I woke up at 3AM this morning to take my wife and son to Denver International Airport. I said my goodbyes as they left for Virginia to visit my side of the family. I then preceded to drive back to Cheyenne just in time to be a few minutes late for work. After work, I donated plasma, readied my fishing gear for the following day’s trip, and sat down to partake in my daily liberty consumption before bed. And this is why I can’t sleep…
The first video I watched was of Peter Schiff speaking at The Atlantic Economy Summit from mid-March (posted below). Now, if you don’t know who Peter Schiff is, I’d say he’s probably the only other economist living right now that fits in the same category as Tom Woods and Bob Murphy. Brilliant man, hails from the Austrian School, etc.; you get the picture. Anyway, in the debate, he makes a straight forward, clear argument against the Fed and Keynesianism in general. And he does it quite well. Now, as I have said before, I do not claim to be a master economist that understands precisely why milk is $1.25 a gallon, but I have done quite of bit of personal research. In my time spent reading Hazlitt, Woods, Hayek, Mises, I have concluded that the Austrian School is generally correct about economics. So, you can imagine my glee when watching Peter make the free market argument, he has the gall to say that most of the economists in the room completely missed the housing market bubble burst that he and Ron Paul warned about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTmKkwqlw48
If you want to hear more from Peter Schiff, he has a radio show called The Peter Schiff show that you can listen to for free on your smartphone and internet radio. He isn’t like Limbaugh or Hannity where he just says things he things you want to hear like “Obama is a Kenyan!” or “The liberal media is everywhere!” He talks about real issues and his show is basically an economics lesson. He also has great guests on all the time. Just two weeks ago he had Rand Paul on to explain why he endorsed Romney. Give Peter a listen, you’ll love it.
So, to make sure I’m not blind to opposing opinions out there, I force myself to read/watch videos about Keynesian economics. As Youtubers know, every video is accompanied by related videos on the right. I couldn’t miss the video where the preview still is Paul Krugman and that unmistakable salt & pepper beard. The video is title “Paul Krugman Laughs At & Shatters Peter Schiff & Ron Paul’s Gold Standard Scam” so of course, I have to watch it now (posted below). What ensued had me puzzled.
Paul Krugman says that Greece’s currency is “like a gold standard” because they don’t have control over it. My first issue with that is centralized control over something as important as money probably isn’t a good idea since “legally-bound” legislatures are hardly ever bound, legally (and actually, in the US the Fed is a private bank that is kept in total secret and the only reason we have had even a glimpse at it’s printing press black magic is because Ron Paul’s audit the Fed bill passed. It got watered down severely with amendments but it uncovered a lot of corruption). My second issue is that we are proof that when a government has complete control over the money supply, it will print, spend, and borrow as long as it can keep expanding it’s size.
The next thing that Mr.Krugman said that bugged me is that he infers that Ron Paul and his supporters philosophy is “the gold standard will, without question, solve all of the economies problems.” That’s a nice strawman argument but Ron Paul has repeatedly said he wouldn’t enact a gold standard his first day in office if elected, he just wants to legalize currency competition. Is that so unreasonable to Keynesians? Monopolies are bad except for the ones on power and money, or at least that is what they would have us believe.
Mr. Krugman also states that the gold standard doesn’t allow for inflation which apparently wealthy people like because the peasants can’t inflate their money away. The only way this argument could even be imaginable in our current situation if all those printed/borrowed trillions went to us. Do any of you recall getting a check for 20k+? I sure don’t. That’s most likely because none of that money made it to us. The $800 billion TARP gaff went to bailout banks. Thanks to Congressman Paul’s audit, it was discovered that over $16 trillion dollars were secretly used by the Fed to bailout foreign banks, corporations, and governments. Do any of you own foreign banks or corporations? It seems to me the inflation is a burden on the lower/middle class; not so much the elite.
The comment that takes the cake though is that Mr. Krugman says that the gold standard is the preferred monetary policy of the rich. Of course, he fails to mention the phenomena where wealthy people (other than Schiff and Peter Thiel) do not give Ron Paul, the only proponent of a gold standard running for POTUS, any money. Instead, they bank roll Romney or Obama. Why both? Because the differences between them are so negligible it’s a laugh. They are both Keynesians and they both intend on keeping the bureaucratic machine that keeps competition at bay for the biggest bullies in the yard.
Liberty Letters 