Oct 21, 2011
I've put up with the Anti-American crowd for about as long as I care to. The leftists, the anarchists, the gold bugs, and the libertarian extreme right have launched an assault against this country’s institutions and policies. I have been very vocal against the present monetary system and the economic direction we are headed. However, what is now being advocated is not a measured return to free market capitalism, but a way to tear it down.
The divergent groups identified above spend most of their energies pointing out only the flaws of the United States. I have no problem with pointing out flaws, I do it myself. But good men who advocate free market capitalism are routinely being vilified by the new propagandists as a “cabal” of greedy "banksters.”
Best I can ascertain the school of thought being propagated today emanated from France around the 1950's. It came to the US and evolved via the internet in the eighties before invading the blogosphere over the last fifteen years. It is now espoused by thousands of Americans, and even though it disguises itself at times as pure capitalism, it is basically Euro-Statism. This has led to its being united with the anarchist movement. Both the statists and the anarchists want to either bring down the American government and the economy, or change it dramatically with no regard for the consequences to innocent victims of their philosophy.
I remember reading some of the words of George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party, while I was growing up. He was an extremely articulate speaker and writer. He propagated the myth that the Jews were in charge of the world banking system. I also remember the John Birch Society, a hard money conservative right-wing group who insisted on the existence of "the tri-lateral society,” a very similar cabal who sought to take over the world through high finance. And again while in London, I ran up against the communist rhetoric being taught officially at the London School of Economics including the idea that a fair society is one that follows the golden rule of Karl Marx: From each of ability to each of need.
On October 16, 2011 Fox News reported on their hour-long news program that the communist and socialist parties of America were urging their members to get involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. But an even more revealing communication came from the American Nazi Party, which posted the following on its official website:
Seriously people, just WHO is our enemy? The unemployed left-wing 25-year-old holding up a sign, OR the judeo-capitalist banksters who swindled the American taxpayers out of A TRILLION dollars in the “bailout” scam…
These groups too are part of the new propaganda movement. Terms like "cabal" and "banksters" are anti-Semitic code words used to inflame readers against the banking and economic interests in our society. The intent regardless of who is saying it is to help bring the economic system down.
From the Rothschilds, to Milton Freidman, to Greenspan and Bernanke, these anti-Semitic bloggers aim to make these men enemies of the state—and have succeeded to a great extent. Thousands of bloggers have used the internet to disseminate this hateful propaganda.
Who is writing these articles being sent out en masse? Some of the intellectuals are professors that accept and teach this point of view on America. Some are business professionals who write as a hobby. They are pseudo-intellectual bloggers and hard money statists that would like nothing more than to see America fail. Some are accountants, stock brokers, political analysts, and the like. They are well read—and they are at war with America. Their philosophy is that self-interest is bad, and regulation of it is good. It is Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx.
The irony of today is that libertarians are siding with the statists, along with hard money gold bugs and conservatives. For those of you who constantly receive emails and articles from this gang of intellectuals you will notice that the one thing they all have in common are the terms “banksters, cabal, manipulation, and conspiracy.” If you do not “understand” the American corruption they speak of you are one of the "sheeple" ignorant of economic and political matters. And if there is an intellectual leader of this movement today, it is George Soros.
Soros indirectly communicates with 330 million people through his 180 media outlets. In fact, he is on a hiring binge looking for even more writers to combat his arch enemy Fox News and other conservative press. To read more about George Soros and his media empire, which he denies having, click here. When Soros is referred to by the mainstream press it is usually as a kind of folk hero or a financial "wizard.” What is never reported on is that he finances a multitude of anti-capitalist groups. Instead the media and his supporters assure us he is “mainstream.”
The fact that he wants the IMF to take over monetary policy, have it run by unelected officials, and issue huge amounts of SDRs to replace the dollar as reserve currency is also rarely mentioned. Nor that he was the number one backer of Barack Obama and a very important factor in Obama winning the Presidency. Bloggers who attack the “rich” speculators, bankers, and Wall St. firms fail to include George Soros in these attacks, even though he is a hedge fund manager, a speculator, and a billionaire, who is spending millions (perhaps billions) on Anti-American propaganda. During the march on millionaire’s homes last week down 5th Ave. in Manhattan, protesters passed by George Soros’s home without a whisper.
Even the extreme right members of this pseudo-intellectual crowd are silent about Soros. They also leave out mention of Paul Krugman, one of the most influential economists of our day. He wants to double the amount of government programs and spending to “stimulate” the economy. He wants more deficit spending and higher taxes on the productive. He is the foremost Keynesian economist out there today. Why is it I never receive articles from libertarians, or anyone for that matter, slamming this man's views? Unimportant, I guess. What is important apparently is to disgrace Alan Greenspan. I get emails about him from the left and the right all the time.
Where are the weekly articles trashing Obama? I get a number of anti-Obama joke emails, but rarely a real article about his philosophy or policies. He has totally screwed up our economy yet I have not received one article condemning him. How about Nancy Pelosi, who just said that more unemployment insurance and more food stamps will somehow reduce unemployment? Where is the outrage from the gold bugs or the libertarians about her? Or Harry Reid, who just said that, “It’s very clear that private sector jobs are doing just fine,” that it’s “the public sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers.” Where is the article pointing out that there were over six million people unemployed in the private sector since the recession and only a couple hundred thousand unemployed in the public sector? And to add to this that wages in the public sector have gone up as wages in the private sector have gone down. Not a single article about any of this. Yet a continuous stream of articles keeps coming about the rich, the banksters, and the manipulators.
No, the only person mentioned in the articles I receive is Alan Greenspan. Why? Is he worse or more dangerous than the people I've mentioned? Yes he is. He is an avowed laissez-faire capitalist. And he is not a follower. He is an independent thinker. He repeatedly disagrees with both liberals and conservatives. That makes him dangerous. He is for deregulated markets. That he is against all fraud and wants even stricter laws and regulations that punish the fraudulent is never mentioned. He is a follower of Ayn Rand, so he must be dangerous say many religious conservatives. And he had a working relationship with Larry Summers, who is dangerous, and Robert Rubin, who is dangerous according to the cabal conspiracy theorists.
Greenspan is a key member of the "CABAL" who together in secret work against the interest of society. According to the new propagandists, he is one of the real criminals in our society. Again nothing about Soros, he gets a pass. The fact that under the so-called cabal’s stewardship the economy boomed, a technological revolution took place, the dollar soared and gold remained stable for twenty years as inflation rates came down with interest rates, and unemployment fell to only 4.5% (its lowest in history), has no meaning whatsoever to these people. Instead they spend all of their time trying to explain away the greatest decades in American history as a trick made possible only through corruption and the manipulating of Americans. Busy devising conspiracy theories to "prove" their case; they spend their days rewriting history to their liking.
In their rewrite they claim the Fed increased the money supply in order to lower interest rates and that was what created the housing boom which subsequently caused the financial crisis of 2007-2008. According to them, “Everyone knows this to be true.” I suggest anyone who actually believes this goes directly to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Board's home page and take a look at the money supply figures for yourself. Try and verify what they are saying. There is absolutely no evidence that this was the case. The money supply fell from 9% in 2002 to 6% in 2003 to 4% in 2004 to 3% in 2005. These were the real estate boom years. Yet everyone knows that the Fed manipulated the money supply to cause interest rates to fall and created an artificial boom in the real estate market? Very clever these propagandists…but I highly recommend you click HERE to read what Milton Friedman has to say about Alan Greenspan’s remarkable performance in his eighteen years as Fed Chairman.
Do they write anything about Soros, Krugman, Obama, Reid, or Pelosi? Not on your life! It is always Greenspan, or Bush, or Bernanke, or America, or the "system,” or the "cabal,” or the "banksters” that are the target. And we the “sheeple” are their targets too.
It’s the banksters that control our lives and are responsible for the state of the world. And not world banksters, but American banksters! Take back control of the banks and we will be free and secure! It is the cabal that manipulates us! Eliminate their power and replace it with government regulators and we will finally have stability and fairness. Get rid of the Federal Reserve and let the IMF take over the world currencies and the evil USA won’t be allowed to cheat people any longer. Regulate Wall Street "crooks" and greedy businessmen and we will have utopia. Tax the rich and we will all be better off. After all, it is only redistributing the nation’s wealth that will create true equality! Marx would be proud.
I know propaganda when I see it. Most newcomers to this Anti-American assault have never taken a class on economics or read an economics textbook in their life. They are victims and have no idea they are being duped. Educated by the very clever propagandists, these students soon count their teachers as "the experts.” To these economics novices the world is the world of “facts” as told to them by these bloggers. To better understand this click here to read my recent article An Unobstructed View of Reality.
Some become "true believers,” who even as they claim to support free enterprise and freedom advocate the regulation of it—and worse—advocate for its collapse as necessary and inevitable. I have been told many times that there is no solution to our economic problems and that collapse is the only realistic outcome. The fact is that the new propagandists do not want people looking for solutions. They truly believe that collapse will lead to freedom when in reality it will only lead to little dictators popping up all over the world and assuming power. The result will be less freedom and less prosperity for all. They are an army dedicated to seeing the fall of the fiat system and with it the banking system of the world. Libertarians, anarchists, leftists, and gold bugs are among the most avid proponents of seeing the “system” brought down.
Despite having written a book on moving away from our fiat standard toward a gold standard, and personally criticizing the Fed for years; I am appalled at the way the right-wing of this country totally evades monetary policy. Almost every Republican candidate blames Greenspan and Bernanke for our problems except for Herman Cain. Herman Cain was Chairman of the Federal Reserve of Kansas City in 1995-96, he is the only candidate with real monetary experience in both theory and practice, and the only one who praises Greenspan and Bernanke. If nothing else this is testimony to how far the propaganda has penetrated the mainstream when conservatives and libertarians make those that advocate free market capitalism the villains of our society.
While you can cite hundreds of articles that accuse both Chairmen of creating our problems, articles which contain no verifiable proof, have you ever seen even one such article defending them? I too criticize monetary policy, but I also complement it when it is correct. Today's monetary critics have only their bias to guide them. They have dangerously little knowledge on what is right and wrong when it comes to policy. And that leaves them only able to condemn. That is what the public have learned from the propagandists too, to see the “solution” not in terms of reform, but tearing everything down.
How good are these propagandists at what they do? Well, when you realize that what they primarily do is confuse people, they are very good at that. Good enough that their efforts are even making many on the right jump ship. George Soros, who financially supports major left-wing organizations such as movingon.org, and as we saw recently with the Cap and Trade bill is powerful enough to put his own legislative agenda before Congress, is now being referred to by libertarians and gold bugs (if they mention him) only as a shrewd investor. Soros was the number one contributor to Barak Obama’s campaign and helped him defeat Hillary Clinton—a major feet. He backs NPR, a left leaning news network that pushed for the firing of Juan Williams after he went on Fox News, a right leaning news network, and spoke his mind. Soros is going to war with Fox News Network as we speak. And yet, not one mention of Soros’s dirty work? How can these Americans accuse Alan Greenspan of being a part of a secret cabal but fail to mention all the unseen strings Soros is pulling (behind closed doors and surreptitiously) to push his global socialist agenda?
Let's break this down. One man wants complete control and regulation, and the other man does not. Which should we go after? Why the pro-capitalist of course! And what will be the result? We will have even more regulation, ever greater government control, more regulators; all part of more and bigger government. Notice that the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith is never attacked outright? But anyone today who advocates such a "dangerous" concept as deregulation is. The new propagandists have won the war over regulation. And you’d think they got what they were after—we now have thousands of new regulators and regulations entering our lives. But it is never enough, and now thousands of their disciples are in the streets demanding even more regulation and calling for the outright distribution of wealth.
Further, I want to point out that those predicting nothing but doom and gloom in America’s future give very little weight to such things as America's freedom, mobility, property right protections, innovation and our inventiveness. And they give zero weight to our heritage, the thinkers that exist here, the work ethic we embody, and the institutions and systems that we have developed over the years.
What do they give weight to when making their perma-bear forecasts? They see a crack in the foundation so they predict complete ruin. They see a flaw in the system and they extrapolate it immediately into the worst case scenario. And when they hear possible solutions to the problems they brush them aside as "unrealistic.” It is testament to their mentality as America bashers that after fifty years of their predicting a terrible financial crisis, we finally have one of the worst in a century, and they go right back to predicting an even worse one being on the way.
Those who are permanently bearish on America will never accept or admit prosperity even when they see it with their own eyes, nor will they stop predicting ever worse times ahead. Their job is to always preach the downside of America to America. They see it as their job to identify every negative they can imagine as a possible scenario. Then they throw it against the wall and hope some of it sticks so that they can be credited as being right. Know these people when you see them. Then remember, it is only positives that create. Tearing things down is the opposite of creating something. Real change for the better comes from constructive discourse that results in solutions. But, you can count out the doom and gloom shouters when it comes to offering creative solutions. That is not their mission in life.
Where the statists and the pro-capitalist perma-bears meet is on the point that America must fall apart before it can be reborn. The pro-capitalists in this camp tell us there are no solutions and that we must collapse because of what we did, and the statists tell us we will collapse because of who we are. Both agree on the future. The statists intend to pick up the pieces and use the money they have stolen to turn us into a government-run economy, and the pro-capitalists doomsters believe that true freedom will naturally blossom from the midst of the ruin. Tell me now who the unrealistic party to this unholy alliance is?
Finally, I want to say that the actual America bashers know exactly what they are doing. And that often those who follow them do not. They have been brainwashed by half-truths that they accept with falsehoods they never even attempted to verify. But the bashers don’t mind one bit that their followers are ignorant of this. They use the followers as mouthpieces to blame others and shout out every negative. They undermine and underplay every positive and let their legion of "protectors" do the dirty work. Now all the propagandists have to do is use the power of the mobs in the streets to topple things in hopes that the government will take total control over the individual.
Fortunately they will fail. The followers will eventually realize that being down on America is futile. America will survive very well in the future. And just as the anti-Iraq crowd became very quiet after we won that war, and eventually faded away, the anti-prosperity, hate-the-rich crowd will fade away in the light of a new day yet to come.
I am very proud to be, as I always have been, a part of the crowd that proposes constructive policies, rather than a part of the crowd that day after day, week after week, tells us how doomed, corrupt, and stupid we are as a nation.
A massive re-write of history is taking place with nary a peep from the left, the right, or the mass media. The propagandists are clever and they are insidious. I leave you with this blatant example of how far they have penetrated and changed our thoughts as a people…
How many of you agree that the government bailed out the banks? I would imagine most. Yet it is completely untrue. The Fed and the Treasury provided funds (in most cases unsolicited and unwanted) to provide capital to the banks so as to prevent a run on them. They did it to protect against a total break down of the monetary system nationally and internationally. If they had not taken such action, if they had done nothing, we would not be talking about this today. We would be talking about who is to blame for not taking action to prevent the meltdown of the monetary system. Of course the Fed and the Treasury and the “banksters” would still be to blame just as they are today, even though they prevented a meltdown.
Most of the money banks received from taxpayers has been paid back. So far the money, which the banks never requested in the first place, has netted the government and the taxpayer thirteen billion dollars in interest earned on these bridge loans. That is not a “bailout.” Further, almost all management of these institutions were fired and replaced. You won’t hear this from the left, the right, or the press. But it is simple fact that requires no more than a quick Wiki search to understand:
Troubled Asset Relief Program
From Wikipedia (View original Wikipedia Article) Last modified on 19 October 2011, at 08:07
This article is about the Treasury fund. For the legislative bill and subsequent law, see Public Law 110-343. For the legislative history and the events leading to the law, see Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. (Italics mine. all debts have since the publication of this piece have been paid in full.)
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008. It was a component of the government's measures in 2008 to address the subprime mortgage crisis.
Originally expected to cost the U.S. taxpayers as much as $300 billion,[1] by December 16, 2010, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the total cost would be $19 billion,[2] although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner argued that the final cost would be still lower.[3] This is significantly less than the taxpayers' cost of the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s. The cost of that crisis amounted to 3.2 percent of GDP during the Reagan/Bush era, while the GDP percentage of the current crisis' cost is estimated at less than 1 percent.[4] While it was once feared the government would be holding companies like GM, AIG and Citigroup for several years, those companies are preparing to buy back the Treasury's stake and emerge from TARP within a year.[4] Of the $245 billion invested in U.S. banks, over $169 billion has been paid back, including $13.7 billion in dividends, interest and other income, along with $4 billion in warrant proceeds as of April 2010. AIG is considered "on track" to pay back $51 billion from divestitures of two units and another $32 billion in securities.[4] In March 2010, GM repaid more than $2 billion to the U.S. and Canadian governments and on April 21, GM announced the entire loan portion of the U.S. and Canadian governments' investments had been paid back in full, with interest, for a total of $8.1 billion.[5]
When people are this busy rewriting history to fit their “needs,” they don’t have time to read anything other than each other’s protest signs. Their chants, "End Wall Street!” and “NO MORE BAILOUTS!” just add to the mass confusion and ignorance about real economic policy. It also says a lot about how much trouble we are in intellectually as a country. And it shows up who the real “cabal” is, and just how pervasive their untruthful propaganda has become.
Paul Nathan
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