Our usurping, non-citizen, spendthrift President, together with our corrupt, elitist-bootlicking Congress of money-grabbing Dumbos and Jackasses, are spending us into a multi-trillion dollar hyperinflationary oblivion as their ratings by their constituents drop into the toilet bowl, ratings which are disgracefully the lowest in all of US history. With a diabolical “Robin Hood in Reverse” plan in place since 1913 for the extortion of money from the US middle class to reduce their serfs to poverty and abject slavery, the Illuminati have managed to use the Federal Reserve Act and US income tax, together with the Social Security Ponzi Scheme, phony, orchestrated wars for profit, socialization of bankster-gangster losses, the globalism/free trade/off-shoring/outsourcing/legal-illegal immigration agendas, and a totally bought-and-paid-for President, Congress, judiciary and regulatory agencies, to reduce US citizens to consumerist credit addicts, living pay check to pay check like narcissistic hedonists.

The future, dumbed-down serfs of the future “masters of the universe” (so-called), now watch completely meaningless sports games and trash-TV instead of getting informed and taking action to save their country from the group of satanic trillionaires who have created the Goldilocks Matrix which they now occupy. We ask our fellow citizens in the matrix: Do you want the blue pill, or do you want the red pill? So far, most Americans have unfortunately opted for the blue pill. As always, those who have opted for the red pill are going to have to save the blue pill idiots from the consequences of their own pitiful ignorance. People who take the red pill are subscribing to the IF to get the truth and are buying gold and silver like there is no tomorrow so they can live to fight another day when the worldwide financial system collapses, as planned, to pave the way for a one world police state. The bold people who took the red pills are going to be all over the Illuminati like flies on rice when that happens, and you can take that to the bank, if there is still a single bank left standing after the Quadrillion Dollar Derivative Death Star goes supernova.

After watching most of our manufacturing industries shipped overseas, we have been reduced to tapping on keyboards, greeting people at department stores, flipping burgers, providing menial healthcare services for pitiful wages and shoving stacks of paper to and fro, while producing little that has any lasting value. Our financial industry, which by and large is run by Illuminist crooks, are using insider trading information from the PPT, led by Goldman Sachs and their government-gifted, front-running trade algorithm, to gun for the fast and easy buck, thereby transforming our capital markets from places where we can invest in our future into gambling casinos complete with craps tables and roulette wheels. When they profit, they get outrageous bonuses, but when they have gambling losses, they pass them on to taxpayers via the sewer slime and pond scum in Congress and in the Executive Branch who are attached to marionette strings, with the Puppet Masters in our shadow government holding the sticks to which those strings are attached, causing them to bob and weave like the wooden dummies that they are.

While our financial industry pushes a lot of paper around, most of the paper produced is rife with fraud and deceitful schemes meant to enrich the evil Illuminati, as well as their henchmen on Wall Street, at Goldman Sachs North, aka the Treasury Department employment pool, and at Goldman Sachs South where money and employees from Goldman Sachs North are shared for a while, all at the expense of just about everyone else around the globe.

The bankster-gangsters are already in the process of creating the next subprime derivative bubble through Fannie and Freddie, the FHA (Federal Housing Administration), the FHLB (Federal Home Loan Bank) and the USDA (US Department of Agriculture), to the tune of many hundreds of billions of dollars. The new subprime real estate bubble, powered by artificially low interest rates, little or no down payment requirements and lax credit standards, together with an $8,000 first time home buyers credit, will be popped later as the next round of inevitable defaults gets underway, probably one to two years from now. This fraudulent subprime loan origination and securitization not only adds nothing to our economy, it will eventually help destroy our economy. The bankster-gangsters and their henchmen will get the goldmine of commissions, fees, spreads, salaries and bonuses, and you will get the shaft.

GS, which sometimes stands for Goldman Sachs, but which always stands for Gold Suppression, is having some public relations issues, and no wonder. The Vampire Squid marches on, continuing to suck the life blood out of all the “useless eaters,” helping to prepare the way for a one world police state by assisting in the collapse of the world financial system while they make a filthy fortune along the way. Some day, they are going to choke on all the filthy lucre they have purloined from the public. Ahoy there, Captain Obama. There’s a Vampire Squid swimming along the port side of the USS Banana Republic. Well then, what are you waiting for First Mate Geithner, hoist up the Jolly Roger in acknowledgement!

By the way, when is GS going to pay back the tens of billions that were given to AIG by taxpayers so that Goldman would not go under as the insured counterparty to credit default swaps guaranteed by AIG that had gone sour? They have a lot of nerve issuing bonuses when they still owe the government big-time from the AIG bailout! And they would not have been able to pay the bailout money back if their totally bogus mark-to-model balance sheets were to show true mark-to-market figures. They are just as bankrupt as all the rest of the “anointed” legacy banks and investment banks, with a lot of their toxic waste still off balance sheet and offshore in SIV’s, structured investment vehicles, in VIE’s, variable interest entities, and in OTC derivatives, which taken together expose them to tens of billions in losses if not hundreds of billions. And who knows what their credit default swap portfolio looks like even after the AIG bailouts. We wonder how much of their toxic waste has been pawned off on the Fed in exchange for treasuries under the Term Securities Lending Facility? And how much of this GS toxic waste has been pledged as collateral at face value for near zero interest Fed loan money which they have parked with the Fed at 3% or which they have used to buy equities on insider trading information as the leading PPT operative with their front-running trade algorithms as the stock markets have rocketed 60% in six months for the first time in history despite the fact that we face the worst economic scenario in our history? Of course, we can’t tell, because GS won’t disclose it and the Fed says it’s a state secret. GS is simply ignoring the new Basel II and Basel III mark-to-market rules which now apply to them because they opted to become a bank to get Fed bailout largesse. Who is going to make them comply? The BIS? The Fed? The Treasury? The SEC? The CFTC? The FASB? The President? The Congress? The Supreme Court?

GS either owns, or is in cahoots with, all of the above. The whole system is laughable. We are now the laughing stock of world finance.

GS would have had to keep the bailout money from the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), and the salary and bonus restrictions that go with them, in order to shore up their awful balance sheets if the terrible truth about their financial condition were made known. In addition, their profits are all totally illegal based on insider trading and government black box front-running algorithms, a gift from our government’s bogus so-called regulatory agencies who sit on their fat duffs and do nothing about blatant financial scams like Madoff Ponzi schemes and the naked shorting of stocks. That is because GS and all of the regulatory agencies themselves are in on virtually all of these financial scams as silent partners. Trust us when we tell you, our regulatory criminals profit greatly from their inaction, whether from bribes, insider trading profits, shares in criminal booty and/or very lucrative jobs they just happen to fall into when they leave government service.

Incidentally, the Basel II rules were part of the overall plan to destroy our economy, much like the repeal of Glass-Steagall that allowed banks to get into investment banking activities again and the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which deregulated the OTC derivatives market. All these legislative machinations were put in place in order to create a new, less regulated, much larger and far more vulnerable and out-of-control (i.e. highly leveraged) financial system which, when broken, would accelerate the current financial crisis, making the implosion louder and the dive steeper.

The purpose in doing so was to destroy the old nation-state financial system and replace it with a satanic global financial system that would make the Vampire Squid look like a Shrimp or a Sea Horse by comparison. The current financial crisis in the US and around the world was not a failure of capitalism, but an intentional looting of the world financial system by Illuminist crony fascism sheep-dipped in capitalism. The old British Mercantilist System that has been surreptitiously adopted in the US via both the Federal Reserve Act (stealth tax on the masses by inflation of the money supply) and the US income tax (direct taxation of the masses) is a freedom-choking system of financial bondage which allows a nation’s economic system to be hijacked by the wealthy and powerful. It is anything but free market capitalism. This is the very system of financial bondage that our Founding Fathers fought a very bloody and costly war to rid themselves of. They are rolling over in their graves.

Basel II, which was implemented by the ultimate Illuminist financial institution, the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) in Basel, Switzerland, is like an adjuvant to the crisis, preventing banks from lending again for fear that they may have to comply with mark-to-market rules, thus choking off our economy to pave the way for an Orwellian one world police state of feudality. Basel II is the perfect excuse for the legacy banks to stand on the sidelines while they gobble up government TARP money and refuse to lend to anyone but the “anointed.” But remember, there is one system for the “anointed,” and another system for everyone else. Thus, the Fed and corrupt US regulators will allow the anointed legacy banks to essentially blow off Basel II, and will only hold the feet of the non-anointed small fry to the Basel II fire. Thus, the big will get bigger, and the small will fail and get eaten by the larger. No wonder Obama and Geithner want the Fed to become the new super regulator, with even more power to decide which banks and corporations will live, and which will die. All the more reason to audit and get rid of the Fed. We do not need a drooling Head Fox guarding the henhouse.

While the resulting credit crunch was ongoing, the Fed “convinced” Congress to allow them to pay interest on member bank reserves held by the Fed. Credit, at near zero rates, is now being extended by the Fed to its “anointed” in exchange for their toxic waste as collateral, which proceeds are then being deposited with the Fed as reserves at a 3% rate of interest instead of being re-loaned, and we’ll give you three guesses as to who gets to pay for this interest on reserves. That is a very profitable and risk free spread, but only for the “anointed,” as the Fed can open and shut its discount loan window to whomever it darn well pleases, being a privately owned bank. The small fry can go scratch, and many have already succumbed. This will continue until the number of banks in our banking system is cut in half. The FDIC is beyond broke. They don’t even have enough to cover but a tiny fraction of potential losses, much less to cover the losses from the failure of half of the banks in the entire system. Either the claims for lost deposits will not be paid, or so much money will be printed to pay those claims that the money received in payment will be virtually worthless, along with any and all remaining dollar-denominated assets. This is going to become a very big problem indeed in the not-too-distant future. The solution: Empty your bank accounts of all but one to three months of necessary household operating expenses, and buy gold and silver related assets with the rest, along with freeze-dried food, a water filter, and the means to defend your family from malefactors, both public and private.

This 3% interest on reserves is one of the primary reasons the Fed won’t say which banks are getting the zero interest loans, because that would identify the Illuminist institutions who are scamming US taxpayers despite being bankrupt. These insolvent institutions should be liquidated in bankruptcy court, but instead public largesse is being used to keep them alive so they can feed their henchmen with salaries and bonuses, which would not otherwise be possible. In addition, these greedy Illuminist institutions are making a risk-free 3%, are hoarding their monetary reserves to sterilize them from having an inflationary impact on the economy in order to suppress gold and silver, and are cutting off the public from acquiring credit even though the public has bailed them out and is guaranteeing their loans from the Fed. Talk about moral hazard!

The near zero rates, and the huge spread on reserve deposits with the Fed, is being protected by currency swaps which the Fed and other foreign central banks have been exchanging with one another. This keeps foreign banks out of US credit markets so their demand for dollars won’t bid up loan rates in the US. These swaps are also being used as conduits by the Fed to feed dollars to foreign banks so they can purchase treasuries, thus keeping treasury rates, and the mortgage rates that are tied into them, on the lower end of the spectrum, while at the same time the Fed uses its foreign currencies from the swap arrangements to weaken those foreign currencies by dumping them on the currency exchanges, thus strengthening the dollar and putting pressure on gold and silver. Needless to say, all the dollars and other foreign currencies used in these swap arrangements are being created out of thin air via monetization, which means that all major currencies are being debauched simultaneously, thus paving the way for a one world currency, while at the same time inexorably driving gold and silver to new heights against all currencies.

By giving the legacy banks the excuse not to continue lending due to the threat of Basel II mark-to-market rules, which rules were temporarily delayed by the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) to delay recognition of losses so the Illuminists could continue to milk the system by originating and packaging their fraudulent loans and securitizations for profits to fund outrageous salaries and bonuses, the recovery of the US economy has been choked off for everyone except the Illuminists and their corrupt, “anointed,” financial institutions. This choking off of credit also sterilizes the inflationary effect that would result if banks started lending again, because the fractional reserve banking multiplier would create a boatload of money out of thin air. In this manner, the Fed is able to feed money exclusively to its cronies in the financial system without stoking inflation to dizzying levels, while everyone else floats off into financial oblivion.

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Fall Of The Republic – Buy the DVD here

Activists asked to leave flu vaccination clinic

Kristen Daum
INFORUM
Wednesday, Nov 11th, 2009

Two teenage political activists were asked to leave an H1N1 vaccination clinic Monday in Fargo after handing out literature to the pregnant women waiting in line.

Fargo Cass Public Health sponsored the clinic Monday afternoon for only pregnant women, a priority group for the H1N1, or swine flu, vaccine. Officials gave out 140 of about 1,000 available doses.

It was Cass County’s third H1N1 clinic, but the first in which officials dealt with an incident that might have disrupted the clinic by possibly deterring those seeking vaccination.

Robert Wanek and Ryan Rettig, both 16 and of Breckenridge, Minn., said they wanted to educate the pregnant women about the risks of the H1N1 vaccine. The boys are members of Minnesota’s chapter of We Are Change, a grassroots political activist group.

More than a dozen pregnant women received handouts from Wanek and Rettig before Fargo Cass Public Health officials and Fargo police asked the boys to leave.

One woman waiting in line left after she read what the boys handed her. Other women were upset because the source of the boys’ information was not listed.

Health officials said Wanek and Rettig misrepresented themselves by saying they were members of the media but then distributing the fliers.

The boys said they weren’t trying to deter women from being vaccinated.

“We’re not trying to scare – we’re just trying to inform them of the risks and benefits so they can weigh them and make their best educated decision,” Rettig said.

Fargo Cass Public Health Director Ruth Bachmeier said clinic participants receive information prior to being vaccinated.

“We’re providing the information that the CDC and the health department provided us,” Bachmeier said.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, H1N1 flu shots aren’t proven to harm pregnant women or their babies, and the risks for the H1N1 vaccine are the same as with a seasonal flu shot.

The remainder of Monday’s clinic went smoothly. About 45 women were in line when the clinic began, but the lines tapered off within 15 minutes and remained that way until the clinic ended at 6 p.m.

Area health care providers have vaccinated pregnant patients as H1N1 doses become available, but Fargo Cass Public Health wanted to give the women an opportunity to be vaccinated sooner.

“Some women were a month out from seeing their doctor again … so we didn’t want to make them wait another month before getting the vaccine,” said Theresa Orecchia, Fargo Cass Public Health public information officer.

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Fall Of The Republic – Buy the DVD here

As Washington continues debating healthcare reform the rest of the country is primarily concerned about jobs and the economy. It is still uncertain what policies will be implemented, but I am certain about one thing: It will only further devastate our economy and our dollar.

The leadership has come up with a proposal they are confident will be what they consider fiscally responsible, only to have it scored as nearly twice as expensive by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Estimates of past healthcare spending programs have been off by as much as 100 percent so there is no telling what the actual cost will be.

The past century should have taught us one thing: that government intervention is expensive. Government programs lend themselves so easily to waste, fraud and abuse. Combine that with overall inefficiency and it all adds up to a hefty price tag for the taxpayer, with not much leftover for actual services. An outright takeover of an entire sector of the economy, especially one as important as healthcare, is something that we just cannot afford for the government to do right now. Not to mention the fact that it is completely unconstitutional. But Washington insists on torturing the numbers and tinkering around the edges rather than facing this truth.

If healthcare reform does indeed pass, we should not be under the illusion that it will be free. The money to pay for it will have to come from somewhere. They say they will get the money from cutting waste, fraud and abuse, but all of that is seemingly intrinsic to government programs. Since they want to expand the government’s reach we have to assume we will be trading waste, fraud and abuse for waste, fraud and abuse with a bigger budget. The powers that be have insisted the money won’t come from higher taxes, it won’t come from rationing of care, and it won’t come from higher premiums. This can only then put more pressure on the Fed to print the money out of thin air. We already have a weakening dollar. They are accelerating everything that weakened it in the past. Adding this new, monumental pressure could very well be the straw that will break the dollar’s back.

Foreign creditors are already nervous about continuing to invest in the US because of our skyrocketing debt. The explosion of debt that is certain to accompany the enactment of this national health care bill can only add to that nervousness.

Ironically, enactment of the health care bill could help the cause of liberty by hastening the day when Congress is forced by economic circumstances to stop increasing the welfare-warfare state and return to the Constitution.

There are many problems with our current healthcare system, to be sure. There are many tragic stories to be told. However, we need to look at the root of our problems in order to address them properly. More government intervention and bureaucracy injected into healthcare will take a flawed system and make immeasurably worse.

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Fall Of The Republic – Buy the DVD here

Documents newly found at the National Archives show that in the weeks before the 9/11 Commission issued a subpoena for tapes of events at the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) on the day of the attacks, it told the military not to send some or all of them to the commission. The documents are internal commission e-mails and a memo, as well as communications between the commission and the military. They were found at the National Archives by History Commons contributor Erik Larson (a.k.a. paxvector) and posted to the 9/11 Document Archive at Scribd.

The tapes became one of the cornerstones of the commission’s account of the day of 9/11, which differed significantly from previous statements by the military and FAA. Although the military had previously claimed it had launched fighters from Langley Air Force Base in response to the hijacking of Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, and to have been tracking Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, the commission found otherwise. It said the Langley fighters were launched for another reason, and failed to find any mention of Flight 93 in military records until around 10:00 a.m., shortly before it crashed

If the commission’s version is correct, it is unclear why the military gave the public and then the commission such a misleading account. Did the Pentagon knowingly lie to overstate its readiness to intercept errant airliners, was it just a SNAFU in the Pentagon investigation, or was there some other reason? The concealment of the tapes from the commission would have indicated a deliberate lie by the military, but the newly found documents show the military repeatedly referred to them in communications and made an apparent offer to provide some or all of them to the commission five weeks before the commission issued its subpoena.

The newly found documents show that the commission received a partial transcript of the tapes on 2 June. However, this transcript was incomplete and, according to a commission memo dated 29 October 2003, only reflected 5 or 6 tapes. Some of the tapes were first released to the public by the makers of the documentary Loose Change, and a fuller set was later obtained by Government Attic, which received a total of 21 tapes. This means the initial transcript reflected at most about one quarter of what NEADS had.

The memo indicates the commission thought the 2 June transcript was a full transcript of all the tapes. However, it ended at 10:15 a.m., just a few minutes after the last airliner crashed, and the commission wanted it to be supplemented to continue after this time. According to the memo, the commission made repeated requests for supplementation, on 8 September, 20 October and 24 October. The memo says that prior to flying to visit NEADS the commission “stressed the significance of receiving all tapes and transcripts relevant to 9/11.” It is unclear which military component these requests were made to.

At the same time the commission was asking the military for the tapes, it was also telling it not to send them.

In an e-mail dated 29 September 2003 (page 8), Miles Kara, one of the commission staffers slated to visit NEADS, wrote to his NEADS point of contact Kasey Blaney. Instead of asking for the tapes and transcripts in advance of the visit, he wrote, “[P]lease have tapes of the transcripts available on site and then provided to us for retention through the document process.”

The next day, he wrote (same as previous link, page 1) to other staffers investigating the air defence on the day of the attacks, telling them: “She [Blaney] confirmed that they have the tapes, but are concerned about fragility—they are reel-reel [note: a problem occurred when NEADS attempted to transcribe them, and NEADS came to believe a couple of the tapes had been accidentally deleted, although they were later recovered]. I told her to hold on making copies and we would make that judgment on site in consultation with their technical folks.” The purpose of making copies would be to provide the copies to the commission, in advance of the visit.

An e-mail dated 21 October from Blaney to Kara and copied to the other relevant staffers also mentions the plan to listen to the tapes. Blaney asks: “When did you envision us listening to the relevant tapes for the period 1015 EDT onward? Cross your fingers, if all works well, the tapes will be copied to a hard drive and will be available on our local area network. You’ll be able to listen to them at your convenience!”

However, when the commission staffers arrived at NEADS in the last week in October, team leader John Farmer apparently became displeased and suspended the visit. He then flew to see Commission Chairman Tom Kean, and demanded that the tapes be subpoenaed. According to Philip Shenon’s The Commission, Farmer intended to resign if the commission did not issue a subpoena.

The exact source of the displeasure is not wholly certain. Possibly, although Farmer had gone to NEADS specifically to listen to the tapes, he did not realise how many tapes they had (i.e. by providing the transcript of 5-6 channels, the military had implied it had only recorded those many channels). Therefore, he was angered by the lack of an explicit reference to the amount of tapes and their non-provision of the commission.

Seen in this light, the subpoena may seem somewhat harsh on the Pentagon. The e-mails between Kara and Blaney show the commission previously told NEADS not to send the tapes in advance. However, commission staffers went to listen to the tapes, and then demanded a subpoena for them, citing NEADS’ non-provision of the tapes beforehand.

On the other hand, the commission may have not understood exactly how many tapes NEADS had. In addition, there were numerous other pieces of documentation being withheld by the military, which had also made other false claims, and subpoenas are hardly extraordinary in Washington.

In addition, some critics of the commission have attacked its policy of not issuing subpoenas. In one instance, the commission only issued a document request to the CIA for detainee materials, and the CIA withheld recordings of the detainees Abu Zubaida and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri being questioned. The recordings were then destroyed. The withholding was not an illegal act by the CIA in regard of the commission’s document request, which was not backed by the force of law, although the tapes’ destruction may have been illegal for other reasons.

The commission issued the subpoena in early November; the tapes were provided promptly.

Finally, there is the question of the incorrectness of the 29 October memo, a report from Team 8 to the commission’s front office about the need for a subpoena. It states:

“Because the [2 June] transcript ends at 10:15 am, we asked in repeated telephone conversations that the tape be further transcribed. This request was memorialized in an email on September 8th. (See tab B). On October 20, after receiving no response to our September 8th message, we again wrote and stressed the importance of both continuing the NEADS transcript and of receiving all relevant NEADS documents prior to flying out to Rome, New York.”

It is hard to understand how Team 8 could have thought there had been no response to the 8 September e-mail, as in late September Kara and Blaney discussed this issue and came to an agreement, of which Kara then informed the other staffers on Team 8. Perhaps if the front office and commissioners had known of this, they would have viewed the subpoena request differently.

Originally posted here

One of the ugliest battles in the blogosphere climate wars has involved the newly released Superfreakonomics, sequel to the best-selling Freakonomics. In their new book’s final chapter, economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner set out to challenge the view that massively restricting carbon emissions is the only hope for averting planetwide catastrophe. Some of the most outspoken advocates for immediate “carbon legislation,” such as Joe Romm and Paul Krugman, were appalled by the chapter.

In this article I will link to some of the major commentary on the book so far, and try to explain to Austrian readers why the interventionists were understandably upset. In particular, I want to caution libertarians not to reflexively side with Levitt and Dubner because “they’re on our side.” I will remind readers of the admitted errors Levitt made in his battles (stemming from the Freakonomics era) with anti-gun-controller John Lott.

Having done all this, at the end of the article my merciful nature will compel me to defend Levitt and Dubner from UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong’s specific claim that their support of geoengineering is somehow “bad economics.”

As we’ll see, Levitt and Dubner might be wrong in their views on global warming, but if so they are wrong because of the numbers. Regardless of their other possible sins, Levitt and Dubner should be acquitted of DeLong’s accusation that they aren’t thinking like economists. 

A Summary of the Blog Wars

I can’t do Levitt and Dubner’s presentation justice here; I encourage the interested reader to read the chapter. To summarize very briefly, they argue that if global warming really is a threat, then it does not follow that governments need to enforce draconian cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, which would cost many trillions of dollars over the next few decades.

Instead, a “geoengineering” solution could be adopted to keep the earth cool despite increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Perhaps the most fanciful idea is to suspend a hose using helium balloons, in order to pump sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. This would reflect some of the incoming sunlight and arrest (or even reverse) global warming, just as occurred after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. Best of all, this particular approach would only cost about $250 million total — less than what Al Gore’s foundation is spending just to “raise awareness” about climate change.

Naturally, the proponents of massive government interventions into the economy were furious at Levitt and Dubner’s claims. Physicist and Clinton administration Department of Energy official Joe Romm got the ball rolling with this fiery post in which he accused the Superfreakonomics writers not merely of being incredibly sloppy in their summary of the climate science but also of consciously distorting the views of the scientists they quoted.

Romm’s frequent ally in such matters, Paul Krugman, soon followed suit and claimed that the authors horribly mischaracterized the views of leading climate economists in the chapter. Dubner defended himself and coauthor Levitt against Romm’s accusations of intentional distortion in this post, and physicist (and all-around guru) Nathan Myhrvold, one of the primary sources for the chapter, defended himself from Romm’s accusations of ignorance here.

Are the Critics Justified?

Readers of these pages know that I am no fan of Paul Krugman, especially when it comes to his views on climate change. But I do want to explain that I understand why he and Romm freaked out about this chapter.

The example that most offended Krugman was Levitt and Dubner’s discussion of the work of economist Martin Weitzman. In a passage discussing the thorny issues of climate change — that the risks are very uncertain and won’t occur for many years, making it hard to know how much action to take in the present — Levitt and Dubner say,

The economist Martin Weitzman analyzed the best available climate models and concluded the future holds a 5 percent chance of a terrible-case scenario — a rise of more than 10 degrees Celsius.

There is of course great uncertainty even in this estimate of uncertainty. So how should we place a value on this relatively small chance of worldwide catastrophe? (Superfreakonomics, p. 169)

This is the only mention of Weitzman in the chapter, and the overall theme of course is that global warming need not alter modern civilization. In context, then, one certainly gets the impression that Martin Weitzman’s work weakens the case for immediate restrictions on carbon emissions.

But this is exactly the opposite of what Weitzman has done. The issues are too technical for a full discussion here, but elsewhere I have explained that Weitzman is one of the interventionists’ heroes on the issue of climate change.

Even conceding the natural-science “consensus” on human-caused climate change, standard cost-benefit models show that the “optimal carbon tax” starts out fairly modestly, and only increases gradually over the decades. This is because the serious damages from climate change won’t really kick in until the end of the century, and so the present discounted value of the “social cost” of an additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions is fairly low.

Weitzman’s work upsets this standard conclusion. He has shown the mathematical conditions under which the usual cost-benefit models break down. Weitzman’s approach shows that, rather than making a slight marginal adjustment in the trajectory of emissions to “internalize the externality,” it can be optimal to aggressively curtail emissions right away in order to minimize the likelihood of experiencing catastrophic climate events.

So it’s not so much that Levitt and Dubner lied about Weitzman’s work, but their reference was very misleading. Austrians can appreciate what happened by considering this analogy: Suppose a proponent of government healthcare said, “All these critics keep warning about ’socialized medicine.’ But Nobel economist Friedrich Hayek wrote in the socialist-calculation debate that there was no logical problem with central planners optimally allocating resources.”

Now the above (hypothetical) quotation would be accurate, strictly speaking, but horribly misleading. If it were embedded in a book chapter pushing for a government health-insurance plan, Austrian economists would understandably freak out. Thus, we should be forgiving when Paul Krugman does the same after reading Superfreakonomics on climate change.

One final point, in case the free-market reader simply cannot bring himself to empathize with Paul Krugman — let’s not forget what happened in the argument between Steve Levitt and anti-gun-control economist John Lott. Levitt ultimately had to write a letter to a colleague retracting claims he had made regarding Lott’s involvement with an issue of the Journal of Law and Economics. In that letter, Levitt made the following correction:

In those emails [I had sent to you], I did not mean to suggest that Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., or anyone acting on his behalf, engaged in bribery or exercised improper influence on the editorial process with respect to the preparation and publication of the Conference Issue. I acknowledge that the articles that were published in the Conference Issue were reviewed by referees engaged by the editors of the JLE. In fact, I was one of the peer referees.

In case the reader’s eyes glazed over, let me emphasize the astounding admission in the above sentences by quoting one cynical blogger: “Look at the size of the lies Levitt was throwing around. ‘It wasn’t a refereed journal,’ Levitt says. Not only was it a refereed journal, Levitt was a referee!” 

Of course, just because Levitt may have been sloppy and very unfair in his treatment of the work of John Lott, doesn’t prove that Romm and Krugman are right when it comes to Levitt’s (and coauthor Dubner’s) handling of climate change. I just want to caution Austrian and libertarian readers not to assume that anyone who “thinks global warming is a big hoax” is automatically a great scholar.

Now that I’ve spent so much time criticizing Levitt, let me end this article by defending him from economist Brad DeLong.

DeLong Forgets that Time Is Money

In a series of posts (one, two, and three), DeLong heaps extreme criticism on our authors. Under normal circumstances, DeLong’s criticisms would be described as “scathing,” yet compared to Romm’s treatment, it’s kid-glove stuff. For our purposes here, I want to focus on just two of DeLong’s (many) complaints. First, DeLong quotes Levitt who said (during an NPR interview), 

[I]f you look at the history of modern mankind, I think you will be hard pressed to find any particular problem that was serious that was solved by a behavioral change, as opposed to by a technological solution. . . .

DeLong is astounded by this claim, and responds, “That’s just not economics: economics is that incentives change, and as incentives change people’s behavior changes.”

DeLong is right: what Levitt said is “not economics.” Rather, it’s a historical claim. Maybe it’s right and maybe it’s wrong, but DeLong can’t trump it by citing a tautology from microeconomics. I am sure that Levitt would concede the narrow point that if governments around the world instituted a massive carbon tax, and enforced it with draconian penalties for evasion, then global emissions would indeed fall quickly.

But one of Levitt’s main points is that governments around the world are not going to do this — that it is naive to expect them to sacrifice their own economies when (in Levitt’s opinion) the climate science is not nearly certain enough to justify this painful step.

Levitt is making a prediction — based on his interpretation of history — that if manmade global warming really does require drastic measures in the next few decades, the response will involve various forms of geoengineering, which (Levitt predicts) will cost a tiny fraction of what the carbon mitigation proposals would require. To repeat, I’m not saying I necessarily endorse Levitt’s glib proclamations on these points, but DeLong is wrong to dismiss them as somehow “not economics.”

Finally let’s deal with another point on which DeLong completely misses Levitt’s valid argument. He first quotes Levitt: 

Now, in the long run, perhaps you’ll want to deal with the [high] carbon [dioxide] issue [even with geoengineering] because we’re going to have acidification of the oceans and the coral reefs will die if we don’t do something about the carbon. But if you just buy the time to keep the Earth cool for a while longer, I am certain that if we invest we will come up with technology that will allow us much more effectively in the future to pull carbon out of the air than we currently have. . . .

DeLong points out that whatever mechanism our descendants use to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, it will require power generation. He then argues, 

So now we have (a) our normal power plants to power our civilization, plus (b) our atmosphere carbon-scrubbing industry, which is (c) powered by even more carbon power plants to generate the power to break the carbon-oxygen bonds that our first set of power plants made. But plants (c) put more carbon into the atmosphere than plants (a) did.

I know, says Steve Levitt, we can power our carbon-scrubbing industry (b) by power plants (c) that use nuclear or solar or. . . But then why not power our original civilization-sustaining power plants (a) by nuclear or solar or whatever?

Now this is frankly silly. Let’s be clear, I think Levitt and Dubner made some major goofs in their chapter, and DeLong (as well as Romm and Krugman) nailed them. But here DeLong is making an obvious mistake. He is neglecting the fact that it will be much, much cheaper to engage in carbon-free energy production the longer we wait. Does DeLong really not see this elementary point and how it makes Levitt’s argument perfectly sensible?

For an analogy, consider people who contract a terminal illness and then elect to have their bodies cryonically frozen so that they can be resuscitated and cured in the future. Now maybe that’s a good idea or maybe it’s not, but it wouldn’t really make sense for someone to say, “That’s just bad economics! Why go to the trouble of having your cancer cured in the future? Just do it now.” Yet that is exactly the argument DeLong has deployed against Levitt.

Conclusion

There is a reason that the energy infrastructure in today’s market economies is so heavily based upon fossil fuels: they are by far the cheapest, most reliable forms of energy, given the needs of modern society. Regardless of their (alleged) sloppy scholarship, Levitt and Dubner raise an interesting possibility that deserves careful scrutiny, not ridicule: even if it turns out that unfettered use of fossil fuels will spell unacceptable climate damages to future generations, it does not follow that the only solution is immediate and drastic reductions in carbon emissions.

Another possibility is to buy a few decades’ worth of “breathing room” (Myhrvold’s phrase in the book) through pumping SO2 into the stratosphere, for example, and then make the transition to carbon-free energy production when it will not be so terribly costly.

It’s surprising that some of the people who warn that the fate of the planet itself is it stake are so dismissive of what could be a crucial component of humanity’s response to the very dangers of which they’re warning.

Alex Jones radio broadcast from July 6th 2007.  Alex Jones Interviews David Mayer de Rothschild.

Anger and discontent are reaching a boil as a lethal combination of economic corruption and political collusion are deleveraged across the United States.

From recent rampages in Orlando, Fla., to mortgage-related torture in Los Angeles, certain members of the citizenry seem to have had their fill of being manipulated for the financial gain of others, and they’re firing back with force.

And the situation threatens to burn hotter as the winter holidays — always a peak period fof domestic violence, due mostly to financial stress — approach to spark its frazzled strands. The economic crisis revealed late-capitalism’s central offense: Human beings are being transparently treated if they were mere transactions. And they’re going postal over it.

“They left me to rot,” Jason Rodriguez said when asked why he went on a shooting rampage at the Orlando engineering firm Reynolds, Smith and Hills that had fired him two years ago.

That compressed vitriol is also found in the Los Angeles case, where Daniel Weston and Gustavo Canez allegedly imprisoned and tortured loan-modification agents Lamond Dean and Luis Garcia while three others — Mario Soloman Gonzales, Marissa Parker and Mary Ann Parmelee, a realtor — sat and watched.

According to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, “Weston and Parmelee live in a house that is in foreclosure,” and they “allegedly sought loan-modification assistance from the victims but believed that nothing was being done and wanted their money back.”

When they didn’t get it, they evidently extracted their payback in violent revenge.

“That’s not right,” explained Kathleen Day, spokeswoman for the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending. “But clearly people are really mad about what’s happened to them. This is the kind of thing that happens when lenders don’t lend responsibly. You can’t abuse your customers forever.”

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Or your tormenters, as Weston and Canez will no doubt realize, once the full force of the state comes down on them for venting their rage. Whatever their perceived or real injustices may have been, their attack on Dean and Garcia crossed a line laid down by the rule of law. But that rule, as everyone from voters to homeowners to municipalities and more have come to fully realize during the last decade, rarely applies in both directions.

For those in power, it is used to shield them from the justice they often deserve. For those on the outside looking in, it is often used to oppress them further. The disturbing blowback from that growing inequality, mirrored by an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor and a true national unemployment rate around 17 percent, can only get worse.

“Loan-modification scams are proliferating now because of the numerous foreclosure-prevention programs that have been announced,” said Douglas Robinson, spokesman for NeighborWorks America, a national nonprofit created by Congress to financially and technically assist with community-based revitalization efforts. “Homeowners know that there is help out there for them, so they are more susceptible to scammers who sound legitimate. Unemployment is increasing, and homeowners are looking for answers that will save their homes. Scammers know this and tailor their approach to homeowners.”

Until more details on the case come in, the jury is still out on whether Dean and Garcia were scamming the posse that allegedly imprisoned and tortured them or were legitimate operators.

But the convergence of malfeasance and blowback in their case is alluring: NeighborWorks announced a national campaign to combat loan-mod scams alongside Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on the same day the district attorney posted its press release on Dean and Garcia.

Of course, there was little in NeighborWorks’ campaign — which designated November as “National Loan Modification Scam Awareness Month” — that mentioned the actual banks whose densely securitized loans have crippled not just American homeowners, but also the global economy.

According to a series of brilliant exposes, McClatchy newspapers found that Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs peddled billions of securitized mortgages that it knew were toxic, and then capitalized on inevitable foreclosures through murky subsidiaries tasked with kicking distressed homeowners onto the street.

The callous practice was good for Goldman’s bottom line: According to a recent report from the National Consumer Law Center, there’s more money for mortgage companies in foreclosures than in loan modification. To reward itself for its purportedly legal duplicity for the holidays, when economic stress is at its peak, Goldman is giving its employees billions in bonuses, all while claiming to do “God’s work.”

Of course, Goldman Sachs isn’t the only perp getting a free ride. According to Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, over 95 percent of troubled mortgages in the United States “has moved to five institutions: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wachovia, Citigroup and HSBC. They have this country held by the neck.”

All of those U.S. banks, excluding London’s HSBC, have received bailout billions in American taxpayer dollars, and yet homeowners threatened with foreclosure, especially poor ones, are running out of lawyers to represent them in court. Ironic, considering that the unjust double-standard, judging by events in Los Angeles and probably coming to a city near you, is destroying what is left of the rule of law as we know it.

“There’s a growing sense from people that they don’t feel they should have to hold up their end of contracts,” added Center for Responsible Lending’s Day. “The banks and government have caused a breakdown in social mores. The Senate didn’t pass the bankruptcy bill, which would have helped homeowners with their loan modifications, because of pressure from the banking industry. And that helped create the situation we’re in.

“Lenders, lawmakers and regulators have really got to start thinking about how to help those who have been hurt by this and how to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.”

For its part, NeighborWorks and its partners in Congress, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and more are trying to help homeowners avoid loan-mod scammers in hopes of stanching the bleeding. And they’re not fans of the kind of frontier justice allegedly meted out by Weston, Canez and crew in Los Angeles.

“No matter how frustrating the circumstance, we urge anyone who feels they’ve been scammed to seek justice by reporting the scam artist or business to the legal authorities,” said Robinson. “Knowing the signs of a scam and reporting a scam is our best defense.”

But that’s wishful thinking, and given the recent rash of violent events, probably exhausted as an alternative at this point.

NeighborWorks’ faith in “the legal authorities” has not been borne out by the facts of this unfolding economic depression, and Americans can see right through the hypocrisy of it all: From the housing bubble to the neutered bankruptcy bill and down to the highway robbery of the bailout, the collusion of the government and the financial-services industry has stripped the population of everything from its equity and savings to its dignity and options. And it’s mad as hell about it, as it should be, given that what it is enduring is a perversion and ultimately erasure of authority.

“This isn’t capitalism, it’s the Wild West,” concluded Day. “We have to heal the market.”

The only way to do that is to give the American people’s money back to them, rather than the white-collar vampires that are sucking them dry. The bailout, allegedly created to increase lending, has failed.

U.S. commercial and industrial loans declined 11 percent to around $1.4 trillion since September, according to the Federal Reserve, which itself, thanks to public anger, is busy trying to hide from audits to outright dissolution.

And so the plan to award banks that built the housing bubble on labyrinthine debt securitization doomed to failure has now fully backfired, and the pitchforks and torches are being brought out with mounting speed.

If the American people, to say nothing of those in much worse straits in poorer countries, don’t get paid their due soon, they are liable to make what’s left of the rule of law that has abandoned them an utter nightmare. You’re likely to find reruns of Orlando and Los Angeles, as well as Fort Hood, replicating everywhere. And who is going to argue with them?

“For once,” Day explained, “borrowers aren’t seen as primarily responsible for products designed to bilk them of every nickel and dime. The fact is that all studies have shown if people can afford to stay in their homes, they will, even if they are underwater. But now there is a growing disrespect for banks and what has been a social norm — if you incur a debt, you should pay it back.

“What the lending institutions have done is outrageous and has gone on for too long.”

While normal everyday oblivious Americans were preparing their beds to sleep Saturday night their elected officials quietly passed H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Indeed, the passage of this act deals one of the final death blows to the Constitution and with it our liberties.

As I ponder upon this momentously horrid occurrence it is as if I have just woken up from a nightmare and been thrown directly into the plot of George Orwell’s 1984, with no hope of escape. As this thought grabs hold I am lead to ponder more and more about America and I ask myself a few questions.

Since when did the Constitution provide for a health care guarantee? Since when did the Constitution grant the Congress the power to force Americans into a health care dystopia? What good is a Constitution if we choose to ignore it? What good is a Constitution if the Congress simply chooses to create a new one in their own graven socialist image?

Truly, these questions are meaningless now. The Constitution is hanging by the tiniest of threads. Who will save it? Who will come to its rescue?

It is the everyday middle class American that will suffer the consequences of this travesty. Indeed, while the economy is reeling and unemployment pushes depression-era levels the arrogant Congress has decided to pass the biggest expansion of government in the history of the United States. It will create a new tax that will primarily be felt by the middle class, the ones most likely affected by the current depression. This is because as Americans are forced to purchase health insurance, the wealthy will have no problem paying for escalating costs. Nor will the poor feel the burden as they will receive government health insurance subsidies. Yet, the forgotten man will be the middle class working American who now already struggling against the burden of economic ruin will be forced to pay fines or even face possible jail time for not complying with our government’s take over of his/her health care. As this tax sinks in, the middle class will be forced downward into the ranks of the working poor and therefore into the ranks of government rationed medical care. Inevitably, government healthcare will swallow the whole of the medical insurance world and there will be no escape.

This dystopian vision will consist of patients waiting in long lines and when they are finally permitted to see their doctor there will be much fruitless begging and pleading for the treatment that they desperately need. But no mercy will be given because the doctor will have become nothing more than a desk-clerk, simply following the government treatment protocols.

“What, you have shoulder pain?” Your doctor asks. “Well, the treatment protocol for this condition provided by our majestic government says you have to wait two years to get a MRI or to see an Orthopedist. I am sorry. Here are a few pain pills. There is nothing more that I can do. Have a nice day.”

Such will be the conservation heard in doctor’s offices throughout America. Don’t believe me? I have personally lived in the socialist countries that we are now trying to emulate. This is the reality in these countries and the people there simply accept it and learn not to complain. We, in America, will also come to learn and accept over time what our benevolent government has chosen to grant us.

And what about our parents? It will not be long before the health care budget spirals out of control and our benevolent government is forced to make cuts. Who will they cut off first? Why, our parents of course. The government will say that the elderly simply cost too much. They will say that the elderly are no longer productive members of society and have only a few years to live anyway so let’s just stop providing life-saving surgeries or needed food and water for these no longer useful people. Don’t believe me? Just look to these same socialist countries where the elderly are frequently pushed into hospice death programs when they have no terminal illness and denied needed surgeries because they are too old.

I could go on and on. Such is the fury and simultaneously the sorrow I feel for our country. Now is the time for our voices to be heard. Now is the time to make a stand before it is too late.

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Fall Of The Republic – Buy the DVD here

George W. Bush redistributed more wealth during his presidency than any president had since Lyndon Johnson. Republicans really have never had any problem with redistributing wealth as long as the proceeds go to the right people. Since Medicare benefits senior citizens, a constituency that no election can be won without in the baby boomer retirement era, Republicans had no problem using the force of government to take money from one individual and use it to buy “healthcare” for another — as they did with their Medicare prescription drug benefit. Neither do they hesitate to redistribute to bankers, under the cover of “saving the financial system.” God help us if there is ever a constituency of senior citizen bankers.

In fact, if one looks at the federal budget as it existed before the massive bailouts started — pre-TARP — at least 80% of the almost $3 trillion budget amounted to wealth redistribution. Always there was some rationalization for why this or that group must receive federal funds “for the good of all.” The farmers must be subsidized because there is absolutely no way to sustain farming in a market economy. If large farming corporations weren’t subsidized, we would all starve. Medical research must be subsidized because we will eventually all die of cancer, AIDS, and other horrific diseases if the government doesn’t subsidize medical research. Corporations in general must be subsidized because if one were to go out of business, everyone would be unemployed.

The Democrats typically attempt to characterize the Republicans as racist or elitist because the Republicans have traditionally resisted wealth redistribution for the poor or minorities. However, the reality is that Republicans do this for the same reasons that Democrats resist redistribution to bankers and corporations (or at least they used to). The poor and minorities don’t vote Republican. That is the only reason that Republicans attempt to leave them out.

No one in America seems to know any American history. Following the American Civil War, when black voters universally supported the Republicans due to their perception that the “party of Lincoln” had set them free, it was the Republicans who promised “40 acres and a mule” to blacks and the Democrats who proclaimed themselves “the party of white men.” Enslaved by their former ruling class and now used as pawns in a political power game by the new one, the freed black voters of post-Civil War America serve as a perfect metaphor for the supposed “beneficiaries” of all government redistribution schemes. Whether it is elderly people trying to scrape by on a Social Security Check, poor people trying not to starve on public welfare, or Iraqi citizens enjoying their newly provided “freedom,” the so-called beneficiaries of government wealth redistribution are never the winners. It takes an alarming lack of skepticism not to ask who the real winners are.

As this new century has “progressed” (pun intended), even the blurry lines separating the two parties have begun to melt away. Remember that George Bush’s redistribution schemes also included stimulus “tax refunds” to everyone, whether they actually paid taxes in the first place or not. “Compassionate conservatism” was nothing more than a euphemism for attempting to blend traditional Republican rhetoric about “free markets” and “limited government” with thinly-veiled redistribution schemes. By doing so, Bush’s Republicans hoped to hold onto their own base while chipping away at the Democratic voting blocks by promising them other people’s money, just as the Democrats do.

Throughout the 20th century, the two parties employed this strategy of “borrowing a page from the other’s playbook” over and over, always hoping to win voters away from the opposition while retaining the loyalty of their own traditional supporters. It was this that caused many liberals to criticize Bill Clinton for being “too much like a Republican.” Why George Bush has managed to hold on to his image as an “extreme conservative” defies explanation.

Until now, there has always been at least one thing to say in favor of the Democrats. They have been honest about their intentions. They have come right out and said that their intention was to redistribute wealth in order to achieve “equality” or “social justice” or some other utopian goal. Certainly, no lucid American can deny that the Democratic platform has been a socialist one for at least the last century. It has been the Republicans who have deceived their followers to a much greater extent by promising them liberty and property rights and then redistributing almost as egregiously as the Democrats.

One hallmark redistribution strategy used by the Republicans was “privatization.” Somehow, they managed to successfully characterize forcibly extracting money in taxes from their citizens and redistributing it to private corporations as “free enterprise,” as if “private” and “free” were synonymous. Alexander Hamilton must have smiled in his grave.

However, the Democrats have truly broken new ground during this presidential administration. Not only have they managed to outspend the voracious Bush administration in just ten short months, but they have taken a page from the Republican playbook and actually privatized wealth redistribution. Formerly, however transparent the scheme, the money at least made it into the federal treasury for a moment before being paid out to the special interest that had bought it with votes. However, H.R. 3962, the so-called “Affordable Health Care for America Act,” dispenses with this formality. Now, using the coercive power of government, private citizens will be forced to pay their money directly to government supported health insurers whether they wish to or not. The veneer that this is “public money” being spent for the “public good” has been completely stripped away. There is now simply a government pointing a gun at its citizens and forcing them to pay directly to the special interest that has successfully lobbied for their money. Even the King John of the Robin Hood tales did not extort for his friends this overtly.

A more perverse merger of left and right political corruption is unimaginable. Using the government’s numbers, this will provided coverage for 36 million uninsured Americans at a minimum of $15,000 per covered life. Assuming these numbers to be at least “in the ball park,” President Obama and his so-called liberals have just handed over a half a trillion dollars a year to corporate America (the health insurance companies). What true progressive could possibly support this?

The price of this corporate welfare, of course, is that any remaining vestiges of voluntary contracts between insurer and insured that health insurance still retained has been eliminated. Insurers are no longer allowed to determine rates demographically and based upon a real risk model. They are no longer allowed to offer diverse coverage packages to compete with one another for different customer groups. They now must offer low rates and uniform benefits to everyone as entitlements. Like individual welfare recipients, they have surrendered all of their liberty and property rights in return for other people’s money. They are now just one more arm of the state bureaucracy.

The worst aspect of this great fraud is the implications it has for the liberty of every American. The closest parallel to this heretofore has been automobile insurance. Americans have been forced to buy auto insurance directly from an auto insurer in order to exercise the “privilege” of driving on the government’s roads. This was of course enacted for the public good, to ensure that poor drivers could not bankrupt the innocent by demolishing their cars or saddling them with exorbitant hospital bills. However, as hostile to liberty as these laws are, they still leave the driver a choice. He can choose not to drive, however impractical or unrealistic that choice might be.

However, with this new bill, even that smattering of liberty is ripped away. Americans are now forced to purchase insurance from a government-protected and subsidized health insurance company merely because they are alive. Worse yet, they are not merely forced to make a single payment of tribute to satisfy their “individual responsibility.” They must go on paying, year in and year out, for as long as they live. They cannot decline. They cannot conscientiously object. There is no escape from this tyranny save one: death. For those individuals that can demonstrate that they are completely incapable of paying, someone else will be forced to pay for them. No matter what, the government’s corporation will be paid. Even life is no longer a right, but a privilege that the government extends to its subjects for a fee.

From 2001-2006, the Republicans controlled all branches of government. It was an horrific period of utter destruction of American liberty. The Democrats have now been given their chance and in ten short months they have far outdone the Bush Republicans for this dubious distinction. Make no mistake. If the Republicans regain power, they will be worse still. Americans should understand that they will affect no “change” in their government by electing either of these two parties. The federal government is a monster that has taken on a life of its own. Both parties are now its minions and are now indistinguishable from one another.

Our Declaration of Independence says that “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Are we there yet?

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Fall Of The Republic – Buy the DVD here

Preface: If you are a Christian or Jew, the importance of the Bible is probably obvious. If you are not, please consider passing this essay on to people of those faiths who you know.

If you are an atheist and believe that religion is crazy, please remember that some 85% of the American population identifies itself as Christian and millions more identify themselves as Jewish, and that most people make decisions and process information based on their beliefs and emotions.

The head of Goldman Sachs literally said he’s doing “God’s work” with his banking activities.

The head of Barclays also recently told his congregation that banking as practiced by his company was not antithetical to Christian principles.

Are they right? Is big banking as practiced by the giant banks in harmony with Christian principles?

Do Justice

Initially, the Bible does not counsel us to ignore the breaking of laws by the the powerful.

In fact, the Bible mentions justice over 200 times — more than just about any other topic. The Bible asks us to do justice and to stand up to ANYONE — including the rich or powerful — who do injustice or oppress the people.

There have been widespread, credible allegations that Goldman Sachs and other giant banks have broken the law (see this, for example).

Indeed, one of the first things God asks of us is to do justice:

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

While many churches and synagogues have become obsessed with other issues, many have arguably ignored this most important of God’s demands of us. As pointed out by a leading Christian ministry, which rescues underage girls trapped as sex slaves in third world countries:

In Scripture there is a constant call to seek justice. Jesus got upset at the Pharisees because they neglected the weightier matters of the law, which He defined as justice and the love of God . . . Isaiah 58 complains about the fact that while the people of God are praying and praying and praying, they are not doing anything about the injustice.

Should Christians just pray for justice and leave the rest to God?

That’s not what the Bible asks us to do. Instead, Hebrews 11:33 tells us that we are God’s hands for dispensing justice, and God uses us to “administer justice.”

We have to “walk our talk” and put our prayers into action.

God demands that we do everything in our power to act as “God’s hands” in bringing justice. And as Saint Augustine reminds us, “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”

Please reflect on the following Scripture:

The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, He was appalled that there was no one to intervene. (Isaiah 59:15-16)

This is the only place in the Bible where the word “appalled” is used for the way God feels — in other words, the only thing which we know God is appalled by is if people are not doing justice.

There are hundreds of other references to justice in the Bible, including:

• Blessed are they who maintain justice . . . . (Psalm 106:3)

• This is what the LORD says: Maintain justice and do what is right . . . . (Isiah 56:1)

• This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. (Jeremiah 22:3,13-17)

• Follow justice and justice alone. (Deuteronomy 16:19, 20)

• For the LORD is righteous, he loves justice . . . . (Job 11:5,7)

• Learn to do right! Seek justice . . . . (Isaiah 1:17)

So if the powerful players in the giant banks broke the laws, they must be held to account.

Manipulating Money

Moreover, there have been credible allegations that Goldman Sachs and other giant banks manipulate the currency and other markets.

As Ron Paul notes, the Bible forbids altering the quality of money (which, at the time and place, was entirely in the form of coins):

Dishonest scales are an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is His delight.

So to the extent that the giant banks have engaged in any dishonest acts or the manipulation of currencies, they are violating scripture.

Of course, any bankers who charge usurious interest rates should remember the little story about Jesus turning over the money changers’ tables.