Economy

(GoldPrices) – Gold, Silver and Mining Companies Shaping Up

We will kick off with a review of the charts for gold, silver and the gold bugs index, the HUI, in an attempt to see where we are now and just where we might go from here. However, to put the charts into context we need to take into consideration the surrounding political, economic and investment landscape. These are volatile times with the financial markets in turmoil as what were perceived to be sound and secure governments now toil under the strain of their own excesses. The borrow and spend philosophies are coming back like a bad penny, to haunt not just those who caused this mess, but also for the rest of us, who are expected to clear it up. Read More Here

(InternationalForecaster) – Towards Another Stock Market Meltdown? – Bob Chapman

This past week the Dow fell 4%, S&P 4.2%, the Russell 2000 fell 6.4% and the Nasdaq 100 fell 4.4%. Banks fell 5.4%; broker/dealers 4%; cyclicals fell 5.6%; transports 5.5%; consumers 3.4%; utilities 4.3%; high tech fell 3.7%; semis 1.3%; Internets fell 4.2% and biotechs 4.2%. Gold bullion fell $56.00, the HUI gold index fell 11.4% and the USDX, dollar index, fell 0.8% to 85.38. Read More Here

(BusinessInsider) – Video: Marc Faber – “The Banks Are Gone” – (Part 1 Video Below)

Marc Faber spoke with Bloomberg Television about his bearish views on markets yesterday, and they remain as bearish as always.

“The banks are gone,” according to Marc Faber, and are only being kept alive by European Central Bank and government aid programs. Part 2 Here

(HuffingtonPost) – $1 Trillion for Wars Makes No Sense By Any Measure

This May 30 at 10:06 a.m., we will reach another dubious milestone in our almost nine years of war. At that precise moment, we will have spent $1 trillion in operational costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tracked by the National Priorities Project’s cost of war counter. Read More Here

(SteveWatson) – Secret Clause Reveals Europe Bailout Designed To Destroy Global Economy

A secret exit clause written into the trillion dollar European bailout agreement will ensure the creation of more debt in Europe, worsening the global economy, decimating nation states and allowing power to be consolidated into fewer super-elite hands.

As the Financial Times reports today, the major German newspaper Bild says it has obtained a copy of the bailout agreement and has set about “exposing” a series of secret clauses. Read More Here

(GoldScents) – How Do You Answer The Question

Let me start off by pointing out that we did indeed break below the yearly cycle low yesterday. Read More Here

(AP) – Falling home prices stir fears of new bottom

Tax credits and historically low mortgage rates have failed to lift home prices so far this year. Prices fell 0.5 percent in March from February, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city index released Tuesday.

That marks six straight months of declines — a sign that the housing market is going in reverse. Read More Here

(BigGovernment) – Faber: Nations Will Print Money, Go Bust, Go to War…We Are Doomed

Today the leading Austrian economic think tank, the Ludwig von Mises Institute held a conference at the University Club in Manhattan in which Marc Faber, famed contrarian investor and publisher of the “Gloom, Boom and Doom Report” gave his perspective on the financial crisis and his outlook for the future. Read More Here

(CNBC) – Libor Spike Is Rekindling Fears Of Another Financial Crisis

A recent spike in the rate banks charge each other for short-term borrowing is reviving investor fears that the market is returning to the abyss of the credit crisis. Read More Here

(OilPrice) – The Hard Truth About Residential Real Estate

Anyone who believes that housing is on the rebound, and that now is the time to buy, should take a very hard look at the numbers I dredged up for my spring lecture and luncheon tour.

There are 140 million personal residences in the US. Today, there are 26 million homes either directly or indirectly for sale. Read More Here

(Cryptogon) – Plummeting Marijuana Prices Create A Panic In California

Understand the purpose of the drug war with just one story. Hint: Law enforcement is used to keep supplies down and prices high.

So what changed?

California is broke and the state government wants a cut of the action. Read More Here

(RevoltofthePlebs) – Fear and Loathing (and Lost Wages)

Last week, Barrack Obama brought his stage show to a manufacturing plant in Youngstown Ohio and took credit for 290,000 new jobs added to US payrolls in April. “The fact is, our economy is growing again,” he boasted “Any fair-minded person would say that if we hadn’t acted … more people across America would be out of work today.” He’s speaking of course of the $787 billion Recovery Act that pumped even more counterfeit cash into the economy and is now redeemable (at interest) by the Federal Reserve from your American tax dollar. Read More Here

(BusinessWeek) – Christie Says N.J. ‘Careening Toward Becoming Greece’

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said the state is “careening our way toward becoming Greece” and can’t afford the cost of benefits and pensions for current workers. Read More Here

(Bloomberg) – Moody’s Reiterates U.S. Spending Risks Credit Rating

The U.S. government’s Aaa bond rating will come under pressure in the future unless additional measures are taken to reduce projected record budget deficits, according to Moody’s Investors Service Inc. Read More Here

(FoxNews) – Despite Soaring National Debt, Congress Goes on Spending Spree

As the national debt clock ticked past the ignominious $13 trillion mark overnight, Congress pressed to pass a host of supplemental spending bills to, among other things, fund the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, ramp up security on the U.S.-Mexico border and prevent teacher layoffs. Read More Here

(PaulWatson)  – Video: Rothschilds Engineer Fire Sale Of UK Infrastructure To Offshore Corporations

The Rothschild banking family is pushing for the privatization of the UK’s motorway network that would force Brits, who already pay road tax, to enrich the coffers of private corporations intimately tied in with the Rothschilds by means of road tolls and pay-by-mile schemes enforced with spy cameras.

“A plan to privatize the UK’s motorway network, giving toll firms access to large swaths of road, would take place under the guise of paying down the government’s debt, British media reported Tuesday, citing a number of key officials who support the scheme, proposed to all major political parties by NM Rothschild, one of the world’s oldest, most influential and little discussed investment banks, founded by the Rothschild family,” reports Raw Story. –

Video: Ron Paul Speech at Jekyll Island – My Battle Against the Fed

(C4L) – The Federal Reserve has had long enough to demonstrate its use to the American economy. The latest economic crisis alone is enough to discredit its claims as the great stabilizer. There is the long history of devastating inflation, the government spending it funds, the wars and welfare that are made possible by its printing presses, and also the conflicts of interest and corruptions it introduces into public life. We can do without the central bank. We don’t need the Fed. Our money and our future would be more assured without it.

100 Years of US Medical Fascism

(Mises) – One hundred years ago today, on April 16, 1910, Henry Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Foundation, put the finishing touches on the Flexner Report.[1] No other document would have such a profound effect on American medicine, starting it on its path to destruction up to and beyond the recently passed (and laughably titled) Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), a.k.a., “Obamacare.” Flexner can only be accurately understood in the context of what led up to it.

Al-Qaeda Video Calling for Attacks On U.S. Arrives Days After Pentagon Shooting

(KurtNimmo) – According to the corporate media, John Patrick Bedell was not only inspired by the 9/11 truth movement and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, he was also motivated by the Fort Hood attack.

Video: The Brilliance of That Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

(C4L) – The debate between J.M. Keynes and F.A. Hayek, both living and teaching in Britain in the 1930s, was one of the great debates of the century. Sadly, the charming globetrotter Keynes had the podium and the audience, to the point of influencing policy the world over even to the present day. Meanwhile, the quiet and studious Hayek never really did gain an audience. Like his colleague and mentor Mises, Hayek wrote in scholarly journals and was heard only by those with skeptical minds, people who doubted the theoretical and policy conventions and looked beneath the surface.

Video: Why You’ve Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920

(C4L) – As President Obama continues to try to sell the country on the necessity of government intervention, this Mises Institute video from April 2009 looks at what happened when a president made the rare choice to restrain government action in an economic crisis.

Video: The Dollar is now collapsing – Peter Schiff

(January 23, 2010) – Peter Schiff is an American economist, author, commentator and popular video blogger who regularly appears in the role of a bearish pundit on numerous financial news networks. Schiff, a licensed stock broker, is the president of Euro Pacific Capital, a brokerage firm founded in 1980 and later reincorporated in 1996, now headquartered in Westport, Connecticut.

Ending Central Banking is the Only Real Banking Reform

(MisesBlog) – President Obama announced on Thursday, January 21 his intention to push for banking reform and new legislation to limit the size of banks to prevent the existence of banks that are “too big to fail,” and to have new regulations instituted that control the type and degree of risks banks can undertake in their investment decisions.

MSM: Ron Paul’s ideas no longer fringe

(LATimes) – With the economy still struggling, the lawmaker’s libertarian views are getting serious attention.

Video: Bank Failures – Then and Now

(December 7th, 2009) – Presented by Douglas E. French at “Depression, Monetary Destruction, and the Path to Sound Money”: the Mises Circle in Greenville, South Carolina, 3 October 2009. Sponsored by Atlantic Bullion and Coin, and Professional Planning of Easley, LLC.

Video: Taxation, Inflation, and War

Lew Rockwell discusses how imperialism is anathema to Freedom and Liberty. Presented at the Ludwig von Mises Institute on October 28, 2006

Video: The Bubble Economy

Presented by Douglas French at the 2009 Mises University. Recorded 28 July 2009 at the Ludwig von Mises Institute; Auburn, Alabama.

Predicting Worse Ahead from America’s Economic Crisis

Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881 – 1973) said:

“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

‘Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire’: Why David M. Walker compared the collapse of the United States to the Fall of Rome

As many are aware, in March 2008, David M. Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office, resigned his commission 5 years before the end of his 15-year term expired. His reasons for resigning were that he was limited to what he could do and that the United States was in danger of collapsing in much the same manner as the Roman Empire

Video: Ludwig Von Mises – Liberty and Economics

What kind of man was Ludwig von Mises? As this unique film shows, Mises (1881-1973) was a man who never stopped fighting for freedom: not when the Nazis burned his books, not when the Left blackballed him at universities, not when it seemed as if statism had won. With courage and genius, he fought big government until the day he died … in 25 books, hundreds of articles, and more than 60 years of teaching.

2008 Financial Collapse: An Inside Job – Robert Singer

(Dprogram Exclusive) – Maybe it’s the smoke from Mt. Vesuvius that keeps Arianna Huffington and the financial community from seeing that the economic collapse has nothing to do with the Fed “missing” the warning signs leading up to the October meltdown.

The Worst is Ahead of Us

The news that the jobless rate in this country has gone from 9.5 percent in June to 9.4 percent last month has led President Obama to declare that his policies have “saved the U.S. economy from catastrophe” and have led to another rally in the stock market.  While I wish I could agree with the President – I really do wish that – I cannot do so, and I must say, “Not so fast, Mr. Obama.”

The Continued Fleecing Of America And Its Citizens By The Financial Elites

Many people are raised with an orientation, indeed an imperative sense, that puts compassion and ethics — ones values and principles — as central to their dealings with others. This foundation becomes part of their identities and shapes the directions that their lives take.

Police State Study Ranks U.S. As 6th Worst In The World

A study designed to rank countries in terms of how aggressively they monitor their populations electronically, has placed the US as 6th and the UK as 5th on a global index.

Video: Peter Schiff – Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No One

The 2009 Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture, presented by Peter Schiff. Recorded at the annual Austrian Scholars Conference, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 13 March 2009.

What Has Government Done To Our Money?

Monetary policy is—aside from war—the primary tool of state aggrandizement. It ensures the growth of government, finances deficits, rewards special interests, and fixes elections. Without it, the federal leviathan would collapse, and we could return to the republic of the Founding Fathers.

Slavery and Taxation

That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support. – Lysander Spooner

This essay is an incendiary device. My muse is Wilberforce and the subject is the abolition of the last existing institution of slavery in America – taxation.

“Down the Memory Hole,” Alan Greenspan Style

He’s back and in denial in a March 11 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined: “The Fed Didn’t Cause the Housing Bubble.” He lied, the way he did throughout his career and for 18.5 years as Fed chairman. How else could he have kept the job, be knighted in the UK for his “contribution to global economic stability, wisdom and skill,” then afterwards be extolled by the Money Trust he enriched.

Fed Up With the Fed

The way Ron Paul tells it, his more than 30 years of speaking and writing about money, inflation, and the Federal Reserve System attracted only limited interest outside libertarian and constitutionalist circles. The subject, and Paul as its spokesman, were scarcely to be found in the media, even—or perhaps especially—on the business networks.

LRC: The Recession Reader

While the Austrian economists of Mises.org and LewRockwell.Com were warning against the housing bubble and the inflationary nature of the Fed, the mainstream was touting the economic wisdom of Bernanke and Greenspan. When this recession hit, it seems everyone except the Austrians was caught off guard.