Consumers in our modern market economy primarily use government fiat debt-based currency. Historically and currently, these currencies are inflated and debased by central bankers. Quite possibly THE key factor to understand is the concept of interest rates, and the “real” interest rate I will introduce in this article. FULL ARTICLE

A dramatic lowering of interest rates and massive government spending cannot improve the bottom line of the economy (the individual’s ability to produce more and better-quality goods). Such policies can only redistribute real wealth from wealth producers to wealth consumers. FULL ARTICLE

America is more than a country; it is the ideal of liberty. In economic terms, liberty translates into the entrepreneurial spirit of hard work, risk taking and self-reliance. And this spirit has made America rich beyond compare.

Unfortunately, over the past four decades, much has been undone.

Under the guise of a new, “social” justice, political leaders have turned our native ethics upside down. Profit-taking is now seen as gouging; success is greed; businessmen are predators. This creeping socialist transformation of our culture has finally broken the back of the American economy. FULL ARTICLE

It’s all part of the war on depression, which is destined to be as successful as the war on drugs. But, hey, if it is a good investment, why not buy bailout bonds? Well, there’s a problem. The bonds represent credit extended to companies and projects that are proven market failures. Creating these bonds is a way of institutionalizing the principle of buying low and selling lower. FULL ARTICLE

Certainly I’m not wildly optimistic but embrace what Shaun Chamberlain, author of “The Transition Timeline“, calls dark optimism, that is, being “unashamedly positive about what kind of a world humanity could create, and unashamedly realistic about how far we are from creating it today.”  FULL ARTICLE

July 24, 1998, was an epic day for the global financial system. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan stood before Congress’s Banking and Financial Services and testified. This article and the next part will focus on these two testimony excerpts concerning derivative regulation and the gold market. FULL ARTICLE

Government does not have any money of its own. It only has what it takes from the rest of us. If individuals repay their debts, but their government takes on additional debt, we are all simply swimming against the tide FULL ARTICLE

Rightly, the students of Austrian Economics have laid the blame for the current economic crisis squarely on the doorstep of the Keynesian policies of governments and central banks. However, in this case, there are other culprits involved, most notably the former titans of financial services. FULL ARTICLE

Despite Congressman Barney Frank’s blubbering insistence that our nation’s current financial mess is a “new phenomena,” today’s “housing/credit/confidence crisis” is anything but. Our ancestors had already seen all the broken dreams and ignorant greed surfing high on a wave of paper money and hollow credit – more than once before. The America of 1819 and the financial panic its citizens experienced was only the first of what is America’s true national pastime: speculative mania. FULL ARTICLE

It’s bad enough when so-called economists serve up the same Keynesian nonsense that has led us down the current cul-de-sac in the first place. At least those people have some incidental knowledge, however deeply flawed, of basic economic concepts. It’s far worse when political pundits, whose understanding of economics typically comes from Treasury Department talking points, hold forth as if they really know what is going on. FULL ARTICLE