Lew's Latest

Moral nihilism.

If the Devil had a teacher, its name would be war. War promotes the view that only suckers fall for moral precepts, that human life is neither here nor there, that private property is nothing more than what you can grab and keep. This is what makes the claim so absurd that the US invaded in order to bring about freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. The war taught the advantages of all the opposite values. The Iraqis have been fine students of the moral nihilism unleashed by the US's war on Iraq.

Solving the Overcrowded Prison Problem

Anthony Gregory has an idea:

Stop locking up so many people and start letting a lot of people out.

Those who have committed no crime against person or property should be released from the jails and prisons. These include drug offenders, sex workers, those in possession of illegal guns, and anyone else who has hurt and threatened no one, whose only offense was to violate a victimless crime statute.

Buy Gold & Silver

Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, is buying.

My strategy remains the same as it's been for years: I bet on real money, which is gold and silver. I also continue to borrow funny money to buy real estate. Since oil and gas are in high demand globally and appear to be going up in price, I also invest in oil and gas production.

Again, I'm not really betting on these assets -- I'm primarily betting against the dollar, and the leaders who manage the U.S. economy.

Now you know why I buy more gold and silver every time they drop in value in the current economic environment. What smart investor wouldn't gladly spend funny money to buy real money?

Whoooop!

U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati announced today that the contract of U.S. Manager Bruce Arena will not be renewed when it expires at the end of 2006, ending his eight-year tenure as the team’s head coach.

America: from Freedom to Fascism

Hits movie theaters July 28th! Go see it.

How To Become a Millionaire

You can get started by reading this article.

Maverick Congressman

This is how Congressmen should act.

Republican Ron Paul missed out on the 19th century, but he admires it from afar. He speaks lovingly of the good old days before things like Social Security and Medicaid existed, before the federal government outlawed drugs like heroin.

In his legislative fantasies, the amiable Texas congressman would do away with the CIA and the Federal Reserve. He'd reinstate the gold standard. He'd get rid of the Department of Education and leave the business of schooling to local governments, because he believes that's what the Constitution intended.

"Article 1, Section 8 gives me zero amount of authority to do anything about public education," says Paul on a recent weekday. He's seated in his congressional office near a sign than says, "DON'T STEAL; THE GOVERNMENT HATES COMPETITION."

Half-Way Through 2006

This is the best article I've read year-to-date. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Bill Walker explains how the Fed was started in 1913, how the Fed ruined the economy in just 16 short years, inflation, deflation, the IRS, and more.

The current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, has openly boasted that the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression. Of course the Fed’s guilt is not that controversial among free-market economists, but it’s interesting that most Americans still don’t grasp this most basic fact of US economic history… even when the Fed Chairman himself has spoken about it publicly.

In 1929 and through the 1930s, as Bernanke says, the Fed hurled the entire US economy into the Great Depression and kept it there for years, unemploying millions. Civilization literally went backwards, with negative economic growth. In 1933, the Fed magically stole all the gold from the bank vaults of the nation and moved it into darkness (a darkness so complete that the gold has not been audited since the 1950s).

Today, the Fed detaches the military-entertainment complex from the need to openly pass war taxes through Congress. They simply print as many dollars as they want, reducing the value of all other dollars proportionately. The purpose of taxes is just to maintain a demand for depreciating dollars, since everyone needs them to send to the IRS.

The Fed performs no productive economic function. All it does is increase the fluctuations in the value of the medium of exchange. Thanks to the "fractional reserve" nature of the Fed, it can’t even accurately control its own destructive powers.

Many Americans already realize that the dollar is a terrible store of value, and use it only for the shortest term that they can. Long-term savings are held in the form of stock mutual funds, real estate, and increasingly "exchange traded funds" like GLD and SLV… in other words, gold and silver, just as people have done for thousands of years.

The Working Group

The New York Post recently ran a piece on Washington’s tight-lipped Plunge Protection Team, or, the "Working Group," as it is formally known. Essentially, the role of this group is to prevent another 1987 "Black Monday" in the stock market. It was put into law in 1988, as Executive Order 12631, by Ronald Reagan. If you read the Executive Order you’ll note that it essentially allows the government to intervene in the stock market – should a crash or foreseeable dip appear to be on the horizon – via legislative law, administrative fiat, or the manipulation of private bodies via coercive tactics on the part of the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, or the executive office. Section Two of the order states that its purpose and function is to recognize "the goals of enhancing the integrity, efficiency, orderliness, and competitiveness of our Nation's financial markets and maintaining investor confidence."

Happy 4th Americans!

Perhaps the best evidence of how American history was rewritten, Soviet style, in the post-1865 era is the fact that most Americans seem to be unaware that "Independence Day" was originally intended to be a celebration of the colonists’ secession from the British empire. Indeed, the word secession is not even a part of the vocabulary of most Americans, who more often than not confuse it with "succession." The Revolutionary War was America’s first war of secession.

America’s most prominent secessionist, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, was very clear about what he was saying: Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and whenever that consent is withdrawn, it is the right of the people to "alter or abolish" that government and "to institute a new government." The word "secession" was not a part of the American language at that time, so Jefferson used the word "separation" instead to describe the intentions of the American colonial secessionists.