Ron Paul Warns of Social Unrest and Martial Law

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqWtiAtSvg0

No Way to Sustain Economy Based on Consumer Credit

Peering into the Abyss

by Peter Schiff

...Washington is telling us that our problems result from a lack of consumer spending. Therefore, the solution is for government spending to pick up the slack. However, if Americans are too broke to spend, then how can our government spend for us? The only money they have is taken from us through taxation. To postpone immediate tax hikes (adding interest for good measure), Washington plans to borrow more from abroad. However, if our foreign creditors refuse to pony up, much of the money will simply be printed instead.

Printing money is merely taxation in another form. Rather than robbing citizens of their money, government robs their money of its purchasing power. Many people assume that if government provides the funds we can spend our way back to prosperity. However, it’s not money we lack but production. If the government simply prints money and doles it out, we will not be able to buy more stuff; we will simply pay higher prices. The only way to buy more is to produce more. It is production that creates purchasing power, not the printing press!

Our current predicament resulted in part from our efforts to maintain consumer spending at unsustainable levels, primarily by the reckless extension of consumer credit. Pushing up consumer credit to levels not supported by market realities required government subsidies and guarantees. In addition, Wall Street pitched in with securitization and credit default swaps, which created a false sense of confidence among our creditors that high-risk consumer loans could actually be repaid. However, now that all those gimmicks have blown up, the entire farce has been exposed.

read more...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/schiff/schiff10.html

Bailout Mania!

Excerpt from:
http://thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary-mainmenu-43/619

The Treasury Department and Federal Reserve are spending trillions — and Congress is letting them get away with the biggest theft in history...

"The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress have become increasingly irrelevant," Reich opined in a January 7, 1999 piece for USA Today. "In case you hadn't noticed," Reich continued, "America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board. Their decisions about interest rates are determining how many of us have jobs and how many of us get a raise."

Reich, who is now an adviser to President-elect Obama, went on:

Congress is out of this loop. Every so often, some senators or House members politely ask Greenspan to visit and talk about the economy. He obliges by riding up to the Hill and muttering convoluted sentences that no two people interpret in quite the same way. Then he goes back down to the Fed and runs the country.

America's foreign policy, meanwhile, is now being run by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with some coaching from the Treasury Department.

Reich's description of things nearly a decade ago certainly describes the situation in Washington today. While Congress voted on $700 billion for bailouts, the Fed is spinning out more than 10 times that amount out of thin air. If Congress, the press, and the public can be kept preoccupied arguing over a few billions, while the Fed is making decisions on and taking action on trillions, then Congress has indeed become irrelevant. And so has the American public — except for when it comes time to pay the tab.