Article: Economic Reform Newsletter: The Biggest bailout in history just got bigger; The People vs. Geithner (lawsuit)

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Hello Fellow Economic Reformers!

It's been 2 months since the last Economic Reform Newsletter, and there is a lot to cover, both local and national. I expect the next newsletter will come out sooner.

Summary of highlights:
- The biggest bailout in history just got much bigger - $29 Trillion cumulatively, according to a new calculation by economist L. Randall Wray (Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City) and 2 of his Phd students.
- News from Common Ground-NYC
- A new lawsuit against Tim Geithner has been filed for fraudulently stating the false equivalency of U.S. Notes and Federal Reserve Notes, both on Treasury Website and in reports to Congress etc. The author of this Economic Reform Newsletter (ERN), that is, me, advised upon the history of the 14-series issued (http://www.ronscurrency.com/rctype.htm) Greenback (U.S. Notes) and supplied exhibit B, my petition for re-issuing the Greenback (click here).
- Libertarian Presidential candidate Bill Still says why returning the money creation power to the Federal Government and away from a private central bank MUST occur, both here an in Euroland, before true justice and reform can take place.
- CAFR reformer Walter Burien warns of a coming gold crash (Gold just entered an official bear market, down 20% from its recent highs).
- North Dakota may be snapping defeat from the jaws of victory with its plan to abolish all property taxes.
First, the local Common Ground-NYC member news...

A Victim of his Own Success

Jacob Shwartz-Lucas, a great guy and great student, whom I met when we both took Mason Gaffney's advanced class at the NY Henry George School last summer, and his friends from the same class, have gotten together with several dozen best and brightest Georgists to produce one super video on Land, how its value can fund community needs, and why it is just to do so - and it's entertaining to boot! However, Jacob is now drowning in comments on the Youtube page. He says:

I need your help! The youtube video page of How to End Poverty, teaser introducing the needed reform, is going crazy with comments. I can not attend to all of them. There are just too many. We have many potential converts here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=itO7OoKtNUc

This is a chance for all Georgists/Geoists and Economic Reformers to help clarify and expand on the lessons in this great little film. One thing we must do more of is help those who haven't yet "gotten it" to, well, get it . Not a day goes by when I don't comment, somewhere, on some aspect of Economic Reform, usually 2-4 times a day. If we all set a goal to comment on at least one economics article, the zeitgeist would soon tip in our favor. Occupy the comments section of your local newspaper, blog, websites and other media!

Funding Transportation from the Land

Long-time Georgist and Common Ground-NYC member, Bill Batt, testified at the transportation finance hearing in Albany recently.
Bill reminded them that:

The most equitable and efficient means of financing infrastructure is "Value Capture."

Value Capture taxes the added increment of value that results in the area benefiting from the infrastructure investment. It taxes it to pay off the bonds that were floated to finance the project.

The method is equitable because the value is created by the public and not by the titleholder to any parcel site. It also assures that the parcel site will be used to the full extent that its site value warrants. A titleholder is thereby induced by the added tax burden to develop his property parcel to the full extent that that its value warrants -- this in a way to recover his increased carrying costs.

The method is efficient because there is no excess burden or deadweight loss incurred. This is the lost productivity that otherwise arises when other means are employed to pay for the projects.

Read the rest here (click here), as well as some other great Georgist papers by someone who has been fighting the good Georgist fight for 3 decades. Georgists have some of the deepest benches of knowledge out there, and Bill has one that's long as well as deep.

Radio Daze

I too, had a chance to reach out, to a more general audience, talking about how the Occupy movement can benefit from Georgism here:
Renegade Economists 23.11.2011 - Scott Baker from Common Ground NY on what Occupy means.
http://pod.3cr.org.au/pod/3CRCast-2011-11-23-33653.mp3
I come on about halfway.
I continue to post to the Occupy forums, here (http://the99delegation.forumotion.com), here (click here) and here (http://www.nycga.net/groups/alternative-banking/). The sprawling plethora of Occupy sites - both physical and virtual - is both a strength and a weakness in that there's lots of opportunities to contribute, but too little coordination and building of a large consensus (the Alternative Banking group, for example, has nearly 300 members, which is great, but there are many other economic groups discussing the same things, and doing it without connecting to each other). One of the major split-off - The 99% Declaration - plans to have a delegation of one man and one woman from every Congressional District meet in Philadelphia this July 4.
They have 20 Declaration items of reform, but I disagree with number 8, to "reduce the debt" per se. As a Greenbacker, I left the following rejoinder:

"Preaching austerity for the 99% and profligacy for the 1% is a favorite tactic of the 1%, and only hurts the 99%.
We have had a fiat monetary system since Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971. That is a GOOD thing. What is a bad thing is routing virtually all the money to the 1%.
We must retake the Money Creation Power to "coin Money" (Art. 1 Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution). The way to escape debt is simply not to create it, by returning Congress to the power to make money, as the founders intended, as Lincoln first did (1862), and as we had -- albeit in too small amount -- until 1996, when Treasury falsely claimed, and still claims, that there is no difference between debt-free United States Notes and Federal Reserve Notes (stay tuned for news of a lawsuit filed for that reason against Tim Geithner real soon).
The power to create the money supply is one of the fundamental powers of any sovereign government. A Government that cannot create the currency, at least for its own needs, is no more sovereign than a government without a military or president.
We do NOT NEED TO BORROW OUR OWN MONEY!
Take this requirement out of the list, or many people will not join. This is Tea Party mantra, and we need to rise above their ignorance."
- Scott Baker
president, Common Ground-NYC, NY Coordinator, Public Banking Institute

Read the rest here: http://www.the-99-declaration.org/8-debt-reduction/

Let's see if we can get our reforms in there.
There's plenty to keep one Occupied...

What's Going Right at the Left Forum

I'll have more to say in the next newsletter, but Common Ground-NYC is working with other Georgists - from those "deep benches" again - to create a panel discussion at Pace University's annual Left Forum. The immensely popular Left Forum is concentrated into hundreds of panel presentations over 3 days. CGNYC hopes to sponsor 3 great speakers, plus a moderator, TBD, during March 16-18, but I can't say who yet. The tentative title will be "The fight against Obama's regressive taxes. tax monopolies and real estate, not employees and consumers." I'll know more for the next newsletter. Keep those days free though. The only difficulty is deciding which forums to attend. See more here: http://www.leftforum.org/

Bill Still still Running for President

Everyone should also check out this position video by Libertarian presidential candidate Bill Still ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gzbq-rZiIQ&feature=player_embedded ). It is well worth 16 minutes of your time:
Still is no ordinary Libertarian, and comes closest to being a Greenbacker Georgist (he's already a Greenbacker - I am trying to persuade him and his policy committee to adopt Land Value Taxation with a 2-page policy suggestion he suggested I write). Right now, Still wants to replace the byzantine income tax with a consumption tax. Still has also worked with State Banking advocate Ellen Brown, and at one point asked her to be his running mate; he supports State Banks as part of a general policy of decentralizing tax revenue management to the states and away from possibly non-people serving private banks. Unlike Greenbacker Stephen Zarlenga, Still does see a way to make both State Banks and Greenbacking work, as do I. This might answer some of the "central-planning" objections to the Kucinich N.E.E.D. Act, HR2990.

Still also has some pretty negative, but correct, things to say about Ron Paul too, who completely misreads the function of gold historically and currently, and in particular, the U.S. Constitution's Article 1, Section 10. As Still suggests in his video, Sec. 10 grants power to the States , not to the Federal Government, to pay debts in gold. This is a very different thing than being able to "coin Money" as in article 1, sec. 8 - a power granted exclusively to the federal government. Elsewhere, not in this video, Still makes the case, like Stephen Zarlenga and Ellen Brown, and Lincoln and FDR for that matter, that a gold-backed money system is deflationary , even depressionary, constraining the money supply to the virtually finite quantity of gold, not to mention supportive only of those who unproductively hoard the "barbarous relic."
By the way, Gold just entered a bear market (20% off its high) - so much for gold as a store of value.
Bill Still "joins" the Republican debate with his own videotaped responses (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjGTaXhpObM&feature=uploademail). What a difference!
"But I'd be wasting my vote on Bill Still!" you say. Well, which is a bigger waste of a vote - a vote for someone who will maintain the unsustainable status quo, or even impose worse solutions like a gold-backed currency, or a vote for a true reformer like Bill Still? Also, if you vote for a minor candidate that only gets a few percentage of the final vote, your individual vote will have had a much greater impact than if you are just one of millions who voted for the mainstream candidates.

Repeating Economic History

We are now entering a dangerous new phase in the Global Economic Upheaval.
That is not news.
However, it is worth reviewing history to see what happened the last time wealth inequity was so high, and economic injustice so great as to keep it that way.
For a boots-on-the-ground Georgist-oriented analysis of how one of the world's leading tyrants came to power, it's worth reading Australian Journalist Brono Heilig's account (1938) here: click here; Leaders like Hitler can only come to power in supportive environments. Heilig tells us:

There are, I know, a number of explanations, ranging from the failure of the Allied nations to implement their pledges in the Versailles Treaty, and their folly or guilt in thereafter pursuing illiberal policies, to the alleged innate militarism of the German people which only awaited another brand to set that spirit in flame. These ideas can be argued to Doomsday, unavailingly, if one takes no account of the social forces that were disrupting Germany from within; internal causes so potent that they deserve far more attention than most students of the German - and of the European - scene have chosen to give them....

SPECULATION IN LAND VALUES

Land speculators had a fantastic time, some doubling or trebling their fortunes overnight. While the common people toiled feverishly and proudly to build up the new Germany that should be the world's most advanced community, money poured into the pockets of those who gambled in land values.

The high rents for flats and premises in the new buildings reacted upon and forced up the rents in the old ones. During the war, rents had been fixed by law at the prewar level, and that law had remained in force during the whole period of the inflation. Suddenly the newspapers began an agitation that it was unjust to maintain the great difference between the rents in the new and in the old buildings, and this was so successful that an amended law permitted the proprietors of prewar buildings to raise rents up to 125 per cent of the prewar level. It was a generous gift. Already the proprietors had got rid of three-quarters of the burden of their mortgages, the valorization law passed after the inflation stipulating that they were responsible for only 25 per cent of the gold value of the bonds. Thus they were getting more than their full prewar rent in terms of gold marks and, in addition, quittance of 75 per cent of their mortgages.

.... The people had not only to pay this tribute to the land monopolists, they also had to finance the business, thanks to the strange policy of the representatives and the corporations of the cities and towns....

Germany, it seems to me, has provided a striking example supporting the theory that the private appropriation of the rent of land is the fundamental cause of industrial depression and of distress among those who labor in the production of wealth - the theory expounded by Henry George in his "Progress and Poverty," a theory that some professed teachers of social science have been strangely slow in accepting, whether from ignorance or prejudice is for them to say.

Heilig concludes:

Therefore also there can be no lasting peace even after the defeat of Nazism if the present economic structure of the civilized countries remains. The private appropriation of the rent of land is the deadly enemy of mankind.

This is as true today as it was then. You can read the rest here: click here; Then see if you can find any reason why the same result will NOT happen again. I couldn't.

North Dakota Wants to abolish Property Taxes

North Dakotans, already flush with cash from the the twin gushers of oil/Natural Gas and revenues from State Banking (the latter is a bigger contributor to state coffers than the former) , will vote on whether to eliminate ALL property taxes this summer:
(http://money.msn.com/saving-money-tips/post.aspx?post=556e1a5f-2b4f-448e-9213-a7ea328cba59 )

As the article points out, oil revenues are temporary - just ask Texas and Alaska - until the source runs out (perhaps sooner than people think as Natural Gas estimates are highly inflated (click here) by a self-serving and under-regulated industry). And banks, even State Banks, can and do make wrong bets on ever-rising land prices.
This is the wrong time to abandon the best tax of all: property, er, Land Value Taxes. A speculator class is forming in North Dakota. The bubble will follow, and no amount of oil revenues will stop it. The solution is to tax the land, not the producers.

Bank Led Economies Lead to Debt Slavery

Economist Michael Hudson has an excellently researched article showing how debt-slavery has led to societal collapse, from Roman times to our own, here: click here;
Like the article above, I couldn't find a reason why we won't go down the same way as Rome unless we change our ways. Ominously, Hudson warns us that the "solutions" to our self-imposed debt crisis comes only from the banking class that is only interested in getting paid back, not in social workability. He says they are encouraging a drift away form democracy(!) and towards austerity combined with appointed so-called technocrats, who will enforce the wishes of the Economic Hitmen (http://www.economichitman.com/)

Yet a bold new report, written by 2 PhD candidates under the supervision of University of Missouri economist L. Randall Wray comes out which forces a different conclusion as to the true nature of money upon us, claiming a full $29 Trillion cumulative was issued by the Federal Reserve, mainly to purchase Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) from member banks - 85% of it ! The full report my be found here ( http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2011/12/14/the-29-trillion-bail-out-a-resolution-and-conclusion/ ).
Now, again, this is cumulative , not outstanding at any one time - and the Fed itself has made a quick rejoinder (click here) to this and to a recently published Bloomberg article that quoted 7.7 Trillion (click here), also involving rollover loans. The Fed has stated that no more than 1.2 trillion was ever outstanding even in the depths of the crisis - this seems low, and may disregard many facilities mentioned in this report.

Whatever the true figure, if there was still any doubt about the Fed's ability to produce money at will under our fiat system, take a look at this new academic report, especially this paragraph on page 4:

"In an attempt to halt growing financial instability, the Fed ballooned its balance sheet from approximately $900 billion in September 2008 to over $2.8 trillion dollars as of today.
Figure 1 depicts the weekly composition of the asset side of the Fed's balance sheet from January 3, 2007 to November 10, 2011. As is clearly indicated in the graph, the Fed's response to events of that fateful autumn of 2008 resulted in an enlargement of its balance sheet from $905.6 billion in early September 2008 to $2,259 billion by the end of the year--an increase of almost 150 percent in just three months! This initial spike in the size of the Fed's balance sheet reflects the coming online of a host of unconventional LOLR programs, and depicts the extent to which the Fed intervened in financial markets. The graph also depicts the winding down of unconventional tools starting in early 2009. However, the decrease was of short duration, as the focus of the Fed shifted from liquidity provisioning to the purchase of long-term securities--which, as of November 10, 2011, comprise approximately 85 percent of the Fed's balance sheet.
Figure 2 shows the structure of Fed liabilities over the same period. Casual inspection of the graph indicates the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet was accomplished entirely through the issuance of reserve balances, creating liquidity for financial institutions."

Whatever the true amount, it is now as clear as it could possibly be that there is no such thing as a shortage of money in a fiat monetary system.
If the Fed can create an amount of money twice that of the American GDP at will in a matter of months, then so can Congress. Let's hope they only reissue a fraction of that amount in U.S. Notes, or we'll have rip-roaring inflation! Right now we only have asset inflation from this unprecedented infusion of money; i.e. the Fed pumping up the mortgage market - 85% of the Fed's balance sheet! - and indirectly into the commodity markets, inflating commodities (oil was $35/barrel in the winter of 2009, now it is close to $100, again. The oil traders are well into new margin accounts...for now). Very little of this FRB generosity has made its way to Main Street.
It's not hard to see why; what lender would want to bother with messy loans that take years or decades to repay, if they are repaid at all, when they can get a guaranteed profit from the spread in Treasuries, yielding 2-3%, vs. the near zero rate of borrowing by the member banks. And, of course, the worst of the Mortgage Backed Securities were generously bought from the banks already.
So, how long can the Fed keep this up?
Well, we got a partial answer in the last few weeks as the European Union's ECB used new funds to loan to banks, who then bought European country debt, often from the same countries where the funds originated! The snake is eating its own tail now. How long can that last?

Also remember, the Fed has resisted disclosing its actions mightily, even against Congress. It took a subpena by Sen. Bernie Sanders to uncover this, and yet, even Sanders seems to have missed the full magnitude of the Fed's actions worldwide (click here). Slightly less than half of this money went to America-based (albeit international in scope) banks.

So, why doesn't Congress pump, say, a couple of trillion into infrastructure, as the Greenbackers and the Kucinich bill, HR2990 recommends? Why don't they alleviate our taxes as they say must be done? Well, to do that would be to admit the whole monetary system is based on a complete fraud of scarcity , cooked up by the Money Power to benefit the 1%, and the politicians who service them. None of this debt , as Bill Still points out, is necessary. It's not unnecessary because we don't have needs, it is unnecessary because we don't need to create money form debt.

A Lawsuit Against Tim Geithner

I've been working in an advisory capacity with a dedicated Greenbacker who also knows his way around the court system on a lawsuit against Tim Geithner.
The petitioner alleges several falsehoods have been made on both the Treasury website, and in reports to Congress by Treasury under Geithner. Specifically:

To preserve this unearned draining of the nation's foreseeably game-changing accumulations of seigniorage tax, Geithner, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve systematically repudiate, belittle, ignore, and above all hide the unique and compelling advantages of United States notes. In particular, the Treasury website's (treasury.gov) "Legal Tender Complaint For Declaratory Relief Status" and "US Notes" pages thrice dismiss true United 1 States notes as obsolete since 1971, by the following direct and fundamental categorical falsehood:

United States Notes serve no function that is not already adequately served by Federal Reserve Notes.

Contrarily, Federal Reserve notes are incapable of serving the function that true United States notes serve in Johnson's petitions, of painlessly reducing the United States' debt held by the public. True United States notes, but not Federal Reserve notes, can adequately serve the functions of: (a) large, direct, prompt debt reduction; (b) interest-free financing; (c) precise economic tailoring ("helicoptering"); and (d) pay-as-you-go, collection-free, flat-tax funding.

In a supporting article for general consumption soon to be published on Op Ed News, Mr. Johnson states:

It's the Fed's account, not the taxpayer's account, that gains from the stoppage. One cannot blame the Fed for stopping the irritating $1 per coin payments to the taxpayer, for more coins than its banks can or could care to put in circulation. But one can blame the Fed for collaborating in the misrepresentation of taxpayer savings. By curtailing coin deliveries in this false fashion, it would seem the Fed has succeeded, for the foreseeable future, in burying the coin-swap question.

There are several references in the brief to GAO reports, which also drastically under-report savings by replacing Federal Reserve Notes with Coins, discounting the seigniorage face-value savings, and allowing the Treasury to swat aside such minor savings as stated by claiming the GAO wasn't being "holistic" enough in its findings (for example, people would rather carry paper money than coins. True, but people would rather not have the government accumulate hundreds of billions in debt they don't need to, without cutting services. What about that? Huh, huh?).

This is major news and a new assault on the Tower. Yes, of course the Government will attempt to dismiss, deflect and otherwise discourage the petitioner. He expects that and is ready for the appeals process. However, these are questions as to statements of fact, not opinion, and as such ought to be subject to judicial ruling.

The complaint may be found in its entirety here: http://tompainetoo.com/
My petition to re-issue United States Notes (click here) - already issued 14 times in our history (http://www.ronscurrency.com/rctype.htm#USN) may be found as exhibit B in the filing just now assigned a judge here (http://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/1:2011cv06684/249618/)

The website is a nice treasure-trove of historical and current articles on the history of the Greenback and its supporters, several taken from the Greenbacks heyday in the late nineteenth century. Henry George was, of course, a Greenbacker too. There's some debate as to whether contemporary Georgists should claim this part of George's beliefs as their own. I say they should, and I'm counting this action in the "win" column for Georgists, Common Ground-NYC, and for all of America.
Let's get behind this in any way we can.

What is the True Meaning of Money?

I have a problem with Wray (see above) and the other MMters like Warren Mosler (who founded the movement with his own book), and who is, significantly, a wealth manager and bond trader. They seem to want to claim that what everyone says is debt, is NOT debt, mostly because they believe we have a fiat money system in which the government controls the money supply. Well, as alert readers, and Still/Zarlenga/Brown know, the government does NOT control the money supply, no matter how many times Wray and Mosler tell the MMT group (and me personally) they do.

The Fed is much more an extension of the banks than it is of the government, and indeed, to the extent it has connection to the government at all, it is to coerce it to favor bank-freindly policies. That's not policy, as Still would put it, for "We the People."
Also, the MMTers seem to believe taxes are nothing more than a means to control inflation - raise taxes and lower inflation, lower them to encourage growth.
First of all, no one outside of MMT understands taxes in this odd way, not those who pass our laws to collect taxes, nor those who spend them, nor those who pay them.
Second of all, controlling the money supply is a much better way to control inflation.
Third, a Georgist tax would be a way of controlling speculation and hoarding and waste, not inflation/deflation, so not all taxes work the same way - this cannot be stressed often enough.
The MMTers seem, like CAFR Reform Theorist Walter Burien for slightly different reasons, to be aiming towards eliminating taxes altogether. This I cannot agree with - I wouldn't agree with it even if we actually had all the 10s of trillions Burien says we do and could institute a Tax Retirement Fund so no one would have to work anymore. If no one had to work anymore, everyone would become a singer, dancer or, gasp, blogger!

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Then we'd really see the cities crumble and the environment get fouled up. There are simply jobs that need to be done, which people won't do, unless they are paid to do them. I've held all sorts of jobs in my life - from busboy to I.T. Manager; I can't think of one I would do if I made the same amount of money, regardless.
I actually don't think we have that kind of money, and even if we did in the 184,000 CAFRS, it would soon lose its worth as the real economy deteriorated and we become Zimbabwe. Post-Columbus Spain tried something similar by relying on its loot of gold from the New World. They wound up losing both the New World and their place in the old one.
There's one other thing: money gets its legitimacy by its acceptability to pay taxes. If you eliminate taxes entirely, our currency could cease to exist - not good unless every other country does the same thing at once. Unlikely.

I have enough qualms with MMT that I wrote them in the margins of my digital version of Mosler's book, and will soon be sending it to him for his comments. He has answered me before, so I'm hoping he finds my criticism, as well as my positive reviews, constructive.

The Tarnish of Gold

I am forwarding Walter Burien's latest salvo, on the future of gold.
Burien is an ex-commodities trader and probably knows a thing or two about manipulated markets.
What if he's right?
We don't necessarily have to return to an official gold standard to find out, like Burien fears and Ron Paul suggests , to experience the effects of a crash; we just have to have a big market for gold, perhaps expanded via ETFs like the GLD, which often trade 1/7th of the daily volume in gold. Then, the commodity hoarders can unload their horde. Remember, gold, like any other natural commodity, is Land under classical economic terms (it is, like silver, a precious metal that cannot be created nor easily destroyed - it won't rust, chip or deteriorate), and can be accumulated and speculated upon just like actual land, then dumped on an unwary public. This may already be happening, as the collapse of gold seems to be occurring outside the general stock market. Is this the beginning of a rotation, or just part of a total selloff of all asset classes?

From: Walter Burien

Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 1:34 AM
Subject: SO YOU WANT A GOLD BACKED CURRENCY - THE 50-YEAR PLAN IS COMING TO A CLOSE..

CAFR1 NATIONAL POST

by Walter Burien - CAFR1.com
Thursday, 24-Nov-2011

People seem to forget that the dollar's barter exchange value has been circulated for decades and hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of products and commodities have changed hands through the use of dollars every decade. The fact that the dollar is "just" an exchange barter tool since 1963 has not changed.

Does anyone think the massive expansion of the economy would have taken place using gold as the barter tool over the same time period?

Individual's assets in 1955 were rather sparse and bare compared to the individual's assets today. Inflation has taken root over the last 20 years due to the spiral of run-away growth and the effect of greed and unethical oppertunity applied from and due to the boom periods where cash flowed as king and as time went by he who could cheat the other guy first walked with the kingdom of the booty. (within government expansion the before mentioned was done quite well)

The ethical and honest were pushed to the shadows to be ignored and the greedy opportunists walked with the booty and became the power base who now called the shots.

Per gold, what we are seeing at this time is the culmination of the "50 year plan" . People in general are not to bright. The public owns percentage wise very little gold. In 1963 / 64 when we went off the gold and silver standard, the 50 year plan began. The commercial banks; large international families; and a few countries started the focus and organized effort to buy all of the gold each and every year. Hundreds of tones per month as they manipulated to keep the price low.

Come 1999 they were very successful in their focus and plan. I would estimate their stockpile of gold increased by over 20,000 tons AND they did so right up until 2000 getting the gold at an average price of $134 to $175 per oz.

When looking at gold the parties mentioned above would own over 80% of the physical gold and the general population less than 10%. Independent commercial interests the rest.

Well, it does not matter if you own all the gold in the world, if you can not unload it in barter for other commodities or property the value is nil.

So, here we go with 2001 and the stage is set and the play begins. Circumstances are forced to create fear; the sky is falling; economic doom and gloom come 2008; the propaganda begins to condition many with Parrot sound-bite conditioning to belittle the dollar and "gold is what is needed as the barter tool with ever increasing fever".

Again, the general public is not to bright. Those commercial banks; large international families; and a few countries with gold hovering in the $1600 to $1800 per oz pricing are standing on a potential profit of over 1000%. They can not sell tens of thousands of tons of gold, the gold they own, that 90% of what is held by them on the open market or gold would plummet down to $10 per oz over-night, possibly to $5 per oz.

The volume of actual "physical" gold sales taking place at these levels over the last year is very light compared to what has been stockpiled by the cartel.

What you will see take place over the next two years is the promotion by the cartel to make the public believe "it is essential to have a gold backed currency". The parrots will be saturated with sound-bites to Parrot away screaming and demanding a gold backed currency. **International Circumstances will be created to bring the fear level to the brink.**

Then in 2014 or possibly 2013, the Powers-That-be, will say: We have heard your cries and we must in good consciousness yield to your demands, so here is your gold backed currency" Bait; Hooked; landed; and fried.

** Now the cartel will have the liquidity ** to unload what they have stockpiled for 50-years as the country obtains the physical gold to back the currency" 1000%+ profit locked in and the public now becomes the bag-holder.

After the conversion is complete and the horde unloaded, then the collapse in gold prices begins (2015-16), with the true and real collapse of the dollar now taking place backed by the quickly diminishing value of gold.

The 50-year plan is complete. The wealth transfer accomplished for the cartel, and the public will be screaming and looking at who to point the finger of blame upon.

The only one to blame in reality will be themselves for so easily being masterfully entertained by Bait; Hooked; landed; and fried.

Break the conditioning! Look at "who" owns all of the gold. That old adage: "He who owns all of the gold makes the rules" applies and believe me, you DO NOT WANT them making the rules.

But then suicide is on the rise now a day"

Sincerely,

Walter Burien -- CAFR1

EX Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) or 14 years (1978 - 1992) and commodity futures trader of 33 years.

Oh, and Burien would like us to ask any potential candidate to pledge to audit all the CAFRs they would be responsible for too.

Is China Facing a Housing Collapse?

Is it finally China's turn to crash from land speculation? Well, they have a speculative bubble as big as ours was, in percentage terms to GDP , so why not? True, they control the bank and can simply tell them to increase reserves and take other offsetting measures, but they can't repeal Natural Law.
China bubble a global concern click here

Occupy Theme Song?

OK, enough, time for a musical interlude. What? No, really. Have a listen to what could be the theme song for the Occupy movement (quarter million hits already):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiPgQV0YgWI&feature=related

Until next time, remember:
1. The Land belongs to all of us and those who use it should pay rent to the rest of us.
2. Money should exist in sufficient quantity to meet the productive capacity of the nation, and be created by a sovereign government.
3. De-centralize power wherever possible, and where it must be centralized, make it answerable to the People, the ultimate Board of Directors.

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