Economics

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CNBC Anchors Mortified That Ron Paul Was Allowed Air Time

Ben BernankeSteve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, Feb 26th, 2009

CNBC anchors were left dumbfounded and acted overtly cantankerous yesterday after Congressman Ron Paul’s opening statement at the House Financial Services Committee was broadcast live to an audience of millions.

CNBC went live to the House, clearly without knowing that the Texas Congressman had the initial Republican statement at the hearing of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

After the Congressman spent two and a half minutes lecturing Bernanke on sound money principles, warning that the financial crisis cannot be solved by merely creating credit out of thin air, CNBC cut back to the studio.

Anchors Erin Burnett and Mark Haines were so perturbed by what they had just heard that they immediately cut to a commercial break:

Haines: “This is not going as planned”

Burnett: “No it is not”

Haines: “We were told that there would be a very limited number of opening statements, and it seems to be getting out of control.”

Burnett: “Here’s what we forgot, everybody is taking this live, you know what that means? Why would they miss an opportunity for free air time?”

Haines: “We’re going to take a commercial break and get them out of the way, so that when something really substandard [he must mean substantial?] is happening, we don’t have to interrupt them.”

The Congressman’s speech was powerful and eye opening:

“This is the end of an era,” said Paul, “we can’t reinflate the bubble….if we think that we can reinflate this bubble by artificially creating credit out of thin air and calling it capital, believe me we don’t have a prayer of solving these problems – we have a total misunderstanding of what credit is versus capital.”

Of course, in the eyes of the corporate media shills for the Fed, the Treasury, and Wall Street Paul’s words were “out of control”. How dare he speak such sense and actively question the logic of the almighty ones, our only hope, our saviors (who also happen to be the very same set of criminals that led us down the path to economic ruin in the first instance).

Then again, how could we expect anything else from the likes of CNBC’s Burnett and Haines, who have previously demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the underlying causes of the financial crisis, even commenting that gold has “no inherent value”.

Research related articles:

  1. Ron Paul Grills Bernanke: “You Can’t Reinflate The Bubble”
  2. CNBC Analyst: Global Bank, Global Currency Within 15 Years
  3. Ron Paul: Bernanke Deliberately Destroying Dollar
  4. Ron Paul Slams “Born-again Budget Conservatives”
  5. Ron Paul Hits Out At “Arrogant” Greenspan
  6. Ron Paul: Secretive Elite Control America
  7. CNBC Host Recommends Statins be Put in the Water Supply
  8. Obama Win Will Not Change Rigged Economy
  9. Paul Lectures Bernanke: U.S. Moving Towards Fascism
  10. Why The Fed Allowed Derivatives Trading on a Sunday
  11. Ron Paul: Greenspan, Bernanke Should Be Criminally Charged
  12. Ron Paul: Stimulus Packages Will Turn Recession Into A Depression

Source: InfoWars

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Final Version of the Economic Stimulus Plan: How It Impacts Your County (e.g., Jackson County, Oregon)


President Obama has just signed a $790+ billion “stimulus” package for the economy, but do you really believe that will actually help our local economy (or just make government bigger, increase the debt and put more burden than ever on the rest of us)?

If you want to see where the money is being spent (your share of the $2,600 per capita increase in the federal debt) for the “Economic Stimulus Bill” read the following summary:

• Senate Final Stimulus Bill Summary

Articles:
• Oregon Governor Targets Federal Stimulus Dollars
• Senate Stimulus Bill

Your fair share?

The State of Oregon will have to compete for it’s share of the $30 billion slated for the states. At last count Jackson County was slated to receive only $400,000 of that money.

Since the federal debt is increasing at $2,600 per capita for this single expenditure alone (that’s a future obligation for each individual in the country, every man, woman and child), wouldn’t it be a better idea to organize our own local capital and resources to provide for our own needs instead of relying on government to do this for us?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to stop relying on the federal government to bail us out, and start doing this ourselves?

So let’s do the math.

According to the 2006 census Jackson County has a population of 197,071 (updated to 198,615 according to recent statistics on the county website). In effect each of us in Jackson County owes an additional $2,600 to the Federal Reserve Bank (or roughly $520,000,000 given a population of 200,000). That’s a lot of money theoretically leaving Jackson County (if indeed the Fed ever called in the debt).

If each of us in Jackson County had the ability (and the desire) to pool our own local capital of $2,600 per capita and funded our own developments and capital projects (instead of the trickle down effect from Washington DC), we’d have a capital fund in excess of $520,000,000 (that’s right millions of dollars, five times the annual budget of the City of Ashland) instead of a mere trickle down of $400,000 from the Economic Stimulus Plan.

Something is terribly wrong with this economic picture.

  • Problem 1 is we cannot create money out of thin air the way the government and banks do.
  • Problem 2 is government spending at this magnitude will not only increase the debt per capita, but devalue the currency (meaning you’ll get less bang for the buck, in effect less purchasing power). This will make the economy worse, not better for most of the people.

Yet all those smart people in Washington DC (and a few newly elected) don’t seem to understand the consequences of such spending for the rest of us. You get my drift?

Now, it’s up to us to do something about it.

How can we refocus our efforts to the LOCAL AND REGIONAL community? What positive and hopeful visions and projects would you like to bring to the table and invest your time, effort, energy and resources (including money)?

U.S. Public Debt

The United States total public debt, commonly called the national debt, or U.S. government debt, is the amount of money owed by the federal government of the United States to holders of U.S. debt instruments. Debt held by the public is all federal debt held by states, corporations, individuals, and foreign governments, but does not include intragovernmental debt obligations or debt held in the Social Security Trust Fund. Types of securities held by the public include, but are not limited to, Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, United States Savings Bonds, and State and Local Government Series securities.[1]

As of February 12, 2009, the total U.S. federal debt was $10.76 trillion [2], or about $37,703 per capita. Of this amount, debt held by the public was roughly $6.45 trillion.[3] In 2007, the public debt was 36.8 percent of GDP [4], with a total debt of 65.5 percent of GDP.[5] The CIA Factbook ranked the total percentage as 23rd in the world.[6]

Public debt is the amount owed by the government to its creditors, whether they are nationals or foreigners. External debt is the debt of all sectors of the economy (public and private), owed to foreigners. In the U.S., foreign ownership of the public debt is a significant part of the nation’s external debt. The Bureau of the Public Debt, a division of the Department of the Treasury, calculates the amount of money owed by the national government on a daily basis.[7][8][9][10] Source: U.S. Public Debt


The estimated population of the United States is 305,670,162 so each citizen’s share of this debt is $35,252.68. Source: U.S. Debt Clock

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Twenty Bailout Banks Cut Lending: Nationalization Considered

capitalbldg1-288Although a main purpose of the Troubled Asset Relief Program was to increase bank lending, a new report casts doubt that recipients of TARP funds are following through. The AP reports the “20 largest banks that received government rescue funds slightly reduced their lending to consumers and businesses in the last three months of 2008.”

The report “is the latest sign that the bailout has done little to increase bank lending.” According to the Washington Post, “The banks that got the most government money, Bank of America and Citigroup, led the retreat.” The Wall Street Journal adds that Treasury officials acknowledge that “the expected decline in fourth-quarter lending was a sign that the program wasn’t working as intended.”

Greenspan: Banks Need Billions More The Financial Times reports former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said yesterday that the Obama administration “will have to go back to Congress for more money to recapitalise the banking system.” Greenspan’s “comments suggest the need for hundreds of billions of dollars over and above the funds remaining” in the TARP.

Graham: GOP Open To Nationalizing Banks The Financial Times reports, “Nationalization is gaining rapid acceptance among Washington opinion-formers,” including Republicans. The Times notes that Sen. Lindsey Graham “says that many of his colleagues, including John McCain…agree with his view that nationalization of some banks should be ‘on the table’.”

US Has Lost $86.5 Billion On Preferred Shares The Hill reports that the federal government “has lost $86.5 billion in the stock market since the end of October courtesy of the Wall Street bailout.”

Source: USNews.com

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Strengthening or Weakening the Economy?

Ben BernankeThe economic situation continues to deteriorate this week as past and future bailouts were discussed on Capitol Hill.  The debate was over the accountability of already disbursed TARP money, and on whether or not to release remaining funds.   Banks that had already been bailed out before are looking for more money to fill the black holes that are their balance sheets, warning that they are simply too big to fail.  However, whatever ‘devastating’ consequences these banks are dreaming up and pushing on Capitol Hill regarding their own collapse will be nothing compared to the collapse of our currency if we keep debasing it through these foolish bailouts.  It should be that they are too big to bailout.  The world will not come to an end without this or that bank.  The most troubling thing to me is this rhetoric that only government can save the economy, and must act.  This is so counter-productive.

We must ask ourselves what strengthens this country, and what weakens it.

Government is a monumental drag on this economy.  Government at all levels currently absorbs about 35-40 percent of GDP, which is still not enough for its voracious appetite. While productivity is already overtaxed, the government routinely spends more than it takes in and makes up for the shortfall by constantly borrowing or debasing our dollars through inflation.  It pains me to think of all the opportunities for productive economic growth we have given up simply because our government is super-sized instead of Constitution-sized.  There are just a few constitutionally sanctioned activities for government to engage in, but it is so overstretched with unconstitutional encroachments that what it is legitimately supposed to do, it does very badly.  And yet we are to believe the solution to our problems is to make government bigger.  On the contrary, government makes our problems bigger.  The central bank’s meddling with monetary policy led to overheated lending, and now massive defaults.  The government used manipulative tax policy to distort the housing market which has had many unintended consequences, and here we are.  Government is quick to enact and slow to correct bad policy.  Yet in spite of government’s failures, it flourishes and grows, thanks to the continual bailouts from the unwitting taxpayer.

Big government has been tried and has failed miserably.  What we need now is small government, and freedom.  We need the freedom to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps again, as we traditionally do in this country.  But try to start a business or charity today, and you will understand how little economic freedom we really have left.  Freedom, not government, made this the land of opportunity.  Freedom laid the foundation that catapulted us to becoming the strongest economic power in the world.  The American people are strong and capable.  We can pull ourselves out of this mess.  All we need is for the nanny-state to get out of the way and allow us to do it.  Freedom is our strength, government is our weakness.  Only by recognizing this and unleashing our strengths will we solve the problems we face today.

Source: Dr. Ron Paul’s Straight Talk and Campaign for Liberty