One of the best reads on Keynesianism vs The Austrian School of Economics, Slavery vs Liberty, Fiat paper vs Real Money, that I’ve come across in a long time: http://www.goldensextant.com/RKLSage.html#anchor1404
Here are some quotes from the article:
And so we come to the second question: how do we get out of this mess?
The short answer is, we don’t. There is no saving the dollar or the monetary system now based upon it.
In the meantime, what keeps the current system going?
You do. You, meaning foreign investors, still lend us your savings. This just enables us to prolong the process, defer the resolution, and increase its ultimate cost.
When will it end? Whenever you cut us off. At some point, foreign holders will sell our debt in earnest, and buy gold with a conviction resembling panic.
And so, finally, I come to gold. This is, after all, a gold conference. Why then do I talk so much about politics?
Because I think it’s impossible to understand gold without understanding its political dimension. Gold is permanent, natural money, the antithesis of money made from nothing, money backed by force alone. It is a potent symbol of private property; of voluntary exchange taking place outside the control of the state; of limits on state power; and of resistance to the runaway state.
Left to its own devices, gold is the ultimate barometer of public confidence in government. It is also the ultimate means for ordinary citizens to opt-out of an oppressive, fraudulent system.
That is why gangsters who wield power in the name of the “people” always make ownership of gold a crime. So it was in France during the Revolution, in Germany during the Nazi era, in Russia during the Soviet era, in China during Mao’s rule, and in the United States from 1933 through 1974. It is why, even during periods when the ownership of gold is not outlawed, its price is ‘governed’, as one commentator puts it, or officially manipulated, as others of us put it.
It’s often hard for practical men of affairs to understand the vehemence of those of us who assert, seemingly ad nauseam, that gold is money. The truth is, our passion has more to do with the concept of liberty than with that of money. We know from history and experience that once the free market has lost control over the definition and creation of money, individuals have lost their liberty.
That’s why neither a central bank nor fiat money find support in the Constitution of the United States, and why our monetary system, which has these two elements as its very foundation, is unconstitutional on its face.
On Media:
We are beset by propaganda, falsehood and spin from all sides. Truth is of no consequence; the Fed has bought and paid for virtually the entire economics profession in the United States.
Our universities are riddled with apparatchiks who at the very least must toe the party line to advance in their careers, and in many cases are directly dependent on Fed largesse.
The financial press, now concentrated in ever fewer hands, is captive to the same false dogma, and is little more than an apologist for the current monetary regime.
An finaly, the author pin-points the very perpose of this blog:
We desperately need credible new sources of information on money if we are going to have any shot at a sustainable regeneration.
And… today Gold hit a new all-time-high of 1.171 USD/Oz. Again:
…gold is the ultimate barometer of public confidence in government. It is also the ultimate means for ordinary citizens to opt-out of an oppressive, fraudulent system.
