Money and Banking

Financial Post Letter

Fed to blame

Financial Post Published: Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Re: Does it Really Matter who is President?, William Watson, April 3

William Watson makes an excellent point that President George W. Bush “entered office more ideological and less interventionist than any of his recent predecessors,” but has ended up seeming to have abandoned the original perceptions, while also abandoning those that elected him because of those perceptions. Was he hamstrung and stymied by “constraints of … inherited structures and interests”? Well, maybe …

Firstly, I’ll be more blunt and call those inherited structures and interests exactly what they are: A deeply entrenched political bureaucracy which is the real power behind the throne, so to speak, ultimately bending elected officials to its manipulative commands. One could cut G.W. Bush some slack and recognize he has paid a price for not doing something to expose these powers behind the throne–and that price is the carefully crafted media image of a President flummoxed and out of his depth, becoming a figure of ridicule. After Mr. Bush is long gone, this entrenched bureaucracy will live on, and the same scene will replay over again with whoever is elected as the new President.

Mr. Bush has become any easy punching bag, easily vilified and Diane Francis points to the overly ambitious Eliot Spitzer traveling to Washington to make some easy political points by pointing his sanctimonious and hypocritical finger at him as being the cause of the current subprime meltdown. Whatever direct influence Bush may have had in that is questionable.

Statists like Mr. Spitzer demand more economic interference and financial regulation, while pretending that an unregulated financial market actually exists. This type of straw-man argument scores political points, even if the reality contradicts their assertions. No free financial market has existed in the United States since the creation of the Federal Reserve, when the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on Dec. 22, 1913.

A quasi-governmental agency that is deeply politically directed, since Fed governors must be politically approved. The Fed manipulates interest rates and regulates the money supply, fundamentally powerful state directed functions, and deleterious to all freedom.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words …

Since actions speak louder than words, the surest way to know the heart of a human being is to recognize and understand the actions of human beings in a proper context. Words may be just so much empty rhetoric used by hypocrites to deceive the gullible into believing their lies.

Observing the contorted facial expressions, primitive and hate filled, blindly following the exhortations of the religious leaders or Islamic “scholars”, tell more about the true nature of this followers of this ideology that the pious phraseology they espouse.

Attacking civilian targets that allegedly represent the decadent enemy of the religion, pretending their depravity is somehow morally justified because they are the true representatives of Islam, exposes the lie contained in their religious rhetoric.

Cheering the deaths of 3000 American civilians on 911 and passing out candy on the streets to celebrate this act of deliberate act of mass murder is just plain psychotic.

Somehow, those that profess to be pious religious and devout and observing Muslims, living within our Western cultures have not stepped forward to condemn these atrocities, but instead play word games and argue about observing the true meaning of the religion and attempt to vilify those that have known the religion from the inside, having been born into it.

Even more ridiculous is the attempt to portray Islam in a more favorable light by those that were not born into Islam, but converted to it later in life. More can be learned from these that have had the courage to walk out the door of the religion because they discovered the true primitive barbaric brutality with which it consumes the lives of those within it, and seeks to consume the lives of those outside of it because they are considered infidels.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul …

How did we get to the point in our supposedly civilized world where people – the citizens – of most countries actually expect politicians to provide a solution to their everyday problems?

Politicians promise solutions which require the creation of a government bureaucracy in order to “study” the issue and provide their “solution”. Inevitably the bureaucracy requires more people and more money to “solve the problem”.

The reciprocally reinforcing daisy-chain effect of politicians perceiving problems for which they just happen to have the solution, requiring expanded bureaucratic manpower, and pandering to those that actually believe that those two groups can solve any problem is one of the ironies of our age. They operate on the principle which George Bernard Shaw eloquently identified: “When robbing Peter to pay Paul, you can count on the support of Paul”.

Whatever one’s opinion of former American President Ronald Reagan is, he did have plenty of experience in both government and private enterprise. He knew that those that believed the promise employed in the phrase :”I’m here from the government and I’m here to help”, were suckers ready to be duped out of the most valued thing America had to offer – a recognition by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, that envisioned the primacy of life and the freedom to choose the way in which your life can be lived by enshrining constitutional rights of the individual and the limited power of the government to destroy those rights by imposing its power into the life of the individual.

Stumbling forward into a future in which citizens readily embrace the empty political promises, which are made with the implied promise that the government can and will solve personal problems, is mind-numbingly suicidal, unless slavery is seen as being preferable to freedom and personal responsibility.

The Eagles

Reproducing a sound in live performance which equals the studio produced sounds of a bands music is something musicians should strive to accomplish. When they do it is both remarkable and noteworthy.

Staying on the theme of eagles, such a group of musicians is The Eagles and their DVD, “Farewell Tour 1: Live From Melbourne” is a perfect example of this. The Eagles recorded a late 2004 live performance in Melbourne, Australia with a mix of the groups music from its early days in the 1970’s onward through the break-up and solo efforts of some members of the band, most notably Don Henley, Glen Frey and Joe Walsh to carry on after the break-up.

The group has changed over the years having to overcome internal conflicts which led to the break-up. The DVD and live performance gives each member of the group to contribute vocally as well as display a considerable versatility in creating a superb end product for which accolades are in order. With 30 cuts spanning the early hits to an introduction of a couple of new efforts The Eagles have captured a live performance which enhances the music with the magic of the atmosphere of existing in the venue between the group and the audience, a reciprocal love affair with the common connection of the music of the band.

Henley’s hits after of his early years with The Eagles, “The Boys of Summer” and “Dirty Laundry” are there along with the hits from the early years of the group, “The Long Run”, ”One of These Nights” and “Hotel California”. If you are a fan of The Eagles, or even if you are not, this live performance is a worthwhile performance, simply because of the phenomenon of capturing time and lightening in a bottle at the same time.

Eagles and Budgies

Eagles are seen as symbolic of the free spirit with which all human life has been born. Soaring high above the Earth and able to see farther from their exalted station, represent the opposite of the domesticated fowl or the caged pet budgie chirping at the sun but never able to soar above the Earth in the skies in the domain to the eagle.

Our world today, seeks to train budgies who will chirp on command the notes for which they have been trained. From cradle to grave the independent spirit is harnessed in the halls of the budgie trainers. Destroying the independent spirit and ability of the individual to be a responsible human being is the work of these statist creators of a “brave new world”, with subjects unable to think or act, unless by permission.

Eagles Soar

Leaders seek followers who will accept unquestioningly the commands of the leaders. Followers seek leaders who will provide them with a pre-digested formula that will replace the necessity for critical thought. The enemy of both leaders and followers is the independent thinker who embraces the obligation of life to understand the world and universe in which we live. Being neither a leader or a follower the independent thinker recognizes that objective truth exists independent of the individual perceiving it.

By recognizing their responsibility to understand the world and universe in which we live to the best of our ability, the independent thinker reaches a little further than his grasp. This gap is filled by expanding knowledge, and the independent thinker of curious mind should be eager to seize the opportunity to learn.

Being a visionary or a dreamer can be a fine line to tread since leaders always seek stirring images with which to arouse their robotic followers. An independent thinker is able to envision that which could be and ought to be, but operates on a different premise than a leader, since it is truth and reality that must be presented to the inquiring mind to further understanding or to create new products or ideas.

Freely trading value for value with those that desire the new product or idea, the collectivist state apparatus is not conducive to independent thinking free creators and free traders. Always, the power of the state hovers nearby to give permission or licence for a price to those that operate within its jurisdiction. The statist bureaucrat lives by sucking the life blood out of the independent creative thinkers and producers.