“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Alexander Hamilton was the exponent of close cooperation between government, banking, and business. Simplified, banks loaned money to the government which paid business to support it. The loans were paid back to the banks by taxing the "people of no particular importance." The result? The banks got richer, the businesses prospered, and the government gained power, but only through supporting the othe two sides of the triangle. The people got poorer and deeper in debt.

Hamilton said,

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."

and,

"In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will."

and,

"It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government."

And to the origins of Faux News, he said,

"It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic. "

Jefferson fought Hamiltonian fiscal policy with all his might. Jefferson lost, Hamilton won, and now we have Goldman Sachs, et al.

Kent Welton,
PublicCentralBank.com

this is an interesting point that you make. obviously, it comes down to semantics. however, i should point out that the entirely notion of a free-market misleading. there is always going to be an institutional economy regulating the behaviors of those who are participants even in a "free-market." the institution of property, for instance, is based upon cultural conventions that have been institutionalized in the juridical mechanisms that adjudicate disputes between private individuals. Further, laws concerning contractual agreements are predicated upon statutes defining who, how, and for what a contract can be agreed upon that is legally binding. in most states, for instance, no one under 18 can enter into a contractual agreement. even the institution of inheritance is based upon cultural conventions that have been institutionalized in our civil codes. I guess my point is that the idea of a free-market is chimerical, because there are always going to be fixtures belonging to the institutional economy. However, this does not impact your argument, because whether the optimal outcome would be actualized by you model of the free-market is an empirical question, which I would not dismiss.

There is no free market in America, and failure to achieve energy independence, then, cannot be blamed on it.

The market in this country is highly regulated, and is far closer to a corporatist – or possibly mercantilist – economy than a market economy.

thus, the blame should be put squarely on corporatism, which is the inevitable outcome of an over-centralized state.

Although my preference is free choice and voluntary exchange, I would far prefer even a localized syndicalist economy to the nearly fascist one we have in this country today.

You are right with your democracy critique and the position of the founding fathers. The problem is that with full democracy an ignorant and uninformed majority is easily manipulated by a few (the banking cartel, et al. in our case.)

Good luck in your run for Congress. Perhaps you, Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and others can finally effect a change.

Jan Getting