Greenspan and those in charge of the economy during Bush were loudly and proudly Libertarians.They are your peeps. They were exactly as wrong as you are espousing a economic philosophy that stupid. Don’t bring Libertarianism to people out of high school?
Absolutely NOT. We did not cut spending and balance the budget. That is ridiculous and completely contrary to reality. Hoover was just as much of an interventionist as Roosevelt.
Why can’t you see that propping up incompetent companies and making the too big to fails even bigger does not solve the problem? What do you think caused the Great Depression? Lack of spending? Do you understand this point:
Whenever a bubble is created through government intervention it creates an unsustainable of debt and malinvestment that necessitates a crash later on. Therefore we should focus on preventing the creation of the bubble in the first place, not doing all the things that caused the crisis in the first place.
This is pretty academic for an Austrian economist.
That is complete bullshit. There was no recovery while FDR was intervening into the marketplace. Why, if Roosevelt’s policies were working so spectacularly, was he convinced to change policies? If, as you say, we had a solid four years of “recovery”, why was there a change of heart?
The truth of the matter is that Herbert Hoover started basically the same policies of federal intervention that FDR continued. So, from 1929 to 1933 Hoover basically started the beginnings of the New Deal. In 1931 Hoover said this:
The program that Hoover pursued was the following:
**Establish a Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which would use Treasury funds to lend to banks, industries, agricultural credit agencies, and local governments;
Broaden the eligibility requirement for discounting at the Fed;
Create a Home Loan Bank discount system to revive construction and employment measures which had been warmly endorsed by a National Housing Conference recently convened by Hoover for that purpose;
Expand government aid to Federal Land Banks;
Set up a Public Works Administration to coordinate and expand Federal public works;
Legalize Hoover’s order restricting immigration;
Do something to weaken “destructive competition” (i.e., competition) in natural resource use;
Grant direct loans of $300 million to States for relief;
Reform the bankruptcy laws (i.e., weaken protection for the creditor).**
This only touches upon a part of Hoovers interventions. Does this sound like Laissez-Faire to you?
So, based on that information, by 1937 we had a solid seven years of the sort of federal intervention you support, yet somehow, despite its overwhelming sucess :rolleyes:, FDR decided to change policies, huh? Where is the logic in that?
No, you haven’t posted “the data”. I have posted TONS of information about the true causes of the Great Depression refuting the fraudulent, propagandistic version of history you are so familiar with. So, I will do you a favor and explain the causes of the Great Depression just for you.
The Great Depression, written by Lionel Robbins is the preeminent book written on the subject. Published in 1934, Robbins was one of the most eminent followers of Ludwig von Mises (who predicted the crash when no one else did).
In it he explains the Misesian theory of the business cycle and applies it to the events of the 1920s and 1930s. He shows how bank credit expansion in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries drove the civilized world into a great depression.
In Britain the problem was the rigid wage structure caused by unions and the unemployment insurance system. In the United States the problem was a desire to inflate in order to help Britain as well as an absurd devotion to the ideal of a stable price level.
This credit expansion created the malinvestment through a sustained period of low interest rates which causes an imbalance between savings and investments. This expansion of credit causes an expansion of the supply of money, which leads to an unsustainable boom during which the artificially stimulated borrowing seeks out diminishing investment opportunities. Once the exponential credit creation cannot be sustained, a correction (or credit crunch, bust or recession, all names for the same thing) occurs.
Austrians understand that the problem comes from the creation of the bubble in the first place due to reckless monetary policy.
A recession is the cure for the mistakes created during the boom period, wiping the bad debt off the books. This is inevitable.
However, Hoover and Roosevelt took measures to “counteract and cushion” the depression, which only made the situation worse. Lionel Robbins shows how the policies pursued, including propping up unsound, shaky business positions, inflating credit, expanding public works and keeping up wage rates were counterproductive and prolonged the necessary depression adjustments profoundly aggravating the catastrophe.
Why can’t you understand this concept? This is pretty obvious for anyone who has ventured beyond the high school history textbook version of events.
You would do well to read Lionel Robbins book.
Jesus, I have never seen a group of people more resistant to reading or learning in my life. You don’t have to watch the whole thing. Just a mere ten or fifteen minutes is enough to make the point. What is an unbiased source, by the way? I would argue that there is no such thing.
The point that you would have gotten had you watched the video is that the Depression of 1920-21 signified the last time that a recession or depression was allowed to correct itself in the manner the Austrians agree is necessary. All of the interventions of the Great Depression were absent in 1920. We allowed the liquidation of debt and the market correction and we had a vibrant recovery within a year and a half. Nobody even remembers the Depression of 1920 because it was a non event. This was because the government didn’t intervene! The Great Depression was great due to the folly of the Hoover and Roosevelt policies.
Therefore there are two easy examples of major downturns which occurred less than a decade apart which were dealt with completely oppositely.
The Depression of 1920-21 was handled in the way the Austrians suggest.
The Depression of the 30s was handled the way you support.
Look at the results. One is the most traumatic economic period in our history and the other nobody even remembers.
If you want to talk about the data, it is clearly on my side. Why don’t you respond in an intelligent manner to the information presented in this post?
No, the draft has not been reinstated. Ron Paul articulated his concerns, most of which have or will soon come true, on the house floor. He said that we should keep these predictions for a decade and he hopes he is proven wrong. I am glad he was wrong about the draft being reinstated. However there was information to the effect (and there still is) that many hawks in Washington will look for any means necessary to increased the Army personnel, including bringing back the draft. I am very glad they haven’t gotten away with it.
Don’t you see that you are nitpicking greatly when the vast majority of the major issues that Ron Paul has talked about were pretty accurate? I never said he was 100% accurate about everything. Nobody is.
This is so beside the point. What about the big issues? The financial crisis, foreign policy, the trend of corporatism and loss of civil liberties, the increase in terrorist activities and us precipitating the hatred of Islamic countries are far more important than whether or not you can pick out a small part of a speech from 2002 that hasn’t come true yet. On the big issues, like those I just listed, he has been accurate.
I am talking about true free markets with Austrian economic policies. No, most people on Wall Street are NOT making their money honestly. That is the truth. They are engaged in fraud, corporatism and paying off politicians and receiving bailouts. This is a total perversion of free market economics and I don’t support it one bit.
The point I am making is the way to solve this problem is not to tax these people more, but to eliminate bad regulations that hurt their competitors, allow bankruptcies to occur, and reform the monetary system.
None of those things that you described are related to free markets. Free markets are computer companies, cell phone makers, car insurance companies and things like that. In those areas, the companies that do well are the ones that provide the best good or service at the best price. We, the consumer make them profits by buying their product. They in turn improve our lives and employ people.
That is the free market I am talking about. All the areas of corporate abuse that you can name are not free markets. The collusion of business and government is extremely dangerous and that is what we need to fight. The way to do it, however, is not move towards socialism, but emphasize the truly free market as the more fair and just alternative.
Credit default swaps and packaged mortgages and derivatives are related to our fraudulent system of money that created this casino atmosphere on Wall Street. With monetary reform and a rejection of fiat currencies and central banks these people would have to get real jobs, manufacturing things and creating value to make a living.
It is untrue that von Mises was the only person to predict the Wall Street Crash. A number of other economists issued warnings, among them Roger Babson (who had predicted a crash for years).
Your beloved Austrian school economists these days reportedly don’t like making “quantitative” forecasts/predictions, because of distaste for statistical analysis and other sciency stuff. It’s probably safer that way.
It should be noted in general that making predictions, some of which eventually come true (or can be interpreted as coming true, in Nostradamus-like fashion) can lead to a false impression of expertise, particularly when inaccurate predictions are glossed over or swept under the rug. There’s also a big difference between making predictions and having the ideas and expertise to forestall the negative ones or make the rosy ones come true.
You silver-tongued devil. You’ll persuade us yet. 
That list is from here, verbatim (typo and all). That may not be the original source; I’ve found it in other places on the web, predating jrodefeld’s post.
It lists them only as ingredients in the diphtheria, pertusiss, tetanus vaccine.
Actually, it lists them as ingredients in a type of broth used for growing the whooping cough bacterium. Even if we assume the list is correct (I do not see any primary source listed) the alarmism contained in it is ludicrous. Sodium chloride is freaking table salt. It’s used in intravenous solutions routinely. Most of the remaining substances (including formaldehyde) are naturally found in the human body at far higher concentrations than ever present in vaccines. Thimerosal preservative was removed from virtually all pediatric vaccines by 2002 as a precaution but never shown to have any negative health effects.
Lists like these are the product of ignorance or are deliberately meant to deceive.
I will not address antivax ideology further here unless jrodefeld or another libertarian/Paul supporter feels the need to revisit it.
Isn’t stomach acid HCl?
I was half expecting to see “dihydrogen monoxide” on that list. I mean, think of how many children die each year from exposure to too much of that.
This is complete nonsense. In a free market economic system, the rich only make their money in proportion to the value they provide others. People get paid what they are worth. It is foolhardy to discourage success through government redistribution, as if the worlds problems are caused by entrepreneurs and innovators. We need to eliminate crony capitalism and special favors and government needs to participate more in prosecuting fraud and making sure nobody is initiating force or violence on anybody else.
But apart from that, the government should allow free people to make mutually beneficial economic decisions without interference.
The truth is, what we have today is the largest income gap in the industrialized world following the policies of big government, central banking and extremely high levels of regulation. Four or five decades ago, when we had freer markets, this was not the case.
Why is that?
What you don’t understand is that government policies are not allowing the correction to occur at all. Why don’t you think to blame the people who created the bubble?
Why do you consider a monetary standard that we had all through our history up until 1971 to be crazy? Throughout our history our money was denominated in gold and linked to gold all the way until the Nixon Administration. The link was weakened during the Great Depression but we have only had a totally fiat currency for forty years.
I think we did pretty good for the first two hundred years of our existence, don’t you?
Do you not see the correlation between the monetary standard and our ballooning deficit and national debt? If you are going to build a house you need a solid foundation to build upon. In economic terms, that would be a stable dollar. The fraudulent, illusory bubble economies we have had since have been doomed from the outset.
There is no hope to regain true health in our economy without true fundamental reform of the banking system and the currency.
What have our politicians done to solve our economic problems? Perhaps they have delayed the inevitable? How is that helpful? Bailing out the banks and propping up illiquid (meaning worthless) assets only compounds our problems.
The reason Obama is having such a tough time right now is because people don’t see ANY benefit to the endless stimulus. The economy has only continued to get worse.
Why don’t you think about the possibility that powerful banking interests and corporate elite have so much control over our government and economy that they simply didn’t want to go bankrupt?
There would have been short term problems for the economy in 08 but in the long term things would have been a lot better if those failing companies were allowed to go under.
As to the Depression of 1920-21, go read about it. Watch the Youtube I linked to previously. I want you to explain in detail why my policies (hands off, allow correction) succeeded and the Keynesian interventions of the 30s failed.
Go ahead. I await your answer.
How is that related? The answer is no, corporations should not be allowed to pollute the air and water without criminal repercussions. There should be strict enforcements of property rights and no one is allowed to pollute their neighbors air, water or land. Period. Many libertarians believe this.
I am a hardcore environmentalist, by the way. The environment can be better protected through property rights and criminal suits than through endless bureaucracy and regulation (which usually protects the polluters). The Cap and Trade scam is really a pay to pollute scheme. I don’t think people should be allowed to pollute in certain amounts no matter how much money they make. If a corporation endangers your health or hurts the environment in a way that affects you personally they should pay you directly and be forced to stop the damaging activity.
Protection of the environment is a role for government, but we have to recognize that government itself is the greatest polluter. Most cases should be dealt with through the courts.
That is an unconstitutional act by Congress. Tell me where the Constitution says that Congress can do anything it wants? The Constitution says it is Congress’ RESPONSIBILITY to declare war. It cannot give away that power to someone else.
What don’t you understand about this? Isn’t it GOOD that the Founders desired that a president not be a dictator in matter of war and foreign policy? Don’t you think the people deserve to have a say in whether we go to war or not?
If you don’t understand this then your understanding of the Constitution is severely lacking.
Jesus Christ you are ignorant. It is just astounding. Nobody is expecting people to walk into a store and pay for things with Gold coins. Where did you get that idea?
Legal Tender laws state that government controlled currency MUST be accepted for many kinds of monetary transactions. There is an economic concept called Gresham’s Law. This means that bad money drives out good money. The idea is that if someone is forced to accept bad money, you need to pass it off and hoard the good money. Therefore, good money is driven out of circulation.
These, and many other laws, make it effectively impossible to have competing currencies in this country. Other countries currencies, which are fiat as well, are not a solution. We need many competing domestic currencies to circulate allowing people to opt out of carrying Federal Reserve Notes. This is effectively impossible.
Did you hear about the Liberty Dollar? The Liberty Dollar was a private currency backed by gold and silver. However, in November 2007 they were raided by the FBI and Secret Service. He was charge with criminal activity, specifically…
Don’t ever tell me people are free to circulate private currencies in this country. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
Oh, and about Ron Paul, that “fucking delusional moron” has forgotten more about economics than you will learn in your lifetime. He has written dozens of books, received a multitude of awards and recognition for his achievements and is the leader of a movement. Ron Paul has done these things:
He received a B.S. degree in biology at Gettysburg College in 1957.
He received his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine shortly afterward.
He served as a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon during the Vietnam War
He was personal friends with and learned from economists Hans Sennholz and Murray Rothbard. He studied directly from the great Classical economists.
During his first term in office he founded the think tank The Foundation for Rational Economics and Education.
In 1982 he launched The U.S. Gold Commission which allowed people to once again own gold in this country.
Ron Paul is honorary chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus
He hosts a luncheon every Thursday to educate his fellow Congressional members on the tenets of true economics and liberty
He serves on the following committees and subcommittees:
Committee on Financial Services
Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology
Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight
Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere
Joint Economic Committee
He co-founded the Ludwig Von Mises Institute
He has authored the following books:
Gold, Peace, and Prosperity: The Birth of a New Currency. Lake Jackson, Texas: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education.
U.S. Gold Commission (September 1982).
The Case for Gold: A Minority Report of the U.S. Gold Commission. Washington, DC: Cato Institute (2d ed. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007).
Ten Myths About Paper Money: And One Myth About Paper Gold. Lake Jackson, Texas: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education.
Mises and Austrian Economics: A Personal View. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute (2d ed. 2004).
Freedom Under Siege: The U.S. Constitution After 200 Years. Lake Jackson, Texas: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (2d ed. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007).
The Ron Paul Money Book. Plantation Publishing.
Paul, Ron (2000).
A Republic, If You Can Keep It. Lake Jackson, Texas: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education.
The Case for Defending America. Lake Jackson, Texas: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education.
A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship. Lake Jackson, TX: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education.
The Revolution: A Manifesto. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing.
End the Fed. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing.
Pillars of Prosperity. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2008.
Liberty In Media Awards–2001. Jersey City, NJ: Palisade Business Press. ISBN 1893958841.
**Liberty In Media Awards **– Vol. 2–2002. Jersey City, NJ: Palisade Business Press.
Paul, Ron (2004).
**Liberty In Media Awards **– Vol. 3–2003. Jersey City, NJ: Palisade Business Press. ISBN 1893958248.
This is not even touching the numerous house speeches he has given and contributions to other projects he has made, and forwards and introductions given to economic works by other authors.
Let me simply suggest that you are in no position to claim someone with the accomplishments of Ron Paul is a “fucking delusional moron”. Let me also add that you may possibly fall back to a position of personal attacks and defensiveness in an effort to resist having to fully face the bredth of intellect and accomplishment that Ron Paul, von Mises, Hayek and the others have demonstrated through decades of work.
I know its getting hard to defend Obama or the “government as savior” paradigm, but believe me its going to get even harder.
The Revolution is just getting started.
I am talking about the totality of his speeches, books, writings and teachings over thirty years of public service. You pick out one house floor speech from 2002 where some of his concerns haven’t come true yet and this is supposed to invalidate everything he has said and done? I never said he was 100% correct. Name one politician or forecaster who is. But I believe he is correct FAR more often than anyone I know of. You can disagree if you want. Trust me, I spend a lot more time studying these issues than you do.
What makes you confident that despite correctly calling the 08 crash that the system won’t break down within the next decade or so? You really think they can patch things together and continue with the spending, printing and borrowing?
Is that what you believe? There is going to be a lot of hardship ahead because we didn’t heed the advice of those who argued for fiscal restraint all these years.
Why don’t you lay out for us what you think will happen in the next decade or so in terms of economics and society in the United States? I would be interested in hearing what you think.
Right on about seat belt laws and lowering the drinking age. You know, some people felt pretty free when FDR was locking up Japanese Americans. A lot of people felt free when Hitler was hunting down the Jews in Nazi Germany. A lot of people are ambivalent to assassinations carried out by our CIA illegally.
Because YOU feel free at the moment doesn’t mean significant liberty has not been lost. If you are locked up without trial indefinitely, you will think you are living under true tyranny. Yet this is happening to other people as we speak.
My concerns are more about the long term effects of economic policies and the devaluation of the dollar. We could have civil unrest and violence break out. We could have a collapse of the system within the next decade.
Don’t you see any of this? I am not saying I (or anyone) can predict everything that will happen in the future, but many are saying it is over for the United States as a world superpower and it is due to bad economic policies for decades.
I am hoping once things break down you will see things more my way.
If he’s forgotten it all, it would explain his utter ignorance of the subject. 
This isn’t economics.
This also isn’t economics.
This also isn’t economics.
What degree did he get?
I could found a foundation called the Fellatio Institute. It doesn’t mean I know how to suck wang.
This also has nothing to do with his knowledge of economics.
This also has nothing to do with his knowledge of economics.
Many of his fellow Congressional members don’t believe in evolution. That they could be taken in by Paul’s banal stupidity isn’t exactly far-fetched.
So?
See above. Founding institutes proves nothing.
This means he’s fanatical, not intelligent.
Other batshit insane authors?
If you spend decades painting a cathedral with shit, you’re still a loon, no matter how nice it looks.
Well, I don’t think of myself as close minded. In fact, there are plenty of areas where I believe I would agree with most of you guys. I am an environmentalist, I support gay marriage, I am for repealing don’t ask don’t tell, I am pro choice, I am against the drug war, I am against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and support drastically reducing the military budget. I also care about the poor and am against corporatism and crony-ism. There are other areas as well.
I specifically targeted this thread to this audience because I knew I would get a lot of opposition. Therefore the tone may be more confrontational than it has to be. So, yes I am convinced of most of my ideas on economics and foreign policy. If that strikes you as close minded, so be it.
I am certainly willing to change my position over time and evolve as a person.
I’m gonna tackle this part first, because it is astounding. I’m a little bit worried about the national debt but not much., and Sure, we face large shortfalls in the future, but those can be eliminated through minor changes such as raising the retirement age and trimming benefits for the richest quartile.
No. Go back and read some economics. We CANNOT deal with the problem through tinkering around the edges. Raising the retirement age and “trimming” benefits for the richest is going to cover $100 Trillion dollars? If you believe that then you need to also go back and take some math courses as well.
The options are these: Continue on as if nothing is wrong until we face a true acknowledged bankruptcy and severe devaluation of the currency and collapse of the system
OR
Cut spending drastically while changing our expectations of what government should be doing for us. Balance the budget and do away with the welfare state and the warfare state (AT LEAST until we have beaten the debt and established solid growth and a stable dollar).
Those are really the only two options we have. Wouldn’t it be better if we had no national debt? What if we had no devaluation of the dollar? Why do you support this madness?
As to this fear of deflation, here is what is going on. Deflation is good. It is what the market is demanding. The market is demanding to establish the true price of houses and assets and liquidate the bad debt and establish equilibrium. Don’t you see how falling prices help the poor? You would rather we had inflation?
This is just an astounding ignorance you display with regards to economics. By “focusing” on the current crisis you are making the problem worse. These policies will make this crisis last maybe a decade (even two decades), rather than a couple of years.
In a downturn, WE CAN cut spending and reduce the deficit. Keynes was wrong, his theories are complete bullshit. If we cut spending and restrained the printing presses the correction would occur, it would be painful and it would be over.
Is it responsible to put off dealing with the debt and the long term deficit which will hurt me later in life and certainly my children? Their future is being consumed because you and others like you put off dealing with the fundamental long term problems for decades.
Don’t believe Keynes.
I can’t convince you. You have to do the work to understand the fundamentals of Austrian economics and why a stable dollar is so important for true economic growth. You could read some books, but I doubt that you will.
I don’t know what you are trying to say here. The 80s and 90s were when this bubble was being formed by Alan Greenspan. Republicans embraced supply side economics and blew up the deficit.
The crisis is here. The BIG one. Prepare because they won’t be able to put this one back together.
How do you know? I have and can easily demonstrate hundred of quotes from MDs and Phd doctors who oppose mandatory vaccination and believe that the number of vaccination given to our children is compromising their health. How can you claim that no serious doctors raise any objections to dozens and dozens of vaccines being given to our children? Vaccines that contain unsafe levels of Mercury and Formaldehyde?
You are the one who is close minded and ignorant on this issue.