Friday, April 5, 2013

News from the Network, Vol. 6, No. 14


The stock market is “going crazy” again, down about 100 points the last time we looked.  This is good news for the gamblers.  Of course, going up 100 is also good for the gamblers.  They make money either way.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve and the federal government are doing everything in their power to make certain that the economy never recovers.  If you think something should be done about this, you might want to pay special attention to the first item in this week’s news notes:

• Don’t forget to clear your calendar for Friday, April 26, 2013 and the annual rally at the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC to demonstrate for democratic access to capital credit for a “Capital Homestead Act” so ordinary people can become capital owners without redistributing the wealth belonging to the rich or increasing government debt, and the money supply can be backed with private sector assets instead of government debt.  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.

• For some reason this past week, sales of CESJ materials in the U.K. have spiked, along with the fiction published by Universal Values Media.  Usually sales in the U.S. are far in excess of those in the U.K. or Australia.

• The next-to-last meeting of the Coalition for Capital Homesteading was held today.  This was the final setting of tasks before the Rally on April 26, 2013.  There will be a final meeting on April 22 to make certain that everything is in place to ensure a smooth operation.

• We sent out two letters to the Wall Street Journal this past week.  The first one happened to mention that the writer of a book review had confused redeemability and convertibility of a currency.  The main point of the letter, however, was that the Federal Reserve is being misused by monetizing government debt and leaving the private sector hanging.  Much to our surprise, the writer actually responded . . . and managed to avoid completely the main issue by complaining that he had used redeemability in the sense of convertibility, hinting that we don’t know what we’re talking about.

• The other letter got a more usual response, that is to say, none.  A pundit stated that any tax reform proposal had to take social engineering into consideration.  The pundit avoided the issue that the sole legitimate purpose of taxation is to meet government expenditures.  The Federal Reserve was never intended to monetize government debt, but to supply the private sector with adequate liquidity.

• We received two writings by Charles A. Conant this week.  Those readers who have paid very close attention to this blog will recognize the name.  Conant was the author of A History of Modern Banks of Issue (1896) that we have cited a number of times.  The first piece we received this week is a “salvaged” copy of an article he published a full century ago in (you guessed it) The Century Magazine: “The Return to Hard Money” (Volume 86, No. 3, July, 1913).  This was a few months before the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, and was during the debates.  Conant was something of a racist and an imperialist capitalist to boot — but he knew money and credit, banking and finance inside-out.  He clearly supported the original purpose of the Federal Reserve: to provide liquidity to the private sector and prevent the government from issuing debt paper.

• The other Conant piece we got was a reprint of what many consider his most important work, The United States in the Orient: The Nature of the Economic Problem (1900).  Since it came this morning we obviously haven’t had time to read it yet, but just opening the book at random revealed an analysis of the income tax that appeared consistent with that of CESJ.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 53 different countries and 50 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines. People in Jamaica, Singapore, Indonesia, Sweden, and the United States 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,” “Some Thoughts on Money, II: The Different Schools of Thought,” “State Sovereignty . . . or Sovereignty of the People,” and “Own the Fed, XVII: The Age of Deregulation.”

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.

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