Bernie Madoff may have "MADE OFF" with 50 billion. If so, he sould be living in a cardboard box in NYC instead of his 7 million NY apartment.

http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/UPDATE/Update2007-09-30.htm

Original site link..

Sorry Mike..

wadada

Jared -

FYI -

... a couple of the "click here" links did not work...

-m

Speaking of Coins Mike here is one that never made the lame stream media..

http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org...2007-09-30.htm

September 30, 2007

Media Blackout: 161 Federal Tax Charges, 0 Convictions

IRS Suffers Staggering Defeat

Tax Questions Raised Regarding

Gold and Silver Coins Used to Pay Wages

Around noon on Monday, September 17th, a Las Vegas federal jury returned its verdict refusing to convict nine defendants of any of the 161 federal tax crimes they had been charged with. The charges included income tax evasion, willful failure to file and conspiracy to evade taxes.

The four-month trial centered around the family businesses of Robert Kahre who paid numerous workers for their labor with circulating gold and silver U.S. coins, and did not report the wages. The payments took place over several years, allegedly totaling at least $114 million dollars.

On September 20, 2007, three days after the federal trial's dramatic conclusion, the Las Vegas Review Journal, reportedly under a degree of public pressure, ran its first (and last) story about the outcome of the trial. To this day, with exception of the single article by the Review Journal, no major media entity has published a news story regarding the outcome of this important federal criminal tax case.

The censorship of this important news story is, unfortunately, not unexpected given the continuing, worldwide onslaught against the U.S. "dollar" -- specifically the Federal Reserve variety, and the ever growing numbers of Federal Reserve Notes required to trade for an actual ounce of silver, gold, oil, or for that matter, anything.

In short, this failed prosecution has coalesced and exposed truths our Government desperately needs to hide from the People: the truth about our money, the truth about our (privately-owned) central bank, and the truth about the fraudulent nature of the operation and enforcement of the federal income tax system.

Click here to read the April, 2005 DOJ press release announcing the prosecution.
Click here to read the 9/20 story by the Review Journal about the trial.

According to defense attorney Joel Hansen, who represented co-defendant Alex Loglia, the primary "willfulness" defense was that the defendants believed they had no legal obligation to withhold, pay income taxes or report anything to the government because, in part, the nominal (i.e., face value) of the gold and silver coins is so small as to fall beneath the reporting thresholds set by the Internal Revenue Code.

The Defendants also argued that regardless of the valuation of the coins for internal revenue purposes, there is no law that requires average American workers to file or pay direct, un-apportioned taxes on the fruits of their labor.

The Government argued that the payments in solid gold and silver U.S. coins must be considered at their bullion (i.e., intrinsic full-market) value when considering the worth of the wages for purposes of the internal revenue code.

Attorney Hansen cited two Supreme Court cases bolstering Defendant's monetary argument at the heart of the defendants "willfulness" defense.

The essence of the argument is that under the Constitution Congress is obligated by law to mint and circulate such coins as demand requires, and must establish the value of coins as they are used as legal tender, but the coins' market value, arising as valuable personal "property," is a distinct, separate attribute of such coins, and is of no legal consequence if the coins are used as legal tender.

In other words, if a worker is paid with such coins, his taxable "income" (if any) can only be the face value indicated upon the coin money paid -- i.e., $1.00 for a circulating silver dollar or $50 for a circulating gold U.S. coin. Not surprisingly, the IRS has never issued any public guidance regarding this significant issue.

The first case, Ling Su Fan v. U.S., 218 US 302 (1910) establishes the legal distinction of a coin bearing the "impress" of the sovereign:

"These limitations are due to the fact that public law gives to such coinage a value which does not attach as a mere consequence of intrinsic value. Their quality as a legal tender is an attribute of law aside from their bullion value. They bear, therefore, the impress of sovereign power which fixes value and authorizes their use in exchange."

The second case, Thompson v. Butler, 95 US 694 (1877), establishes that the law makes no legal distinction between the values of coin and paper money used as legal tender:

"A coin dollar is worth no more for the purposes of tender in payment of an ordinary debt than a note dollar. The law has not made the note a standard of value any more than coin. It is true that in the market, as an article of merchandise, one is of greater value than the other; but as money, that is to say, as a medium of exchange, the law knows no difference between them."

Defense attorney Hansen confirmed that members of the jury were able to actually hold and inspect the gold and silver U.S. coins paid to the workers.

After almost four months of testimony and three and a half days of deliberation, the jury did not convict any of the defendants of any of the 161 crimes alleged. Although some defendants were acquitted of multiple counts, and several were acquitted completely, others may have to stand for a retrial if the Government brings charges a second time.

The Review Journal reported the jury foreman claimed DOJ prosecutors admitted they were "shocked" by the outcome.

In March 2007, the primary defendant, Bob Kahre, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the prosecutor and IRS agents who had conducted what he alleges to be an unlawful search and seizure raid. In 2005, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to overturn a previous District Court ruling holding that the federal prosecutor is not entitled to absolute immunity for the unlawful raid.

The media suppression of this story is similar to the widespread mainstream media suppression of the July 11, 2007 acquittal of Louisiana attorney Tommy Cryer who was also charged with multiple federal income tax crimes and relied upon numerous Supreme Court precedents and U.S. tax laws to establish his "willfulness" defense. Click here for a previous WTP update containing a link to Cryer's 100-page Motion to Dismiss which details his legal arguments.

Click here to execute a Google News archive search to attempt to locate news stories about Tommy Cryer's tax trial.

The Real Reason Why BAILOUTS are BAD for You and Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwSG6lIHN6I

The Reason Why, the bailouts of the automobile industry, the $700 Billion bank Bail Out bill, and when they want to bailout anything else(to help, even though it meants a take over!) will absolutely be BAD for You and Me.

Edwin Vieira, Jr. - four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School)

Yes, I remember the debates well, and that exchange in particular.

On a side note, which most of our comments are since we tend to get off topic, I was reminded about your comments about coin usage as currency.
How about that guy who paid his property taxes in coin over the weekend? Good stuff.

-m

oops i meant 30 years not the last 3 years. Dr. Paul has been talking about this for 30 in Congress..

Thanks Mike, I've already seen it.

He is only talking the points that Ron Paul has been pointing out for 3 years..

Mike listen to Fred Thompson laugh at Ron Paul during the debate..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZWt897p7tY

I wonder why Fred Thompson didn't you pick up on this during the campaign, Because he is now jumping on Dr. Paul's bandwagon and what he talked about all during Dr. Paul's campaign.

Something he doesn't even talk about and that is the FED.

Why does he not talk about the country having to borrow all of its currency from the privately owned FED, in violation of the US Constitution..

A Federal Reserve Note is not a real Dollar according too US Law..

What Is a Dollar?
By Edwin Vieira, Jr.

Mr. Vieira is an attorney specializing in constitutional law. He is the author of numerous publications on monetary law.

This is a condensed version of the monograph “What Is a Dollar?,” distributed by the National Alliance for Constitutional Money. All rights to this condensed version are reserved by the National Alliance for Constitutional Money, Inc.

The question “What is a ‘dollar’?” seems trivial. Very few people, however, can correctly define a “dollar,” even though a correct definition is vital to their economic and political well-being.
1. Why is a correct definition of the term “dollar” important?

In America’s free-market economy, prices are expressed in units of money. Under present law, “United States money is expressed in dollars . . .”1Moreover, all “United States coins and currency (including Federal Reserve Notes . . . ) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes and dues.”2Thus, defining the noun “dollar” is necessary in order to know what is the “money” of the United States and what constitutes “legal tender.”
2. Do the present monetary statutes intelligibly define the “dollar”?

The present monetary statutes do not define the “dollar” intelligibly.

a. Federal Reserve Notes. Most people mistake the Federal Reserve Note (FRN) “dollar bill” for a “dollar.” But no statute defines or ever defined the “one dollar” FRN as the “dollar” or even a “dollar.” Moreover, the United States Code provides that FRNs “shall be redeemed in lawful money on demand at the Treasury Department of the United States . . . or at any Federal Reserve bank.”3Thus, if FRNs are not themselves “lawful money,” they cannot be “dollars,” the units in which all “United States money is expressed.”

b. United States coins. The situation with coinage is equally confusing. The United States Code provides for base-metallic coinage, gold coinage, and silver coinage, all denominated in “dollars.” The base-metallic coinage includes “a dollar coin,” weighing “8.1 grams,” and composed of copper and nickel.4The gold coinage includes a “fifty dollar gold coin” that “weighs 33.931 grams, and contains one troy ounce of fine gold.”5Finally, the silver coinage consists of a coin that is inscribed “One Dollar,” weighs “31.103 grams,” and contains one ounce of “.999 fine silver.”6What is the rational relationship between this “dollar” of 31.103 grams of silver, a “fifty- dollar” coin containing 33.931 grams of gold alloy, and a “dollar” containing “8.1 grams” of base metals? Obviously, these are not the amounts of the metals that exchange against each other in the free market—that is, the different weights of different metals do not reflect equivalent purchasing powers. So, on what theory are each of these disparate weights, and purchasing powers, equally “dollars”?

c. Currency of “equal purchasing power.” The United States Code mandates that the latter question should not even be capable of being asked. For the Code commands that “the Secretary [of the Treasury] shall redeem gold certificates owned by the Federal reserve banks at times and in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to maintain the equal purchasing power of each kind of United States currency.”7Obviously, the Secretary has defaulted on this obligation to keep all forms of “United States currency” at parity with one other—that is, to maintain a “dollar” of constant purchasing-power, whether it be composed of gold, silver, or base metals.

In sum, the monetary statutes do not define the noun “dollar” in a unique way. Instead, completely different things have the same name, things unequal to each other are treated as equivalent, and things that should have the same characteristics (i.e., “equal purchasing power[s]”) are quite different.
3. What does American history and the Constitution identify as the “dollar”?

History shows that the real “dollar” is a coin containing 371.25 grains (troy) of fine silver.

a. The “dollar” in the Constitution. Both Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 of the Constitution and the Seventh Amendment use the noun “dollar.” The Constitution does not define the “dollar,” though, because in the late 1700s everyone knew that the word meant the silver Spanish milled dollar.

b. Adoption of the “dollar” as the “Money-Unit” prior to ratification of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers did not need explicitly to adopt the “dollar” as the national unit of money or to define the “dollar” in the Constitution, because the Continental Congress had already done so.

The American Colonies did not originally adopt the dollar from England, but from Spain. Under that country’s monetary reforms of 1497, the silver real became the Spanish money of account. A new coin consisting of eight reales also appeared. Known as pesos, duros, piezas de a ocho (“pieces of eight”), or Spanish dollars, the coins achieved predominance in the New World because of Spain’s then-important commercial and political position.8Indeed, by 1704, the “pieces of eight” had in fact become a unit of account of the Colonies, as Queen Anne’s Proclamation of 1704 recognized, when it decreed that all other current foreign silver coins “stand regulated, according to their weight and fineness, according and in proportion to the rate . . . limited and set for the pieces of eight of Sevil, Pillar, and Mexico” (forms of Spanish dollars).9

By the American War of Independence, the Spanish dollar had become the major monetary unit of the Colonies. Not surprisingly, the Continental Congress adopted the dollar as the nation’s standard of value. On May 22, 1776, a Congressional committee reported on “the value of the several species of gold and silver coins current in these colonies, and the proportions they ought to bear to Spanish milled dollars.” And on September 2 of that year, a further committee report undertook to “declar[e] the precise weight and fineness of the . . . Spanish milled dollar . . . now becoming the Money-Unit or common measure of other coins in these states.”10

Meanwhile, the Continental Congress worked on a new national monetary system. In his letter to Congress of January 15, 1782, Robert Morris, Superintendent of the Office of Finance, recommended that “our money standard ought to be affixed to silver.” Although Morris favored creating an entirely new standard coin, he recognized that, of “[t]he various coins which have circulated in America . . . . there is hardly any which can be considered as a general standard, unless it be Spanish dollars”.11

In a plan published on July 24, 1784, Thomas Jefferson concurred that “[t]he Spanish dollar seems to fulfill all . . . conditions” applicable to “fixing the unit of money.” “The unit, or dollar,” he wrote, “is a known coin . . . already adopted from south to north . . . Our public debt, our requisitions and their apportionments, have given it actual and long possession of the place of unit.”12

Yet Jefferson recognized the necessity of “say[ing] with precision what a dollar is. This coin as struck at different times, of different weight and fineness, is of different values.” So, Jefferson suggested, “we should examine the quantity of pure metal in each [type of dollar], and from them form an average for our unit. This is a work . . . which should be decided on actual and accurate experiments.”13

On July 6, 1785, Congress unanimously “Resolved, That the money unit of the United States be one dollar.”14On April 8, 1786, the Board of Treasury reported to Congress on the establishment of a mint:

Congress by their Act of the 6th July last resolved, that the Money Unit of the United States should be a Dollar, but did not determine what number of grains of Fine Silver should constitute the Dollar.

We have concluded that Congress by their Act aforesaid, intended the common Dollars that are Current in the United States, and we have made our calculations accordingly.

* * * * *

The Money Unit or Dollar will contain three hundred and seventy five grains and sixty four hundredths of a Grain of fine Silver. A Dollar containing this number of Grains of fine Silver, will be worth as much as the New Spanish Dollars.15

On August 8, 1787, Congress adopted this standard as “the money Unit of the United States.”16

Many of the same people who served in the Continental Congress participated in the Federal Convention that drafted the Constitution. And even those members of the Convention who had not served in the Continental Congress knew what that Congress had done. Therefore, when the Convention used the noun “dollar” in Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 of the Constitution, it was with the tacit understanding of the relevant history. The lesson here is clear: The constitutional “dollar” is a fixed weight of fine silver in the form of a coin.

c. Adoption of the “dollar” as the “Money-Unit” immediately after ratification of the Constitution. Upon ratification of the Constitution, Congress and the Executive began work on a national monetary system.

On 28 January 1791, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton presented to Congress his Report on the Subject of a Mint. Hamilton posed two questions, “1st. What ought to be . . . of the money unit of the United States?,” and “2d. What [should be] the proportion between gold and silver, if coins of both metals are to be established?”17

On the first question, Hamilton referred to the resolutions of the Continental Congress and concluded that “usage and practice . . . indicate the dollar” as the money unit. As to “what precise quantity of fine silver” the dollar should contain, he surveyed the various dollar coins in circulation over the years, and recommended that “[t]he actual dollar in common circulation has . . . a much better claim to be regarded as the actual money unit.”18

Turning to “the proportion which ought to subsist between [gold and silver] in the coins,” Hamilton recommended the domestic market-ratio of “about as 1 to 15.” “There can hardly be a better rule in any country for the legal than the market proportion,” he explained, “if this can be supposed to have been produced by the free and steady course of commercial principles. The presumption in such a case is that each metal finds its true level, according to its intrinsic utility, in the general system of money operation.”19

Hamilton recommended the minting of two coins: a silver coin of 371-1/4 grains of fine silver (the dollar), and a gold coin of 24-3/4 grains of fine gold. “[N]othing better,” he wrote, “can be done . . . than to pursue the track marked out by the resolution [of the Continental Congress] of the 8th of August, 1786.”20

Congress then enacted the Coinage Act of 1792,21embodying the constitutional principles that Hamilton had re-affirmed in his Report. First, Congress followed American tradition by continuing the use of silver and gold as money.22Second, it reiterated the judgment of the Continental Congress and the Constitution that “the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars or units.”23and defined the “DOLLARS OR UNITS” as “of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure . . . silver.”24Congress also created a new gold coin, the “EAGLE, . . . . each to be of the value of ten dollars or units”25(i.e., the weight of fine gold equivalent in the marketplace to 3,712.50 grains of fine silver). It fixed “the proportional value of gold to silver in all coins which shall by law be current as money within the United States” at “fifteen to one, according to quantity in weight, of pure gold or pure silver.”26It made “all the gold and silver coins . . . issued from the . . . mint . .. a lawful tender in all payments whatsoever, those of full weight according to the respective values [established in the Act], and those of less than full weight at values proportional to their respective weights.”27And it provided free coinage “for any person or persons,” and affixed the penalty of death for the crime of debasing the coinage.28

Thus, Congress did not create a “gold dollar,” or establish a “gold standard,” as the popular misconception holds. For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica erroneously reports that the “dollar . . . was defined in the Coinage Act of 1792 as either 24.75 gr. (troy) of fine gold or 371.25 gr. (troy) of fine silver.”29The Act did no such thing. It defined the “dollar” as a weight of silver, and “regulate[d] the Value”30of gold coins according to this standard unit and the market exchange-ratio between the two metals. Nowhere did the Act refer to a “gold dollar,” only to various gold coins of other names that it valued in “dollars.”31
4. Where are we now?

This history demonstrates that official Washington, D.C., has no conception of what a “dollar” really is. The reason for this self-imposed ignorance is obvious. By reducing the “dollar” to a political abstraction, the government has empowered itself to engage in limitless debasement (depreciation in purchasing power) of our money. A “dollar” that must perforce of the Constitution contain 371.25 grains of fine silver cannot be reduced in value below the market exchange value of silver. A pseudo-“dollar” that contains no fixed amount of any particular substance per “dollar,” on the other hand, can be reduced in value infinitely.

Because debasement of money amounts to a hidden tax, Congress’ silent refusal torecognize the constitutional “dollar” amounts to the usurpation of an unlimited power to tax through manipulation of the monetary system. Thus, modern money has become a means for the total confiscation of private property by the government.

One need not be overly pessimistic to predict that misuse by politicians of the fictional, constantly depreciating pseudo”dollar” to expropriate unsuspecting citizens will continue until an economic crisis finally shocks an increasingly impoverished American people out of its slumber, and forces the people to ask the simple question: “What is a ‘dollar’?” At that time, the answer will be no different from what it is today, and has been since 1704. []

1. 1. 31 U.S.C. § 5101 (emphasis supplied). See Act of 2 April 1792, ch. 16, § 9, 1 Stat. 246, 248.
2. 2. 31 U.S.C. § 5103.
3. 3. 12 U.S.C. § 411 (emphasis supplied).
4. 4. 31 U.S.C. § 5!12(a), 51120o).
5. 5. 31 U.S.C. § 5112(a)(7).
6. 6. 31 U.S.C. § 5112(e).
7. 7. 31 U.S.C. § 5119(a) (emphasis supplied).
8. 8. See Sumner, “The Spanish Dollar and the Colonial Shilling,” 3 Amer. Hist. Rev. 607 (1898).
9. 9. See An Act for ascertaining the rates of foreign coins in her Majesty’s plantations in America, 1707, 6 Anne, oh. 30. § I.
10. 10. 4 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1777-1789 (W. Ford, ed., 1905), at 381-82; 5 id. at 725.
11. 11. Propositions respecting the Coinage of Gold, Silver, and Copper (printed folio pamphlet presented to the Continental Congress 13 May 1785), at 4, 5.
12. 12. “NOTES on the Establishment of a MONEY MINT, and of a COINAGE for the United States,” The Providence Gazette and Country Journal, Vol. XXI, NO. 1073 (24 July 1784), in Propositions, note 11, at 9, 10.
13. 13. Id. at 11.
14. 14. 29 Journals of the Continental Congress at 499-500.
15. 15. 30 Id. at 162—63. After ratification of the Constitution, Congress made a more accurate determination of the value of the dollar, setting it at 371-1/4 grains of fine silver (as described below).
16. 16. 31 Journals of the Continental Congress at 503.
17. 17. 2 The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States ($. Gales compil. 1834), Appendix, at 2059, 2060, 2061.
18. 18. Id. at 2061-63.
19. 19. Id. at 2066, 2068, 2069.
20. 20. Id. at 2O82.
21. 21. Act of 2 April 1792, ch. 16, 1 Stat. 246.
22. 22. § 9, 1 Stat. at 248.
23. 23. § 20, 1 Slat. at 250.
24. 24. § 9, 1 Slat. at 248.
25. 25. § 9, I Slat. at 248.
26. 26. § 11, 1 Slat. at 248-49.
27. 27. § 16, I Slat. at 250.
28. 28. § § 14-15, 1 Star. at 249-50; § 19, 1 Star. at 250.
29. 29. Vol. 7, “Dollar” (1963 ed.) at 558.
30. 30. See U.S. Cost. art. I, § 8, el. 5.
31. 31. For the correct interpretation of the Act, See, e.g., A. Hepburn, History of Coinage and Currency in the United States and the Perennial Contest for Sound Money (1903), at 22.

Jared -

Thought you might enjoy this little message from Fred Thompson regarding the economy. (It's about 8 min.)

http://blip.tv/play/Ad3iNI+MAQ

-m

Peterson Foundation:

"According to recent calculations by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the sum of America's debts and other financial commitments is about to exceed the collective net worth of its citizens. That means that for the first time in our history, we'll owe more money than all of us have combined.
"

Debtor are not choosers

Cheney claims power to decide his own case
John Byrne
Published: Friday December 19, 2008

I am the law.

That's the message Vice President Dick Cheney appeared to send in a little-noticed court filing last week, in which his lawyers asserted that the vice president alone has the authority to determine which records are turned over to the National Archives after he leaves office. But the law exempts "personal and partisan" records, which Cheney's lawyers said he will be the sole decider upon.

"The vice president alone may determine what constitutes vice presidential records or personal records, how his records will be created, maintained, managed and disposed, and are all actions that are committed to his discretion by law," according to a filing by Cheney's office with the court hearing the case Dec. 8, noted by the AP's Pamela Hess.

"National Archives officials have said records of Cheney's dealings with the Republican National Committee would not require preservation under the law," Hess notes. "As of November, it had not made a final determination on the status of Cheney's records produced when he acts as president of the Senate, which he says are exempt."

Steven Aftergood, government secrecy expert and editor of the blog, Secrecy News, told Hess the law is unclear as to who is supposed to determine what records can be kept as private property.

"Decisions that are made in the next couple of weeks may prove irrevocable," he said. "If records are held from the archivist now they may never be recovered."

Cheney was ordered to preserve all records in September while the case progressed.

Citizens for Ethics has tangled with the White House for years. Last year, they took issue with the White House's announcement that they'd lost more than five million emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005.

"It’s clear that the White House has been willfully violating the law, the only question now is to what extent?" CREW executive director Melanie Sloan wrote. "The ever changing excuses offered by the administration – that they didn’t want to violate the Hatch Act, that staff wasn’t clear on the law – are patently ridiculous. Very convenient that embarrassing – and potentially incriminating – emails have gone missing. It’s the Nixon White House all over again."

"How Bernake Stole Christmas." Hahahahahaha. Thanks for sharing, Jared.

Ron Paul Blasts Secret Government Running Economy

Congressman Ron Paul has issued a stinging address concerning the financial crisis in which he outlines how the current economic problems, created via malinvestment and shift to a debt based economy, are now being mismanaged by private interests in secret.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD4kayWV1tk

December 19, 2008

How Bernanke Stole Christmas

By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A. (With Apologies to Dr. Seuss)
December 2008

Every Who Down in Who-ville Liked Christmas a lot
But Bernanke, who lived just north of Who-ville, thought it might be for naught.

Bernanke feared for Christmas, and the whole shopping season.
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be that interest rates weren’t adjusted just right.
It could be, perhaps, that banks were leveraged too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
May have been that his brain was under Keynesian thrall.

But whichever of these reasons you may choose,
He stood there on Christmas Eve, fretting for Whos,
Staring down from the Fed with a sour, Bernanke frown,
At the warm lighted windows below in their town.
For he knew every Who down in Who-ville beneath,
Was busy now, hanging a mistletoe wreath.

“And they’re hanging their stockings! He snarled with a sneer,
“Tomorrow is Christmas! It’s practically here!”
Then he growled, with his Fed fingers nervously drumming,
“I MUST find some way to keep Christmas cash coming!”

For tomorrow, he knew, all the Who girls and boys,
Would wake bright and early and rush for their toys!
And finding none there—Oh the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!
That’s one thing he hated! The Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!

Then the Whos, young and old, would expect a great feast.
And they’d feast! And they’d feast!
And they’d feast! Feast! Feast! Feast!
But this year there would be no Who-pudding, and no rare Who-roast beast.
Which was a thought poor Bernanke couldn’t stand in the least!

And then they’d do something he liked least of all!
Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small,
Would stand close together, with Christmas bells tinkling
They’d stand hand-in-hand. And the Whos would start thinking.

They’d march and they’d protest!
And they’d chant! Chant! Chant! Chant!
And the more Bernanke thought of this Who Christmas Chanting
The more Bernanke thought, “I must stop this Who ranting!
“Why for 45 years we’ve made fiat work now!
I Must keep Christmas cash flowing!
. . . But how?

Then he got an idea!
An awful idea!
Bernanke
Got a wonderful, awful idea!

“I know just what to do!” Bernanke laughed in his throat.
And he made a quick Santy Claus hat and a coat.
And he chuckled, and clucked, “What a great Fed-ish trick!
“With this coat and this hat, I’ll look just like Saint Nick!”

“All I need is a reindeer . . .”
Bernanke looked around.
But since reindeer are scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop old Ben?
No! Bernanke simply said,
“If I can’t find a reindeer, I’ll make one instead!”
So he called his friend Hank. Then he took some red thread
And he tied a big horn on top of his head.

Then he fired up the printing presses.
He had lots of money to make,
Loaded the sleigh with excesses
And he hitched up old Hank.

Then Bernanke said, “Giddyap!”
And the sleigh started down
Toward the homes where the Whos
Lay a-snooze in their town.

All their windows were dark. Quiet snow filled the air.
The Whos were all dreaming sweet dreams without care
When he came to the first failing bank in the square.
“This is stop number one,” The old Bernanke Claus hissed
And he climbed to the roof, bloated bags in his fist.

Then he slid down the chimney. It looked rather grimy.
But if Santa could do it, then so could Bernanke.
He got stuck only once, for a moment or two.
Then he stuck his head out of the fireplace flue
Where bad mortgage backed debt all sat in a row.
“These derivatives,” he grinned, “are the first things to go!”

Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile most like a snake,
Around the whole town, and financed each big bank’s mistakes.
Fannie and Freddie, Bear Sterns, and Citi
TARP, AIG, GE and more Citi.
To bad business he gave billions, oh very nimbly,
But as for good business, they didn’t get any.

To get the money flowing he was bound to inflate,
So he even brought treasuries down to negative interest rates.
Printing money by trillions he nearly doubled the cash.
Just think of Zimbabwe; it wouldn’t be rash.

Then he stuffed all the money down the chimneys with gusto
“And NOW!” grinned Bernanke, “I’ll fix up the Autos.”

And then Bernanke flew to Detroit, with more money to drop
When he heard a small sound say “The Senate said ‘Stop.’”
He turned around fast, and he saw to his gall
Congressman Ron Paul, who was ready to brawl.

Bernanke had been caught by this noble Who master
Who’d got out of bed to see what was the clatter.
He stared at Bernanke and said, “Santy Claus, why,
“Why are you devaluing our dollar and savings? Why?”

But, you know that Bernanke was so smart and so slick
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!
“Inflation’s not bad,” the fake Santy Claus lied,
“It’s just that this level has never been tried.
“So I’ll inflate until we can create a new bubble.
“Then our economy will be back to boom on the double.”

But his fib fooled no one. Then he grabbed Paul by the head
And he trussed him and gagged him and tossed him back in bed.
And when Paul was disposed of, with his Constitution too,
He turned back to Detroit and forced the money through.

But inflation burned through the Whos’ savings like fire.
They were poorer, not richer, as he left, the old liar.
Working longer and harder before they could retire.

And the only speck of money
Left to the average Who house
Were accounts that were even too small to buy food for a mouse.

Then the same thing befell all the Whos’ houses
Leaving accounts much too small to feed the other Whos’ mouses.

It was a quarter past dawn . . .
All the Whos, still a-bed
All the Whos, still a-snooze
When he packed up his sled,
Packed it up with their final stimulus package! The checks! All indebting!
For the poor! And the Middle Class! For Change! What trappings!

80 trillion feet up! Up the side of Mount Debt-it,
He rode to overlook Who-ville, on their heads to dump it.
“Hal-loo to the Whos!” he was Fed-ishly humming.
“They’re finding out now that Christmas cash is coming!
“They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do!
“Their mouth will hang open a minute or two
“Then all the Whos down in Who-vill will all cry YOO-HOO!”

“That’s a noise,” grinned Bernanke,
“That I simply must hear!”
So he paused. And Bernanke put a hand to his ear.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow . . .

But the sound wasn’t happy!
Why, this sound sounded angry!
It couldn’t be so!
But it WAS angry, VERY!

He stared down at Who-ville!
Bernanke popped his eyes!
Then he shook!
What he saw was a shocking surprise!

Every Who down in Who-ville, through distortions great and small,
Was chanting! Not one had any presents at all!
He HADN’T kept Christmas cash flowing!
IT FROZE
Somehow or other, it froze, though how, he did not know.

And Bernanke, with his Fed-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?
“It froze despite nationalizing! It froze despite rate cutting!
“It froze despite bailouts, quantitative easing, and printing!”
And he puzzled for hours, ‘till his puzzler was sore.
Then Bernanke thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe our economy,” he thought, “doesn’t come from just a store.
“Maybe the economy . . . perhaps . . . means a little bit more!”

And what happened then?
Well, in Who-ville they say
That Bernanke read von Misses and Hayek that day!
And the minute he saw true capitalism’s light,
He whizzed back to town to set all to right.
He stopped all the bailouts and ended fiat money!
And he, he himself, Bernanke, restored a land of milk and honey.

With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise
By Jordy Yager
Posted: 12/17/08 05:41 PM [ET]
A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”
However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.

Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.

“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”

Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair.

Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.

“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.

Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable.

In 2006, after the Republican-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Democrats, who had just come to power in the House with a slew of freshmen, vowed to block their own pay raise until the wage increase was passed. The minimum wage was eventually increased and lawmakers received their automatic pay hike.

In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.

Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.

Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically.

“It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/with-economy-in-shambles-congress-gets-a-raise-2008-12-17.html

Jared,

You want Obama to go back and clean up Viet Nam, and Korea's mess too? You don't ask for much do ya?

I think we should put one foot in front of the other to start!

Let's see if we can fix our economy and leave Iraq in a manageable amount of time. Although if Dubya...can manage to keep himself out of trouble and sit in the white house doing what he does best...nothing!! And try not to get us back into another uprising over in Iraq- him with the shoes and all!! We just might me able to close that one down..but granted there's still much work to be in foreign /military affairs.

As far as energy goes..yes my husband is involved in new clean and green energy technology. There are many inventors who are working on this new wave of technology. Many have made monumental strides in creating new sources of energy...No, that does not include "clean coal" because there is NO such thing as clean coal!! It is definitely not nuclear, unless nuclear fallout is what we mean by green...green people that glow in the dark..not my idea of green! And it is not compressed air either. One of our technologies is air... but it is not compressed air which can be dangerous. Our air system is not dangerous. We also have a system to create electricity... that is amazing and can take you off the grid. Solar is a part of this..but it is old technology compared to all the new stuff out there!

There are many major revolutionary methods to create power that will be explored by Obama and Chu and there are directions that this new administration will tap that does not come from big Oil. Even with these new technologies on the horizon...There will still be a need for some fossil oil in our world. However soon it won't be the only source of power that we have to choose from. And oil will be used for some industrial needs but not as the only source of power for cars. The oil companies already know this...that's why they have all launched enormously expensive ad campaigns to give the impression that they are moving with the Green energy flow...but actually the flow as moved on in spite of them..because they wanted it to stay just the way it was...and Obama knows this. That's why he brought in an outside scientist who can see outside the "Big Oil Box".

As you like to illustrate your knowledge about the fed and the money flow of the world. there are those of us who have in depth knowledge about the energy paths that are growing in our country.

I'll just say I would not spend a lot of money on a regular gas run car in the next year..because amazing things in automotive technology will be coming soon!

PLM

If you want to see what foreign policy will be make this site part of your source of info..

http://blogs.cfr.org/campaign2008/

As far as an energy source.

And for this local i like solar/electric. I don't like having to burn anything or i'd go with bio diesel from algae. For the different types of fuel needed if it be for a car or for a jet just use a different type of algae that creates the type of protein needed to make the fuel for the car or for the jet.

And then there is compressed air(I think you said your husband worked with compressed air if i'm not correct)

Compressed air could be good for the off peak solar and wind electric systems and i have seen cars powered by compressed air.

I think you will see something coming from the Obama Admin that will promote a fuel/energy source that is already in control by a big major corporation such as an oil company.

I prefer both solar and wind here myself because for under a $1000 investment you can have a system that would keep your house going and charge your electric car and sell electricity back if you wanted or you could go 100% off the grid..

I'm working on saving enough to buy a new car next year(paying cash) Don't like credit.. But on a home solar/wind system i could have free fuel and buzz around in a sporty electric car. Link to car http://www.teslamotors.com/

Hey i have to have my toys... :)

PLM

I never said a thing about Bush.. And when i said about getting us into this mess in economic is takes ten to twenty years to see the effects of the bubbles..

This present bubble was set up during the Greenspan years and before...

Obama going back to vote for the bailout for the bankers and wall street proved to me that he was bought off by them just as McCain was..

And PLM i haven't said that everything Obama is doing is the same as Bush.. An intervention type of foreign policy will be the same he has already stated such.

But I will say that he is a sock puppet of the global elite and his agenda for world government will be different.

But general foreign policy will be the same as the US's foreign policy for the last few administrations.

I don't know if you follow Noam Chomsky this is what he thinks of many of the neo con appointments in Obama cabinet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atki1GHaES4

PLM and others here on this blog..

I get my sources for what i learn from the left and from the right and from everywhere in between and further on the fringe sides..

PLM we spend a trillion dollars a year maintaining our empire around the world. We've had troops in Korea for over 50 yrs and Obama won't be bringing them home anytime soon.

Now much of that trillion is in the form of wages for military personal. Those wages are spent in foreign countries. If the personal were here in the USA they would spent that money here and that could be a boost to the economy more spending in the USA is what they are telling us isn't that not right?

Rather be about with a foreign policy that says we'll help your country and give you loans by the IMF but you'll have to do what we say and if you don't want to go along with it then we'll blow you off the map and put someone else in charge of the country and government of it..

And rather then going around and fighting some ghost in a cave. And be about our taxpayer dollars blowing bridges in other countries and then more of our taxpayer dollars to rebuild those bridges while our bridges and infrastructure here is falling apart.

We don't need to borrow money from the FED which is what Obama and his economic advisor's will suggest.

If we brought troops home from around the world and told the world that we were changing our foreign policy to one of non intervention. And one of we would gladly talk and trade with these countries. Just like what we are doing with Viet Nam.. In fact John Kerry has made millions from what he has done with that country.

BUt we will remain in the middle east and the rest of the world spending a trillion maintaining our presences around the world and in the middle east just as the goals of the PNAC Project for the New American Century their web site http://www.newamericancentury.org/

This one of the homes of the Neo Cons..

If you go to the section of their site about Defense and National Security and look for the report "Rebuilding America's Defenses" link here to PDF http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

Do a search on the the term pearl harbor and read before where you will find the 2 places that it talks about PH and look to see what is to be the catalysts of the USA to maintain a military presents in the middle east.

Obama and Gates have no plans of bringing our troops home from that region. We have i think last count was 13 permanent military bases in Iraq And not to mention the new US Embassy there.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2364255.ece

We've been rebuilding Iraq for ourselves or more like the elite..

wadada

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Alena

http://www.smallbusinessavenues.com

Yeah Jared, That may be. Obama may have selected a few people from previous administrations, (mostly Clinton not Bush, only one staffer from Bush, Gates, and he’s temporary)...but the difference is that these advisers were working for these politically motivated presidents not Obama. Even the Clintons played Washington politics like the big boys.

However from all indications Obama is not like these previous presidents. These cabinet members will answer to Obama, not to Clinton or either of the Bush’s! Obama will be different, Jared. I know you want to throw him under the bus before he even gets on the highway. But you will just have to wait and see.

BTW...the cabinet member my husband and I are most impressed with Obama’s choice for Energy Secretary Nobel prize-winning physicist, Steven Chu.

Huffington Post says... “Steve Chu could be a groundbreaking energy secretary for the energy research efforts of President-elect Barrack Obama's Administration in several ways”. And furthermore, HP states that “his selection, and other new clues from Obama's transition team, could signal some big changes in the way that the United States conducts science to tackle the energy challenge.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/14/steven-chu-physicists-che_n_150878.html

This Chu is a very smart man is not now or has never been associated with Washington politics. This scientist is going to take us in new directions where energy is concerned not the way the lobbyist representing Exxon Mobil suggest by calling the shots that only benefit big oil companies. Not this term! So you see Jared you can’t say that everything Obama is doing is the same as Bush. It definitely is not!

Whether you like Obama or not... Jared... He is different from his predecessors...and I for one am extremely excited to see what’s to come!

Believing in change plays an active part of making it happen! PLM

ANd now Obama is calling for a $1 trillion stimulus package..

Where is the money going to come from?

These funds will most likely come out of some sort of borrowing plus interest so this package will cost the taxpayer the $1 trillion plus the interest to pay for this...

Why does the nation have to borrow its own currency from the privately owned FED, when the US Constitution gives Congress the delegated authority to coin and mint the nations money?

There has been an amendment to change that...

wadada

PLM

Obama's wise advisors are some of the same one's who got us into the mess...

As Ron Paul has said for many years when he questioned Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke as a member of the House Financial Group...

How can you fix the problem of inflation by throwing more inflation at it?..

And as Dr. Paul always tells them, you can't do it..

And until and unless Obama changes the current system and it stays in place you vcan never fix it. And as long as the nation has to borrow its own currency under the current Federal Reserve Banking System, there is NO way the Nation will ever get out of debt and we will ALWAYS have Bust and Boones for it is part of this unconsitutional monetary system..

And Economic game of musical chairs, where someone always loses..

wadada

This guy is a snake. There are honest good people raising money for good causes, but people like this who trick and steal from others... Can make investors skeptical of the good honest opportunities that come their way.

This guy should get put away for a long time. The authorities should get the money he took and give it back to the people he stole from.

And while we are at it...We need to find out just where that money went that was supposed to go to bail out America... because the BO didn't work the economy is still plummeting down faster than a speeding bullet.

Is Obama our Superman? He has such a big mess to clean up! I'm still optimistic that Obama and his wise advisors will fix all this.

Looking forward to January 20th with much anticipation.

Nice response, Jared.

Happy Holidays!

Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke don't really care.

They work for a private bank who still made money off of this deal for all the original loans of putting the money in circulation plus interest made the owners of the FED very happy...

This guy will end up being one of the reason or the blame for the lack of liquidity in the currency..

And Dan most of the money in the economy is what they call checkbook money (ie: credit) it is only on the books and can be transferred with a push of a button from one computer to another of different banks..

Dan:

I've heard off-shore accounts like Switzerland or the Islands. Accounts that can't be traced.

Eric:

The names Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson come to mind when the question of "who's minding the store" enters the conversation. They headed the Federal Reserve & Treasury between 1987 til today. Where were they when the country was being looted? Madoff must be some smart cookie. Can George Bush pardon him before leaving office?

Eric,
So where is all this money? Not only how did he pull this off, but how did he hide 50 Billion dollars?
It makes you wonder how many other wealthy people have been frauded out of millions...
Boy, I guess I'm glad I'm considered Low to Middle Income!!!
This story just amazes me - I'm not sure how to feel about it. On one hand I really feel for these people that have lost millions, yet, to be quite honest a part of me says; maybe they'll have a better understanding of how the other 95% of us live!