Edward Perry, G.P. Manish and Christopher Oppermann on Reality Economics 08/08/09 RFM

Interview with the three winners of the Young Scholars Competition held at Mises University 2009, Edward Perry, G.P. Manish and Christopher Oppermann. Host, Michael McKay and Special Commentator, Jeffrey Hedquist discussed with these gentlemen Why young people (and older people) need to learn Reality Economics, aka Austrian Economics and why their future economic health depends on it. Other topics covered were Why artificial interest rates set by the Federal Reserve hurt business people and – eventually all of us; What is the role of Ethics in Economics and How busy people can get educated in Reality Economics. Practical tips were given on how to learn the essentials quickly and easily using the resources at www.mises.org

Play mp3 here   RFM Young Scholars Final 080809

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A Great Moment in Our History, by Andrew P. Napolitano

Introductory Comment From Michael McKay: Did Government give us our Rights? Or do we derive our Rights from simply being Human  – called our Natural Rights?  America was founded on Our Natural Right to be Free, which is why they are called our ‘God Given Rights’.  Judge Napolitano provides an excellent history lesson that many Americans have forgotten, and need to be reminded. You will want to watch this video read the text of his speech to your kids and share them both with all those you care about.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8ySpaDlMsY]
Let me set down a couple of fervent beliefs that animate everything I do and everything I say.

I believe that God created heaven and earth and every single individual on the planet.

I believe that the God who gave us life gave us liberty and that freedom is our birthright.

I believe that the States created the federal government and not the other way around. And that the power that the States gave to the Federal Government – they can take back.

When we were colonists, and the King and the Parliament needed money from us, and they always seemed to need money, they devised ingenious ways to tax us. One of them was called the Stamp Act. The Parliament decreed that every piece of paper that the Colonists had in their homes; every book, every document, every deed, every lease, every pamphlet, every poster to be nailed to a tree had to have the King’s stamp on it. You think going to a Post Office is bad? You had to go to a British Government office and buy a stamp with the King’s picture.

Question. How did the King know that his picture was on every piece of paper in your house? The Parliament enacted a hateful piece of legislation called the Writs of Assistance Act which let the king’s soldiers write their own search warrants, and bang down any door they chose to look for the stamps or anything else that they were looking for.

It was the last straw.

We fought a revolution. We won the revolution. We wrote the Constitution. The constitution doesn’t grant power, it keeps the government off our backs.

When they were debating the Constitution in the Summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, there were two great arguments – one by the Jefferson and Madison crowd and one by the Adams and Hamilton crowd. Jefferson argued, though he wasn’t physically there in Philly, as he did in the Declaration of Independence that our rights are ours by virtue of our humanity. That as God is perfectly free, and we are created in his image and likeness, we too are perfectly free. The big government crowd – yes they had them even in those days – argued that you can’t have freedom without government, and that government gives us our rights, and therefore, that government can take them away. This is not an academic argument. Jefferson and the natural law argument prevailed because the Constitution was written to keep the government from interfering with our natural rights.

And so, your right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to travel where you want, to worship as you see fit, to keep and bear arms to defend yourself against a tyranny. And, after the right to life, the greatest and most uniquely American of rights – and I say this in front of the seat of the government – is the right to be left alone.

We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights. Think about it – if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away. But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.

This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem. It’s a problem with government today. There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as there’s a democrat version of big government.

We fought a revolution because British soldiers could knock on our doors and demand that we house them, and demand that we turn over property to them because they could write their own search warrants. In the Patriot Act, the most hateful piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, a republican congress and a republican president authorized federal agents to do the unthinkable – to write their own search warrants. And the republican administration didn’t even let members of the House of Representatives read the Patriot Act before they voted on it.

Why should the government be able to spy on us? We should be able to spy on them!

When some judge is rationalizing away our liberty, or some congressman is plotting to take away your freedom or your tax dollars, we should know what they do every minute that they do it.

I was speaking to a group of congressman from a neighboring state – I won’t tell you which state it was, but they don’t play football there – and they came up to me and said “this is the first time we have heard that the Patriot Act allows federal agents to write their own search warrants.” Remember, in the Constitution, we put in the 4th Amendment, the right to be left alone, to make sure that if the government had a target, no matter how guilty the target, no matter how widespread is the belief in the guilt of the target, no matter how dangerous is the target, the government has to go through a neutral judge with a search warrant before it can get to that target. These members of Congress said, “we didn’t know that the Patriot Act allowed the government to bypass the courts and write any search warrant they wanted.” Then I asked them a question I knew the answer to already – did you read the Patriot Act before you voted on it? The answer – no. What were you voting on? A summary we received. Let me guess who wrote the summary – some lawyers in the justice department, right? Of course.

Would you hire anybody to run your business that committed you to a violation of the very reason you’re in business if they didn’t even the document by which they were making that committment? Of course not.

The camera is the new gun. There’s nothing that government dislikes more than the light of day, and cameras recording what the government is doing, whether it’s on a street corner, or in there, or in Washington D.C., we have the right to know everything that they do and why they do it, and when they do it, and how they are taking our freedoms.

I have another one of my basic core beliefs. The individual has an immortal soul. Every individual is greater than any government.

Your government is based on fear and force. You don’t have to take my word on it. The 2nd president on the United States, John Adams, said “Of course the government is based on fear.” And the first president, George Washington, said “Government is not reason, it is force.” I think they knew what they were talking about.

Now fast-forward to modern times. Whenever the government wants something, it scares us. During the civil war, Lincoln tried civilians in this state where no battles occured, by military tribunal. After he died the supreme court invalidated everything the military tribunals did. During the first world war, the Wil
son administration locked up 2000 people called anarchists – same thing as enemy combatants. No trial, no charge, just jail for the duration of the war. In world war II, FDR locked up 150,000 Japanese Americans, people born in the United States, who got no trial and had no charges, and when the war was over were given $25 and told to go home.

Today we have federal agents. You know I get in arguments with my friends at Fox News, and one of them, I don’t have to tell you who it is, but is truly the most irascible person there. And he said to me, you know you have a problem with Guantanamo Bay, and you have a problem with the Patriot Act, what will you do if I get sent to Guantanamo Bay, will you visit me? And I say, Bill – no, because they’ll probably keep me there as well.

Government likes to say that it’s taking an oath to uphold the Constitution. In the years that I was on the bench, it seemed that every time government lawyers were in my courtroom, if the government was prosecuting someone who was legitimately guilty or whether it was a mistake, or whether somebody was suing the government because government contractors or government doctors, or government workers made a mistake – the government doesn’t come in to the courtroom to enforce the constitution, it comes into the courtroom to evade and avoid it. That, ladies and gentlemen, must be stopped.

This is a great moment in our history. A crowd of this magnitude on a beautiful day, in the boiling sun, in the most middle-American of great middle-American states…comes together not because the president is a democrat, not because his predecessor was a republican, not because a war is just or unjust, not because the Fed is stealing or printing – you’re here because you believe in human freedom.

It is the essence of our existence that we should be free. But remember this: the government hates freedom. It is an obstacle to every one of their designs. Whenever they write laws, whenever they take your tax dollars, whenever they regulate your private behavior, whenever they tell you how to spend your money, whenever they tell you what medicines to take, whenever they tell you what food to eat, whenever they tell you with who you may or must associate, they are taking away your freedom and they love to get away with it. And they cannot get away with it any longer.

In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation! Now is the time to defend our freedoms.

Jefferson was no saint but he was the greatest of our American presidents. He believed that the individual was greater than the state. He believed that the states were greater than the federal government. And when he wrote that our rights come from our creator, and that our rights are inalienable, he forever wed the notion of natural rights to the American experience and the American experiment. We must be vigilant about every right that the government wants to take away from us.

You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.” He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free.

Shortly before he died, Jefferson lamented, that in his view of the world that is was in the natural order of things for government to grow and freedom to be diminished; how ardently he wish that that wouldn’t happen. And in order to prevent it from happening he had a very simple remedy, “When the people fear the government, that is tyranny. When the government fears the people, that is liberty!”

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Dr Robert Murphy on The Great Depression and The Federal Reserve 08/01/09 RFM

Interview with Dr. Robert Murphy, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal".  His excellent book was reviewed by Host, Michael McKay and Special Commentator, Jeffrey Hedquist. Topics covered were ‘Just about everything you were taught about the Great Depression Period was False’, ‘How the Federal Reserve was the Biggest Culprit – and how they are still getting away with it today’ and how the present day Cash for Clunkers program was just like the FDR program that – while people were standing in food lines – poured out milk and destroyed crops to prop up prices. Practical recommendations were given to address the coming period, which could turn into the Greater Depression.

[audio http://radiofreemarket.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/rfm_robert_murphy_final_080109.mp3]
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Michael McKay on Reality Economics 07/25/09 RFM

Host Michael McKay and Special Commentator Jeffrey Hedquist discuss ‘Reality Economics’, the non-transparency of the Federal Reserve, Geithner’s plan for a Single-Super-Duper Financial Regulator and state-threatening questions, like ‘Why didn’t I learn about how money works in High School?’ Important comments and questions came in from callers in MN, TN and NC on the importance of REAL Education, our Rights as Americans, and the First Principles which are the foundation of our Liberties.

[audio http://radiofreemarket.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/rfm_michael_mckay_final_072509.mp3]
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Interview with Richard Maybury

Richard Maybury explains mal-investment, crooked regulations and the true cost of economic fairy tales

The editors of The Daily Bell proudly present this comprehensive and exclusive interview conducted by Scott Smith with global strategist and free-market analyst Richard Maybury.

Introduction: The former Global Affairs editor of MONEYWORLD, Richard Maybury is one of the most respected business and economics analysts in America. His articles have appeared in major publications. Books include “Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?” “Whatever Happened to Justice?” and “Evaluating Books: What Would Thomas Jefferson Think of This?” His current interest is “The Coming Great War.” His writings have been endorsed by top business leaders, and he is a consultant to investment firms in the U.S. and Europe. He is editor of the newsletter Richard Maybury’s U.S. & World Early Warning Report.

Daily Bell: We understand that your speech at the Wealth Protection Conference in Phoenix, Arizona on May 2nd received a standing ovation. What did you say that was so impressive?

Richard Maybury: I truly don’t know. I’ve been giving speeches about economics for almost four decades. Maybe it’s a case of the million monkeys with typewriters. Given enough tries, they’ll eventually produce something brilliant.

Daily Bell: Well, we’d like to judge for ourselves. Where can we find the speech?

Richard Maybury: Just go to our web site, www.richardmaybury.com. The speech is titled “What Obama Does Not Know.”

Daily Bell: In your speech, you say your work is based on Austrian economics, which is much different than the Keynesian model (pronounced canes-ee-an, named after economist John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946) used by almost everyone else. Two questions: first, why is it called Austrian?

Richard Maybury: The founders, or leading lights, were from Austria.

Daily Bell: Second, what’s different about the Austrian model?

Richard Maybury: The speech explains this. But very briefly, for one thing, the Austrian view is that the economy is not a machine, it’s an ecology, made of biological organisms, meaning people. People have free wills, and they change their minds, all day every day. Trying to predict their behavior and steer it is like trying to herd cats.

Daily Bell: An interesting analogy.

Richard Maybury: Imagine putting fifty cats in your house and trying to herd them. What would your house look like afterwards.

Daily Bell: Like the economy does now?

Richard Maybury: Yes. Very astute of you to pick on that up so quickly. When a government tries to control the economy, it is trying to control people, and people are like cats. Each individual’s brain is hard wired to do what the individual wants, not what the government wants.

Daily Bell: Except, we aren’t talking about fifty cats, we’re talking about the world economy, which means 6.8 billion humans.

Richard Maybury: Correct. And none of these humans want to be herded. At bottom, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and nearly every other government agency in the US and abroad, exists for the purpose of steering people as if they were sheep. That’s what government control means – controlling people.

Daily Bell: And Austrian economics says this controlling or steering won’t work, it will only make things worse?

Richard Maybury: Again, my speech explains, but yes. Or, maybe it’s more accurate to say Austrian economics asks this question: if it is possible for the benefits of government controls on the economy to exceed the costs, where is the evidence? Show us the evidence. Let’s see the numbers.

Daily Bell: So, the Keynesian model assumes the government is trying to herd sheep, and the Austrian model says the government is trying to herd cats?

Richard Maybury: Well said, you are very good at this.

Daily Bell: Thank you.

Richard Maybury: And in every case I’ve heard of, in 2,500 years of economic history, trying to herd cats – or humans – has in the long run always led to chaos. Each human has his own plans for his life and very rarely are those individualized plans compatible with the government’s.

Daily Bell: But don’t some people want to be sheep? Aren’t there those who believe they need a leader to tell them what to think and do, to take care of them, to keep them safe?

Richard Maybury: You are right, I stand corrected. Some probably do want to be sheep, and if so, they have every right to choose a leader and follow him or her. But the rest of us are cats…

Daily Bell: … and trying to force us to follow the plans of some leader isn’t likely to achieve anything except pandemonium.

Richard Maybury: Yes. Or at least, I think that’s what 2,500 years of economic history shows. If the sheep and their shepherds would just leave the cats alone, things would probably work out okay. But herding cats? No, it will never work.

Daily Bell: And we are living through more of that history now – the shepherds and the sheep versus the cats.

Richard Maybury: That’s how I see it. Human DNA is what it is, but for more than a century governments have been trying to make us all into docile, obedient, mindless herd animals that follow the politicians’ plans. Now we are paying the penalty for that.

Daily Bell: Some say this economic catastrophe was caused by the free market. They say free markets are inherently unstable and corrupt, and government regulation is needed to keep us on the straight and narrow.

Richard Maybury: That’s certainly the orthodox view these days. But to those who claim we have free markets, I say, show me. Free markets? Where? What are you smoking?

Daily Bell: Free markets don’t exist?

Richard Maybury: During the past century, in the U.S. alone, the federal, state and local governments have enacted tens of thousands of regulations and taxes. That’s a free market?

Daily Bell: Tens of thousands?

Richard Maybury: It’s impossible to give an exact number, they are literally uncountable. But I can guarantee this. If I spent the rest of my life trying to read them – if I spent 40 hours per week at it – I would barely scratch the surface, because each year more regulations are enacted than any human could possibly read and understand. This is free markets? This is freedom?

Daily Bell: You say regulations are difficult to understand.

Richard Maybury: Here is an example from a book called The Trenton Pickle Ordinance and other Bonehead Legislation, by Richard Hyman. A law in Texas says that when two trains meet at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone.

Daily Bell: That’s extraordinary.

Richard Maybury: The Arkansas legislature enacted a law forbidding the Arkansas River to rise higher than the main street bridge in Little Rock. In Florida, it’s illegal for a housewife to break more than three dishes per day. In Massachusetts, you are a criminal if you put tomatoes in clam chowder. Idaho law says you need a special permit to conduct a transaction in which you are buying chickens after dark.

Daily Bell: (Laughing) We don’t know what to say.

Richard Maybury: Writing about “crazy rules, convoluted taxes and rampant lawyers,” The Economist magazine reports that “senseless rules that benefit cartels are common. Oklahoma protects consumers from the perils of unlicensed interior decorators. Marylanders are barred from massaging animals without a vet’s license. Wisconsin until recently banned the sale of excessively cheap gasoline.” (“Surviving the Slump,” The Economist, 30 May 09, special section pages 9 & 10.)

Daily Bell: Excessively cheap gasoline? You must be kidding.

Richard Maybury: Not at all. In school we were all taught that regulations are meant to protect us, but that is simply not so. Regulations are, for the most part, covert ways governments exercise power for the benefit of themselves and their friends. Regarding tax regulations, The Economist writes that “the system is repulsively complex. Federal, State and Local rules accumulate each year in a vast and impenetrable heap. No one understands it.” About the legal system in general, The Economist says, “nearly every business grumbles about the system’s unpredictability,” and many people suffer “penalties that bear no relation to any harm suffered.”

Daily Bell: So, do you think it is a fair statement to say free markets might be a goal of some people, but no one alive today has ever experienced one?

Richard Maybury: Yes, I would agree with that. What regulations in the financial sector do mainly is create a false sense of security among the victims of swindlers. People think they are being protected, but they aren’t, at least not much. The big financial disaster is proof. Despite all the mountains of regulations, millions of trusting people lost sizable portions of their savings.

Daily Bell: But surely there must be some kind of control.

Richard Maybury: In genuine free markets, there is. Contracts, courts with informed juries, and the forces of competition. Instead, as things stand now, all brokers and other financial entities are under these massive regulatory umbrellas, no matter how incompetent or dishonest they are, so the investor cannot tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. All are certified by the government . Remove the umbrella, and very quickly the investors will begin paying attention to such things as court decisions and reputations, and the honest, competent firms will be able to distinguish themselves from the crooks.

Daily Bell: So you are saying, what regulations really amount to in the real world is camouflage for criminals.

Richard Maybury: Yes, well said. Regulations are mostly a service to crooks. They create a false sense of security. A lot of the individuals you know personally who have recently suffered huge losses in their investment portfolios are the living proof of it.

Daily Bell: What do you think is the biggest problem with this idea that governments should be shepherds caring for their sheep?

Richard Maybury: The biggest by far is, shepherds don’t work for free, and what starts as the shepherd raising the sheep for their wool, usually ends with the shepherd raising them for their meat.

Daily Bell: How close do you think we are to that?

Richard Maybury: Look at the US economy. Millions now have lost their jobs, their homes and huge portions of their savings. At the same time, Washington is planning to use this mess as an excuse to raise taxes on the rich. This is not an economic misfortune, it’s the shepherd beginning to go after the meat as well as the wool.

Daily Bell: A chilling thought. But many would ask, what’s so bad about raising taxes on the rich?

Richard Maybury: I would say to them, show me just one case in 2,500 years of economic history in which raising taxes on the people who create the jobs has yielded more jobs. I’m sure you will find in every case that forcibly taking money from the job creators has made things worse.

Daily Bell: You’ve written often that political power corrupts the morals and the judgment.

Richard Maybury: Again, look at 2,500 years of economic history. Try to find a case where a government-managed economy didn’t lead to the shepherd eating the sheep.

Daily Bell: We are obviously in a very unusual period in history now. What do you think is an aspect of this period that very few investors have recognized?

Richard Maybury: Suddenly, knowledge of economics has become critical for financial survival and success. If an investor does not understand how Keynesian economics skews the judgment of both the government and the people who give investment advice, then that investor is headed for a financial train wreck.

Daily Bell: Which is what has been happening?

Richard Maybury: Yes, and the wreck has only just begun for those who are on the Keynesian track. On the other hand, experience has convinced me that the Austrian model is much more effective at helping people earn money and keep it. If your model, or the model of your investment advisor, is Austrian, then odds are that the past two decades have been wonderful for you, and the next decade will be, too.

Daily Bell: That brings us to your own track record. In the May 2009 issue of your Early Warning Report newsletter, you wrote, “I’d put my track record up against that of any Keynesian, any day. This isn’t to say I’m always right. It is to say, it would be difficult to foul up as often as they have.”

Richard Maybury: Austrian economics is not infallible, nor is my application of it. But the Keynesian competition has fumbled so often that beside it, in my opinion, even a mediocre application of the Austrian model is dazzling.

Daily Bell: What is the most important indicator investors should be watching now?

Richard Maybury: Well, I wouldn’t call it an indicator, since there are no reliable statistics on it. I’d call it a force, or a dynamic. It’s velocity, meaning the speed at which money changes hands.

Daily Bell: And why is that important?

Richard Maybury: Money is like blood, it does little good unless it circulates. When people become fearful, they stop spending and investing, and they flee to whatever form of cash they consider trustworthy.

Daily Bell: So, when they are scared, demand for money goes up, and demand for goods, services and investments goes down.

Richard Maybury: Correct. And a decline in the speed at which the money changes hands has the same effect as a decline in the money supply.

Daily Bell: You’re saying it’s deflationary?

Richard Maybury: Yes. Even if the money supply has not declined. If the money isn’t being used for purchases or investments, then it has been taken out of circulation, and this has the same effect as a deflation of the money supply. This is one of the things I explained in my May 2nd speech.

Daily Bell: And this is what has been happening?

Richard Maybury: I believe so. No one has ever found a good way to measure velocity, so I’m not certain about it, but the anecdotal evidence certainly is persuasive. We all know lots of people who have cut back their spending and/or investing, and are just keeping their money on hold, in short-term insured bank accounts or Treasury bills.

Daily Bell: And that’s why interest rates are so low?

Richard Maybury: It’s certainly one reason. The money just sits in the banks. The bankers are afraid to loan it out, and borrowers are afraid to borrow it – meaning go more deeply into debt – so the money just piles up and doesn’t accomplish anything.

Daily Bell: Because of fear.

Richard Maybury: Yes. In my opinion, the velocity problem is the number one economic problem in the world today.

Daily Bell: Why do we hear so little about it?

Richard Maybury: As far as I know, my newsletter, Early Warning Report, is the only publication that says much about velocity, but I don’t know why. Apparently, for most people velocity is a difficult concept, and the journalists in the mainstream press don’t understand it well enough to be confident they are explaining it correctly. After all, most of them still do not realize that inflation isn’t rising prices, it’s a rising money supply that causes rising prices.

Daily Bell: Why do you suppose they don’t get that?

Richard Maybury: I have a 1969 edition of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. The book reports the definition of inflation as, “an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods resulting in a substantial and continuing rise in the general price level.” That definition, which had been used for centuries, led to the question, who increased the volume of money and credit?

Daily Bell: And the government didn’t want the question asked?

Richard Maybury: Right, because the culprit behind inflation is the government.

Daily Bell: So what happened?

Richard Maybury: The political class went on a campaign to change the definition. By 1980, pretty much the whole population had adopted the new, simpler definition: rising prices. Like a flock of sheep, the mainstream press in those days went along, and today almost everyone in the US uses the word inflation to mean, rising prices, not a rising money supply. I’m sure very few of today’s journalists realize that when they use the word inflation, they are being led down the garden path by the government’s propaganda.

Daily Bell: Another subject you write about often, but we seldom see elsewhere, is malinvestment. Could you explain a bit about that?

Richard Maybury: When the government injects newly created money into the economy, the money does not descend on the country in a uniform blanket. Some people receive a lot, others less, and some, none at all. The destinations of the newly created money become hot spots, and businesses crowd into these hot spots to tap into the larger flows of money.

Daily Bell: Do businesses do this on purpose?

Richard Maybury: Generally not, because very few understand inflation. They just see the rising prices of, say, houses or restaurant meals or haircuts, and they move in to those areas to sell these things to the people who have the extra money.

Daily Bell: Some people would ask, is that bad? Where’s the problem?

Richard Maybury: Money responds to the law of supply and demand just as everything else does. When the supply goes up, the value of each individual unit of money goes down, and prices rise to compensate for this decline. After prices have been rising for a while, the government becomes afraid of riots and other kinds of trouble, so they slow or stop their expansion of the money supply. The flow of money to the hot spots slows or stops, and…

Daily Bell: … the businesses in those former hot spots go broke.

Richard Maybury: You’ve got it. The cooling of the hot spots means not only bankruptcies but rising unemployment.

Daily Bell: What about malinvestment?

Richard Maybury: The malinvestment is, or was, the businesses that were created in the hot spots. If the government had not been injecting money, those businesses would have been created elsewhere. But the distorted prices lured the managers into locating in the wrong places.

Daily Bell: So it’s about geographic location?

Richard Maybury: Well, I’m just using geography as an example. There are lots of kinds of malinvestment. The thing they have in common is that the decision makers are misled by distorted pricing signals caused by the government’s manipulation of the money supply.

Daily Bell: This ties into what you’ve been writing about the recession, correct?

Richard Maybury: Yes. Almost the whole world has been taught Keynesian economics, and Keynesian economics sees recessions and depressions as problems. When a recession or depression hits, virtually everyone demands that the government stop it as quickly as possible.

Daily Bell: By inflating the money supply.

Richard Maybury: Yes. They call this stimulus. What it means is, pumping new oceans of currency into the hot spots that have begun to cool.

Daily Bell: So stimulus means, re-inflating the hot spots.

Richard Maybury: Right.

Daily Bell: Which means stopping the shakeout of the malinvestment.

Richard Maybury: Right again. My key point is that a depression is the correction period following an inflation of the money supply, and when a government re-inflates, as all governments are doing today, it stops the correction.

Daily Bell: So the malinvestment is preserved, and as new money is injected into the economy, this creates more malinvestment, which is added on top of the malinvestment that’s already there.

Richard Maybury: You have the picture.

Daily Bell: If a depression is the correction period following an inflation, what’s a recession?

Richard Maybury: A recession is an incomplete depression. The government stimulates, which means it creates more money out of thin air, and this injection of new money stops the shakeout of the malinvestment.

Daily Bell: So, a recession is actually worse than a depression, because we go through a surge of bankruptcies and unemployment, but in the end it accomplishes nothing, because government officials re-inflate before the corrections can go to completion.

Richard Maybury: Excellent. That’s a good insight. In the long run, a recession is a bigger disaster than a depression, because we go through the agony without accomplishing anything. In fact, the act of aborting the depression, which means injecting a lot of new money, creates more malinvestment. This then requires a more severe depression to correct it.

Daily Bell: This is awful. You are saying most of the world is blind to the concept of malinvestment.

Richard Maybury: Yes, and you can prove it yourself. Google the word investment, then Google the word malinvestment; compare the number of hits. Most of the world watches investment very closely, but very few pay attention to malinvestment. Keynesian economics does not address it.

Daily Bell: Who does pay attention to it?

Richard Maybury: The thousands of readers of my Early Warning Report are familiar with it, as are the readers of my little Uncle Eric books. Now, so are the readers of Daily Bell. I congratulate you on helping your readers become aware of a crucially important topic that, very likely, none of their friends have ever heard of.

Daily Bell: Sometimes ignorance isn’t bliss. We wonder how many of their friends have gone broke from not knowing about malinvestment.

Richard Maybury: Millions, certainly. Almost everyone has been taught Keynesian economics, which does not contain an explanation for inflations, recessions, depressions or malinvestment.

Daily Bell: Why Keynesian?

Richard Maybury: Because most of the world’s population is educated in government-controlled schools. And, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Keynesian economics was adopted as official government policy in most countries, especially the U.S and Britain, which were the leaders of the world.

Daily Bell: Why was it adopted?

Richard Maybury: It teaches that the people need a shepherd. Government interference in the economy is a fine and necessary thing, says Keynesianism, so naturally, that’s what a government-controlled school teaches. There are exceptions, of course – some teachers use, for instance, my little Uncle Eric books – but those teachers are few and far between. Most teachers are Keynesian, although they don’t know it.

Daily Bell: And the government is, too?

Richard Maybury: Yes. There was a break under Reagan, but except for that, ever since Richard Nixon said, “We’re all Keynesians now,” the federal government’s model has been Keynesian. After all, politicians and bureaucrats – and teachers – are raised in the same government-controlled schools as the rest of us.

Daily Bell: So the government does not understand recessions and depressions?

Richard Maybury: Correct. All my life, except under Reagan, who had some background in Austrian economics – a background he shared, incidentally, with Margaret Thatcher – it has been official government policy that the cause of recessions and depressions is unknown, so politicians and bureaucrats should be given unlimited powers to do whatever appears necessary to counter them.

Daily Bell: That’s handy. The less the government knows, the more power it should have, so if it knows nothing at all, its power should be infinite. That’s a statist’s recipe for nirvana.

Richard Maybury: Good observation.

Daily Bell: What books would you recommend for someone who wants a background in Austrian economics?

Richard Maybury: After beginning with my Uncle Eric books, I suggest Planned Chaos by Ludwig von Mises, and Road to Serfdom by F.A Hayek. Then the reader could go on to Human Action, and Theory of Money and Credit by Mises, and Constitution of Liberty by Hayek. All these by Mises and Hayek were written before 1960, and their foresight and explanations of the chaos we are experiencing today are uncanny.

Daily Bell: What are the Uncle Eric books?

Richard Maybury: They are a set of 11 short books by my alter ego, Uncle Eric, who is an economist writing a series of letters to a 14-year old niece or nephew. The books explain all sorts of things that as students we were never taught because these things might be embarrassing to the government.

Daily Bell: Things like, inflation isn’t rising prices, it’s a rising money supply that causes rising prices.

Richard Maybury: Yes, exactly. Incidentally, Howard Ruff has a great way of explaining that concept. He says, inflation isn’t rising prices, it’s falling money. Uncle Eric uses that and similar comments from all sorts of sources – including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry and the other American founders – to revive the understanding that was once common among Americans, before they began attending these government-controlled schools.

Daily Bell: How long do these books take to read?

Richard Maybury: A person with normal reading skills will need only about 25 hours for all eleven books. Ever since the books were first published about 20 years ago, I have received stacks of letters from people thanking me and saying the 25 hours was the most eye-opening of their lives.

Daily Bell: Are there people who should not read them?

Richard Maybury: Yes, certainly. If you are a sheep who wants a shepherd – that is, if you believe a huge, powerful government that controls everything and everyone is a good idea – then these books will give you permanent insomnia.

Daily Bell: How do we get the Uncle Eric books?

Richard Maybury: You can go to our web site www.richardmaybury.com or phone 800-509-5400, or 602-252-4472, or fax 602-943-2363.

Daily Bell: Is that also where we would get your newsletter, Early Warning Report?

Richard Maybury: Yes.

Daily Bell: Is there a connection between the newsletter and the Uncle Eric books?

Richard Maybury: The concepts in the books, especially the Austrian economics, are the basis of the economic analysis and investment recommendations in the newsletter. Those concepts are why the newsletter’s investment track record is so good. The books present a logically consistent framework of economics, law, geopolitics, history and other areas that are always used as the foundation for the investment suggestions.

Daily Bell: Yet the books are written so that any reasonably intelligent 14-year old can grasp them easily?

Richard Maybury: Yes. When we began the Uncle Eric project in the 1980s, we realized that people no longer had much free time to read. They needed a fast, interesting collection of summaries of what they missed in school and college.

Daily Bell: Fast? Let’s put that to the test. You say you use pithy quotes to try to distill important concepts into small packages. Give us a quote that packs as much economics as possible into a single sentence.

Richard Maybury: That’s easy. I often quote Ronald Reagan: “Government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.” Even the most rabid statists, including socialists, who feel government is the cure for every malady, see the truth in that comment. They won’t admit it, of course, but I’ve watched their faces often enough to know the remark hits home.

Daily Bell: One more quote?

Richard Maybury: I’ve always liked the remark by John Quincy Adams: “All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from the defects in their constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.” Adams said that in 1829, which was almost a half-century after the runaway inflation and other economic chaos of the Revolution, so the economic lessons of the Revolution had apparently already been erased from the memories of the general public.

Daily Bell: Not many people today realize that in the American Revolution, the country went through a runaway inflation that totally destroyed the value of the dollar.

Richard Maybury: Correct. That also happened in the South during the Civil War, and partly so in the North.

Daily Bell: The US is in a war now. Do you think history is repeating?

Richard Maybury: No guarantees, but I think that’s the way to bet. If you look at the money supply statistics on the St. Louis Federal Reserve web site, especially the monetary base, which is the raw material from which the money supply is constructed, you can see we are undoubtedly headed in that direction.

Daily Bell: What do governments think of your books and newsletter?

Richard Maybury: I’ve never heard anything directly from any of them, but I’ve been told often that Early Warning Report circulates under-the-table all over the Pentagon.

Daily Bell: The Pentagon?

Richard Maybury: Yes. And once when I was hired to give a hush-hush presentation to an exclusive group of large Canadian pension fund CEOs, I was told by the organizer that I was recommended to him by someone in Canadian intelligence. He said this person told him – and this is a direct quote – “Maybury will do a very good job but he will scare your audience.”

Daily Bell: Did you?

Richard Maybury: When those people filed out of the room, they were the definition of the word somber.

Daily Bell: So you predicted what we are going through now?

Richard Maybury: Yes. On our web site you can find a detailed description of our track record. I often wonder how many of those CEOs went home and had the courage to face the facts and do something about them, and how many simply forced themselves to forget everything they heard.

Daily Bell: Any other fans of your work? Names we might recognize?

Richard Maybury: The books and newsletter have been recommended by Ron Paul and Harry Browne. Also, the late US Treasury secretary William Simon was a big fan of the Uncle Eric book Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? Simon had been on the inside of the Keynesian revolution, and saw what a mess the government was beginning to create. He said the little Penny Candy book was a must read. Karl Hess loved it, too; he called it a grand book, and said it could “replace a full shelf of weighty tomes.”

Daily Bell: Before we finish, could you give us some investment tips based on Austrian economics?

Richard Maybury: In the Track Record section of our web site we’ve posted nine specific stocks recommended in the May 2009 Early Warning Report. That newsletter was mailed May 4th, so you can use, for instance, www.bigcharts.com to follow exactly what the nine are doing. Aside from those, I have recommended gold, silver and platinum unceasingly since before 9-11. In the June 2009 Early Warning Report, there is a lengthy explanation why I think gold will go to $3,000, silver to $50, and platinum to $3,000.

Daily Bell: You’ve also said oil will go to $300.

Richard Maybury: Yes, but bear in mind that I’m not necessarily saying gold, silver, platinum and oil will rise that much, I’m saying the dollar will fall that much. Prices will rise to compensate for the drop in the value of the greenback.

Daily Bell: Mr. Maybury, this has been a fascinating interview. We appreciate your taking the time. Thank you.

Richard Maybury: I enjoyed it, it was fun. It’s not often that I get the chance to be interviewed by people who are as well equipped to understand what is happening as the Daily Bell is. You are performing an extremely valuable service for your readers and I congratulate you.

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What Obama Does Not Know by Richard Maybury

Introductory comment from Michael McKay: I broadly recommend Mr Maybury’s books starting with “Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?” which provides a basic understanding of Money, Economics, Law and Ethics – and how Money+Economics are based on the System of Law we use which in turn is based on our Standard of Ethics.

It was after first reading ‘Penny Candy‘ years ago that I started telling friends and family that I would rather not be called a libertarian and that I would rather be called An Adult with Good Manners.

It is my contention that all problems between people have – at their source – someone displaying bad manners.

Economics, then, the study of two things. It is the study of how we manage the stuff of life – the allocation of scarce resources.  But it is more: Economics is the study of how people choose to cooperate with others in harmony – or not. In other words, it is significantly a study of our Human Ecology.

Richard Maybury integrates and applies these two aspects of Economics and then looks back at 2500 years of history.  From his lense he provides an excellent perspective of how we can make sense of current events – and how we can survive and thrive through it.

What follows is a speech that Mr Maybury presented at a Wealth Conference in May 2009 for which he received a standing ovation. MM

What Obama Does Not Know

– By Richard Maybury

In 1992, I coined the term Chaostan — meaning the land of the Great Chaos — for the area from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, and Poland to the Pacific, plus North Africa.

    Thereafter, for nine years, I warned incessantly that federal officials did not understand Chaostan, and if they did not stop meddling in those countries, we would end up in a war. And, the war would wreck the economy, because the government would pay for it by borrowing and printing dollars; the debt and inflation of the money supply would lead to economic chaos.

    Obviously, that prediction has come true, so today I’m going to explain three more things that the government and mainstream press seem not to understand.

    The title of this speech is, “What Obama Doesn’t Know.” The first draft was 14 hours long, but I have cut that quite a bit.

    You might ask, how can the president of the United States — the most powerful, most well-connected person in history, with all sorts of intelligence agencies — not know something important?

    The answer is that a successful politician is not an expert at economics, foreign policy, military affairs or any of the other areas in which he makes decisions.

    A successful politician is a person who is an expert at winning elections. That’s how he gets the job — by winning elections. That is his skill, his career, his area of expertise. Winning elections.

    In other words, to be president, he needs to be highly skilled at illusion. He must be a better actor than his competition.

    I sometimes think we need a change to the Constitution. Every six months, a president’s job performance should be evaluated, and if he isn’t doing well, we should call up Hollywood Central Casting and tell them to send over another president.

    Since the president isn’t really an expert at anything presidential, except how to get the job, he doesn’t know what he should look for when he hires an advisor or cabinet member. Generally presidents just hire their drinking buddies, or whoever their drinking buddies recommend.

    You can see that with Obama’s group of economic advisors. Before he was sworn in, he formed one group of advisors, then on February 6th, only three weeks after he took office, he hired a second group. Now he has two groups of economic advisors.

    Why? Well, if you know a bit about economics, you can make a good guess.

    During his election campaign Obama admitted he knows very little about economics.

    The first group he hired were people who were prestigious, but they have different economic models. Some are Keynesian, some monetarist, some socialist — I’ll say more about the different models shortly — and I’m sure every time he got a dozen of them in a room and asked for an explanation of what’s happening, he got a dozen different answers.

    He hired a second group, and he’s probably getting a dozen different answers from that group, too.

    So, I’m going to explain three crucially important topics the president — and mainstream press — seem not to know anything about.

    When I’m finished, you will know more than Obama does.

    The first I’ll cover is the fact that …

     …the economy is not a machine

    When we listen to politicians and the mainstream press talk about the economy, we usually hear comments such as, the economy is sluggish, or, the economy is slowing down. We need to speed it up, to jump start it, or repair it, or tune it up.

    But the economy is not a machine. It’s an ecology, made of biological organisms — people — you and me and our loved ones, and millions of others.

    Economics is not a math course. It’s not the study of charts, graphs and equations. It’s the study of living, breathing, thinking, feeling humans.

    Especially feeling. And I’ll say more about that shortly.

    Economics is not a branch of mechanical engineering, it’s a branch of biology — because we are biological organisms.

    The economy is an ecology, the human ecology, and it is by far the most complex ecology on earth. I think, for instance, the typical big city hospital probably contains more complexity than all the other so-called natural ecologies in the world put together.

    Think about it. Not only are the physical bodies and brains of the patients unimaginably complex, but so are the t
houghts and feelings of the medical staff and patients, the personal interactions, the decisions, the knowledge base, the experience and training, the chemicals in the color of the paint on the walls, the production of the raw materials used in the bathroom tiles.

    The contents of that one building are so complex no human will ever understand them.

    Yet, for more than a century, politicians and bureaucrats have been meddling in the human ecology, which means they’ve been playing God.

    The economic trouble we see around us today is the chickens coming home to roost.

    Right now, there is a big political movement to increase the number of regulations on the financial industry. The industry already labors under tens of thousands of regulations, that no one understands, and it broke down. So how is more regulation going to help?

    I submit that the financial industry only needs one regulation, of four words: thou shalt not steal.

    Let me be very clear about this: the politicians and bureaucrats have been taught to see us and our loved ones as machines that have broken down, and they plan to do whatever they think is necessary to jump start us and rev us up.

    If someone elected you God, and gave you the power to meddle in a rain forest, or a tropical reef, with all its coral, fish and underwater vegetation, where would you start?

    How would you tune up your tropical reef so that it ran more smoothly?

    How would you jump start your rain forest?

    If you’ve read my Uncle Eric book called WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JUSTICE?, you know that the human ecology is vastly more complex than a rain forest or tropical reef, and yet for more than a century politicians and bureaucrats have operated on the assumption that they are God and they know how to improve it.

    So, they wrecked it.

    I’m sure that if we gave federal economists control of the Amazon rain forest, it would never occur to them to just leave it alone!

    The first thing they’d do is set up the official Amazon Federal Reserve, and start arguing about the formulas they’d use every six weeks to loosen or tighten the supply of water.

    A hundred years later, the Amazon rain forest would be a lifeless desert, two million square miles of sand.

    The most complex thing ever discovered is the human brain, and the economy — the human ecology — is comprised of 6.8 billion of those brains.

    So, does Obama understand that the economy is an ecology?

    Well, just listen to the terminology he uses. He has said — and these are his actual words — the economy has “structural problems.” It’s “locked up.” It’s “out of balance.” It’s “sluggish.” It’s “frozen.” It’s “slow.” It’s “clogged up.”

    The man thinks he’s a plumber.

    The next topic Obama — and the mainstream press — seem not to understand is…

    …economic models

    All mechanical engineers and architects use Newtonian physics. Cars, ships, trains, skyscrapers, they’re all built on Newtonian physics, because Newtonian physics has been proven right billions of times.

    So, for most of what we do every day, Newtonian physics is the model. No engineer or architect would for one minute consider using anything else.

    Economics students in college are led to think there is just one model in economics, too. But there isn’t. There are five main models: Keynesian, monetarist, socialist, fascist and Austrian, and there is no consensus about which one is correct.

    Yet, every financial analysis, every investment recommendation, begins with a choice of economic models. It cannot be avoided. Whether he knows it or not, the analyst is using some kind of economics to do the analysis, because all financial work builds upward from economics — meaning, from the study of the human ecology.

    Economics is the foundation. I would like to see the whole financial industry, including every article or book you read, disclose under the name of the writer, the economic model the writer is using, so that the audience can tell what the bias is!

    In my own case, the article would show the title, then “by Richard Maybury, Austrian.” An article by John Doe would say “by John Doe, Keynesian,” or monetarist, or whatever.

    When I was in college, we were never told what model we were being taught. In one course, the professor would be a monetarist, in another a socialist, another a Keynesian, and they never disclosed it.

    So, most of us didn’t even know there were different models.

    Ever since, I’ve talked with college students, and found this has not changed. I almost never run across a student who even knows there are different models.

    So they come out of college thoroughly confused. To them, the human ecology is a huge mystery. They’ve been taught a mass of contradictions, and they think there must be something wrong with them personally — their brains are defective — because they can’t make sense of it.

    Several times I’ve had people with college degrees in economics read my little book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO PENNY CANDY, which is written to be easily understood by a 12-year old, and these people have told me that for the first time in their lives, they understand economics.

    I use the Austrian model, which is the one that most closely dovetails with the beliefs of Thomas Jefferson and the other American founders. It’s the only one that sees the economy as an ecology not a machine.

    As far I know,
I’m one of the very few people in the whole country who ever disclose their model — because I’m proud of my model.

    As for Obama, I’m sure his confusion comes from the fact that he doesn’t know or is only vaguely aware that there are various models, and he doesn’t know how they differ. If someone asked him, which economic model do you think makes the most sense, and why, I’m sure he’d have no answer.

    So the result in the White House is confusion.

    It cannot be any other way when the advisors have different models of how the world works.

    The third topic Obama and the mainstream press apparently know nothing about is…

    …velocity & money demand.

    Jim Powell has pointed out that the tens of millions of people who are still working — and that’s 91.5% of the workforce — have received a huge pay raise, because prices of houses, cars, refrigerators and a lot of other things, have been cut drastically. The buying power of their wages has soared!

    And, it’s the best kind of pay raise, because they didn’t need to work any harder to get it, and it’s not taxed.

    This is a huge windfall. It’s probably the biggest, most widely shared windfall in all of world history.

    So why aren’t these tens of millions of people out celebrating? They should be delirious with joy. Why aren’t we seeing dancing in the streets?

    Because people are scared and afraid to spend the money. And that brings us to what economists call velocity.

    As this war was developing during the 1990s, I repeatedly warned that it was likely to bring a dollar crisis, and advised my readers to always have part of their savings diversified into non-dollar assets such as Swiss francs, New Zealand dollars, gold, silver, platinum, oil, and other raw materials.

    Incidentally, in March on our web site, I ran a special bulletin telling my readers that I think there is an 85% probability the bottom in non-dollar assets has occurred, or is occurring, and I think those investment suggestions are now as solid as they were ten years ago.

    A major reason is velocity. As far as I know, my Early Warning Report is the only publication that says much about it.

    I think velocity has become the key driver in the entire world-wide economic crisis, so here is a quick explanation of it.

    Money responds to the law of supply and demand just as everything else does.

    If people do not want a particular currency — let’s say the British pound — then the value of a pound will fall.

    Sellers will demand more pounds in trade for their goods or services, and prices in Britain will rise, even if there has been no change in the supply of pounds.

    On the other hand, if the demand for pounds rises, the value will rise and prices will fall even if there has been no change in the supply of the currency.

    Velocity is the speed at which money changes hands. When demand for the money is high, money changes hands more slowly, and velocity is low.

    When demand for the money is low, velocity is high.

    A key point is that velocity and money supply can act as substitutes for each other. A 10% rise in velocity has the same effect as a 10% rise in money supply.

    The biggest problem with velocity and money demand is they can turn 180 degrees overnight. If people trust the currency, and suddenly perceive some kind of big threat to their futures, money demand can shoot up.

    That’s exactly what happened last year. The supply of dollars certainly did not go down, but when the real estate crash happened, people became so frightened they were afraid to let go of their dollars.

    Within a few days, money demand shot up, people stopped spending and held onto their dollars, and this had the same effect as an instantaneous deflation of the money supply.

    If you don’t spend your money, that’s the same thing as taking it out of circulation.

    This can instantly cause the equivalent of a sharp deflation of the money supply by 10 or 20 percent, or more.

    That’s what happened in the Great Depression. The Fed was inflating. In 1932, the money supply1 was $20 billion, and by 1940 it was $38 billion. But fear was so great that velocity was falling faster than money supply was rising.

    This is why Franklin Roosevelt said in his first inaugural speech, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” People were afraid to spend their money, as they are now, and velocity was falling, which has the same effect as deflation, because if you don’t spend your money, it’s not in circulation.

    So, speaking economically, I think that is where we are now. Changes in money demand and velocity are running everything.

    And, my key point is, it’s all controlled by emotions. By fear.

    What are you more afraid of? The dollar becoming worthless? Or losing your job and running out of dollars?

    The whole world is constantly shifting back and forth between those two fears, so money demand bounces up and down like a yo-yo, and velocity — the speed at which the money changes hands — does, too.

    These wild shifts in money demand and velocity have the same effect as massive, instantaneous shifts up and down in money supply. It’s like we’re having a huge inflation, then a deflation, every few hours — because our fears change every few hours — because the politicians have all this arbitrary power and we don’t know what they’re going to do to us!

    Now, do you see why it is so important to see the economy not as a machine but as an ecology. Machines don’t feel, they don’t have fear, or joy, or optimism.

    But people, biological organisms, do have feelings. They do fear, and their fears can change instantaneously.

    The human ecology, especially these days, is driven very largely by emotions.

    How are the politicians and bureaucrats who are playing God ever going to control, or fine tune, or repair, or speed up or slow down, our emotions?

    Okay, so I’ve given you three of the things politicians and the mainstream press say little or nothing about, probably because very few of them understand these things. The three are:  

#1, The economy is not a machine, it’s an ecology made of unimaginably complex biological organisms, meaning people.

#2, Models. There is no single economic model, like there is in Newtonian physics. Obama probably does not realize his advisors are giving him conflicting advice because they have different models.

#3. Velocity. The speed at which money changes hands is dependent on emotions.

    Now you know some of the things Obama doesn’t.

    Perhaps a good summary of what I’ve said so far is, when people play God, they always do it badly. And, the politicians and bureaucrats have been playing God with the human ecology for more than a century, and now the chickens have come home to roost.

    On March 29th on our web site, we posted a special bulletin telling my readers that I think there is an 85% probability the recent deflationary stage of the crisis is ending and the next inflationary stage is beginning.

    I can’t prove it, but I think the bottom in non-dollar assets has occurred, or is occurring, and now is the time to get into non-dollar assets: Swiss francs, New Zealand dollars, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, oil and other raw materials, real estate, and especially, gold, silver and platinum.

    Pat Gorman at Resource Consultants can help you with the gold, silver and platinum. I’ve been recommending Resource Consultants for precious metals for twenty years or so, and never had even one complaint from any of my readers.

    If I’m right about this new inflationary cycle, then within two or three years, we will see oil at $300, gold $3,000, platinum $3,000, and silver at $50.

    I think we have three to five years of chaos ahead of us, but a lot of new fortunes will be made by those who are knowledgeable and prepared.

    We’re going through a giant, and very painful, object lesson. But when it’s over, America will be back on track to a new golden age, and the people who were knowledgeable and prepared will enjoy a prosperity far greater than anything ever seen before.

    That’s the objective of my newsletter, Early Warning Report, to get you through the hard times as comfortably as possible, so that you can enjoy the golden age that will come after.

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Patrick Barron and Benjamin Harnell on Austrian Economics 07/18/09 RFM

Interview of Economist Patrick Barron and Benjamin Harnwell from Strasbourg, France regarding the historic Austrian Economic presentation they made to Members of the European Union Parliament on July 14, 2009. Topics covered Sound Money and Sound Banking.

[audio http://radiofreemarket.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/rfm_patrick_barron_final_071809.mp3]
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Michael McKay on Fiat Money, California IOUs and a One World Government 07/11/09 RFM

Host Michael McKay and Special Commentator Jeffrey Hedquist inaugurate the Radio Free Market show and discuss various topics including Fiat Money, California IOUs and the specter of a One World Government.

[audio http://radiofreemarket.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/rfm_michael_mckay_final_071109.mp3]
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Michael McKay on Economics 07/04/09 RFM

Michael McKay Interview on Common Sense Revisited

On this show Michael McKay discussed: How Economics is two things, the Management of ‘Stuff’ and the Ecology of Human Cooperation. He also discusses Sound money and how Fiat Money is an important tool for waging War.

[audio http://radiofreemarket.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/rfm_michael_mckay_final_070409.mp3]
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