Quotes on Inflation

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

–Ernest Hemingway

Big Deficits and a Weaker Dollar

by Michael S. Rozeff

Hyperinflation in the U.S. hasn’t happened for quite some time. The last two instances that come to mind are confederate money in the 1860s and the continentals in the 1770s. In both these cases, governments used inflation to finance wars because their tax systems were weak.

A strong tax system (from the government’s perspective) has several aspects. It has a large productive capacity that it can tax without causing production to decline by a great deal. It can enforce tax collections. The required taxes are low compared to the overall government spending.

The U.S. tax system is not weak, but it is weakening. The productive capacity is difficult to evaluate, but it too has probably weakened. The U.S. economy has a large government sector (at least 40 percent) that is relatively inefficient. It also interferes with and distorts the private economy. The federal government has not been able to finance its spending by current taxes in a long time. Instead it has resorted to borrowing (deficit spending) and inflation. The results are a large national debt and a depreciating currency.

U.S. government financing has weakened further in the past year. The government is borrowing very heavily to pay for such actions as the absorption of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, bailouts of AIG and large banks, and the rest of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. A short while ago, the government sent out $160 billions of dollars of tax rebates. Meanwhile the Fed has, on its own and with government cooperation, vastly increased credits to the private economy. This has dramatically inflated the monetary base.

Continued on…

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff267.html

The Crash Course

Ready to learn everything you need to know about the economy in the shortest amount of time?

The Crash Course is a condensed online version of Chris Martenson’s “End of Money” seminar

How long will it take?

Chapters are between 3 and 20 minutes in length. All 20 sections take 3 hours and 23 minutes to watch in full.

You will learn about:

• Intro (on this page, above)
• Chapter 1: Three Beliefs (Time: 1:46)
• Chapter 2: The Three “E”s (Time: 1:38)
• Chapter 3: Exponential Growth UPDATED! – November 3 (Time: 6:20)
• Chapter 4: Compounding is the Problem (Time: 3:06)
• Chapter 5: Growth vs. Prosperity (Time: 3:40)
• Chapter 6: What is Money? (Time: 5:55)
• Chapter 7: Money Creation (Time: 4:19)
• Chapter 8: The Fed – Money Creation (Time: 7:13)
• Chapter 9: A Brief History of US Money (Time: 7:14)
• Chapter 10: Inflation (Time: 11:48)
• Chapter 11: How Much Is A Trillion? (Time: 3:28)
• Chapter 12: Debt (Time: 12:32)
• Chapter 13: A National Failure To Save (Time: 12:06)
• Chapter 14: Assets & Demographics (Time: 13:41)
• Chapter 15: Bubbles (Time: 14:10)
• Chapter 16: Fuzzy Numbers (Time: 15:52)
• Chapter 17: PART A: Peak Oil (Time: 17:52)
• Chapter 17: PART B: Energy Budgeting (Time: 12:15)
• Chapter 17: PART C: Energy And The Economy (Time: 7:05)
• Chapter 18: Environmental Data (Time: 16:22)
• Chapter 19: Future Shock (Time: 8:02)
• Chapter 20: What Should I Do? NEW! – October 22 (Time: 19:48)

Lindsey Williams on the USA Economy

Pastor Lindsey Williams (author of The Energy Non-Crisis) predicted in July of 2008 that the price of crude oil would drop from over $100. dollars  to $50. dollars.  Many laughed, but now the price is at $49.00.

Here is his most recent prediction.

Quotes on Money and the Economy

He tried to explain why men on Wall Street had jumped from skyscrapers……… because, why? Because all the businessmen realized at once, on the same morning, that paper money was only paper. What Terrible fools. What did they think it was? – Annie Dillard

When everything is worth money, then money is worth nothing.
— David Byrne

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don’t have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all. —Denis Diderot

Economic development, more than any single issue, is the battle line between two competing world views. Tribal people’s fundamental value was sustainability, and they conducted their livelihoods in ways that sustained resources and limited inequalities in their society. What made traditional economies so radically different and so very fundamentally dangerous to Western economies were the traditional principles of prosperity of Creation versus scarcity of resources, of sharing and distribution versus accumulation and greed, of kinship usage rights versus individual exclusive ownership rights, and of sustainability versus growth.

— Revecca Adamson

For the economy I want workers and consumers to have control over their own economic lives. I want everyone to have fair conditions that fully utilize their talents and potentials. I want incomes that accord with the efforts people expend in their labors. I want what is produced, by whom, under what conditions, and with who consuming the result–all determined in accord with enhancing human well-being and development and all decided by the people involved and affected. I want an end to hierarchies of power and wealth and to class division with most actors subordinated to an elite few. To accomplish all these ends I favor the institutions of participatory economics — worker and consumer councils, remuneration for effort and sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning. If someone should demonstrate that those institutions somehow fail to accomplish necessary economic functions or have social or personal by-products that outweigh their benefits — I would simply return to the drawing board. Exploitation, alienation, poverty, disempowerment, fragmenting and debilitating labor, production for the profit of a few — much less harsh homelessness, starvation, and degradation — are not like gravity. They arise from institutional relations established by human beings. New institutions, also established by human beings, can generate other vastly superior outcomes. Defining and working to attain those new institutions ought to be our economic agenda.
— Michael Albert

Economics has been incurably growth-oriented and addicted to everybody growing richer, even at the cost of exhaustion of resources and pollution of the environment.

–Kenneth Boulding

“If the corporations have their way, the Earth will be killed, and that’s in your lifetime. It’s revolting to me that students are being trained to work in corporations. It’s obscene to me that the corporations are running the world. We’ve got to get cross. Anger is an appropriate emotion.”

— Helen Caldicott

The superior person understands rightness; the inferior person understands profit
— Confucius

American consumerism is about buying things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress friends we don’t have time for.
— Leo Horrigan