Liberty Asylum

"This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every Part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home pursues their descendants still." -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, January 10, 1776

Would you buy a gold bar from a vending machine? If the ATM were located in a secure area, and the bars carried an acceptable premium over the current spot price and could be purchased in units as small as one gram or as large as an ounce, would you consider swapping your unbacked paper money for an authenticated 24-karat gold bar?

As the 18th century's most influential political pamphleteer, Paine's reputation was born with the American Revolution he was largely responsible for creating, and he wanted to spend his last years among people with whom he shared a passion for liberty.

From that point on, government, through its proxy the federal reserve, could create paper claims to economic goods without concern about redeeming it for a unique kind of economic good: gold. By government fiat, real money was no longer money. By government fiat, paper money and bank deposits redeemable in paper money were now real money. The federal reserve could create money at will without worrying about an equivalent amount of metal on deposit. Member banks could continue making loans on small fractions of their deposits without worrying about suspicious depositors suddenly rushing madly to the banks for gold coin redemption.

Having failed to learn what causes depressions and how to treat them when they arrive, our nation's leaders are steering us straight into a monetary catastrophe. Predictably, the major media voices are clinging to the assurances of Keynesians, who see new wads of debt and paper money and conclude that the good times are ready to roll again; don't pay any heed to the millions still looking for work.

Pens for Hire, Cheap
January 6, 2010

No one traveling in hostile country should ever be without reliable protection. When the territory in question is intellectual, it always helps to have the aid of fighters who've been there before. In fact, two of the most seasoned pros are yours for only the cost of the effort required to understand their arguments. Fortunately, these straight-shooting writers have made that cost minimal.

Frédéric Bastiat's legacy has two key components: his artful polemics for free markets and his uncompromising conviction that men's interests are "naturally harmonious" to the extent that their property rights are respected. He was an artist with an unfailing loyalty to logic, and a revolutionary who fought the interventionist schemes of both the Right and Left despite suffering from a debilitating terminal illness.

The Virtue of Hoarding

Even before the Fed, hoarding was not the way to get rich, but because gold retained its value "through time and space," holding it was a way of avoiding penury and saving for old age. The present fiat money system pressures people to drop a portion of their income into the great slot machine of the investment world, most often by means of financial intermediaries.

People's portfolios fatten during the boom years, but working below the radar is the central bank's monetary policy, silently siphoning off the value of their money while orchestrating a disaster. Whether the boom ends in depression or a spurt of aggressive inflation, Fed policy will ruin investors who don't time their bets properly.

One way to hoard money today is in precious metals, particularly gold and silver. Thanks to Congressman Ron Paul's work, it has been legal for Americans to own and trade gold coins since January 1, 1975. Buying gold and silver coins and holding them is not only a way of protecting oneself against inflation, but it is also, in a sense, a way of boycotting the federal reserve. That in itself would be reason enough to own them.

How Much Money Do We Need?
September 19, 2009

The American dollar is no longer tethered to gold. Whereas money was once difficult to create, thus keeping its supply limited and protecting its value, the Fed can create fiat paper money in any amounts at the push of a button. Because of the benefits that accrue to the early users of the new money, there is pressure throughout the political system to keep the money machine printing.

Ben Bernanke is committed to monetary inflation. He claims it is healthy in boom times and will pull us out of any recession. He blames the Fed for not inflating enough once the Great Depression began. He’s determined not to make the same mistake today.

Fiat paper money regimes are not designed to promote a healthy economy. They are designed as a means of wealth distribution for the benefit of a few.

One Man in a Million

In 1919 a book was written that contained a brief passage about how to bring any modern society to its knees without firing a shot.

Ninety years after publication of that passage, another book has arrived calling for the abolition of the world’s most respected currency debaucher, the U.S. Federal Reserve. It’s author, Ron Paul, has spent the better part of his career trying to wipe the Fed and its toxic effects off the face of the earth. His new book, End the Fed, is, as the title indicates, a death threat to the central bank. Given Paul’s popularity among libertarian activists and his congressional support for blowing the lid off Fed secrecy, the book cannot be dismissed as fanciful.

Meltdown's Monetary Heresy

As the dollar continues its descent, the prospects for sound money are alive, but much more so are the prospects for a new fiat currency. The top decision makers in the federal government regard the money machine as their right arm.
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Auditing the Fed will Audit the State

The Fed is a racket at heart, a con game writ large — what else can you call an organization with the exclusive privilege of printing money in the trillions and handing it over to friends? But if this is true, what does that say about the state, the organization that created and sanctions it? Is the Fed an honest mistake in the state's otherwise undying efforts to preserve our liberty, or might it be a key component of a bigger racket?
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Murphy Sets the Record Straight

Will Barack Obama's New Deal finally sink the American economy into the sands? This is the question author Robert P. Murphy poses at the end of his latest myth buster, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal. Readers who follow Murphy's narrative from page one will understand that unless the current administration suddenly turns pro free market and gets out of the way, our future looks grim at best.

The Ghost of Dred Scott

“The government gives [blacks] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America .’ No, no, no, God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.” [198]

Such were the words of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright as he addressed the congregation of the mostly black Trinity United Church of Christ in southside Chicago on April 13^th 2003 . As the world has since learned, one of his parishioners was Barack Hussein Obama II.

Many people were shocked at Wright’s rhetoric, believing racial diatribes were mostly behind us. But as Judge Andrew P. Napolitano explains in his latest book, Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, Wright’s comments are one of the predictable outcomes of government’s sordid history of race relations.

The Ship That Couldn't Sink

The Titanic tragedy is about the unexpected sinking of an unsinkable ship. In that respect, it is much like the American economy that many believed would stay fat and happy forever.

In today’s crisis, our “ship” is not being allowed to right itself; in fact, Team Obama is accelerating its sinking. As Guido Hülsmann observes, “The crisis did not hit us despite the presence of our monetary and financial authorities. It hit us because of them.” And the nightmare continues. They’re still on the job.

Whatever you do, make sure it doesn’t amount to re-arranging deck chairs. Don’t be one of the steerage passengers who can’t find the lifeboat

The Case for Natural Money

Studying Jörg Guido Hülsmann's latest book, The Ethics of Money Production, is a vastly enriching experience. After building his case for natural money on the inviolability of an individual's right to his own property, he then shows us how the state has spent the last 400 years usurping this right for the benefit of a privileged few through its protection of fractional-reserve banking.

The production of natural money is ethical because it involves no violations of property rights and is the corollary of a completely free society in which private property is inviolable. The economy of such a society, Hülsmann tells us, may then be called a "free market," which would likely harbor a variety of natural monies. With this understanding, the claim that the culprit of the current crisis is the free market puts its proponents in the awkward position of having to show causality from something that doesn't exist. Full Article

A Juggernaut of Destruction
February 20, 2009

With the world’s economies run by monopoly printing presses, there is a serious disconnect with reality. Someone very important needs $30 billion to stay afloat? Will it to happen, and it is done. A bunch of very important entities need 20 times that figure, or even more? All it takes is more will. No one has to dig it out of the ground.

Money, which once had real value whose supply could not be changed on command, can be created in any amount by state appointees. This is inflation. It has ruined other countries. It is a juggernaut of destruction. It is what the administration is counting on to save us. Full Article

Hamilton's Counterfeit Capitalism
December 16, 2008

When history confirms that hands-off is the only effective and humane approach to a bust, and to prosperity generally, while hands-on brings ruination, why do governments today consider every option but free markets? Look back to the founding and the baneful influence of Alexander Hamilton. His influence has been highly detrimental to the majority who live outside the rarefied reality of national politics.
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In my proposed game, a player could have the option of paying rent to the bank in return for future undisclosed favors. If a player subsequently finds himself threatened with bankruptcy by landing on a property with hotels, he could draw a card to see if his past rent payments have earned him the status of “too big to fail.” Also, if a player wanted to put 7,000,000 hotels on a piece of property in a fit of irrational exuberance, the bank should have the option of providing cheap credit to cover the investment. And if another player should be so unfortunate as to land on a property with 7,000,000 hotels, the bank should once again be available to intervene in the public interest by bailing out the player. Full Article

There may be as many different preferences for president as there are voters, but only one person will win. Voters who prefer someone else or non-voters who prefer no one at all must endure the election results -- for years. If the political methodology were imported to the market, everyone in the country would end up wearing one size, style, and brand of shoes, even if their choice was to go without them. Full Article

Government has tried countless ways to sustain its Fed-induced booms and avoid the painful but necessary corrections. Its track record has been an unmitigated disaster, unless inflating the economy out of a crisis for a bigger one later is regarded as success. Yet the idea persists that intervention works, that if a mountain of facts show otherwise it’s always possible the intervention was too little, too late.

From the Establishment’s perspective, the fatal flaw of Austrian economics is the job it accords government, which is none at all. But free markets are markets free from intervention, which means today’s government not only has a job, but a crucial one: It should bow out of our economic lives altogether. That’s the “something” government should do. Full Article

Everything possible is done to prevent the fraud of the monetary system from being exposed to the masses who suffer from it. ~ Rep. Ron Paul, TX, before the U.S. House of Representatives, February 15, 2006

The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. ~ Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, 1953

The quotes from Paul and Mises are political heresy, yet they hint at why government crises have long dominated the headlines. Why doesn’t the public understand this? Libertarians often observe that government doesn’t work, but clearly, it does some things right or those statements would be conventional knowledge. Put another way, why is the idea of sound money so foreign to most people? Why do they trust the state’s inflatable notes and the inflationist in charge of them, then wonder why the economy blows up? Given its record, why do they trust the state at all?

Year in and year out, government schools produce students who either (a) could care less about monetary issues, or (b) have state-approved ideas of them. Government crop management weeds out potential trouble-makers. Full Article

Winston Churchill once said that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. A conversation with just about any voter would work as well. Hans-Hermann Hoppe points out that democracy promotes “the ‘infantilization’ of society,” resulting in “continually increased taxes, paper money and paper money inflation, an unending flood of legislation, and a steadily growing ‘public’ debt.”
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Less than three months from now either Obama or McCain will be the president-elect. Should we be concerned? Not whatsoever. Here’s why: Full Article

From what I can gather, Hackworth and Paine had this much in common: They saw the world with their own eyes. They were surely wrong about some things, perhaps many things, but their loyalty to reality was seldom breached. Their gods were facts and logical argument, not authority. Full Article

Anyone who publicly calls for the abolition of the Fed gets my attention. Add to his resume the fact that he rode a motorcycle across China once, circled the planet on the ground twice (the second time with his beautiful bride), ran the New York City marathon three times, and is one of the world’s most successful investors as well as a best-selling author, and I’ll sit and take notes.

I did my note-taking while reading Jim Rogers’s book, Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip...full article

After Lexington and Concord, Congress had a war on their hands and needed a way to finance it. The Americans were in large measure tax rebels, so taxation of their own would have to wait. After giving some thought to borrowing, Congress decided instead to call upon their old friend, the printing press.

The colonists had a long history with paper money. They had been inflating since the 1690s and had all but driven silver specie out of circulation.
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The gold standard, Ludwig von Mises wrote, “requires nothing else than that the government abstain from deliberately sabotaging it.” [p. 421] Much to the detriment of civilization, governments have undermined and debased the gold standard throughout much of history. With the aid of a state-sympathetic class of intellectuals, most educated people now regard monetary gold as a quaint contrivance of a bygone age--to the extent they give the issue any thought at all. Any suggestion that we adopt an authentic gold standard as a permanent solution to financial crises, dollar depreciation, and senseless wars is dismissed by the intelligentsia as hopelessly naive. Full Article

Thomas Paine made the case for freedom in 1776, and ten years later made the case for freedom’s money, gold and silver. [1] If we had followed his advice on the latter, we would still possess a good measure of the former. Full Article

Ron Paul not only believes in the power of freedom, he is the only candidate I’ve heard explicitly oppose the philosophy of statism. And if we can go by a man’s record, we have to believe he means it. To get us moving in the right direction, he offers a few recommendations...Full Review

No one has ever died from inflation directly, yet it constitutes a serious threat to our existence. By “inflation” I mean a policy of increasing the money supply, the root cause of the booms that inevitably go bust. Using this traditional idea of inflation--which, it should be mentioned, is regarded as contrived by most economists today--in what sense can it be considered so dangerous?

In testimony last week, Ben Bernanke told Ron Paul that the government created the Federal Reserve in 1913 to stop the “periodic financial crises” that erupted in the 19th Century and again in 1907. Bernanke, evidently, was counting on Paul holding the accepted view of the Fed’s origins, the one untainted by Wall Street-government conspiracy -- not the view meticulously presented in the works of Kolko, Rothbard, and Griffin, among others.
Full Article.

“The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the

United States

, provides the nation with a safe, flexible, and stable monetary and financial system.” ~ Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Like an interminable soap opera, pundits continue to bring forth scenarios of impending economic disaster. Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, for instance, discusses in detail Professor Nouriel Roubini’s Twelve Steps to Financial Disaster, of how we have reached unsustainable levels of debt, and that bankruptcies, defaults, a collapse of stock prices, and “a drying-up of liquidity” are heading straight at us. Full Article

Candidate Ron Paul understands inflation as the creation of money out of thin air. While this view depicts a disturbing state of affairs and has a distinguished history, it is not in the least popular. For one thing, it tends to incriminate the money creators.

If inflation is defined as price increases, by coincidence the guilt falls on those who raise prices. Full Article

Imagine for a moment the dark days of banking when banks had to redeem gold coin for the money substitutes they issued, which were either bank notes or deposit accounts. Folks were generally happy to keep their gold locked up in a safe place and found it more convenient to use the substitutes. Very importantly, most of them were also either stockholders of the bank or in debt to it {pdf, p. 82), so they had little incentive to confront the bank for redemption. But this very fact enticed banks to create substitutes well beyond the amount of gold they held in their vaults, a practice considered normal and not the least fraudulent. Full Article

Pens for Hire, Cheap January 6, 2010

The Virtue of Hoarding

How Much Money Do We Need? September 19, 2009

One Man in a Million

Meltdown's Monetary Heresy