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Sunday, October 21, 2012

Gold vs Paper

by Ludwig von Mises

Most people take it for granted that the world will never return to the gold standard. The gold standard, they say, is as obsolete as the horse and buggy. The system of government-issued fiat money provides the treasury with the funds required for an open-handed spending policy that benefits everybody; it forces prices and wages up and the rate of interest down and thereby creates prosperity. It is a system that is here to stay.

Now whatever virtues one may ascribe — undeservedly — to the modern variety of the greenback standard, there is one thing that it certainly cannot achieve. It can never become a permanent, lasting system of monetary management. It can work only as long as people are not aware of the fact that the government plans to keep it.

The Alleged Blessings of Inflation

The alleged advantages that the champions of fiat money expect from the operation of the system they advocate are temporary only. An injection of a definite quantity of new money into the nation's economy starts a boom as it enhances prices. But once this new money has exhausted all its price-raising potentialities and all prices and wages are adjusted to the increased quantity of money in circulation, the stimulation it provided to business ceases.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Jim Rogers : Finance has failed several times in history




Jim Rogers : when i went to Wall Street in the sixties mostly it was backward nobody went to Wall Street , in the fifties sixties and seventies Wall Street was not important then we had a long bull market for thirty years it became extremely important , everybody got an MBA and everybody wanted top go to finance but that happens anytime in history for the first years of the twentieth century finance they were kings then we had the collapse of the thirties it became disastrous again until the eighties but it always worked this way , finance has failed several times in history , many times in history but everything has failed , everything goes to excess and collapses has a long period of bad period then it starts over , like agriculture ......

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Gold And Silver Capped Until After U.S. Election?

 
by Mark O'Byrne - Goldcore
source : 24hgold.com 

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,767.00, EUR 1,362.80, and GBP 1,101.35 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,767.25, EUR 1,371.45 and GBP 1,103.29 per ounce.
Silver is trading at $33.96/oz, €26.27/oz and £21.21/oz. Platinum is trading at $1,679.50/oz, palladium at $648.80/oz and rhodium at $1,205/oz.
Gold edged up $4.60 or 0.26% in New York yesterday which saw gold close at $1,767.50. Silver climbed to a high of $34.33 and then fell off and finished with a marginal loss of 0.12%.
Gold has seen volatile and choppy trading overnight in Asia and in Europe this morning with the price being capped at $1,772/oz and in a tight range between $1,767 and $1,772/oz.


Cross Currency Table – (Bloomberg)


Unthinkable Iceberg for Europe's Unsinkable Ship


by Adrian Ash
source : 24hgold.com

BACK in 2009 when Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize just nine months after becoming US president, he said he felt "surprised" and "deeply humbled".

No such shock and awe today for the European Union's unelected leaders, of course. Self-assurance and pride are now the EU's hallmarks, at least at the executive level. But its shiny new Nobel Peace Prize risks just the same historical irony.

"Mr. Obama decimated Al Qaeda's leadership," as Peter L.Bergen noted in the New York Times this spring. "He overthrew the Libyan dictator. He ramped up drone attacks in Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen and Somalia and authorized a threefold increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. He became the first president to authorize the assassination of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki...And, of course, Mr. Obama ordered and oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden."

QE Unlimited, China, and Depression 2.0

by Andy Sutton - Sutton & Associates
source : 24hgold.com 



With the pop from the USFed’s latest attempt at financial shock and awe already seeping from lackluster markets, and the teleprompter news networks losing steam over their promotion of the same, it is time to take a look back at the decisions made on 9/13/2012 and set the record straight on some things.

QEunlimited is not going to save the US Economy.

Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions about all this easing is that it is somehow going to help the economy. To stimulate it. To bring it out of recession (yes, we’re still in recession). None of these things happened with the first two, but there are some very good reasons it won’t happen with the third. And the truth is there is a much more gruesome component to this latest scam.

As I’ve outlined many times before in these pages, what happens when the USGovt or banks buy up toxic mortgage securities is that they’re buying the note on your house – along with thousands of other notes since they’ve all been bundled up. You signed on the dotted line with Bank of America for example, but now maybe the Chinese own your house. Or the Japanese. Or European bankers. Or the USGovt. So the fed creating another $40 billion (that they’re willing to admit) each month to buy more mortgages ought to be a pretty scary thing. Will they foreclose on you if you can’t make your payments?

China, Russia, and the End of the Petrodollar















by John Rubino - Dollar Collapse
source : 24hgold.com 

Say you're an up-and-coming superpower wannabe with dreams of dominating your neighbors and intimidating everyone else. Your ambition is understandable; rising nations always join the "great game", both for their own enrichment and in defense against other big players.

But if you're Russia or China, there's something in your way: The old superpower, the US, has the world's reserve currency, which allows it to run an untouchable military empire basically for free, simply by creating otherwise-worthless pieces of paper and/or their electronic equivalent. Russia and China can't do that, and would see their currencies and by extension their economies collapse if they tried.

So before they can boot the US military out of Asia and Eastern Europe, they have to strip the dollar of its dominant role in world trade, especially of Middle Eastern oil. And that's exactly what they're trying to do. See this excerpt from an excellent longer piece by Economic Collapse Blog's Michael Snyder:

Can The Fed Ever Exit?

 by Tyler Durden
source : www.zerohedge.com


We have extensively discussed the size (here - must read!) and growth (here) of the Fed's largesse in soaking up massive amounts of the primary and second Treasury (and now MBS) markets with the ongoing theme of 'what about the exit strategy?' among other things. The onset of QEternity likely means the Fed's balance sheet will grow to over $4 trillion within the next year and, as UBS notes, although the Fed has suggested that it will not begin an exit strategy until 2015, the magnitude of the excess balance sheet argues for considering whether the Fed has the ability to unwind their balance sheet. We, like UBS, believe that the Fed will find it far more difficult to exit than they have found it to enter given the limitations of the exit tools frequently cited. There are three main tools for reducing the Fed’s balance sheet: asset sales/maturation (bad signaling), reverse repurchase agreements (size constraints), and interest on reserves (inflationary).

Via UBS:
  • Asset sales/maturation. The portfolio shift to a longer average maturity means that the Fed is unable to reduce its balance sheet only by letting securities mature. There would be no material reduction until at least 2016 and even then the reduction would likely be under $250bn. Outright sales face a different problem – expectations. Unlike purchases where announcing a certain amount of purchases reinforces the Fed’s goal of lowering rates via expectations, any sales would likely result in the market pricing in a fully normalized balance sheet. As such, an initial sale program of just $200bn would not be credible as the expectation would be that the sale announcement signals a desire to return to normality requiring an addition $2.5tn in sales at some point.
  • Reverse repurchase agreements. This tool is swamped by the magnitude of the drain required. At present money fund assets are roughly $2.5 trillion, $200 billion less than the excess balance sheet we anticipate by the end of 2013. However, this statistic does not tell the full story as reverse repurchase agreements only make up just over 20% of money fund assets, or just $500 billion. The other primary counterparty the Fed would rely on, the Primary Dealer community, are unlikely to be able to participate in anything close to that size. While these figures do not prevent the Fed from using this tool, they do suggest it can only be a part of the overall solution.
  • Interest on reserves. Although interest on reserves theoretically creates a floor on rates in the interbank market, it does not prevent banks from using funds to make loans. Loans eventually end up as deposits somewhere and, as such, the overall level of deposits at the Fed provide little guidance as to whether the funds are circulating in the economy. The only way to prevent lending would be for the Fed to raise this rate sufficiently to make banks prefer depositing the money at the Fed to lending to their client base.
QE3 and QE4, if enacted and continued until the end of 2013, will leave the Fed with excess balance sheet of roughly $2.7 trillion.


The ECB-Driven Toxic Debt Loop At The Heart Of Europe's Misery

by



Just as we will not tire of pointing out the unintended consequence of the Fed's central-planning efforts, so it is time, courtesy of the IMF's latest missive, to point out the vicious circle that the ECB has created and encouraged in Europe. The unintended consequence of the ECB's intervention - as both perpetual backstop and lender of last resort - has created an ever-increasing fragmentation between the core and the periphery (exactly the supposed 'issue' Draghi is attempting to fix with his OMT). The toxic-debt-loop as capital leaves the periphery for the core, pressuring peripheral bond yields/spreads, and forcing private sector borrowing to be replaced by public-sector not only clouds the true picture for real-money investors or depositors (risk-based pricing has been destroyed) but encourages front-running fast-money flows which do nothing but provide short-term cover for banks/sovereigns to delay the inevitable (and potential market-clearing) deleveraging/restructuring that is required. Because the fundamental issue is one of solvency - not liquidity - the ECB's continued artifice of plugging liquidity shortfalls does nothing but lessen the confidence in the system and reduce any faith in price levels as without addressing the real insolvency, trust will never return.

Europe's ECB-Driven Toxic Debt Loop...



The Inflation Monster

by By Ferdinand Dyck, Martin Hesse and Alexander Jung
source : www.spiegel.de

Part 1 : How Monetary Policy Threatens Savings

Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, has established a museum devoted to money next to its headquarters in Frankfurt. It includes displays of Brutus coins from the Roman era to commemorate the murder of Julius Caesar, as well as a 14th-century Chinese kuan banknote. There is one central message that the country's monetary watchdogs seek to convey with the exhibit: Only stable money is good money. And confidence is needed in order to create that good money.

The confidence of visitors, however, is seriously shaken in the museum shop, just before the exit, where, for €8.95 ($11.65) they can buy a quarter of a million euros, shredded into tiny pieces and sealed into plastic. It's meant as a gag gift, but the sight of this stack of colorful bits of currency could lead some to arrive at a simple and disturbing conclusion: A banknote is essentially nothing more than a piece of printed paper.

It has been years since Germans harbored the kind of substantial doubts about the value of their currency that they have today in the midst of the debt crisis. A poll conducted in September by Faktenkontor, a consulting company, and the market research firm Toluna, found that one in four Germans is already trying to protect his or her assets from the threat of inflation by investing in material assets, for example. 

No Currencies Will Survive What Lies Ahead, But That’s OK













by Robert Fitzwilson
source : kingworldnews.com 

October 19, 1987 was a shocking day as the U.S. stock market declined by a stomach churning 23 percent in that one session. It is impossible to convey the sense of desperation, on that day, felt by anyone whose savings or livelihood was dependent upon the equity markets.

Most of the financial disasters since the early 1980s were caused by well meaning professors espousing new insights derived from their research. In the case of ’87, institutions were convinced to take a much higher allocation to equities. The research showed that if a problem ensued, the institutions could simply sell a futures contract, thereby immunizing their portfolio’s exposure to the effects of any subsequent decline. It worked great in their computer simulations.

 The markets began to roll over on the preceding Friday....

“It started with Hong Kong. In those days, Hong Kong was seen as a source of emergency liquidity by institutions, and their stock market was hit very hard. As the declines reverberated around the world, the losses arrived in New York on Monday.

Unfortunately, futures traders are a smart lot. When the institutions implemented the protection phase of the professor’s plan and went to sell the futures contract, the traders on those exchanges balked. This was the fatal flaw in the hedging plan put forward by the academics. A computer would always buy the futures contract. The brokers would not.

What ensued was full-scale panic. Prices for the bluest of blue chip stocks plummeted. Orders could not be filled as the exchanges were swamped.

Being a specialist at the NYSE was a very good thing. Seats on the Exchange were often passed down from generation to generation. One of the obligations, however, was to provide temporary liquidity to the issues for which you were responsible if you could not immediately match a trade with a specific buyer and seller. That was the safety valve at the Exchange.

Ultimately, the specialist’s ability to buffer significant declines was backed up by bank loans. As the panic unfolded, the banks pulled the loans. What saved the day was Alan Greenspan telling the banks that they would make whatever loans were necessary to maintain the solvency of the specialists, and therefore the Exchange itself. It worked.

Was the government engaged in intervention and manipulation? Absolutely. Was there anyone who was not thrilled at having our money, savings and careers bailed out? Not a one.

For the next 13 years, the government stepped in time and time again to bail out markets which were once again corrupted with the professor’s well intended, but completely devoid of reality, schemes. The last one of the 1990’s was the Long-Term Capital debacle that probably could have brought down the global financial system a decade before the sub-prime mess.

Central bankers had become the financial fire department. Up until the early 2000’s, it was seen as a good thing. Alan Greenspan became a personality, not the head of the Federal Reserve. Investors and the government officials celebrated each and every word he spoke at his periodic testimonies. Taking excessive risk was not a problem. The Fed would make everything right.

The chart below juxtaposes the various forms of quantitative easing, known as QE, since the current crisis became out of control in late 2008.



As you can see, QE1 was more of the 1987 type. Wall Street, the politicians and the professors had once again gotten us into a monumental mess. While few were happy with the implication for deficits due the printing of fiat money, the $20+ trillion in global spending was seen as being rescued, akin to the 1987 experience. Cash came out of Treasuries and markets correctly anticipated the inflationary effects of spending and printing such sums and interest rates rose.

At the end of QE1, fear returned that we were headed to a severe recession. Interest rates declined as expected. People were looking for what traditionally was a safe haven, Treasury bonds. When QE2 was announced, a side effect was rising rates, as markets anticipated higher inflation and money was shifted out of Treasuries and into equities.

Europe then imploded. China began to weaken. More ‘stimulus’ and printing was needed we were told. However, a curious thing happened, interest rates have since plummeted. To an extent, it was a flight to perceived safety. Operation Twist and now QE3 are about wrestling interest rates to the ground. This is what has happened. The key function of price discovery through free markets no longer exists. Government policy now chooses winners and losers, at least for the time being.

Somewhere along the line, central banks transitioned from being safety nets to market manipulation. The central banks are taking us into waters that are unchartered in our lifetimes. But I would remind KWN readers that others have done this in the past with unpleasant endings.

We can only hope for the best. At the same time, it is imperative to switch out of paper-based assets into real assets such as gold, silver and well-located real estate. Along the way, various currencies will become the safe haven of the day, but none will survive what lies ahead. We are living in an Entitlement Bubble along the lines of the Dutch Tulip Bubble in the 1600s. No amount of printing or economic growth can prevent our destiny of currency destruction and entitlement collapse.”

Global Debt Over $200 Trillion, Gold Demand Surges













 by Today Egon von Greyerz 
 source : kingworldnews.com

 US deficits are set to continue to rise, no matter who wins the election. This means a great deal more money printing. Right now the US has $40 billion per month of QE in the form of buying mortgage-backed securities, and with ‘Twist’ another $45 billion. But you have to also add the $145 billion monthly budget deficit.”
“Right now the US deficit is running at roughly $1.5 trillion per year. So in total, the US is already printing $200 billion each month, and that will of course increase. The US debt is up $10 trillion in ten years. As revenues decline and expenditures increase, the pressures on the US economy will be enormous, and the deficit will increase substantially.
In a couple of years time, we will have $20 trillion, at least, of US debt....
“$20 trillion of US debt, think about that for a moment. US tax revenue is now around $2.3 trillion. If you examine $20 trillion of debt, and factor in a dramatic increase in interest rates in coming years, as money is printed and inflation enters the picture, an interest rate of 12% is very likely.
Take 12% of $20 trillion and you get $2.4 trillion per year just in interest. That figure is more than the current tax revenue of $2.3 trillion. So the US will reach a point, in the not too distant future, where the total debt servicing will be equal to the total tax revenue. That is of course unsustainable.
If you look at global debt, in the last ten years it is up from $80 trillion, to $200 trillion. These are figures which are hard to comprehend. Global debt has increased $120 trillion in just ten years. So when you look at the so-called prosperity of the world, it is all based on debt. So it is all an illusion.
Central bank balance sheets are also exploding. They have increased 16%, compounded, per annum. What are the central banks doing? Just like the Fed, they are buying toxic debt which has zero value. What are they doing to buy that? They are printing worthless pieces of paper, they call it ‘money,’ and with that ‘money’ they are buying another worthless piece of paper which they call an ‘asset.’
So it is the most massive Ponzi scheme the world has ever seen, and this will clearly end in total disaster. It will end with the implosion of debt and the implosion of assets. But before that, we will have hyperinflation. As governments continue to print, we will have hyperinflation.
Hyperinflation comes from a collapsing currency. Take Iran, that is a good example. Iran’s currency is now down 70%, and inflation is now estimated to be running at 50% per month. This is what we will see all over the Western world in coming years. I’m absolutely certain about that.”
Greyerz had this to say regarding gold: “So we are holding gold to preserve wealth because gold is the ultimate way of protecting your assets from total destruction as a result of the money printing. Because the financial system is bankrupt and governments are bankrupt, any asset that you hold within that system is at risk.
This is why you have to have physical gold and you must store it outside of the banking system. Eric Sprott came out with a superb report detailing the official figures we are seeing regarding production and purchases of gold. His conclusion, quite correctly, was that they are not telling the truth in those official reports being published.
He (Sprott) is looking at an annual deficit of 2,500 to 2,600 tons of gold. I have talked about this many times, and Eric puts it superbly in his report, that the 30,000 tons which central banks are holding in gold reserves, with the Western central banks holding about 23,000 tons of that gold, are probably not there.
When that becomes apparent, there will be panic in the gold market because nobody will hold paper gold anymore. It means that Western governments do not have adequate amounts of gold to back their money.”
Greyerz also added: “I would also note, Eric, that some of the refiners we are talking to, they are seeing business strongly increasing now, and in this environment they are actually increasing their margins and prices. So there is clearly an increase in short-term demand. This is why, up to now, the paper shorts in the gold market have been struggling to bring the price down.”

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle

Compiled by Richard M. Ebeling
The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle
Ludwig von Mises source : mises.org

Nowadays it is usual in economics to talk about the Austrian theory of the trade cycle. This description is extremely flattering for us Austrian economists, and we greatly appreciate the honor thereby given us. Like all other scientific contributions, however, the modern theory of economic crises is not the work of one nation. As with the other elements of our present economic knowledge, this approach is the result of the mutual collaboration of the economists of all countries.
The monetary explanation of the trade cycle is not entirely new. The English "Currency School" has already tried to explain the boom by the extension of credit resulting from the issue of bank notes without metallic backing. Nevertheless, this school did not see that bank accounts which could be drawn upon at any time by means of checks, that is to say, current accounts, play exactly the same role in the extension of credit as bank notes. Consequently the expansion of credit can result not only from the excessive issue of bank notes but also from the opening of excessive current accounts.

The Destruction Of Currency And Rise Of Gold

  
by Nick Barisheff 
source : goldsilverworlds.com

Today’s discussion is based on the primary trend that started at the beginning of this millennium. The fundamental shift that has been taking place since then was the creation of value through paper assets shifting in a gradual way to hard assets, primarily (but not only) gold and silver. Part of the current ongoing dollar devaluation is caused by this disparity between financial assets and gold. Nick Barisheff gave with these rounded numbers to create a high level picture of the scale of the paper asset market versus gold. The market for financial assets should be worth approximately $250 trillion. It includes mortgage bonds, equities, treasury bills and related financial instruments. It contains pure paper assets and does not include real estate or derivatives. Against that $250 trillion stands a nominal value of the gold market of around $4 trillion.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Fraud, Why The Great Recession Happened




"Fraud. Why The Great Recession Happened" is a crowdfunded documentary.

The Great Recession has not been fault of the free market. On the contrary, it´s origin should be sought for in the State´s and central bank´s deep intervention in the economy, causing in a fraudulent way, recurrent cycles of artificial expansion, the" bubble effect" and economic recession that all citizens end up paying for.The great depression is what happens when the government sticks their hands in everyone's business. How come we still haven't learned? America was created to have less government control. and it worked amazingly. Then Roosevelt stuck his hands into everything and we spent twelve years with 25% unemployment. But we continue to try it that way.So many people are dependent on the government giving them money. What is going to happen when they run out of other peoples money to give?

Finally, the root of the Great Recession is found at the end of WW2 when were created World Bank, and first and foremost IMF. Illuminati, the majority of them being bankers, have planned since more than two hundred years ago these events (1773), and mainly IMF, next with the Hebrew Banks, had and have a vital role in today's global depression and into the enslavement of the populations of the world in these huge debts. Their final goal is a new economic, social, politic, cultural order obtained through a war: WW3 or "The Final Social Cataclism".

Determining the value of gold













Author:

When considering whether gold is a value investment, one needs to first recognise that gold does not have a balance sheet, management team, price-earnings ratio or any of the other things one needs to analyse before making an investment. Also, gold does not generate any cash flow, so it does not pay a dividend. We can therefore conclude from these observations that gold is not an investment. Indeed, it is something different, which means that normal investment analytical techniques cannot be used to determine gold’s value.

Value of course arises from an item’s usefulness, and gold is useful because it is money. Though only used as currency these days in a few places like Turkey and Vietnam, gold is still useful in economic calculation, or in other words, measuring the price of goods and services.

For example, when the Maastricht Treaty was signed in February 1992, one barrel of crude oil cost $19.00, €15.95 (Dm 31.30) or 1.67 goldgrams. Now it costs $91.79, €71.27 or 1.61 goldgrams, which makes clear that not only is gold useful in communicating prices, it preserves purchasing power. Gold has been useful in these ways for over 5,000 years, so it is logical to assume that gold will remain useful for the foreseeable future.

Have you seen Robert Triffin?



 By Joe Yasinski and Dan Flynn 
source : bullioninternational

"It was the outcome of an unbelievable collective mistake, which, when people become aware of it, will be viewed by history as an object of astonishment and scandal"  - Jaques Reuff 1972 .

The obscure Belgian economist Robert Triffin is not only very dead he also isn't exactly a household name, yet. Triffin, who died in 1993 studied at Harvard, taught at Yale, worked at the Federal Reserve, the IMF, and was a key contributor to the formation of the European monetary system. Triffin exposed serious flaws in the Bretton Woods monetary system and perfectly predicted it's inevitable demise yet his work remains largely ignored and unstudied by today's mainstream economists. This "flaw" became known as the Triffin dilemma, and many believe Triffin's dilemma has as serious implications today as it did 50 years ago. In short, Triffin proposed that when one nations currency also becomes the worlds reserve asset, eventually domestic and international monetary objectives diverge. Have you ever wondered how it's possible that the USA has run a trade deficit for 37 consecutive years? Have you ever considered the consequences on the value of your Dollar denominated assets if it eventually becomes an unacceptable form of payment to our trading partners? Thankfully for those of us trying to navigate the current financial morass, Robert Triffin did. Prior to the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, central banks used gold as the asset to back their currencies. By the end of World War II, the United States had established itself as the world's creditor and largest holders of gold. Under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, the US Dollar was fully backed by gold at a fixed value of 1/35th an ounce per dollar, and foreign Central Banks could use US Dollar assets as reserves backing their currency, in lieu of gold. This agreement avoided the inevitable deflationary pressure a return to pre-war gold/currency ratios would have forced just as Europe was beginning to rebuild, and allowed US debt held abroad to be used as an asset by central banks against their local currencies.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

The three Big Central Banks, the Japanese, the European and the Americans are all in the game and printing

Jim Rogers : "The central bank in Europe is getting in the party — everybody is in the party. The Chinese are not quite so much in the party as they were before but the three big central banks, the Japanese, the European and the Americans are all in the game and printing."
"Either the world economy is going to get better and commodities are going to go up because of shortages, or they are going to print more money, and throughout history when they printed a lot of money, you protect yourself by owning real assets."

- in NewsMax TV

Click Here to watch the full interview>>>>>

Jim Rogers started trading the stock market with $600 in 1968.In 1973 he formed the Quantum Fund with the legendary investor George Soros before retiring, a multi millionaire at the age of 37. Rogers and Soros helped steer the fund to a miraculous 4,200% return over the 10 year span of the fund while the S&P 500 returned just 47%.

To Tax Is to Destroy

The landmark Supreme Court decision McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) has had wide impact on the powers of the federal government. In fact, this decision, more than any other, is responsible for the incredible growth of federal authority throughout the years. Today, Washington has a tight grip on every aspect of our lives, and much of this federal intrusion is due to the "implied powers" doctrine that emanated from this court decision.
In the case, the clerk of the Bank of the United States, James McCulloch, brought action against the state of Maryland. In opposition to the national bank, Maryland had imposed a tax on the Bank of the United States — hoping to tax it out of existence. McCulloch took the position that such a tax was an unconstitutional interference with the activities of the federal government by a state — in this case Maryland. Therefore, McCulloch brought action to stop Maryland from taxing the national bank out of existence.
Pleading the case on behalf of McCulloch, the eminent jurist Daniel Webster argued that Maryland had no authority to tax the bank. The essence of his argument was quite simple: "An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy."
The court agreed. Speaking for a unanimous court, Chief Justice John Marshall echoed Webster's words. He wrote, "The power to tax implies the power to destroy. If the States may tax one instrument, may they not tax every other instrument…? This was not intended by the American people."
Consequently, with the help of these two highly esteemed jurists, we have conclusively settled a point of contention among many scholars — that the unlimited power to tax is the power to destroy, clear and simple. And without question, the government has an unlimited power in this respect.
Let us now examine some of the many ways in which the power to tax destroys.

The Fed and the ECB: Two Paths, One Goal

by Philipp Bagus
 Both the Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) are owners of the printing press. They produce base money. On top of the base-money production, the fractional-reserve-banking system can produce money out of thin air. Both central banks produce money in order to finance their respective governments. As a result of their money production, prices will be higher than they would have been otherwise. All money users indirectly pay for the government deficits through a reduction in purchasing power and the reduced quality of their money.Download PDF
While the ECB's and Fed's functions (to provide liquidity to the banking system in times of crisis and to finance the government together with the banking system) are the same, there exist small differences between them. In the so-called open-market operations (another term for active manipulation of the money supply) the central banks produce or destroy base money.
There are two ways central banks produce base money. By tradition, the Fed uses the produce-money-and-purchase approach (PMP). Normally, the Fed produces money in their computers and uses it to buy US Treasuries from the banking system. In exchange for the US Treasuries, the Fed creates money on the account that the selling bank holds at the Fed.
The ECB, in contrast, uses the produce-money-and-lend (PML) approach. It produces money and lends it to the banking system for one week or three months. The preferred collateral for these loans to banks is government bonds.[1] As a result of PMP and PML, banks receive new base money. They hold more reserves at their account at the central bank. The additional reserves mean that they can now expand credit and create even more money.
For governments, the mechanism works out pretty well. They usually spend more than they receive in taxes, i.e., they run a deficit. No one likes taxes. Yet, most voters like to receive gifts from their governments. The solution for politicians is simple. They promise gifts to voters and finance them by deficits rather than with taxes. To pay for the deficit, governments issue paper tickets called government bonds such as US Treasuries.
An huge portion of the Treasuries are bought by the banking system, not only because the US government is conceived as a solvent debtor, thanks to its capacity to use violence to appropriate resources, but also because the Fed buys Treasuries in its open-market operations. The Fed, thereby, monetizes the deficit in a way that does not hurt politicians.
But what about the interest paid on the Treasuries? The US government has to pay interest on the bonds to their new owner, the Fed. The Fed receives the interest, which increases the Fed's profit. Who receives the Fed's profit? The bulk of the Fed's profit is remitted back to the US government at the end of the year.
But what about the principal on the bonds? What happens when the bond must be paid back? At the end of the term of the bonds, the government would have to pay its holders. The trick here is just to issue a new bond to pay for the maturing one. Thus, the debts must never be paid but keep getting monetized. Figure 1 shows how the Fed finances the US deficit:
Figure 1
Figure 1: How the Fed finances the US government
The ECB finances deficits in a more subtle way. Only in the sovereign-debt crisis did it start to buy government bonds outright. Normally, the ECB lends to banks against collateral. Banks buy government bonds because they know it is preferred collateral at the ECB. By pledging the bonds as collateral at the ECB, banks receive new reserves and can expand credit. As the government bonds are still owned by banks, governments have to pay interest to banks. Banks, in turn, pay interest on the loans they receive from the ECB, which remits its profits back to governments.
Thus, the system is similar to the Fed, with the difference that normally some of the interest payments leak out to the banking system that pays lower interest rates on its loans than it receives on the bonds. Another important difference is that there may be a redistribution between governments if eurozone governments run deficits of different sizes. In my book The Tragedy of the Euro I explain that the Eurosystem resembles a tragedy of the commons. Several independent governments can use one central-banking system to finance their deficits and externalize the costs in the form of a loss of purchasing power of the Euro onto all users of the currency. The incentive is to have higher deficits than other eurozone governments in order to profit from the monetary redistribution. The flow of the new money is shown in figure 2.
Figure 2
Figure 2: How the ECB finances Euro area governments
Is the difference between the Fed's and the ECB's manipulation of the money supply essential? The Fed buys government bonds outright, while the ECB accepts them as collateral for new loans to the banking system. Economically, the effects are identical. The money supply increases when the Fed buys government bonds. When the ECB grants a loan with government bonds pledged as collateral, the money supply increases as well. In the case of the Fed, the money supply increases until the Fed sells the bond. In the case of the ECB, the money supply increases until the ECB fails to roll over (renew) its loan to the banking system.
There exists a legal difference. The Fed integrates the government bonds on its balance sheet. The ECB does not do so as bonds remain legally the ownership of the banks. Because the ECB does not publish the collateral provided for its loans, we do not know how many Greek government bonds, for example, are provided as collateral for ECB loans. The Fed is more transparent in this respect.
In both cases, government deficits are effectively monetized. That means that the ECB was bailing out Greece even before May 2010. It did not have to buy the Greek bonds outright; it only had to accept them as collateral. If the ECB had not accepted Greek bonds, Greek debts could not have mounted to such an extent. The Greek government would have had to default much earlier.
Aside from this more direct monetization, there is also a monetization going on that is often neglected. Market participants know that central banks buy government bonds and accept them as the preferred collateral. Banks buy the bonds due to their privileged treatment ensuring a liquid market and pushing down yields.
Knowing that there is a very liquid market in government bonds and a high demand by banks, investment funds, pension funds, insurers, and private investors buy government bonds. Government bonds become very liquid and almost as good as base money. In many cases, they serve to create additional base money. In other cases they stand as a reserve to be converted into base money if necessary. As a consequence, new money created through credit expansion often ends up buying liquid government bonds, indirectly monetizing the debt. (Another main holder of government debts is other foreign central banks.)
Imagine that the government has a deficit and issues government bonds. Part is bought by the banking system and used to get additional reserves from the central bank, which buys the bonds or grants new loans, accepting them as collateral. The banking system uses the new reserves to expand credit and grant loans to, for example, the construction industry. With the new loans, the construction industry buys factors of production and pays its workers. The workers use part of the new money to invest in funds. The investment funds then use the new money to acquire government bonds. Thus, there is an indirect monetization. Part of the money created by the fractional-reserve-banking system ends up buying government bonds because of their preferential treatment by the central bank, i.e., its direct monetization.
The process is shown in figure 3:
Figure 3

While it is an intricate system at the first sight, one that many common citizens fail to understand, the system boils down to the following: The government spends more than it receives in taxes. The difference is financed by its friends from the financial system, accommodated by central banks. Money production sponsors politicians' dreams, thereby destroying our currencies. The population pays in the form of a lower purchasing power of money.
For governments it is the perfect scheme. The costs of their deficits are externalized to the users of the currency. The debt is never paid through unpopular taxes but simply by issuing paper that says, "government bond."

Notes
[1]  Traditionally central banks have used both ways to finance government debt. America's Federal Reserve System places emphasis on the purchase of government bonds in its open-market operations. It also accepts government bonds as collateral in repurchase agreements. Repurchase agreements and other loans in which government bonds were accepted as collateral rose in importance during the financial crisis of 2008. The European Central Bank, on the contrary, has put more emphasis on accepting government bonds in collateralized loans in its lending operations to the banking system. Only during the sovereign-debt crisis of 2010 did the ECB started buying government bonds outright. On these central-bank policies in the wake of the financial crisis, see Bagus and Howden (2009)Download PDF and Bagus and Schiml (2010).Download PDF

The Fed Plays All Its Cards


There never really could be much doubt that the current experiment in competitive global currency debasement would end in anything less than a total war. There was always a chance that one or more of the principal players would snap out of it, change course and save their citizenry from a never ending cycle of devaluation. But developments since September 13, when the U.S. Federal Reserve finally laid all its cards on the table and went "all in" on permanent quantitative easing, indicate that the brainwashing is widely established and will be difficult to break. The vast majority of the world's leading central bankers seem content to walk in lock step down the path of money creation as a means to economic salvation. Never mind that the path will prevent real growth and may ultimately lead off a cliff. The herd is moving. And if it can't be turned, the only thing that one can do is attempt to get out of its way.

The details of the Fed's new plan (which I christened Operation Screw in last week's commentary) are not nearly as important as the philosophy it reveals. The Federal Reserve has already unleashed two huge waves of quantitative easing (purchases of either government securities or mortgage-backed securities) in order to stimulate consumer spending and ignite business activity. But the economy has not responded as hoped. GDP growth has languished below trend, the unemployment rate has stayed north of 8%, and the labor participation rate has fallen to all-time lows. In the meantime, America's fiscal position has grown significantly worse with government debt climbing to unimaginable territory. Despite the lack of results, the conclusion at the Federal Reserve is that the programs were too small and too incremental to be effective. They have determined that something larger, and potentially permanent, would be more likely to do the trick.

However, in making its new plan public, the Fed made a startling admission. At his press conference, Ben Bernanke backed away from previous assertions that printed money would be effective in directly pushing up business activity. Instead he explained how the new stimulus would be focused directly at the housing market through purchases of mortgage backed securities. He made clear that this strategy is intended to spark a surge in home prices that will in turn pull up the broader economy. Such a belief requires a dangerous amnesia to the events of the last decade. Despite x²the calamity that followed the bursting of our last housing bubble, economists feel this to be a wise strategy, proving that a poor memory is a prerequisite for the profession.

But now that the Fed is thus committed, the focus has shifted to foreign capitals. Not surprisingly, the dollar came under immediate pressure as soon as the plan was announced. In the 24 hours following the announcement, the Greenback was down 2.2% against the euro, 1.6% against the Australian Dollar, and 1.1% against the Canadian Dollar. A week after the Fed's move, the Mexican Peso had appreciated 2.7% against the US dollar. Many currency watchers noted that more dollar declines would be likely if foreign central banks failed to match the Fed in their commitments to print money. On cue, the foreign bankers responded.

It is seen as gospel in our current "through the looking glass" economic world that a weak currency is something to be desired and a strong currency is something to be disdained. Weak currencies are supposed to offer advantages to exporters and are seen as an easy way to boost GDP. In reality, weak currencies simply create the illusion of growth while eroding real purchasing power. Strong currencies confer greater wealth and potency to an economy. But in today's world,no central banker is prepared to stand idly by while their currency appreciates. As a result, foreign central banks are rolling out their own heavy artillery to combat the Fed.

Perhaps anticipating the Fed's actions, on September 6th the European Central Bank announced its own plan of unlimited buying of debt of troubled EU nations (however, the plan did come with important concessions to the German point of view - see John Browne's commentary). On September 17th, the Brazilian central bank auctioned $2.17 billion of reverse swap contracts to help push down the Brazilian Real. The next day, Peru and Turkey cut rates more than expected. On September 19th, the Bank of Japan increased its asset purchase program from 70 trillion yen to 80 trillion and extended the program by six months. It's clear we are seeing a central banking domino effect that is not likely to end in the foreseeable future.

Although the Fed is directing its fire towards the housing market, the needle they are actually hoping to move is not home prices, but the unemployment rate. Until that rate falls to the desired levels (some at the Fed have suggested 5.5%), then we can be fairly certain that these injections will continue. This will place permanent pressure on banks around the world to follow suit.

All of this simultaneous money creation will likely be a boon for nominal stock and real estate prices. But in real terms such gains will likely not keep pace with dollar depreciation. Inflation pushes up prices for just about everything, so stocks and real estate are not likely to prove to be exceptions. Even bond prices can rise in the short term, but their real values are the most vulnerable to decline. In fact, even nominal bond prices will ultimately fall, as inflation eventually sends interest rates climbing. But prices for hard assets, precious metals, commodities, and even those few remaining relatively hard currencies should be on the leading edge of the upward trend in prices.

While I believe the Fed's plan will be a disaster for the economy, the silver lining is that it provides investors with a road map. As the policy of the Fed is to debase the currency, those holding dollar based assets may seek alternatives in hard assets and in the currencies of the few remaining countries whose bankers have not drunken so freely from the Keynesian Kool-Aid. We believe that such opportunities do exist. Some broad ideas are outlined in the latest edition of my Global Investor Newsletter, which became available for download this week. I encourage those looking for ways to distance their wealth from the policies of Ben Bernanke to start their search today.

Peter Schiff is CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, a gold and silver dealer selling reputable, well-known bullion coins and bars at competitive prices.