What to do about the coming depression

Great video from Stefan Molyneux:

The market doesn’t like the government’s plans for the economy

Yesterday, after Tomothy Geitner made the non-announcement of the “plans” for the stolen TARP funds,  the market sank almost 400 points, and gold rallied, up a about 30 bucks.

What does this tell us?

Yep, people have lost confidence in government having any kind of solution whatsoever.

The truth is, Geitner and Obama and the rest of the government have no idea what they are doing. They are just taking stabs in the dark as to how to “revive the economy”, when in reality, the only right thing to do is nothing at all!

Today, the market did not rally and gold did. We have an alarming situation at hand. The government bureaucrats keep saying they have to “act”, but acting is exactly what got us into this mess. Obama somehow thinks that the reason Japan was mired in a 16 year+ recession was because their government didn’t act! This is hillarious. The Japanese government ran their interest rates all the way down to zero- to no avail.

The problem here is much worse than Japan. While they could somewhat withstand government interfering in the economy nonsense, the U.S. is much more fragile. People are unemployed, not a lot of people have saved over the past decade, and our manufacturing base is dead. Our government’s plan to print more money to solve the problem is just like a heroin addict getting more heroin to “make things better”.

Money printing as the government is doing is prolonging this recession, and leading us right smack into the worst depression our country has ever faced.

The only way to protect yourself is by buying some gold or silver. Real money doesn’t ever “lose value”, and right now we are nearing the last days of being able to buy gold for less than $1000/oz. Silver is actually a better deal at $13 an ounce, but don’t count on that lasting more than another week or so either.

Pick up small amounts of gold and silver easily at goldmoney.com.

Keynesian vs. Austrian Economics

Ron Paul goes up against a handful of uninformed mainstream media pundits. His argument is simple but they try to cloud it with Keynesian nonsense.

Gold Rises, Dow Drops on Obama Inauguration Day

It’s a bad day if you are a a believer in the U.S. economy.

We’ve been hearing about an “Obama rally” coming in the stock market for weeks now. Apparently, Wall Street has already discounted any positive effect Obama could have on the stock market, and the dow is down well over 100 points today already on this day of cult-like worship of this new president.

Gold is also rallying today and up $15 at last check.

What’s going on?

January is typically an indicator of how the stock market will do over the course of the year. Many experts predicted a market rally in Q1 of 2009 just on expectations that the “change” many have been sold on will actually improve the economy.

The developments in the market today are ominous. There is literally nothing positive to look forward to over the next 4 years in the macro economy. We have more of the same, destruction of the dollar, and bye bye economy.

The best thing you can do is hide your assets and buy gold. Goldmoney.com is a good place to go, or buying physical gold and silver if you can find it. Pay attention to your own micro-economy and try not to focus on the nonsense going on in Washington D.C.

Obama and the Decline of Self Ownership in America

I’ve discussed Obama with many Obamamaniacs over the past few month, and I’ve been shocked and amazed at what little they know about him, or why they even choose to support him.

I’ve asked point blank, what are the significant differences between Obama’s and Bush’s policies? Most of the time, I get a blank look or a snappy comment back. The few times that someone comes up with something, it will be a tiny issue like stem cell research (which I believe is up to the states and not the president), or abortion (which only affects a tiny percentage of Americans).

I’ve been scratching my head for months as to how people could believe there is significant change with this incoming president. I have been chalking it up to his cult of personality- it’s not what he says, it’s how he says it.

This is definitely a big part of what is going on, but recently, I have come to the conclusion that there is more.

Obama would like the government to run just about everything it could get its hands on. With Obama and his “team”, there is nothing government cannot do better than the private sector.

Since we have been going down the path of mommy and daddy government for quite some time, people have been propagandized into believing that yes, government IS filled with virtous people who not only want the best for us, but are themselves like magic, special human beings that have powers that us normal folk do not posses.

Believing in this fantasy of politicians-as-magicians has led to many people taking on the attitude of “government will take care of us” or “they’ll figure it out” or “what can government do for me next?”

This is akin to a child who never fully becomes an adult. It’s the 44-year old who got a DUI and needs his parents to bail him out of jail. It’s the 33-year old who still lives with his parents to “save money”. It’s the college student who drives home every weekend to do her laundry and have mom cook for her.

It’s the belief that we need government-as-parents from cradle to grave.

As more businesses become “nationalized”, and more industries get bailed out, the self-esteem of the individual- and the idea that we do indeed own ourselves- errodes away. This trend of Americans’ self esteem in decline has been going on now for decades, but as times get tougher and the media points the cameras towards our so-called elected officials, propagandized Americans who believe what they see on TV fall right in line with the idea of sacrificing their independent minds for the sake of the collective.

This leads to a society of nobody thinking, nobody innovating, and everybody expecting that the “authorities” will take care of things.

So what has happened is that the Obamamania exsits because people simply want to believe that their own life is out of their hands, and some “leader” is going to ride in and save the day- protect them, make everything okay- as mommy and daddy did for so many years.

The Free Market vs. The Great Depression

“If Ben Bernanke were my student I would’ve flunked him”
-Peter Schiff

What caused the Great Depression?

There is a clear-cut right and a wrong here.

“Common wisdom” and history textbooks tell us that the Depression was caused by the free market.

But the correct answer is that government intervention caused the Great Depression.

By not allowing the free market to work, Hoover and Roosevelt set the stage for a horrible period in U.S. history. The same thing is happening right now. The government and Federal Reserve all think that that if they “do nothing” things will get worse. And they are right, things will get worse no matter what. But by artificially manipulating interest rates and printing trillions of dollars out of thin air, they are compounding the problem.

These facts should not even be up for debate. There is a clear objective truth here, and the government and bankster crooks are on the side of falsehood, with the mainstream media as cheerleaders for all that is wrong.

Can we stop living in the fantasy world that the government will take care of everything, that the government doesn’t lie, that the U.S. government is virtuous?

To save the economy we will need more than to simply adopt a gold standard. If we just switch to gold and let congress control the game, we are screwed. We must let the free market decide what currency we will use, not some central planning bureaucrats.

There is a chance that the central planners will try to roll out the Amero this year or next. However, why would anyone buy into this sham? Simply changing the name of the currency and what countries it represents does not make fake money real! A first grader could figure this out.

For now, I’m sticking with goldmoney.com and working on Plan B if things go downhill in a hurry here in the so-called land of the free!

Is Now The Time To Buy Real Estate?

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say:

“Now is the time to BUY!”

when it comes to a discussion on the real estate market. Suddenly, everyone is a contrarian. At least, they think they are contrarians!

Fortune magazine just published their list of the 10 worst real estate markets for 2009. Not surprisingly, 8 of the 10 are in California. The important point here is that Fortune, not known for going out on a limb, is predicting that some markets in will fall as much as 25% just in 2009!

This doesn’t bode well for U.S. real estate.

What also doesn’t bode well is the fact that Option ARM loans are set to start resetting in Q1 of 09- meaning foreclosures are about to go through the roof.

So the armchair cocktail party real estate market experts are getting it wrong again. There is no “blood in the streets” yet, foreclosers are just getting started, and we certainly haven’t hit bottom anywhere in the country at this point!

My advice to anyone looking to buy property (especially in CA) is to wait a year. 2010 won’t be good either, but at least by that point the shakeout from the credit crisis and option ARM reset disaster will be nearing an end.

Hold on to your hats (and your gold)!

Peter Schiff vs. a Manchild

For some comic relief courtesy of the lamestream media, Schiff goes up against a clown on the auto bailouts and the cause of the Great Depression. I personally think the government needs to do a better job hiring their operatives for interviews like this! Leeb comes across as a child who lets his emotions do the talking.

Like I was saying, where’s MY bailout??

Money Rules the World

I was reading my Richard Russell newsletter this morning (www.dowtheoryletters.com), and he quoted a synopsis of an article that I found interesting:

“Human Freedom Rests on Gold Redeemable Money
by Hon. Howard Buffett
U.S. Congressman from Nebraska

Reprinted from The Commercial and Financial Chronicle 5/6/48

“Congressman Buffett stresses relation between money and freedom and contends without a redeemable currency, individual’s freedom to sustain himself or move his property is dependent on goodwill of politicians. Says paper money systems generally collapse and result in economic chaos. Points out gold standard would restrict government spending and give people greater power over public purse. Holds present is propitious time to restore gold standard.”

“Is there a connection between Human Freedom and A Gold Redeemable Money? At first glance it would seem that money belongs to the world of economics and human freedom to the political sphere.

“But when you recall that one of the first moves by Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler was to outlaw individual ownership of gold, you begin to sense that there may be some connection between money, redeemable in gold, and the rare prize known as human liberty. You see, gold is mobility, gold is a passport to move across borders.

“Also, when you find that Lenin declared and demonstrated that a sure way to overturn the existing social order and bring about communism was by printing press paper money, then again you are impressed with the possibility of a relationship between a gold-backed money and human freedom.

“In that case then certainly you and I as Americans should know the connection. We must find it even if money is a difficult and tricky subject. I suppose that if most people were asked for their views on money the almost universal answer would be that they didn’t have enough of it.

“In a free country the monetary unit rests upon a fixed foundation of gold or gold and silver independent of the ruling politicians. Our dollar was that kind of money before 1933. Under that system paper currency is redeemable for a certain weight of gold, at the free option and choice of the holder of paper money.”

Ron Paul was not the first to speak the truth about money and enslavement in congress. This goes to show that even in the early days of the U.S. government taking the dollar off the gold standard, there were a few sober voices of reason who knew that  giving control of the money supply to any one group of people would be a recipe for an unfree society.

At some point in the next few years, the dollar is going to collapse and end up being worth nothing at all. The cameras at that point will turn to the politicians for a “solution”. Is it likely that the politicians will opt for a reasonable and logical solution, like a gold-backed currency? This would mean giving the people more freedom and taking away a lot of their power.

More likely, they will try to push a new currency, like the commonly discussed Amero on is. But the new currency will be the same as the old currency. This Amero introduction may keep the sheeple asleep temporarily, but as it will be fake money just like the dollar, it will have no effect on the sustainability of our system or the inevitability of the value of gold skyrocketing.

Eventually- and this could be a long way off in the future, or merely a few years- reality will win out, and we will be forced to exchange real money for our goods and services. This will result in the U.S. government not being able to wage war when it feels like it- basically the fall of the empire.

Once there is no longer the capability to print money out of thin air, sanity will return. We will not be arguing about war or government welfare programs because there will literally be no money for them, not even the phony money that is currently used to prop them up right now.

Why is it that the government does pretty much whatever it wants?

Why is it that over 90% of the American public was against the bailouts, but congress ignored this and passed the money on anyway?

It all simply comes down to one thing: unlimited ability to print money by the authoritarian sociopaths that call themselves our leaders. This is the enslavement that we live under.

We are living through extraordinary times. We will someday look back at these times, amazed at the foolishness people believed in, the propaganda that was swallowed by the masses, and how an entire generation lost the ability to reason and process logical concepts like the fact that only a system based on real money such as gold and silver will give the greatest amount of opportunities to the greatest number of people.

The best way to get around the system as it stands right now is to start trading in your fake money for gold and silver. Since physical metals are in short supply, a great alternative is to set up an account at goldmoney.com.