Guy S. out in Iowa has been pointing out that the so-called
“Sequestration” cuts are being offset by the cash that Federal Reserve Chairman
Ben Bernanke is pumping into the economy.
The effect, of course, is to divert money from government programs to
holders of government debt whose bonds are being purchased.
This not only cancels out the spending cuts, it accelerates
the concentration of capital ownership.
Worse, at a time when the stock market is increasingly volatile (shades
of early 1929), debt holders necessarily replace their former holdings of
government debt with existing equity issues on the secondary market. This puts upward pressure on stock prices,
which counters the downward pressure from the lack of real economic growth, and
creates the illusion that growth is taking place simply because people are
making a profit by gambling on the increasingly wide swings in stock prices.
We don’t agree with the idea that government should take
care of everyone’s needs — but given a choice between pouring cash into the
coffers of the rich so they can gamble, and giving people some cash to live on
by increasing or maintaining current levels of government spending, common
sense says to continue government spending . . . assuming that there is no
other way for people to gain income.
Fortunately, there is a much better way for people to gain
income, the Just Third Way, which is what we’ve been trying to talk to, e.g., Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall
about (below). Of course, we’ve been
doing other things, as well:
• Don’t forget to clear your calendar for Friday, April 26,
2013 and the annual rally at the Federal Reserve. We don’t have all the details yet, but it
looks as if there is going to be some entertainment and a number of interesting
speakers.
• We were able to suggest a sound program to
Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall, who to date has not responded.
• Efforts continue to encourage Delegate Bob Marshall to
talk to Norman Kurland about spearheading a similar program for the
Commonwealth of Virginia. You can send
Bob an e-mail suggesting that he talk to Norm at delegatebobmarshall [at]
Hotmail [dot] com.
• An interesting bit of news out of Spain is that, as the
government there successfully implements its “austerity plan,” panic is ensuing
about the possibility of not having a money supply! (“Spain Pays a Price for Smaller Deficit,” Wall Street Journal, 02/28/13,
A11.) It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone
that you can back the money supply with private sector hard assets instead of
government debt.
• MeShorn Daniels interviewed Norman Kurland on the FocusShow Wednesday of this week.
The theme was “Changing the Victim Mentality to a Justice Reality.” While it’s two hours, the show is well worth
listening to.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 52 different countries and 48 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Nigeria. People in Nepal,
Columbia, Morocco, Estonia, and Argentina spent the most average time on the
blog. The most popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private
Property,” “Aristotle on Private Property,” “A ‘Virginia-Only’ Currency,” “Avoiding
Monetary Meltdown, I: Andrew Jackson’s War on the Economy,” and “The Death of
Reason, XIII: Understanding Money.”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we
know about. If you have an
accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at
mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into the next
“issue.” If you have a short (250-400
word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog —
do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated anyway, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
