Posted on 02/22/2022 6:58:17 AM PST by RandFan
According to numbers released by the US government, consumer prices have increased by 7.5 percent in the past year, the steepest increase since 1982. The actual price increases are even worse than the government numbers suggest, given that the “official” statistics are manipulated to understate the real rate of price increases. According to John Williams of ShadowStats, prices have actually increased by around 15 percent over the past year.
The fact that prices remain at historically high levels shows that inflation is far from “transitory,” as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had described it. The continuing inflation has led the Federal Reserve Board to suggest the Fed will start increasing interest rates earlier than previously announced. The Fed may also break with its practice of only raising rates by 25 basis points at a time and increase rates by increments of up to 50 basis points. However, the increases the Fed is discussing would still leave interest rates at historic lows. Thus, such interest rate increases would do little or nothing to ease the pain rising prices cause for average consumers.
Most policy “experts” and politicians, including President Biden, support interest rate increases to deal with inflation. However, some progressives oppose raising rates. Opponents of rate increases fear that increasing interest rates will slow economic growth, increase unemployment, and depress wages. These progressives believe the old fallacy that workers benefit from easy money. The truth is workers are inflation’s main victims.
Workers may see their nominal pay (pay unadjusted for inflation) increase while the Fed-produced price increases cause real wages to plummet. That is certainly the case today. In contrast, the Federal Reserve’s money creation benefits crony capitalists who receive the new money created by the Fed before the injection of new money causes prices to rise. This increases the elite’s purchasing power, furthering income inequality.
The Federal Reserve’s creation of new money does more than erode the value of the currency. It also artificially lowers interest rates, which are the price of money. This distorts the signals sent to market actors, leading to investment decisions that do not reflect the real condition of the market. The result is a temporary boom, followed by a bust. Workers who find new jobs in the boom lose those jobs in the bust. These workers are then not just unemployed. They are also often saddled with unmanageable debt incurred during the low interest rate, easy money phase of the business cycle.
Progressives could help workers by joining the movement for market-based money. Free-market money will be safe from government manipulation, and thus its value will remain stable. A step toward restoring a free-market monetary system is letting the people know the truth about the Federal Reserve by passing Audit the Fed. Another step is legalizing alternative currencies by repealing legal tender laws and ending all capital gains taxes on precious metals and cryptocurrencies. Congress must also begin to cut spending, starting by making major cuts in our 750 billion dollars military budget and ending all corporate welfare.
Fiat money benefits financial and political elites at the expense of working people whose standard of living is eroded by Federal Reserve actions. As a Texas labor leader once told me, “Gold has always been the working man’s friend.” I would add that fiat money is the worker’s foe.
then get rid of the fed, or audit it, at the very least.
The “Fed” - completely unneeded. Does more harm than good.
If there are any young people in your life, you’ll do a lot of good work by educating them about this menacing global entity. And thanks, Dr Paul!
#EndTheFed
The Federal government is the enemy of the American people.
The best thing we could do is kill the bank (todays federal reserve) just as Jackson did.
If we want to back our money I say silver. Gold is just too rare and susceptible to cornering by financial elites.
If we stay fiat, then let us at least drop the whole bond deal. If the government can back a bond it can back a dollar bill. One causes interest to the people, the other does not.
Constitutionally control of our money supply was left to the people through our representatives. Now I do not trust our representation to correctly monitor our money supply, but it is ludicrous that we allow the privately held federal reserve to make money out of nothing and charge us interest on it.
You don't like the Fed buying Treasuries?
Given that this is now an obvious Ponzi scheme propping up other Ponzi schemes worldwide at this point, the nation needs correction, sooner rather than later.
With what is the Fed buying Treasuries? The Fed produces only debt and generates money out of thin air.
Thin air money. And?
Trump’s plan was masterful and likely the reason he was overthrown.
The Federal Reserve is the ‘public’ face of US global central banking and it is only 5% of the players and transactions involved in US central banking.
Wall St international investment banks make up more than 90% of US central bank activity.
It’s monopoly money.
But so are all the other currencies. The reason the Federal Reserve Notes predominate is because of its petro-dollar status, thus leading it to become the world’s reserve currency.
Trump’s plan was to appoint Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve Board. She was an economic advisor to President Trump. She is known for her criticisms of the Federal Reserve and her advocacy for returning the US dollar to the gold standard.
Trump’s plan was to bring the Federal Reserve in under Treasury, return the dollar to some stable backing having the allure of gold, then deactivate the Federal Reserve.
This plan would return Americans to a culture of working and saving with confidence the dollars earned would be worth about the same in the years ahead.
Hence, saving rather than borrowing would increase freedoms for Americans thereby spurring innovation and prosperity.
Ron Paul was head of the treasury, who sells us dollars to the federal reserve at face value.
Never trusted the man. On one hand he’s called out the reserve. But the other hand fed it for years.
Indeed. Over the morning coffee, I am chuckling a bit at the humor of buying or selling using "and." That seems about the gist of it. And as sensible as anything coming out of the Leftists' parade of "answers."
Doubt that will ever happen, unfortunately.
There is nothing "Federal" about them.
Huh? Source please.
Paul was a member of Congress like his son and has never been part of the Treasury
Are you sure you have the right guy /
In either case, the Fed acts to control the currency by reducing demand, i.e. reducing the effective wages of working Americans, instead of punishing the speculative excesses of Wall Street and the big banks who have been -by far- the principal beneficiaries of its loose money policies.
What it should do is force banks to pay much higher interest rates for savings and checking accounts from small depositors and accept new small accounts. That would remove money from circulation and redirect capital from the rentier class to the working class.
Instead, it will either tolerate high inflation or raise interest rates generally, forcing taxpayers to pay exorbitant rates on the national debt and make credit much more expensive for working people, and the rentier class will make even more money.
This isn't capitalism: it's a crony oligarchy pretending to be 'capitalist' just as it increasingly pretends to be a 'democracy' with stolen elections and medical 'emergency' dictatorship, as we can see in Canada, covered with legal euphemisms.
Oh, am I wrong here?
If I am I’m sorry for being out of line.
Republican globalist open border Free Traitors are the real enemy of the working class.
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