Video: Ron Paul gives trenchant foreign policy analysis in "The State of Liberty 2015"

If you are short on time, begin at the 30-minute mark. Dr. Paul gives an excellent analysis of foreign policy.

Near the beginning, he also touches on Ferguson and police militarization and police culture.

Does the Federal Reserve cause booms and busts?

I recently asked Federal Reserve Governor Jerome H. Powell what he would say to the critics of the Federal Reserve who say that the Fed is the cause of the boom and bust cycle.  I figured that any answer would do.  This was his response:

“The question was do we cause booms. I guess I would really look at that question this way: What would life be like without the Fed. In other words, I wouldn’t expect perfection from of any government organization, or of any organization of any kind.

So the fed will never get things perfect and the fed has made mistakes. Right? We allowed inflation to get out of control in the 70s. Policy improves over time, we hope. Exogenous events happen and they make fools of everybody and then they’ll make geniuses out of everybody. So don’t expect perfection. But over time it has made sense – I think the Fed has done a good and improving job in keeping inflation low now for more than 30 years, and essentially having pretty good results.

Now are you going to point – now you ought to be pointing at the financial crisis and say “how did that work out?” The financial crisis is not something that -- any government agency that had a responsibility for the economy can feel really good about. So mistakes get made.

But I guess the question I would ask back is what would life be life with no – if you look back pre-fed, there were very severe depressions—depressions that looked a lot more like the Great Depression.

In this depression (sic), output went down 4%. In the Great Depression, output went down 25%. That kind of thing happened a lot in the 19th century. You had these hard stops of credit. The banking system would fail. There would be a run on the banks. JP Morgan personally would come in and get his friends together and bail out the system.

But – so the judgment was finally made to create a central bank. There is no advanced economy in the world that doesn’t have a central bank that does pretty much the same thing the Fed does. No one has run an experiment in a very long time of not having a central bank. Don’t really think that’s a way to go.

Where I went wrong in my last post

"He knows better than that."

I do.

So I'll make a correction. The U.S. got out of the Great Depression by drastically cutting spending; so implementing that very Christian policy brought relatively prosperous times. We eventually had the #1 economy.  But it was temporary.

Christian Policy? Yes.

Christians are urged not to get into debt and the government is prohibited from stealing property--money in this case--for their own uses. Cutting spending is the economic equivalent of the King stealing less property and allowing it's citizens to freely do business.  As Douglas Wilson once put it, "Free markets are the economic expression of the apostolic teaching that we are to serve one another in love."

Even if you couldn't find any exegetical wiggle room to interpret the commandment as applying to the government, thou shalt not covet would still apply to the individual; therefore, and individual king (president) could not covet it's constituents properties.

Imitation of Christians -- a form of behavior modification that doesn't get to the root cause of social ills -- even when secularists don't realize they are imitating Christians, in political policy or personal ethics, will only bring a temporary fix. But it will be a fix.

Lasting prosperity will come when there is a sustained spiritual revival combined with a return to God's law in economic policy. Imitations of it will be temporary. But at least it will work for a while.

That's the part I missed out in my last post. So if you wanted to poke the ultimate hole in my last post, you could easily have pointed out that there was no spiritual revival, I think, or at least another "Great Awakening" in the mid-1940s in the United States.

Video: Families Living In Cars

Video: Gerald Celente on Alex Jones Tv - Part One (8/4/11)

Video: Top 3 Myths About the Great Depression and the New Deal

Free Download: Food Shock

Preparing for the worst is exactly what this 33-page book is about. The book is not shy to say so. On page four we read the following:

At some point in the very near future, home gardening may no longer be just a hobby; for millions of Americans, it could become a necessity.

Excerpts:

Darfur for the Simple, China for the Prepared

“Hunger today is not people starving in the streets, but it’s people choosing between food and rent. It’s parents going without food to feed their children. If safety net programs are further eviscerated, we are going to see Depression style hunger, Darfur style hunger, Calcutta style hunger happening here in New York.”

Estrangement from the land

“Never before in history have so many people been divorced from the production of their own food. Our estrangement from the land could prove to be our undoing … unless we take action now and reclaim that relationship.”

Plugging our ears when we hear "personal responsibility"

“Most people don’t want to hear about taking greater personal responsibility, or becoming more self-reliant. It’s no secret that many Americans, in general, have a sense of entitlement. A huge segment of the population expects that somehow, the government will come to the rescue.”

Hundreds, Thousands Earned on Food

A home garden can save at least $600 in food costs. Many gardeners save much more.

Housing Taking Away Farm Land

We lose, on average, one acre of U.S. farmland every minute. Most of this loss is due to the conversion of farms to industrial and residential uses. Between 2002 and 2007, 4,080,300 acres of farmland were converted for development. This is roughly the area of Massachusetts. This is just part of a long-term trend.

Prepare for the Worst; Download this Book

“In our just-in-time economy, we aren’t used to planning ahead. We think food will always be available, 24/7, whenever we need it. In most parts of the world, that’s simply not the case. Someday soon, that could be the case here in America as well.
Gardening isn’t hard, but it takes time … and timing.”

The book is available for download here and here.

If you don't want to go the Food Shock route (like me), or can't, then you can go the Alpha Strategy way. For those who just want to stock up, and learn how to do so effectively, download the Alpha Strategy here.

Robert Kiyosaki: We are facing either Depression Or Hyperinflation

I agree with almost every word.

Check out his books here.