time preference is a reasonably universal empirical phenomenon. I ask my students: do you know anybody who is indifferent between receiving a paycheck now and receiving it in ten years? The answer is no. To me, that is enough to provide the basis of the theory.

AEN: You don't rule out the possible existence of negative rate of time preference?

KIRZNER: I would be surprised, but I don't rule it out apodictically. If there is a tax on bank balances that is sufficiently high, it would pay people to lend money at negative interest, provided the interest is less than the tax rate. Is that negative time preference? Probably not, but it does show that a positive rate of time preference can coexist with a negative rate of interest. That seems to be what Mises is denying, so my theory cannot claim to present the Misesian view.

AEN: Is it right to say you have adopted a Misesian rather than Rothbardian view of monopoly?

KIRZNER: That is correct. Mises had a view of monopoly in which he said that under certain exceptional circumstances, the pattern of resource ownership may fly in the face of the interest of consumers.

Ordinarily, the ownership of a resource provides value to its owner only to the extent he is prepared to put that resource to use in the service of the consuming public. The only possible exception is where the entire supply of a scarce resource, for which there are no substitutes, happens to be in the hands of a single seller. It may indeed be the case that the interests of the resource owner may be counter to that of consumers. In other words, the resource owner may discover an advantage in producing less of a product for consumers than consumers themselves desire.

This is a possible conflict of interest, and, for Mises, an extraordinary phenomenon. Here we see Mises's integrity. He was willing to recognize that it's not always true that a private-property system conduces to the well-being of the consuming public. He didn't think it was an important case, but he did draw attention to it. He did not use this exceptional case to argue for controls over monopolies.

I too think this point is interesting. I don't believe it is empirically important. It doesn't provide justification for monopoly regulation, or breaking companies, or anything like that. It simply points to a theoretical implication of certain patterns of resource ownership.

Others have disagreed. Rothbard used to say you can never really know if a producer is storing up resources in order to gain more profits or whether his doing so is even contrary to the interest of consumers. That's true. You never will know. But the theoretical possibility is still there."

Reply from The Daily Bell

Boy, you really shoot yourself in the foot here. Having put your pen name on articles that claim that the Austrian economic school is actually a Satanic church, you now CITE these same Satanic Austrian economists to try to prove points about interest and monopoly!

Noted. 'Nuff said ...

I find that I generally agree with Bischoff. The FED was originally created to act as a backstop for the banks. This is an excellent paper by Martin Armstrong along the same lines.
Click to view link
Armstrong points out that it was the politicians that borrowed too much and then expected the FED to fix the problem. He also points out that the S&L crisis was caused to a great extent by regulatory flip-flopping.
Congress's unlimited checkbook for the welfare-warfare state is the biggest cause of financial problems. Obviously, the banks aren't innocent.
Click to view link

In the question of silver, it has been used as money for a long time in a lot of countries. It may not truly be "money" but, it worked well in both Germany and China.
India is on course to import 5,000 tons this year. It may never hit $10,000 an ounce like Rhodium but, it will have value. Silver may be "just" an industrial metal but so is Rhodium.
Silver was generally at 15:1 with gold on volume found. With that refining of HUGE amounts of zinc, copper, lead, etc, far more silver was found. But, at the same time, FAR more uses for silver were developed.
It is even touted as a remedy for electricity-storage problems.
Click to view link

With the emergence of drug resistant bacteria, silver is the LAST and best line of defense. Only 10% of silver production is available for investment. The rest is used to produce things. A cruise missile has about 15 kilos of silver wire. U.S. military socks for jungle use have silver strands in them to stop fungus.
Much of the silver used in production is used in very small quantities and is not available for recycle.
Platinum is a very important metal for industry. Even this "industrial" metal sells for about $ 1400 an ounce. If silver went to 10 times it's current price, it would still be cheaper than it's industrial competitors like Palladium.

--"If you artificially set a price by force - and this is what central banks do - then that price is almost bound to be incorrect. Only the market itself can generate a "natural" rate of interest or determine monetary volume."--

The price (prime interest rate) is not set artificially by "force". It is set artificially out of "necessity". Under the gold standard, the prime interest rate was set by the "savers" and not the "central bank". Under the Gold Standard, the interest rate depended entirely on the willingness of the savers to invest their gold savings for a return. The volume of "redeemable" paper currency depended entirely on the value of Real Bills drawn, which in turn depended entirely on consumer demand.

The "natural interest rate" is not a market phenomenon at all. The "natural interest rate" refers to the reproductive force of nature and provides a bottom to the interest rate scale below which interest rates will not sink under the gold standard.

When gold is removed from relationship to paper currency, there is no way for people to save, and therefore no way for them to be a factor in the "market rate" of interest. Instead, it is the central bank, and its "Open Market Committee" which determines the "prime interest" rate for Treasury bonds sold in secondary markets. If the have to set the "prime interest rate" below the "natural rate of interest", they are justified in doing so by the theories of Keynes and Friedman.

--"That's because the market itself is competitive. The "Invisible Hand" of competition creates naturally fluctuating interest rates and the appropriate volume of money stuff."--

Under the gold standard, the "market rate" of interest hardly fluctuates at all. That is why there doesn't exist a secondary market for "Gold Bonds". BTW, what in the world is an appropriate volume of "money stuff"... ???

--"This is why monetary competition historically yields up evermore efficient and healthy money. People voluntarily choose the kind of money they want and the volume of money as well."--

Monetary competition... ??? People voluntarily choose the kind of money, and the volume they want... ??? Do you have a model of such monetary system... ??? I am most anxious to learn about it.

--"Within this context, gold and silver have proven to be a historically popular money stuff. Used with each other, gold and silver provide a ratio. If the ratio becomes distorted, people can tell that someone is trying to manipulate the market. This called bi-metalism."--

Gold is Money, and nothing else. Silver is a monetary metal which had a more or less fixed relationship to gold. Prior to the Coinage Act of 1791, the gold to silver ratio was accepted to be 1:15. The Coinage Act of 1791 in fact fixed the ratio 1:15 in law. Generally, wherever gold was found, silver was found in quantity that was about fifteen times larger.

However, with the finds of ever larger pure silver deposits (Comstock Lode being the largest), the fixed ratio was disturbed. The Coinage Act of 1783 changed the gold to silver ratio which set off great political battles.

As more and more redeemable paper currencies came into use, the need for silver currency declined. Gold asserted itself as money, and by 1900 the U.S. officially signed on to the gold standard and de-monetized silver. Silver as currency existed only, because of the lobbying effort by the State of Nevada.

That bi-metallism served as a check on the value of gold and silver while both metals were used currency, is quite correct.

--"Greenbackerism has made a startling comeback of late, which we have long predicted, citing Ellen Brown's effective boosting of the idea that government ought to have the sole franchise to print money."--

Greenbackerism making a startling comeback... ??? That certainly is news to me.

Greenbacks were the most successful paper currency ever put into circulation. They were continously issued for over a hundred years from 1864 until 1971. That they have been issued since is startling news to me.

Greenbacks are "Bills of Credit" issued by the USDT. Their acceptance depended entirely on the "full face and credit" of the U.S. Government.

While they were suitable for consumption, they could not be used for savings. Unlike RBD currency under the gold standard, Greenbacks do not "exstinguish". Therefore, the Congress "threw" Greenbacks open to redemption for gold during limited periods of time during the late 1800s. About 65% of all Greenbacks ever issued were actually redeemed for gold.

Where ever did you get the idea that USDT "Bills of Credit" have made a comeback as of late... ??? From Ellen Brown or Stephen Zarlenga... ??? Please... ..I ask you.

Federal Reserve Notes created since 1935 are a debt monetized currency. They have been irredeemable for U.S. citizens since 1933, and they have had "legal tender" protection since the Coinage Act of 1982.

BTW, who today has the sole franchise of printing irredeemable Federal Reserve Notes... ??? Who do you think... ???

Reply from The Daily Bell

Ingo, you are a well-learned man. But it is impossible to have a substantive conversation with you within certain parameters because of your gold obsession. Even Rothbard, who was fairly fanatical about gold, admitted that "money" is what societies make of it. Money is gold, sure ... but it's also been salt, beads and remains silver despite your pooh-poohing of the "people's metal." When you start with the insistence that the "only" money is gold, then whatever flows from this flawed proposition becomes increasingly incomprehensible. Which is too bad. You have a lot to offer ...

"This allows people to travel from one place to another nearby place if they are being oppressed."
Welll, we'll just have to make oppression,,, worldwide. That will take care of that problem.
Here are a couple of quotes from a good paper on the FED.
"Acting on behalf of the banks, the Fed has sponsored the un-taxing of real estate and monopolies, as these have become the major bank customers. And by deregulating Wall Street, the Fed has underwritten the overgrowth of unproductive credit - credit extended not to finance industrial capital formation, but simply to speculate and to transfer ownership of assets already in existence."

Greenspan, "He pointed out before Congress that the virtue of loading down homeowners, college students and others with debt was that they were afraid to go on strike or even complain about working conditions or seek higher wages, for fear of being fired and missing a mortgage payment or credit-card payment."
Click to view link

The evidence seems to agree with the supposition of the Bell. The banks were induced/allowed to offer credit that would eventually crash the whole system. I assume that the PTB above the level of the banking industry wanted a credit bubble and a crash and something of a cull.
The shortsighted banks didn't think ahead to what effect the crash might have on them. They securitized everything with misplaced confidence. RE crashed and the securitization isn't enough. Student loans are crashing.
Click to view link
Commercial RE is falling. Retail RE is crashing. Sovereign debt is crashing. One could speculate that the banks never had any intention of crashing the whole mess. It's possible that the TBTF banks expedited the crash, fully expecting to exit to some safe harbor. They may very well have had prior reassurances.

That points to the next level up [down].
They appear to be idiots as personified by D'Estaing, The economy was BAD under his control. He pushed to have his bad ideas used Europe-wide. The whole EU idea was implemented as a more-or-less open-minded attitude. It has crashed. The Eurocrats suspected that it would. The Maastricht, etc treaties [210] couldn't make it work.
http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/ListeTraites.asp?CM=8&CL=ENG

The U.S.S.R was kind enough to prove once again that a socialistic, command economy was / is not viable. California is giving a repeat performance. The EU seems determined to prove the matter once again.
The PTB seem to believe that their schemes WILL work if implemented worldwide. Like the buffoon, Marx, they refuse to account for human nature. We can easily assume that the PTB never read Mises' book, "Human Action".
One can guess that the PTB never examined the economy of East Germany vs West Germany
Decades ago. The same could be said for N.Korea vs S Korea.

The U.S. Neocons waged war in Iraq to win the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqis.
Not to be outdone, the world-improvers are going to crash the whole world down and create a wonderful, egalitarian, phoenix. Obummer has his own strategy for crashing the whole shebang.
Click to view link

This phoenix is going to arrive as a blood-spattered Dodo bird.

Here's an article summarizing neuroeconomics, and their conclusion that temporal discounting is a "wired" aspect of the human condition. To be clear, time discounting means interest.

Click to view link

It's also interesting to note that the ideas of subjective value and marginal utility has been widely validated.

Here's a useful quote from Mises on interest:

'Therefore there cannot be any question of abolishing interest by any institutions, laws, and devices of bank manipulation. He who wants to 'abolish' interest will have to induce people to value an apple available in a hundred years no less than a present apple. What can be abolished by laws and decrees is merely the right of the capitalists to receive interest. But such laws would bring about capital consumption and would very soon throw mankind back into the original state of natural poverty.'

One of the best articles I've found on the Austrian theory of interest is Interest: In Defense of Mises, by J. Patrick Gunning:

Click to view link

If you've been confused by just what is the Austrian view of interest, it's because there is, of course, confusion over definitions of what "time preference" means, and how those different definitions are applied. The major thinkers, I believe, are Bohm-Bawerk, Fetter, Mises, Rothbard, Gunning, and Herbener. I believe Fetter did the better job on interest, in particular, while Mises did the better job of integrating and systematizing. The best work I've found on how the theory of interest has evolved over time is in:

Click to view link

You don't have to accept the DB's (or my) view on interest. The major alternatives are available for perusal, for free. Isn't the internet wonderful?

What are the goals of the US Central Bank as listed on their website?

Why doesn't your claim of "growth" match what the Fed lists as its own goals?

This is a post by memehunter (not "danny B"), in reply to comments made by the DB to a previous post by memehunter at 3:52 PM.

DB: So if two people wish to construct a transaction in which one lends the other money, you would forbid it? What would you do them if they persisted? Would you hurt them? Put them in jail?

M: I pointed out that who or what controls the issuance of the currency is a much bigger problem than the material out of which the currency is made. The usual mention of coercion/jail/guns (in the future, abbreviated as CJG) is completely irrelevant to that point. The question is: why does the DB seemingly ignore the fact that a currency can be interest-bearing and debt-based, whether it is based on gold or paper?

DB: The US free-banking system in the US in the 1700s and 1800s (which was both gold and silver based).

M: This is again only partly relevant to my point and an oversimplification to boot. Several colonies used paper money or other alternative currencies before the American Revolution. As for the Civil War, it turns out that Lincoln was the original "Greenbacker". What does this tell us?

DB: You don't know how much gold the Rothschilds own and in a free-market oriented society it doesn't even matter.

M: How can it not matter when a single family or group controls a large part of the money supply? Also, are you talking about physical gold as a store of value, or "private gold-backed currencies" in which it is mostly "paper gold" that is circulating?

DB: OK. And our question would be simply: Does Money Power fear government? Or does it fear a free people?

M: My answer would be simply: Money Power fears a free people regaining control of its government (regardless of what a free people would eventually decide to do with the institution of "government").

DB: We will go much further, (as we have in the past): If people within the context of their communities wish to adopt interest free money, then they will do so. We would not be philosophically opposed to it. Greenbackers, too, can issue money as they wish within their communities. But it seems to us that these measures are NOT implemented voluntarily and within a communal context. Even Franklin's system was imposed by force as we understand it.

M: Well, that's a step in the right direction. I believe that in a free-market situation, most people will choose to use interest-free currencies, at least for everyday transactions (the "means of exchange" function) and those who would like to make a living by simply using interest-bearing currencies to exploit the work and resources of others will find few takers. No need for force or CJG.

DB: Not only that, but you have declared that only government - presumably a centralized one - can properly deliver freedom. The more government the better?

M: No, I have not declared that. Again, the usual confusion: being against Money Power does not equate being for "more government".

Reply from The Daily Bell

"A step in the right direction," Yes, one that took place 20 years ago when the elves read the arguments of Selgin and White against the Austrian purist gold standard. The trouble with having a discussion with you, in addition to your making the same rebuttable points over and over again, is that as you have admitted you know little or nothing about free-market economics.

Great article, DB. It reminds of those stories that told how the soviets copied the prices of its more capitalistic neighbors, yet still couldn't "make" their economy work. The tragedies of central planning, indeed.

"We just have to figure out what's natural and then fake it."

My nomination for quote of the day.

Why is the DB changing the name of the feedbacker? It is "memehunter" who wrote this post, not "danny B".

Reply from The Daily Bell

It may have been a glitch in the system. If it happens again, we'll have tech look at it.

As much as I see the many wrongs with Central banking; it has never been a central banking claim to produce "natural" interest rates. The CB manipulates money supply and interest rates to keep the economy growing. The results have not been good but I am not sure without free competition among banks one would get a true free floating rate. I certainly would not trust the big banks anymore than I trust big oil to produce "competitive" gas prices.

here we go again, DB, please don't "bite"

The problem is not necessarily that people will disagree with the main points of the article. The problem is that the DB tries to lead its readers astray by focusing on secondary issues, such as the material out of which the currency is made (paper versus precious metals), while ignoring the important issue of how the currency is issued. Yes, precious metals - gold in particular - have properties that make them better in the 'store of value' department, but besides that the nature of the currency should be a peripheral concern.

A much more important issue is whether the currency is an interest-bearing debt-based currency, because all currencies of this type are essentially exploitative devices which benefit the currency issuer. An interest-bearing, debt-based 'private gold-backed currency' in a free market will eventually lead to the same problems and imbalances that we are currently seeing with paper money, except that people could always choose to use another currency in the absence of a monopoly. Of course, we should keep in mind that cartels are also quite likely to flourish in a pure free-market environment.

The DB regularly denounces 'Greenbackerism'. Well, I don't know if that makes me a 'Greenbacker', but I can only repeat that the current monetary environment leads to both inflation and exponentially rising debt, whereas an interest-free currency (whether issued by the government or not) would at least get rid of the interest problem and of the tremendously negative societal consequences of this exploitative device used by the Money Power.

Regarding the DB's comments about hoarding/dishoarding and the opening/closing of mines as mechanisms to control the price and volume of money, I can do no better than cite some very relevant paragraphs from this article by Anthony Migchels:

Who is Ed Griffin?
Click to view link

'And last: the notion that rising prices would force Gold out of hoarding. The Daily Bell is also known for spouting this ridiculous nonsense: a Monopolist doesn't surrender his stash when the price is right! He just lets the market set the maximum price it can bear and then proceeds to rip us all off for ever at that price!

So no, there is no free market for Gold. Rothschild DOES own a decisive stake in the World's reserves. And rising prices due to scarcity is his wet dream: he can continue his monopoly pricing operation.

It's just incredibly upsetting and annoying that we even need to have this conversation.

Then this:
'Bankers may hoard gold (because they understand its value more than most people) but they have always done everything possible to prevent a gold-backed currency.'

This is such a blatant lie. Are we to believe that Ed Griffin did not read Eustace Mullins? Just read Mullins' quote above. His entire book radiates an absolute disgust for a Gold Standard. Mullins time and again explains it's a banker operation.

I can understand people reading Griffin and ignorantly touting this lie all over the Blogosphere.

But Griffin is responsible for this obfuscation of the Truth. For this clearly blatant and well considered try to extinguish Mullins' and Pound's message from the Truth Movement.'

And the conclusion of Migchels' article, a true gem in my opinion:

'Abusive Government is a result of it being subverted by the Money Power. But the Money Power fears Government, because it can be liberated by the Nation to which it belongs. That's why they want their World Government, that will know no national affiliation and will be of their making only.

Considering the horrible damage done by the Austrian Economics Mind Control operation, as witnessed by Ron Paul's ascent, it will no longer do to see them as allies against the Powers that Be.

Ed Griffin is a particularly nasty cookie, as he clearly purposefully tries to obscure the crucial messages of Pound and Mullins. Knowing the Money Power there is every reason to suggest that this is the main reason Ed Griffin exists and why we all know about him.'

Reply from The Daily Bell

The problem is not necessarily that people will disagree with the main points of the article. The problem is that the DB tries to lead its readers astray by focusing on secondary issues …

DB: Why don't you let people decide what they want to do with their money instead of telling them?

-----

A much more important issue is whether the currency is an interest-bearing debt-based currency, because all currencies of this type are essentially exploitative devices which benefit the currency issuer.

DB: So if two people wish to construct a transaction in which one lends the other money, you would forbid it? What would you do them if they persisted? Would you hurt them? Put them in jail?

------

An interest-bearing, debt-based 'private gold-backed currency' in a free market will eventually lead to the same problems and imbalances that we are currently seeing with paper money …

DB: The US free-banking system in the US in the 1700s and 1800s (which was both gold and silver based) led to some of the greatest prosperity a country has ever known, Money Power had to fight a WAR (Civil War) to dislodge the system at the cost of millions of lives. To say it didn't work is to argue against what history shows us is true.

-----

The DB regularly denounces 'Greenbackerism'. Well, I don't know if that makes me a 'Greenbacker', but I can only repeat that the current monetary environment leads to both inflation and exponentially rising debt …

DB: You must be purposefully misconstruing our arguments as we are proposing nothing more than competing money. This whole site is devoted to debunking the current monopoly fiat environment. As for the "problem" of interest, we ask again, what are you going to do if two people want to work out an interest-based arrangement? Are you going to put them in jail?

------

Regarding the DB's comments about hoarding/dishoarding and the opening/closing of mines as mechanisms to control the price and volume of money, I can do no better than cite some very relevant paragraphs from this article by Anthony Migchels:

Who is Ed Griffin?
Click to view link

DB: We've read the arguments. Unfortunately, it’s a logical fact that a DESTRUCTIVE an unwanted monopoly cannot exist in a free society.

----


A Monopolist doesn't surrender his stash when the price is right! He just lets the market set the maximum price it can bear and then proceeds to rip us all off for ever at that price! …

DB: A monopolist can do whatever he wants in a free market and it will make no difference. This is a fact.
-----

So no, there is no free market for Gold. Rothschild DOES own a decisive stake in the World's reserves. And rising prices due to scarcity is his wet dream: he can continue his monopoly pricing operation.

DB: You don't know how much gold the Rothschilds own and in a free-market oriented society it doesn't even matter. People will do what they choose, in communal associations anyway, and a percentage would choose not to cooperate with monstrous and genocidal programs.

-----

Are we to believe that Ed Griffin did not read Eustace Mullins? Just read Mullins' quote above. His entire book radiates an absolute disgust for a Gold Standard. Mullins time and again explains it's a banker operation …

DB: Eustace Mullins thought the Austrian school was founded in the late 1920s, as you yourself approvingly observed (mistakenly) in a previous thread, How can you treat him as an "expert." In fact you may believe he is an expert but there are no "experts."

-----

I can understand people reading Griffin and ignorantly touting this lie all over the Blogosphere. But Griffin is responsible for this obfuscation of the Truth.

DB: Now you are abandoned yourself entirely to a tangent regarding Griffin. Neo Austrians tend to believe in COMPETING CURRENCIES and even free-banking. So rebutting Griffin, even if your rebuttal is accurate, is besides the point.

----

And the conclusion of Migchels' article, a true gem in my opinion: 'Abusive Government is a result of it being subverted by the Money Power. But the Money Power fears Government, because it can be liberated by the Nation to which it belongs. That's why they want their World Government, that will know no national affiliation and will be of their making only.

DB: OK. And our question would be simply: Does Money Power fear government? Or does it fear a free people?

-----

Considering the horrible damage done by the Austrian Economics Mind Control operation, as witnessed by Ron Paul's ascent, it will no longer do to see them as allies against the Powers that Be.

DB: This is a particularly startling statement. Libertarians and neo-Austrians believe in freedom, free currencies and the ability of people to do what they want within the context of small and controllable communities. We will go much further, (as we have in the past): If people within the context of their communities wish to adopt interest free money, then they will do so. We would not be philosophically opposed to it. Greenbackers, too, can issue money as they wish within their communities. But it seems to us that these measures are NOT implemented voluntarily and within a communal context. Even Franklin's system was imposed by force as we understand it.

We believe people ought to have the freedom to create their own communities - often with an agrarian context - live freely as possible within a given cultural context and use the money they choose. This is CERTAINLY a neo-Austrian position and it is a position you find so offensive that you declare those who adopt it to be excommunicated from the freedom community. Not only that, but you have declared that only government - presumably a centralized one - can properly deliver freedom. The more government the better? This seems strange to us indeed.

I don't know if the following information is trustworthy and/or well-known already. But when it's true, it might explain some aspects of certain 'evolutions' we are witnessing:

'Former Soviet Dissident Warns For EU Dictatorship (... ) In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our 'common European home.'

The idea was very simple. It first came up in 1985-86, when the Italian Communists visited Gorbachev, followed by the German Social-Democrats. They all complained that the changes in the world, particularly after [British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher introduced privatisation and economic liberalisation, were threatening to wipe out the achievement (as they called it) of generations of Socialists and Social-Democrats - threatening to reverse it completely. Therefore the only way to withstand this onslaught of wild capitalism (as they called it) was to try to introduce the same socialist goals in all countries at once. Prior to that, the left-wing parties and the Soviet Union had opposed European integration very much because they perceived it as a means to block their socialist goals. From 1985 onwards they completely changed their view. The Soviets came to a conclusion and to an agreement with the left-wing parties that if they worked together they could hijack the whole European project and turn it upside down. Instead of an open market they would turn it into a federal state.

According to the [secret Soviet] documents, 1985-86 is the turning point. I have published most of these documents. You might even find them on the internet. But the conversations they had are really eye opening. For the first time you understand that there is a conspiracy - quite understandable for them, as they were trying to save their political hides. In the East the Soviets needed a change of relations with Europe because they were entering a protracted and very deep structural crisis; in the West the left-wing parties were afraid of being wiped out and losing their influence and prestige. So it was a conspiracy, quite openly made by them, agreed upon, and worked out.

In January of 1989, for example, a delegation of the Trilateral Commission came to see Gorbachev. It included [former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro] Nakasone, [former French President Valéry] Giscard d'Estaing, [American banker David] Rockefeller and [former US Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger. They had a very nice conversation where they tried to explain to Gorbachev that Soviet Russia had to integrate into the financial institutions of the world, such as Gatt, the IMF and the World Bank.

In the middle of it Giscard d'Estaing suddenly takes the floor and says: 'Mr President, I cannot tell you exactly when it will happen - probably within 15 years - but Europe is going to be a federal state and you have to prepare yourself for that. You have to work out with us, and the European leaders, how you would react to that, how would you allow the other Easteuropean countries to interact with it or how to become a part of it, you have to be prepared.'

This was January 1989, at a time when the [1992] Maastricht treaty had not even been drafted. How the hell did Giscard d'Estaing know what was going to happen in 15 years time? And surprise, surprise, how did he become the author of the European constitution [in 2002-03]? A very good question. It does smell of conspiracy, doesn't it?

Luckily for us the Soviet part of this conspiracy collapsed earlier and it did not reach the point where Moscow could influence the course of events. But the original idea was to have what they called a convergency, whereby the Soviet Union would mellow somewhat and become more social-democratic, while Western Europe would become social-democratic and socialist. Then there will be convergency. The structures have to fit each other. This is why the structures of the European Union were initially built with the purpose of fitting into the Soviet structure. This is why they are so similar in functioning and in structure.

It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.

If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB - not yet - but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organisation will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a KGB with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes - two of which are particularly worrying, one is called racism, another is called xenophobia. No criminal court on earth defines anything like this as a crime [this is not entirely true, as Belgium already does so - pb]. So it is a new crime, and we have already been warned. Someone from the British government told us that those who object to uncontrolled immigration from the Third World will be regarded as racist and those who oppose further European integration will be regarded as xenophobes. I think Patricia Hewitt said this publicly.

Hence, we have now been warned'

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More food for thought:


'Explaining Central Banking to the Publicly Educated'

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'Read the FBI Memo: Agents Can 'Suspend the Law'

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Last but not least - a rather fair question:


'Why Does The Department Of Homeland Security Need 450 MILLION Hollow Point Bullets?'

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