An excellent speech on our monetary system ... and the scam that it is.

Ahhh, damn. Sorry Med. That was an excellent speech too. I'll try to find it again.

Vi

Here ya go, try this one Med. You'll enjoy it, I'm sure.

http://www.fame.org/HTM/Edwin%20Vieira%20Speech%20to%20the%20Rotary%20Club%20of%20NY%203-25-03.htm

Well, you've made a lot of good points. I completely agree that the elites have taken over the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. That's why the recent defeat of the amnesty bill was so important. The sane people in the legislative branch listened to the people for a change. There is a new media threatening the elites ... its called conservative talk radio. Millions of listeners phoned their reps and demanded that the amnesty bill be defeated. Interestingly enough, we aren't hearing a peep from the mainstream media about how talk radio had a hand in this defeat. Wonder what they're trying to cover up? *lol*

By the way ... on the money issue, the federal income tax is all part of the hoax/scheme.

Vi

You've stated the problem in a nut-shell there Med. As long as we have the preception that our representatives are "grafting" for us, and electing those who "graft" the best, the country will continue to slide into oblivion.

Vi

very nice insights Vi!

it's definitely a well proven method for our government to use the guise of an emergency, no matter how real or unreal, to coerce more power from the flaccid hands of the inattentive masses who have distanced themselves ever further from truly being "We the people"... to most Amerikans it's more like, "they the people"... "they", never being quite what "we" want but damn sure making a go at it!

we've come a long way from "[FONT=&quot]to wit, three hundred and seventy-one and one-quarter grains of silver.[/FONT]"




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We can thank FDR for adhearing to Italian fascism and debasing our currency.

Vi

yep, everything is fake. the same people who tell us we don't need our liberty are the ones telling us what a dollar is worth...great combo there.

indeed Vi, FDR and his evil regime is at the root of every single major dilemma facing America today; at home and abroad.




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a great president, hmm...inventor of the welfare-warfare state/great president. that's a neat idea.


here are a few of his great accomplishments:

created the domestic drug war (government corporation)
crafted strict international alliances (imperialism)
international campaigns to nation build (government corporation)
welfare (government corporation)
price controls in agriculture (subsidies)
regulated private securities (socialism)
imposed federal government into private union affairs (more socialism and voter herding)
made the government a lender and insurer for private sector (government corporations)
introduced the minimum wage (socialism)
made federal unemployment insurance (government corporation)
government selling electrical power (government corporation)

he also made the depression worse by confiscating gold and demanding that all transactions be moved to that "Cash" money that you have so much concern about. rightly so, because when FDR claimed that only federal money could be used he centralized the economy of the USA around a few elite bankers and cronies.

at a time when people were starving and jobless he offered farmers more money than market value to cut their production. sounds good, right? it is good if you're into making more people starve by artificially driving prices up.

you get all hot and bothered by Cheney meeting with enron execs but FDR invited his top corporate supporters in to craft LAW itself, not just to discuss policy - they literally drafted laws. the NRA, national recovery administration, was a group of hooligans spread out all over the country to enforce price controls and an amazing array of government manipulation on our strained economy.

this country still hasn't fully recovered from what that man set in motion, and it's certainly not something we should be proud of...






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lol, so he ended the depression. that's some powerful kool-aid you've got yourself into today med. sorry to rain on your parade but you better get a glass of water and read this before your empty mind causes you to implode!

and, what's this "fair labor" that you mention, is that somehow different from getting paid for the work you do?

i thought you were on the wagon med...i really did.





>>>

How FDR Made the Depression Worse
February 1, 1995
Robert Higgs


Franklin Roosevelt “did bring us out of the Depression,” Newt Gingrich told a group of Republicans after the recent election, and that makes FDR “the greatest figure of the 20th century.” As political rhetoric, the statement is likely to come from someone who does not support a market economy. The New Deal, after all, was the largest peacetime expansion of federal government power in this century. Moreover, Gingrich’s view that FDR saved us from the Depression is indefensible; Roosevelt’s policies prolonged and deepened it.

There’s no doubt that Roosevelt changed the character of the American government—for the worse. Many of the reforms of the 1930s remain embedded in policy today: acreage allotments, price supports and marketing controls in agriculture, extensive regulation of private securities, federal intrusion into union-management relations, government lending and insurance activities, the minimum wage, national unemployment insurance, Social Security and welfare payments, production and sale of electrical power by the federal government, fiat money—the list goes on.

Roosevelt’s revolution began with his inaugural address, which left no doubt about his intentions to seize the moment and harness it to his purposes. Best remembered for its patently false line that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” it also called for extraordinary emergency governmental powers.

The day after FDR took the oath of office, he issued a proclamation calling Congress into a special session. Before it met, he proclaimed a national banking holiday—an action he had refused to endorse when Hoover suggested it three days earlier.

Invoking the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, Roosevelt declared that “all banking transactions shall be suspended.” Banks were permitted to reopen only after case-by-case inspection and approval by the government, a procedure that dragged on for months. This action heightened the public’s sense of crisis and allowed him to ignore traditional restraints on the power of the central government.

In their understanding of the Depression, Roosevelt and his economic advisors had cause and effect reversed. They did not recognize that prices had fallen because of the Depression. They believed that the Depression prevailed because prices had fallen. The obvious remedy, then, was to raise prices, which they decided to do by creating artificial shortages. Hence arose a collection of crackpot policies designed to cure the Depression by cutting back on production. The scheme was so patently self-defeating that it’s hard to believe anyone seriously believed it would work.

The goofiest application of the theory had to do with the price of gold. Starting with the bank holiday and proceeding through a massive gold-buying program, Roosevelt abandoned the gold standard, the bedrock restraint on inflation and government growth. He nationalized the monetary gold stock, forbade the private ownership of gold (except for jewelry, scientific or industrial uses, and foreign payments), and nullified all contractual promises—whether public or private, past or future—to pay in gold.

Besides being theft, gold confiscation didn’t work. The price of gold was increased from $20.67 to $35.00 per ounce, a 69 percent increase, but the domestic price level increased only seven percent between 1933 and 1934, and over the rest of the decade it hardly increased at all. FDR’s devaluation provoked retaliation by other countries, further strangling international trade and throwing the world’s economies further into depression.

Having hobbled the banking system and destroyed the gold standard, he turned next to agriculture. Working with the politically influential Farm Bureau and the Bernard Baruch gang, Roosevelt pushed through the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. It provided for acreage and production controls, restrictive marketing agreements, and regulatory licensing of processors and dealers “to eliminate unfair practices and charges.” It authorized new lending, taxed processors of agricultural commodities, and rewarded farmers who cut back production.

The objective was to raise farm commodity prices until they reached a much higher “parity” level. The millions who could hardly feed and clothe their families can be forgiven for questioning the nobility of a program designed to make food and fiber more expensive. Though this was called an “emergency” measure, no president since has seen fit to declare the emergency over.

Industry was virtually nationalized under Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. Like most New Deal legislation, this resulted from a compromise of special interests: businessmen seeking higher prices and barriers to competition, labor unionists seeking governmental sponsorship and protection, social workers wanting to control working conditions and forbid child labor, and the proponents of massive spending on public works.

The legislation allowed the President to license businesses or control imports to achieve the vaguely identified objectives of the act. Every industry had to have a code of fair competition. The codes contained provisions setting minimum wages, maximum hours, and “decent” working conditions. The policy rested on the dubious notion that what the country needed most was cartelized business, higher prices, less work, and steep labor costs.

To administer the act, Roosevelt established the National Recovery Administration and named General Hugh Johnson, a crony of Baruch’s and a former draft administrator, as head. Johnson adopted the famous Blue Eagle emblem and forced businesses to display it and abide by NRA codes. There were parades, billboards, posters, buttons, and radio ads, all designed to silence those who questioned the policy. Not since the First World War had there been anything like the outpouring of hoopla and coercion. Cutting prices became “chiseling” and the equivalent of treason. The policy was enforced by a vast system of agents and informers.

Eventually the NRA approved 557 basic and 189 supplementary codes, covering about 95 percent of all industrial employees. Big businessmen dominated the writing and implementing of the documents. They generally aimed to suppress competition. Figuring prominently in this effort were minimum prices, open price schedules, standardization of products and services, and advance notice of intent to change prices. Having gained the government’s commitment to stifling competition, the tycoons looked forward to profitable repose.

But the initial enthusiasm evaporated when the NRA did not deliver, and for obvious reasons. Even its corporate boosters began to object to the regimentation it required. By the time the Supreme Court invalidated the whole undertaking in early 1935, most of its former supporters had lost their taste for it.

Striking down the NRA, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote that “extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.” Congress “cannot delegate legislative power to the President to exercise an unfettered discretion to make whatever laws he thinks may be needed.”

Despite the decision, the NRA-approach did not disappear completely. Its economic logic reappeared in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, reinstating union privileges, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, stipulating regulations for wages and working hours. The Bituminous Coal Act of 1937 reinstated an NRA-type code for the coal industry, including price-fixing. The Works Progress Administration made the government the employer of last resort. Using the Connally Act of 1935, Roosevelt cartelized the oil industry. Eventually, of course, the Supreme Court came around to Roosevelt’s way of thinking.

Yet after all this, the grand promise of an end to the suffering was never fulfilled. As the state sector drained the private sector, controlling it in alarming detail, the economy continued to wallow in depression. The combined impact of Herbert Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s interventions meant that the market was never allowed to correct itself. Far from having gotten us out of the Depression, FDR prolonged and deepened it, and brought unnecessary suffering to millions.

Even more tragic is the lasting legacy of Roosevelt. The commitment of both masses and elites to individualism, free markets, and limited government suffered a blow in the 1930s from which it has yet to recover fully. The theory of the mixed economy is still the dominant ideology backing government policy. In place of old beliefs about liberty, we have greater toleration of, and even positive demand for, collectivist schemes that promise social security, protection from the rigors of market competition, and something for nothing.

“You can never study Franklin Delano Roosevelt too much,” Gingrich says. But if we study FDR with admiration, the lesson we take away is this: government is an immensely useful means for achieving one’s private aspirations, and resorting to this reservoir of potentially appropriable benefits is perfectly legitimate. One thing we have to fear is politicians who believe this.



from: How FDR Made the Depression Worse: Newsroom: The Independent Institute

Med sez ...

"Bullshit, thats the view from your seat. He ended the depression with government work projects (WPA) created roads and trails in most of the national parks ..."

Ok, Med ... if FDR "ended" the Depression, why were there more unemployed in the country at the end of his third term than there was at the beginning of his first?

Vi

PS: 7x ... It's very obvious that you've done your history homework. *lol* Of course, they don't teach this type of history in our government monopolized schools. They'd much rather turn out little drones who honestly believe (brain washed) that government is the answer to all problems.

Look, lets get this straight right now: I am no fan of government. I see a need for social programs and you don't. that does not make me pro government. In fact this government has done everything in it's power to cut or curtail all social programs, you should be estatic with Dubya. I see this: a government needs to be concerned with the welfare of it's citizens first, then it can move on to bigger things like war and squandering the wealth of the nation. This government has done everything for the corporations, especially the oil companies at the expense of everything else. We are much worse off now than when Bushco took office. Granted there are a few richer people that are better off, but the population in general is worse off.

And as the article posted by 7x points out ... the best way for government to be "concerned" for the welfare of its citizens is to just get the hell out of the way. That's why the founders placed into the Constitution the following words: The federal government shall have to power to PROVIDE for the defense and PROMOTE the general welfare.

Vi