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How the Banking Cartel Bought off the Education Cartel
Blind Men’s Bluff: FED-Defending, Gold-Hating Economists
Dec. 3, 2011
Higher education in the United States was transformed by Rockefeller money, beginning in 1902: the General Education Board. The GEB made grants to colleges only if they hired Ph.D-holding graduates of a handful of universities, which alone granted the Ph.D. This way, the universities could indirectly take over the rest of the colleges, which were mostly church-related. The strategy worked.
Rockefeller’s academic empire included the University of Chicago, which he founded. From the turn of the 20th century, the University of Chicago’s department of economics repudiated the use of gold in monetary affairs.
Milton Friedman earned his Nobel Prize for a book researched mainly by his co-author, Anna J. Schwartz: A Monetary History of the United States (1963). Born in 1915, she still works full time. In the Wikipedia entry for her, we read:
Anna Jacobson Schwartz (born November 11, 1915) is an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York City, and according to Paul Krugman “one of the world’s greatest monetary scholars”. She is best known for her collaboration with Milton Friedman on A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 which laid a large portion of the blame for the Great Depression at the door of the Federal Reserve. She is a past president of the Western Economic Association (1988).
The book is known in academic circles and policy-making circles only for its thesis regarding the Federal Reserve System, 1930-33. It says that the FED had not inflated enough, 1930-33. The book is never quoted by the media on any other topic, although it is a fat book. That is the only academic thing that Friedman ever wrote that was adopted by his Keynesian peers. Why? Because he came out on their side.
The academic economics profession is united on only one topic: the superiority of central banking to the gold standard.
There has never been a college textbook in economics that called the FED a government-created cartel that exists for the sake of the largest banks. This outlook shapes the thinking of the students who get certified to teach. They are literally unable intellectually to apply the economic theory in the chapter on cartels to the Federal Reserve System, despite the fact that the theory in the cartel chapter fits seamlessly onto the facts of the FED. Support of central banking is basic to the entire curriculum in modern economics.
So, the graduates have a blind spot: central banking. This means they have another blind spot: a gold coin standard. It means that they have literally never examined the theory of a monetary standard that is based solely on the enforcement of voluntary exchange, including contracts. They are literally incapable of imagining a free market for money. The methodological tools which they apply with mathematical precision — a fake precision — to every other area of life, including marriage, they are intellectually incapable of applying to money.
For decades, the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors (government) and its 12 regional banks (privately owned) have spent tens of millions of dollars (created out of nothing) handing research jobs to academic economists. The FED has literally bought off the profession. This story was concealed for years by the FED and its bought-off defenders, but it has recently surfaced.
This strategy was first adopted by the Rockefellers. John D. Rockeffer, Jr. hired Raymond Fosdick to run the Rockefeller Foundation. After he took the running of the foundation, Fosdick continued to pay public relations pioneer Ivy Lee to help reduce criticism of the Rockefeller oil empire. Lee had been on the Rockefellers’ payroll ever since 1914. One of Lee’s suggestions was to pay academics a lot of money to write pro-Rockefeller books. This worked so well that Fosdick began spending millions to buy off academia. There is a book on this: Donald Fisher, Fundamental Development of the Social Sciences: Rockefeller Philanthropy and the United States Social Science Research Council. It was published by the University of Michigan Press in 1993.
Why Don’t We Eat Cloves on Pesach?
Shulchan Aruch O.C. 467:8:
והמנהג במדינות אלו שלא לאכול כרכום שקורין זפרי”ן או נעגלי”ך (מהרי”ל), מיהו אינן אוסרין תערובתן וכן נראה לי.
Mishna Berurah 467:34:
או נעגעלי”ך, מפני ששורין אותן במי שעורין קודם שמייבשין אותן [ד”מ].
This is no longer the case, yet the “Minhag” remains. Of course, we aren’t Chazal, so unless there is a reason to assume this may recur (שמא יחזור הדבר לקלקולו), this is no custom at all.
There is a huge difference between stringency based on a distant (or very distant) concern, to a custom based on what others did under different conditions.
Environmentalism Is Racist!
The Greens vs. the Non-White Poor
The green movement is anti-free market. It proposes restrictions on the production of energy except for wind power and solar power. It favors renewable energy, especially wind and solar. A representative presentation is made by the Union of Concerned Scientists. (Note: when a group is “concerned,” it is not Right wing. There is no union of concerned gun owners, nor will there be.)
Wind power is a delusion. This is a great article on wind energy.
I am not going to review it here.
Wind power is an economic loser. In rare circumstances, it can work for an individual household, when the house is located in the equivalent of a wind tunnel. Some people who are worried about the failure of the electrical power grid may think it’s worth a huge amount of money to build such a system. But the obvious doesn’t occur to them, namely, that if the power grid goes down, the division of labor will collapse in the entire region where the power goes down and stays down. Civilization will basically disappear in that region. It will be a Mad Max scenario.
What about solar power? It, too, is mostly hype except in regions with a lot of sunshine. The percentage of power generated in the United States by solar power is one half of 1%.
The issue of battery storage is crucial. The pace of development is slow. Prices have not fallen as fast as solar power panels.
It is indicative of the political ignorance of vast numbers of Americans that anybody would take seriously the argument that the American economy can switch from coal, oil, nuclear, and natural gas to wind power and solar power. The only rival to the big four is hydroelectric power, and that constitutes 13% of power generated in the United States. To increase renewable hydropower requires dams. Dams flood the land. The greens are opposed to flooding lands — not because the land is privately owned, but because man-made flooding is not natural. The green site Ecowatch has issued a warning against hydroelectric power.
Anti-capitalists have used arguments against pollution, including carbon dioxide, to discourage the use of nuclear, coal, oil, and natural gas. Burning natural gas does produce carbon dioxide. Therefore, the greens are opposed to natural gas as much as they are opposed to the other forms of power.
Basically, the greens are opposed to the modern division of labor. They are opposed to the United States and the West in general as being enormously wealthy in comparison to the masses of the world, who do not have cheap energy. Over the last generation, the masses of the world have gained access to cheap energy, and this is the primary reason why they have become richer. The other reason is an increase of free trade, both domestically and across borders. But the greens are opposed to both capitalist trade and modern forms of energy.
The greens’ agenda would keep the Third World from getting richer. Cheap energy fuels Third World economic growth.
India and China have growing populations. Why? Economic growth. How? A major factor has been their access to cheap energy. A good study of this connection is here. This is going to continue.
From GaryNorth.com, here.
Ron Paul Is Hopeful – In the Long Term
Economic Storm Clouds Gather, but Ending the Fed Provides Hope
April 3, 2018
The Federal Reserve recently increased interest rates to 1.75 percent. This is the highest interest rates have been since 2008, but it still leaves rates at historic lows. While the Fed says economic growth justifies future rate increases, an honest examination of the economy suggests that future rate increases are unlikely.
The Fed’s claim that the economy is strong is based on misleading government statistics. For example, the official unemployment rate understates true unemployment by not counting those who have given up looking for work. According to John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, the real unemployment rate is above 20 percent. Government figures also understate the rate of inflation by pretending that you are not negatively impacted by inflation if you can still buy hamburger when you cannot afford steak. Shadow Stats estimates that the real rate of inflation is as much as four times higher than the official rate.
President Trump’s tariffs will further weaken the economy. While export-driven industries, including manufacturers that rely on imported materials, will be particularly hard-hit, the tariffs combined with the inevitable retaliation from other counties will impact all sectors of the economy. A global trade war could also lead other countries to stop buying US debt instruments, increasing pressure on the Fed to keep rates low.
Since Republicans have held control of the White House and Congress over the last year, federal spending has increased 12.9 percent. Clearly those in Congress serious about reducing government spending are few and far between. The sad fact is that both major parties are happy to increase welfare and warfare spending, although many Republicans pretend to oppose deficits when a Democrat sits in the White House. This puts tremendous pressure on the Fed to keep rates low so as not to increase the federal government’s already high interest payments.
This cannot last forever. Eventually the combination of a spendthrift Congress and a print-happy central bank will cause a major economic crisis. This crisis will herald the end of the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system that sustains it. The only question is whether the existing system will be replaced by a free market and limited constitutional government or we will complete our descent into totalitarianism.
Fortunately, more Americans are becoming aware of the freedom philosophy and demanding that government roll back the welfare-warfare state and rein in the Fed. Many are also demanding protection of their right to opt out — not just from government programs like Obamacare but also from the Federal Reserve System. For example, Wyoming recently joined Arizona in passing a law recognizing gold and silver as legal tender. Citizens of these states are now able to protect themselves from the coming dollar crisis by using what has historically been considered real money.
At the federal level, the movement to audit the Fed remains strong. As the failures of Keynesianism become more apparent, the movement to audit and end the Fed will grow in size and strength. Hopefully this movement will ensure the end of the welfare-warfare state and the fiat currency system as well as lead to a new era of liberty.
From Lewrockwell.com, here.