Why The Market Is Slowly Dying

Original article submitted by Tyler Durden on Zero Hedge here.

Three years ago, when virtually nobody had yet heard of High Frequency Trading, Zero Hedge wrote “The Incredibly Shrinking Market Liquidity, Or The Upcoming Black Swan Of Black Swans” in which we asked “what happens in a world where the very core of the capital markets system is gradually deleveraging to a point where maintaining a liquid and orderly market becomes impossible: large swings on low volume, massive bid-offer spreads, huge trading costs, inability to clear and numerous failed trades?” Subsequent to this, our observation was proved right on both an acute (the May 6, 2010 Flash Crash), and chronic (the nearly 50% collapse in average daily volumes since the 2008 top) secular basis. And while we are not happy to have been proven correct in this particular forecast, as it ultimately means the days of equity capital markets in their current configuration are numbered, we now note that none other than Morgan Stanley’s Quantitative and Derivative Strategies released a note which, with a three year delay, effectively predicts the end of capital markets in a world where every declining retail participation (another topic we have been hammering for the past 3 years as it is only the most natural response to a world in which not only equities are openly manipulated by central banks, but in which perpetrators for massive market disturabances are neither identified nor prosecuted) is replaced by artificial high frequency trading churn, which never was and never will be a true liquidity provider on a long-term basis.

To wit from Morgan Stanley: “In our mind, many of the approaches to algorithmic execution were developed in an environment that is substantially, structurally different from today’s environment. In particular, the early part of the last decade saw households as significant natural liquidity providers as they sold their single stock positions over time to exchange them for institutionally managed products… While the time horizon over which liquidity is provided can range from microseconds to months, it is particularly shorter-term liquidity provisioning that has become more common.” Translation: as retail investors retrench more and more, which they will due to previously discussed secular themes as well as demographics, and HFT becomes and ever more dominant force, which it has no choice but to, liquidity and investment horizons will get ever shorter and shorter and shorter, until eventually by simple limit expansion, they hit zero, or some investing singularity, for those who are thought experiment inclined. That is when the currently unsustainable course of market de-evolution will, to use a symbolic 100 year anniversary allegory, finally hit the iceberg head one one final time.

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How does Morgan Stanley frame their analysis? First, MS notes the ever increasing ownership of the stock market by big institutions, as retail investors took a back seat to investment allocation decisions, a secular theme until 2008, which however has subsequently plateaued:

Asset management has become increasingly institutionalized over the years. Individuals have outsourced their wealth management to institutions, whether pension funds, insurance companies or investment advisors. These, in turn, invest mostly in institutionally managed products such as mutual funds, ETFs, or long/short vehicles. The net result of this is that the vast majority of investable assets are held through institutionally managed vehicles. Exhibit 1 shows the evolution of ownership vehicles of corporate equity in the US. 37% of the USD 22tn of corporate equity is held by ‘Households and Nonprofits’ now, down from 50% at the turn of the century. This segment includes endowments and foundations, as well as on-shore hedge funds. Arguably, these should be counted as institutional investors as well. This means that direct household ownership of corporate equity is substantially below this figure.

 

For a universe of large-cap stocks4, Exhibit 4 shows the evolution of the percentage of ownership attributable to 13F filers and mutual funds since Dec 2001. This data corroborates Exhibit 1 on the increase in institutional ownership – on average, institutional ownership increased from 54% in March 2000 to 81% at the end of 2011.

 

Following the rapid growth of institutional asset management, however, the pace of increase in institutional ownership has slowed since 2008. We see this as one of the key drivers of the change in market structure and liquidity sourcing opportunities in recent years.

As more and more “equity capital” was concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people, the only logical outcome took place:

Trading decisions have become more concentrated as asset management has institutionalized. There are fewer decision makers (fund managers) now than in a world where management is dispersed across households. The size of their parent orders, on the other hand, has grown. The basic set up of the market – in terms of a continuous auction limit order book supplemented with ‘upstairs’ solutions –  has not changed. The details of the implementation have adjusted, of course – such as competition in execution venues, new order types,  and greater use of technology.

 

One of the most significant results of the tension between fewer market participants and larger parent order sizes is that the share of ‘real’ trading volume has declined by around 40% in the last five years. In Exhibit 5, we show the average proportion of quarterly trading volume that is attributable to changes in the 13f filings of each institution. We use this as our definition of ‘real’ trading volume. We also calculate the trading volume from our separate dataset of mutual fund holdings. We aggregate ‘buys’ (positive position changes) and ‘sells’  separately for each institution and mutual fund, on a per-stock basis, and calculate the average percentage of volume across stocks in our universe.

As a result, reports of the market’s evaporating volume are not greatly exaggerated.

In our mind, these numbers constitute a lower bound on the amount of ‘real’ trading volume in the market (defined as the trading volume from market participants that hold assets for longer periods).

 

The share of real trading volume shows three distinct phases. From 2001 to 2006, institutional buys accounted for 27% of total trading volume on average, while sells accounted for 20%7. The asymmetry between buys and sells reflects the growth in the institutional share of ownership over the period (see Exhibit 4). From 2008 to 2011, we see a significantly lower share of trading volume – buys represent just 16%, and sells 13%, a drop in market share of almost 40%.

 

The 2007/2008 period represents a transition period, with a rapidly declining share of ‘real’ trading volume. This period coincided with rapidly increasing overall trading volume (Exhibit 6) – in 2006, the ADV was 4.8bn shares, while in 2008 it was 8.8bn shares. Volume has since declined again – YTD ADV is 6.9bn shares.

While it will not come as news to any of our regular readers, the disappearance of retail investors has meant the incursion of electronic trading in the form of relentless rise in HFT dominance.

Throughout the last decade, the share of institutional trading volume by each institution type has been remarkably constant (Exhibit 7). This means that the reduction in institutional share of overall trading volume between 2007 and 2008 was not due to a reduction in trading activity by any one institution type, but rather due to the introduction of a new type of trading volume.

 

A potential reason [for the drop in our measure of the share of ‘real’ institutional trading volume] is that institutional execution strategies have made liquidity more challenging to find. Concentration in assets under management has led to larger order sizes. One of the responses to this has been automation in execution strategies. The algorithms used tend to split parent orders into smaller child orders. As a result, we find that block trades, which made up around 30% of trading volume in 2003, accounted for just over 5% of trading volume in 2011 – see Exhibit 8. At the same time, the average trade size has fallen to around 250, from more than 1,000 back in 2003. Both data series are based on NYSE listed stocks.

 

Next Morgan Stanley explains precisely why the current market is no longer fit to deal with the existing roster of players, fit for a previous iteration of capital market topology such as that which prevailed when Reg-NMS was conceived, but certainly not the current one, especially if retail continues to withdraw from trading equities and invest its cash forcibly into that other terminally epic bubble – bonds.

In our mind, many of the approaches to algorithmic execution were developed in an environment that is substantially, structurally different from today’s environment. In particular, the early part of the last decade saw households as significant natural liquidity providers as they sold their single stock positions over time to exchange them for institutionally managed products. Adjusting the institutional execution strategy to capture this liquidity was a rational thing to do.

But…

This institutionalization of asset management is mostly done by now, as we showed in Exhibit 4. As a result, execution strategies that were calibrated on the earlier market environment may no longer be optimal. The rise in trading volume since 2007 (when the growth in institutional ownership leveled off) reflects the growing challenges of sourcing liquidity. The way this has been resolved is through the introduction of more ‘market making’ activity in the form of liquidity provider trading.

Let’s repeat that for the cheap seats: “As a result, execution strategies that were calibrated on the earlier market environment may no longer be optimal and we could in theory just end it here. 

We all know that the bulk of HFTs close each day flat to avoid overnight holding risk, which they do by increasing churn amongst each other to unprecedented levels, in the process generating massive momentum swings as every player piggybacks on either side of the move. End result: even Moran Stanley admits that churn is not liquidity, and that the inability of HFT to carry inventory and have a longer-term bias is the fatal flaw in the current market topology, precisely as we warned back in April 2009!

The risk-carrying capacity of these providers is limited. If natural liquidity does not materialize, they may trade with another intraday liquidity provider to manage their inventory. This is particularly true if the institutional parent orders are larger and hence typically longer lasting.

From here, everything else follows:

Typical market-making liquidity provisioning strategies can be modeled as mean reversion strategies. If liquidity demand is persistently one-sided (such as in the case of large parent orders), it is rational to flatten the market maker position faster if the risk-carrying capacity is limited. In the absence of natural liquidity on the other side, this will often be through a trade with another intraday liquidity provider.  The net result is that the the amount of trading volume that is attributable to this segment of the market will increase.

Thus: lim investing time horizons approaches 0 as HFT ->  infinity

While the time horizon over which liquidity is provided can range from microseconds to months, it is particularly shorter-term liquidity provisioning that has become more common. This is partially a reflection of the changing nature of the default liquidity provider – ‘High-Frequency Trader’ is a commonly applied term.

Unfortunately, the “High Frequency Trader” is NOT, as explained, a liquidity provider in the conventional sense: it is an ultra-short time horizon churn facilitator and liquidity extractor (when the meager rebate for providing liquidity does not offset the capital holdings risk) and nothing else. Which is why just like the Fed has become the artificial lender of last resort in a regime that is unsustainable and where central banks are forced to grow their assets exponentially (as shown on Zero Hedge) just to preserve the flow so very needed to keep equities from collapsing, so HFT has become the artificial provider of fake liquidity.

The problem is that just like the half lives of central bank intervention, so the incremental benefits of ever greater HFT penetration are becoming less and less.

What happens next? Here Morgan Stanley, while trying to be diplomatically correct, comes to precisely our conclusion – trade while you can.

In our view, many of the changes in the market environment – such as the decline in trading volume – are secular. The trade from household direct share ownership to institutionally managed ownership has happened, removing one of the natural sources of liquidity. At  the same time, the micro-efficiency of the market in identifying and exploiting liquidity demand, exemplified by the growth in intraday liquidity provisioning strategies, is here to stay.

 

What are the implications for institutional execution strategies? The first implication is a re-evaluation of parent order sizing. Liquidity for institutional trades is now ultimately sourced from other institutions for the most part, rather than from households. The share of trading volume from these institutions has been falling by almost 40% over the last five years. This means that the amount of liquidity we can reasonably expect to source in the market should also fall by a similar amount. For example, we find that the upper limit of the percentage of ADV that can be traded in a VWAP-type strategy without undue price impact is typically around 4-5% now, versus 10-15% in the period before 2007.

 

The second implication is that execution strategies have to focus on maximizing the likelihood of being a liquidity provider. This has always been the objective of portfolio managers (‘Buy Low, Sell High’). Within the institutional asset management process, that has not always  been as central to the execution strategy. The assumption has been that liquidity will be available in the markets, and that the cost of demanding that liquidity (the market impact cost) was small relative to the alpha potential over time. As the composition of trading volume changes, this assumption has become more problematic. Having urgency constraints (e.g. having to finish a trade at a particular time)  becomes increasingly costly relative to the alpha potential.

Where Morgan Stanley stops short is the logical next question: what will detour this transition to a market driven by quantized incremental binary decision-making, aka RISK ON, RISK OFF, where with every passing day, we get greater and greater volatility shifts? The answer: nothing, unless of course, for some reason retail investors do come back, however with Lehman, the Flash Crash, MF Global, central planning, forced media propaganda telling everyone “it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy”, even as markets in real terms are still down nearly 40% from 2000, retail has had enough of the rigged stock market casino.

Simply said: they are done.

Hence HFT will have no choice but to become a greater and greater role in equity trading, pardon, churning. Until one day, by logical extrapolation, only HFT is the marginal setter of prices, with no regard for value, logic or analysis, and a price-determining function set purely by historical precedent yet a precedent which will be no longer applicable in the least as the paradigm shift to a conceptually different “market” will have then happened. Or said otherwise: “large swings on low volume, massive bid-offer spreads, huge trading costs, inability to clear and numerous failed trades“… just as we predicted back in April 2009.

Just as simply said: with its advent, HFT sowed the seeds of its own self-cannibalization.

Which also goes back to another key concept, and arguably the biggest flaw in all of modern economics: it is never about the stock. It is all, and always has been, about the flow. Last week Goldman tacitly acknowledged it for the first time. Expect more and more economic hacks to follow suit.

The irony that ties it all together, is that if indeed for some reason retail investors do come back, and do pile their over $8.1 trillion in fungible money currently stored under the electronic cushion as we described in This Is Where “The Money” Really Is – Be Careful What You Wish For, which in turn would also unleash the titanic wall of money hidden behind the Shadow Banking dam wall (at last count about $35 trillion contained among the custodial holders of all securities why are quietly swept into the shadow banking system’s re-re-rehypothecated pseudo asset pyramid and regulated by exactly nobody), which no conventional economic theories account for, yet which as Ben Bernanke this week, and Zero Hedge for the past 2 years, has been warning is the real catalyst of the (hyper) inflationary spark, then the Fed will be powerless to stop the biggest avalanche of empty artificially created fiat currency ones and zeros to ever hit the monetary system in the history of the world since Weimar. Only this time it will have the added benefit of HFT to accentuate every move imaginable as cash transitions from an inert form to an active, asset managed one.

But this is far beyond what one learns in Econ 101, which is why we will have to wait at least another 3 years before the Morgan Stanleys and all other bandwagon chasers of the world close the loop on what we are (and have been for a while) warning right now.

In the meantime, we are confident readers will enjoy the supreme irony: in their attempt to perpetuate the insolvent status quo farce, the central planners are now forced to choose between the terminal Scylla and Charybdis: a pyrrhic Schrödinger [alive|dead] market, or an even more pyrrhic Schrödinger [alive|dead] monetary regime.

We hope they choose wisely.

15 Fundamental Problems with Fiat Currencies

Ron Hera
financialsense.com
April 8, 2012

Value Subjectivism and Monetary Instability

Subjectivism is the philosophy that reality is what we perceive to be real and that no underlying, true reality exists independent of human perception. In other words, the nature of reality for an individual person is dependent on that individual’s own consciousness. It follows that each person experiences their own reality that is not shared with others. What is true and what seems moral to one person may not be true or moral for another person, i.e., truth and morality are relative. In contrast, objectivism is the philosophy that reality exists independent of human consciousness; that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception; and that objective knowledge of reality can be obtained through perception, evidence and logic, e.g., through scientific methods.

A subjectivist might view the stock market as a perpetual bubble floating on the hopes and dreams of entrepreneurs and investors who invest in stocks in the same way that gamblers place chips on a craps table in a casino, without any concept of an objective economic reality outside of the game. A subjectivist might view technical analysis, which is based purely on trading activity in the stock market, as the ideal tool to understand financial markets, despite the fact that is has no direct connection to the objective economic realities of the companies that stocks represent. In contrast, an objectivist might view the stock market as a venue for participation in business ownership where stocks have value as a function of the particular businesses that they represent and because of the goods and services that the businesses provide in the objective world. A subjectivist might say that “everything is relative” (although the statement is self contradictory), while an objectivist might say that they “…believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification” (Thomas H. Huxley 1825-1895). Although they may not know it, Keynesian economists, bankers and day traders are often philosophical subjectivists while Austrian economists, advocates of the gold standard and value investors are often philosophical objectivists.

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World Bank Wants Control Of The High Seas

By Brandon Smith
Original article on Alt-Market

As a proponent of legitimate free markets, I am always up for a little creative entrepreneurship.  However, there is a considerable difference between building productive markets, and engaging in monopolistic piracy.  Global conglomerates and the elites that operate them have long been familiar with the pirate’s life, and not the fun filled adventure-time rope swinging swashbuckling brand.  In fact, it was elitists like Sir Francis Drake, commissioned by the English monarchy, who embodied this disturbing covert bedlam.  We’re talking murder, mayhem, and blood-money, folks!  So, it should be of no surprise to anyone that the thieving mercantile swine of our era are returning to the high seas to plunder once again, only in a much more subversive and devious manner.

This past week, World Bank President Robert Zoellick made his organization’s intentions for oceanic regimentation known, at least in a candy coated way, at the Economist World Oceans Summit in Singapore:

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23126775~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html

Over the last several years, World Bank has seen fit to insinuate itself into the environmental movement as a “bastion” of green ideology.  In reality, World Bank has long used the threats of environmental destabilization (some of them real, some of them fake) as tools for the centralization of resources into the hands of mega-corporations.  In fact, if one was to attempt to sum up exactly what it is that World Bank actually does in a single phrase, it would probably be “resource domination”.  This domination is achieved through the strict lending guidelines that sovereign countries have to commit to in order to attain financing from the supranational entity.

Like a greasy loan shark working for a hardboiled mob cartel, World Bank’s M.O. is to lend large capital packages (made with money or credit created out of thin air) which the target country and its government obviously cannot afford to pay back.  These loans often stipulate that the country relinquish control of its natural resources, the true wealth of the nation, over to international corporate bodies for “management”.  Through this process, World Bank removes competition from a market and hands designated companies (globalist front-companies) the keys to the kingdom.

Environmental manipulation has been used in the past by World Bank as a cover for resource piracy.  Global corporations including Enron, Bechtel, GM, and Monsanto from the late 90’s onward have been handed coveted water rights to entire communities and nations under the guise of managing “water scarcity”.  This control of the water supply has extended even to rainwater collection.  World Bank’s argument in the case of water privatization was that monetizing the resource would create “incentives” for populations to conserve water.  That is to say, the higher they could increase the cost of water, the more coveted it would become, and the more careful people would be when using it.  This feudalistic idea was expressed clearly in a World Water Council (founded with the help of the Vice President of World Bank) document entitled “The Long Term Vision For Water, Life, And Environment”:

http://www.bvsde.paho.org/bvsaca/i/fulltext/mirh/education.pdf

In 1998 the World Water Forum expounded a need for control and regulation over the planet’s water supply.  This meeting was packed with top multinational corporations and commissioned by a viper’s nest of global elites, including:

-Dr Ismali Serageldin (Commission Chair), Vice President, World Bank, and Chair of Global Water Partnership
-Margaret Catley-Carlson, President, Population Council
-Gordon Conway, President, The Rockefeller Foundation
-Mohamed T. El-Ashry, Chair and CEO of the Global Environment Facility
-Howard Hjort, former Deputy Director, FAO
-Enriquo Iglesias, President, Inter-American Development Bank
-Yolanda Kababadse, President, World Conservation Union
-Jessica Mathews, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, USA
-Robert S. McNamara, Co-Chair, Global Coalition for Africa
-Maurice Strong, Chair, Earth Council, member of Commission on Global Governance, and a chief adviser in charge of the UN reform process
-Wilfred Thalwitz, former Senior VP, World Bank
-Jerome Mondo, Chair of the Supervisory Board, Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux

In March of 2000, the forum made the following statement:

“Water is an economic good and its economic value should be recognized in the allocation of scarce water resources to competing uses. While this should not prevent people from meeting their basic needs for water services at affordable prices, the price for water must be set at a level that encourages conservation and wise use…”

http://www.waternunc.com/gb/secwwf11.htm

This methodology of artificially raising prices through the issuance of securities to enforce a particular environmentalist ideal, in the end, has NOTHING to do with protecting the environment.  Essentially, it creates the derivitization of natural resources that is the calling card of globalized tyranny.  Cap and Trade programs were designed to monetize air usage.  Energy derivatives were used by Enron to allow easier manipulation of electric and oil prices.  Water privatization was designed to corporatize a free flowing resource and create artificial scarcity.  And now, World Bank wants to apply the same con game to one of the last economic commons; the ocean.  The only beneficiaries in these schemes have always been large conglomerates, along with a smattering of stock investors who revel in the idea of erecting entire markets out of absolutely imaginary products with no real inherent value.

As with water privatization, the flood of massive bureaucracy in the guise of corporate management over oceanic usage will only create a mind boggling maze of red tape that will thwart all business interests except the largest.  This is entirely deliberate.

Not only does it cause prices to rise to levels beyond what the impoverished (a global majority) can pay for a commodity, but it also squeezes out small business owners whose only advantage was the level playing field of an open resource.  On the oceans of World Bank, a small fishing outfit will have no chance to make a living, because the permit process, new taxes, and new legal requirements, will empty their bank accounts before they ever get started, leaving only the big boys to ravage the seas at will, and legally, because they will have paid the exorbitant fees for the right to do so.

There is also a very good reason why Zoellick at the World Oceans Summit mentioned fishery issues so often, and why he is so keen on the idea of international regulations on their operations.

On dry land, companies like Monsanto are the slavemasters of food supply.  The centralization of national farming infrastructures has given these companies unrivaled power over how we eat, and thus, how most of the populace survives.  However, the ocean, an unparalleled food source, is still a decentralized region of production.  Anyone can fish it, almost anywhere, without having to ask permission from the government, or a private company.  This obviously does not sit well with World Bank, not because they fear overfishing, but because it provides a sovereign means of survival, allowing people to remain independent from the globalist system.

By utterly corporatizing resources that have through all of time been freely accessible to every human being, World Bank and the elitists they serve hope to build a framework for total centralization of all means of production and sustenance on Earth.  Does this sound like mad scientist stuff?  Absolutely.  Does that make it any less factual or terrifying?  Not a chance.

The real cleverness in using the environmental aspect of ocean management lay in the reality that there is, indeed, severe damage being done to many parts of the ocean’s ecosystems.  Cap and trade is based on the lie of anthropomorphic global warming and highly misrepresented data on the effects of CO2 (just ask any global warming enthusiast why NASA and the CRU have never released the source data for their experiments to prove that their claims are true).  The monetization of the air we breathe can be defeated in the minds of the general public for this reason.  But with the oceans, legitimate pollution is occurring.  This gives World Bank a much more tangible argument for supranational regulation in the name of environmentalism.  What people must realize, though, is that this regulation will have no effect on the deterioration of the seas.  In fact, it will likely hasten their destruction.

The international nature of how the oceans are utilized also opens the globalization door to World Bank.  When a supranational entity is given de facto governance over a region that is used by all sovereign countries, it gives that entity the ability to interfere in the decision making processes of those nations without any input or respect to the people who live within them.  For Americans, this means being susceptible to laws created by men far outside our borders who we cannot vote in, vote out, or chase down with our pitchforks when the voting is rigged.  This has always been the goal of globalists; to create the most dominant and unaccountable ruling body in history, while at the same time convincing the masses that we cannot live without it.

At bottom, centralization is the foundation for the collectivist fallacy; that there is a “greater good” that must be maintained by the establishment.  This process makes the establishment indispensable in the minds of the public.  The elites in power today have chosen environmental dogma as their version of the “greater good”, because the “end of the world as we know” can be used to rationalize almost any brand of despotic behavior, from food and water rationing as a method for social conditioning, to population control or even depletion in the name of “saving the planet”.  Always beware the true motivations of any governing institution that seeks to assert itself as the purveyor of all that is “best” for the people.  Such groups are rarely if ever what they seem.

 

Time To Accumulate Gold And Silver

This article was written by Jeff Clark and originally published at The Market Oracle

Do you own enough gold and silver for what lies ahead?

If 10% of your total investable assets (i.e., excluding equity in your primary residence) aren’t held in various forms of gold and silver, we at Casey Research think your portfolio is at risk.

After speaking at the Cambridge House conference last month and talking with many attendees, I came away convinced that most investors fall into one of two categories: those that hold an abundance of gold and silver (which tends to be physical forms only), and those with little or none. While both groups need to diversify, I’m a little more concerned about the second group. Here’s why.

Regardless of what you think will happen over the remainder of this decade, one thing seems virtually certain: the value of paper money will be affected, perhaps dramatically. Even if the economy slips into deflation, the deflation wouldn’t last long. A panicked Fed would print to the max and set off a wild rise in prices. This is why we’re convinced currency dilution will not only continue but accelerate.

Let’s take a look at what’s happened so far with the value of our currency vs. gold, after accounting for the loss in purchasing power.

Both the US and Canadian dollar, after adjusting for their respective CPIs, have lost about a quarter of their purchasing power just since 2000. Concurrently, gold has increased dramatically in buying power, far outpacing the effects of inflation.

This is the core reason why I’m convinced we should hold our savings in gold and silver instead of dollars. Let’s take a brief look at how gold and gold stocks might perform if the economy takes a turn for the worse…

What If We Enter a Recession or Depression?

Mayan prophecies aside, many of our panelists last month, including most of the senior Casey staff, believe economic, monetary, and fiscal pressures could come to a head this year. The massive build-up of global debt, continued reckless deficit spending, and the lack of sound political leadership to reverse either trend point to a potentially ugly tipping point. What happens to our investments if we enter another recession or – gulp – a depression?

Here’s an updated snapshot of the gold price during each recession since 1955.

Clearly, one should not assume that gold will perform poorly during a recession. Even in the crash of 2008, gold still ended the year with a 5% gain. And with the amount of currency dilution we’ve undergone since that time, it seems more likely gold will rise in any economic contraction than fall. Indeed, if the response of government to a recession is more money printing, precious metals will be a critical asset to have in your possession.

Even if the gold price ends up flat or down this year, the CPI won’t. Gold’s enduring purchasing power is why we hold the metal.

How about gold stocks?

In spite of the debilitating 1970s that suffered from stagflation, price controls, three recessions, and the Vietnam war, gold producers rose over 600% while the S&P was basically flat. And that includes a roughly 65% fire-sale correction, much like we saw in 2008. To be clear, gold and silver stocks won’t be immune to sell-offs if a recession or worse temporarily clobbers our industry. But in the end, we’re convinced they will prevail.

Don’t lose patience with, or confidence in, your gold holdings. What happens to the price over any short period of time is only one chapter in the book of this bull market, and we think you’ll be happy by the time that last chapter is written.

You Don’t Own Yourself – The Federal Reserve Does.

Click here for original article on viewzone.com.

by Gary Vey for viewzone

For a while I have been receiving e-mails from a good friend who has asked me to investigate something weird about the Birth Certificates. He wanted me to take a look at them because they have certain numbers and other things printed on them that need an explanation.

When I looked at my own Birth Certificate, I noticed it was a copy of the original. So I went through old boxes and baby books that my Mom had saved before she died and found what I was looking for — my original Birth Certificate. It was brittle and yellowed with decades of age but — wow — it was NOT the original!

What I have learned since is kind of like discovering that you are part of the Matrix. It seems none of us have our original Birth Certificates — they are all copies. And the copies have a serial number on them, issued on special Bank Bond paper and authorized by “The American Bank Note Company.” Huh?

The truth is stranger than fiction. But here it is:

It seems that back in 1913 the United States was short of cash. World War I had depleted the treasury and there were several really bad financial panics (in 1907 especially) so the country needed to print more money than it had as equity to restore confidence in the money supply and get the economy back on its feet.

When you or I need more money, we use something as collateral and go to a bank for a loan. When a country needs more money it has to go somewhere also. But in 1913 there wasn’t anywhere to go. So the US created the Federal Reserve Act. This established a private central bank (The Federal Reserve Bank) that would regulate the amount of money the US government was allowed to borrow and put in circulation. It also would expect to be repaid, like any bank, with interest.

After only 20 years things went from bad to worse. During Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, in 1933, the US was unable to pay its debt. The county was bankrupt. The private banks that made up the Federal Reserve demanded their money and Roosevelt responded. He had to use the only thing left of any value to pay the banks and continue doing business with them — the citizens of our country. Us!

Exactly how all this was orchestrated is too lengthy to be addressed here, but this much can be told. The original birth or naturalization record for every U.S. Citizen is on file in the official records in Washington, D.C. (you get to keep a copy!) and the property and assets of every living U.S. Citizen is pledged as collateral for the National Debt!

Within two weeks and three days each Certificate of Live Birth is to be filed in Washington D.C. Evidence reveals that there is even a Federal Children Department established by the Shepherd/Townsend Act of 1922 under the Department of Commerce that appears to be involved in this process in some way. Every citizen is given a number (the red number on the Birth Certificate) and each live birth is valued at from 650,000 to 750,000 Federal Reserve dollars in collateral from the Fed.

This kind of makes you feel a little different when you look at Federal Reserve Chairman, Bernanke, doesn’t it?

OK. Let’s take a pause to look at the Birth Certificates [below]. You will see the red numbers and you will see the fact that it is, in reality, a “Bank Note.” Congratulations — you and I are commodities!

Names in “ALL CAPS” on Birth Certificates

Since the early 1960s, State governments have issued Birth Certificates to “persons” with legal fictional names using “ALL CAPS” names. This is not a lawful record of your physical birth, but rather the acknowledgement of the “birth” of the juristic, all-caps name. It may appear to be your true name, but since no proper name is ever written in all caps (either lawfully or grammatically) it does not identify who you are. The Birth Certificate is the government’s self-created document of title for its new property — you and me! In a way, it makes us a kind of corporation whose company name is the same as our real name, but written in ALL CAPS. This “corporation” then generates taxes and wealth over its lifetime and in this way repays the collateral that Uncle Sam borrowed from the Federal Reserve.

Remember that “Bond” thing printed on the bottom of the certificate?
Bond.I a: A usually formal written agreement by which a person undertakes to perform a certain act (as fulfill the obligations of a contract) . . with the condition that failure to perform or abstain will obligate the person . . to pay a sum of money or will result in the forfeiture of money put up by the person or surety. lb: One who acts as a surety. 2: An interest-bearing document giving evidence of a debt issued by a government body or corporation that is sometimes secured by a lien on property and is often designed to take care of a particular financial need. — Ibid. — Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Law (1996).Banknote. A kind of negotiable instrument, a promissory note made by a bank payable to the bearer on demand, used as money, and in many jurisdictions is legal tender. Along with coins, banknotes make up the cash or bearer forms of all modern money.
Birth certificates are a form of securities called “warehouse receipts.” The items included on a warehouse receipt, as descried at §7-202 of the Uniform Commercial Code, the law which governs commercial paper and transactions, which parallel a birth certificate are:

  • the location of the warehouse where the goods are stored…(residence)
  • the date of issue of the receipt…..(“Date issued”)
  • the consecutive number of the receipt…(found on back or front of the certificate, usually in red numbers)
  • a description of the goods or of the packages containing them…(name, sex, date of birth, etc.)
  • the signature of the warehouseman, which may be made by his authorized agent…(municipal clerk or state registrar’s signature)

Birth certificates now appear to at least qualify as “warehouse receipts” under the Uniform Commercial Code. Black’s Law Dictionary, 7th ed. defines:
Warehouse Receipt. “…A warehouse receipt, which is considered a document of title, may be a negotiable instrument and is often used for financing with inventory as security.”
It is not difficult to see that a state-created Birth Certificate, with an ALL CAPS name is a document evidencing debt the moment it is issued.

Once a state has registered a birth document with the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Department notifies the Treasury Department, which takes out a loan from the Federal Reserve. The Treasury uses the loan to purchase a bond (the Fed holds a purchase money security interest in the bond) from the Department of Commerce, which invests the sale proceeds in the stock or bond market. The Treasury Department then issues Treasury securities in the form of Treasury Bonds, Notes, and Bills using the bonds as surety for the new securities.

This cycle is based on the future tax revenues of the legal person whose name appears on the Birth Certificate. This also means that the bankrupt, corporate U.S. can guarantee to the purchasers of their securities the lifetime labor and tax revenues of every citizen of the United States/American with a Birth Certificate as collateral for payment. This device is initiated simply by converting the lawful, true name of the child into a legal, juristic name of a person.

Legally, you are considered to be a slave or indentured servant to the various Federal, State and local governments via your STATE-issued and STATE-created Birth Certificate in the name of your all-caps person. Birth Certificates are issued so that the issuer can claim exclusive title to the legal person created thereby.

Sleep well, fellow slaves.

Ben Swann: The Fiat Dollar is the Real Reason for High Gas Prices

There is so much talk right now about gas prices.
Who’s at fault? Is it President Obama for not drilling enough? Is it OPEC for price fixing? Could it be greedy oil companies?
There are many reasons being floated as to why gas prices are so high but there is one that you aren’t going to hear from most media and it is tied directly to the value of the dollar in your pocket.

Ben Swann has the Reality Check.

February 20, 2012 – Veterans for Ron Paul Marching to the White House Chanting END THE FED!

Video courtesy of Ransom Christova Godwin.
Click here for original video on his Facebook page.

Deliberate implosion of US economy – Former Bush Sec. of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts

Former Assistant Secretary of Housing under George H.W. Bush Catherine Austin Fitts blows the whistle on how the financial terrorists have deliberately imploded the US economy and transferred gargantuan amounts of wealth offshore as a means of sacrificing the American middle class.

** This video is sped up by 20% to make watching more efficient, and it is uploaded uncut from the original interview. **

Fitts documents how trillions of dollars went missing from government coffers in the 90′s and how she was personally targeted for exposing the fraud.

Fitts explains how every dollar of debt issued to service every war, building project, and government program since the American Revolution up to around 2 years ago — around $12 trillion — has been doubled again in just the last 18 months alone with the bank bailouts. “We’re literally witnessing the leveraged buyout of a country and that’s why I call it a financial coup d’état, and that’s what the bailout is for,” states Fitts.

This video is also located on the Money & Fed Video page of this site.

American Wealth Eroding

Original article here on Lew Rockwell.com
by Bill Sardi

Recently by Bill Sardi: The Curse of the Coffee, Tea and Beer Drinkers

In dollar terms, what does Presidential Candidate Ron Paul mean when he says: “The standard of living is going down for a lot of people on fixed incomes.” What does Mr. Paul mean when he says this is what happens when “a country destroys its money” and “destroys or eliminates the middle class.” What does that mean in dollars and cents?

It means the American people are aggregately losing the value of their banked money at the rate of $16,881 per second, $970,904 per minute, $58,254,253 per hour, $1.398 billion per day, or $510,304,260,000 per year (that’s $510 billion!). That is the most conservative figure, based upon a 7% rate of inflation. The erosion of American wealth could be as high as $780 billion/year if a higher 10% inflation rate is employed.

How did I come up with these numbers? Americans have $8.505 trillion on deposit in American banks (FDIC numbers: includes $6.410 trillion in interest-bearing accounts, $1.848 trillion in time deposits like CDs, with an additional $2.094 trillion in non-interest bearing accounts).

The estimated yield (interest) on that banked money is less than 1% today. Let’s say Americans are getting 1% interest on $8.505 trillion. That would amount to $85.05 billion. Now take away ~18% of $85.05 billion the federal government would be in taxes, or $15.3 billion, and this actually amounts to $69.78 billion gained that must be balanced against inflationary losses.

The federal government says the rate of inflation is around 3%. However, the real rate of inflation is not the 3% figure government provides (government calculations don’t include the cost of fuel or food, for example). According to ShadowStats economist John Williams (www.shadowstats.com), who reverts back to ways the government calculated the rate of inflation in 1990 and 1980, Americans are losing 7% to 10% of purchasing power of their banked money annually.

Using the 7% figure, that comes to a $510 billion erosion of saved money per year. Using the 10% inflation rate, Americans are losing $780 billion of their banked money via inflation per year.

In just 5 years $8.505 trillion in aggregate banked wealth will diminish to as little as $4.250 trillion in purchasing power using the 10% inflation estimate. John Williams shows savers who deposited $100 in banked money in 2006 would need $160 today to buy the same amount of goods and services as 5 years ago.

What an insult: bankrupt banks offer dividends to stockholders

To make matters worse, American banks, which were imprudent in offering home loans, temporarily creating a false demand and a crashing real estate bubble, have been delivering small dividends to bank stockholders since the crash. It’s a wonder why the Federal Reserve allows these insolvent institutions to declare dividends at all. But Americans banks are being allowed to cook their books and dream up profits.

The Federal Reserve is now unleashing American banks from restrictions on dividends. This means Americans are essentially capitalizing Americans banks at a loss while banks are divvying out dividends to make it falsely appear they are solvent. Bank stockholders, including many bank executives, will now reap even larger rewards at the expense of the savings class.

What to do? (It’s not pretty)

Methinks if Dwight D. Eisenhower or John F. Kennedy were President during these trying times, and they realized Americans’ personal wealth is being wiped out, they would take some strong action. It’s obvious what must be done.

The central Federal Reserve Bank which currently supplies banks with cheap money (0.25% interest) needs to increase its interest rate to lender banks so that home mortgage rates go back up to around 10% and bank depositors would be rewarded with ~7% interest, and bankers with the remaining 3%. The stealth robbery of the people’s money would cease.

But the real estate industry is going to cry foul as it has been using low interest rates (now as low as 3.9%) to jump start sales again. But that is the very manner in which the real estate bubble was created, with low teaser interest rates. Lenders have driven the real estate industry into a box canyon. Who could afford a home mortgage at 10% interest these days? But to realize that 3.9% mortgage interest rates aren’t revitalizing the real estate industry and the low interest rates on banked money are eroding Americans of their savings, is a double whammy. Let the real estate industry wallow in the mud but spare the savers before the wealth of Americans vanishes.

Essentially future home buyers are being subsidized by savers. It’s a miserable state of affairs.

Planned inflation erodes personal wealth

Ben Bernanke, the chieftain at the Federal Reserve, unashamedly says the nation’s central bank, fearing deflation more than inflation, has established a buffer rate of inflation, which appears to be around 3% officially (but recall John Williams’ 7-10% inflation rate).

So let’s consider an example of a single-mom who gave birth to a child in 1990 and was making $36,000 at that time, and whose salary has not subsequently risen. And let’s say today, 21 years later, that child is ready to enter the work force for the first time. And that mother’s goal has been to try and make sure her child will do financially better than she did.

Thanks to Mr. Bernanke’s planned inflation, that child, now entering the work force, will have to make $62,317/year beginning salary just to equal the purchasing power of his/her mother 21 years ago. This is what the Federal Reserve has done to the value of American money. Does anybody wonder why Ron Paul says the Federal Reserve must be taken down?

Soon, food stamps for all

Incomes are not keeping up with inflation and more and more Americans are slipping into poverty. The Census Bureau now says nearly 1 in 2 Americans are living near the poverty line and food stamps are at an all-time high. An estimated 46 million Americans are now living on food stamps. Five more years of this insanity and the majority of Americans will be on food stamps.

When Mr. Paul says he wants to derail the Federal Reserve Bank and put it out of business it is because it has failed to live up to its objective – to stabilize the value of money.

The Federal Reserve deceives your kids

The Federal Reserve Bank website posts the following graphic which shows a $50/month savings plan adhered to for 30 years (an $18,000 investment) @4% interest (recall, the current interest rate on banked money is less than 1%) would grow to around $35,000. But the Federal Reserve does not calculate for inflation or taxes here. Calculating for an 18% tax rate on $17,000 added from interest would mean $3000 needs to be deducted from that the gains. Then inflation, even using the government’s own low rate of inflation, would more than wipe out any remaining imagined gains.

Yet the Federal Reserve continues to encourage Americans to save. It’s obvious why. Savings provide free capital for American banks which the Federal Reserve represents. This is simply masked government racketeering. Under the flag of government, the masses are being plundered. The only Presidential candidate who makes an issue out of this is Ron Paul. It is because he knows the inside workings of government, banking and lending. The masses are never taught any of this.

Another point is that the Federal Reserve is bold enough to pull off this ruse on young American children. The Federal Reserve website has an online education section for American children which never mentions the erosion of banked money via inflation.

Critics of Ron Paul: I’ll take alleged bigotry over thievery any day

Today I’m hearing critics allege Ron Paul is a bigot. Fine, I’ll take bigotry any day compared to thievery.

I’m hearing that Ron Paul is a foreign policy isolationsist. Fine, the US is simply bribing foreign leaders now with borrowed money, providing military defense by treaty to foreign nations with borrowed money, and maintaining military bases worldwide with borrowed money. The whole mess will inevitably collapse and vindicate Mr. Paul anyway.

Like the collapse of the British Empire, the Pax Americana will crumble and the US may face a day when it can’t even afford to bring its own naval warships back to home port like the Russians who couldn’t maintain the missile silos or submarines as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

The only hope for America is to put the Federal Reserve Bank out of business. It also siphons off about 6% of the profits it creates as an unnecessary and ineffective middle-man.

The candidate with the $1.6 trillion idea

Ron Paul’s financial literacy has been recently taken to task.  Yet it appears other Presidential candidates were completely in the dark when he said that the first thing we can do as a nation is to write off the interest we owe ourselves.  To wit, the other candidates didn’t even know what Mr. Paul was talking about. It’s obvious they are not familiar with the workings of government that Mr. Paul refers to. 

Mr. Paul is pointing to the $1.6 trillion in government bonds (IOUs) the Federal Reserve Bank now holds. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says Mr. Paul “has produced a very creative plan that has two enormously helpful outcomes. The first one is that the destruction of the Fed’s $1.6 trillion in bond holdings immediately gives us plenty of borrowing capacity under the current debt ceiling. The second benefit is that it will substantially reduce the government’s interest burden over the coming decades.”

Hey, would you cast your vote for a candidate that came up with a bona fide $1.6 trillion idea?

The US is continually going bankrupt and raising the national debt to meet its obligations. This crisis management of government, where shutdowns in federal government services loom every few months, could be averted for some time if the nation forgave the money it owes to itself. And imagine, all the other candidates missed a trillion-dollar idea.

Is Ron Paul crazy when he says he wants to eliminate Social Security and Medicare?

When Ron Paul says he wants to put an end to Social Security and Medicare (actually, turn these programs over to the States), Americans look perplexed. That is because they can’t imagine these programs are on the verge of complete collapse. Only when Medicare reimbursement checks and pension checks bounce will the masses believe this.

You don’t believe this is going to happen? As reported by Associated Press writer Stephen Ohlemacher, the cost of Social Security benefits will exceed payroll tax revenue by approximately $29 billion this year (2011). You can read about the whole Social Security fraud here. And you thought the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme was bad?

If you still don’t believe this, read what the Congressional Research Service says: “By law, if Social Security revenues exceed expenditures, the “surplus” is credited to the Social Security trust funds in the form of U.S. government securities. The money itself, however, is used to pay for whatever other expenses the government may have at the time. There is no separate pool of money set aside for Social Security purposes.”

An article in he Kansas City Star says the Social Security administration has no “real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future.”

It’s only a matter of time before the Federal Government collapses.  There is no way it can meet its trillion-dollar obligations to provide pension checks and medical care for retirees.  Medicare and Social Security face a predicted $60 trillion shortfall in meeting their commission to pay for the health care and retirement of pensioners. 

Net sum game

Recognize the US is a nation that questionably generates $14 trillion in annual gross domestic product balanced against an accumulated debt of $14 trillion, collects $2.4 trillion in taxes and spends ~$3.8 trillion annually, thus adding another $1.4 trillion to its debt load every year and faces continual shutdowns and legislated increases in its debt limit.  This is against a future backdrop of multi-trillions of dollars of obligations to provide health care and pension checks to retirees with trust funds that only contain IOUs.

It’s sad to say, if Mr. Paul is not elected, he will be the Presidential candidate that Americans most regretted not electing.

Ron Paul is moving out of the Rodney Dangerfield (no respect) era of his candidacy. Expect the news media to apply even more unfair tactics in his pursuit of The White House. Comedian Jon Stewart first alerted Americans to the shunning of Ron Paul’s candidacy by the news media. It is obvious the news is media attempting to think for Americans by writing a script (“unelectable,” “isolationist”) that continually discounts his candidacy.

As Mr. Paul once said, “There is a risk I could win.” (The Tonight Show with Jay Leno 2007.)

100 Reasons to End The Fed

Original article from Silver Circle Underground

1. The Federal Reserve System constantly decreases the value of our dollar by printing money out of thin air. (inflation)

2. Graph: The value of a $1 Federal Reserve Note in 1913 dollars (the year the Fed was created).

3. The Fed even recognizes its inflationary activity. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston says: “When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money.”

4. American economist Irving Fisher said: “Thus, our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money, but promises to supply money they do not possess.”

5. If you or I did what the Fed does when it prints money, we would be found guilty of counterfeiting and locked up for a very long time!

6. The reason you or I would be arrested for counterfeiting is it’s theft! Every bill you create in bad faith, which doesn’t actually represent the creation of real goods and services, real value that has improved life by directing resources to their most productive uses, is a lie and an appropriation of value from the rest of the world, which gives the counterfeiter goods and services in exchange for nothing, because he or she did not actually create anything of value in return.

7. This is true of what the Federal Reserve does: “Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities, intrinsically, a ‘dollar’ bill is just a piece of paper. Deposits are merely book entries.” – Modern Money Mechanics Workbook, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 1975

8. “The Fed creates absolutely nothing. It does not produce a single grain of wheat to feed people, a single drop of oil to power the engines of an industrial economy, nor a single ingot of metal from the ground to build the products and buildings that improve our lives.” -Wesley Messamore

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9. This situation, in which you or I would be arrested for doing something the Federal Reserve does every day, is the hallmark of institutionalized theft and a legal system turned on its head. As French economist Frederic Bastiat said in the 19th century: “But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply… See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

10. The inflation that results from the Federal Reserve’s massive counterfeiting operation steals from hardworking Americans by diminishing the value of the money they earn.

11. This destroys the purchasing power of the American people by causing the price of everything (like groceries and gasoline) to rise.

12. In this way, inflation works as a hidden tax– one of the steepest and worst taxes Americans have to pay.

13. “Inflation has now been institutionalized at a fairly constant 5% per year. This has been determined to be the optimum level for generating the most revenue without causing public alarm. A 5% devaluation applies, not only to the money earned this year, but to all that is left over from previous years. At the end of the first year, a dollar is worth 95 cents. At the end of the second year, the 95 cents is reduced again by 5%, leaving its worth at 90 cents, and so on. By the time a person has worked 20 years, the government will have confiscated 64% of every dollar he saved over those years. By the time he has worked 45 years, the hidden tax will be 90%. The government will take virtually everything a person saves over a lifetime.” -American filmmaker and lecturer, G. Edward Griffin

14. If government overtly raised the average American worker’s taxes to 90% tomorrow, there would be a revolution in this country. No American worker would tolerate the affront to his life and property.

15. “By this means government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.” – John Maynard Keynes

16. Alan Greenspan wrote in one of his more sober moments before rising to Chair the Federal Reserve: “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation… This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”

17. Inflation hurts the poor and middle class the most because rising costs of living don’t affect the large budgets and lavish life-style of the wealthy nearly as much as they affect struggling middle class Americans who already struggle to pay for expenses at their present cost; and rising costs can positively break the budget of poor families who are already just barely making ends meet.

18. The Federal Reserve’s racket also hurts the poor and middle class the most because as inflation raises their cost of living, the Fed simply prints more money and lends it out at low interest to wealthy banking establishments, which can lend out and profit from the new money before it circulates, devalues the rest of the money, and raises everybody else’s prices.

19. In this way, central banking is unambiguously a policy of class warfare, a vicious economic war on poor and middle class working Americans, a blank check written out to the already wealthy establishment and signed with every bead of sweat and every aching muscle of every struggling wage earner in this country.

20. “Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.” -U.S. Senator and politician, Daniel Webster

21. And this class warfare isn’t merely confined to the United States. It is no coincidence, after a decade of monetary expansion unprecedented in history, that dollar-traded global commodities like wheat are becoming so expensive, that food shortages in the Middle East are one of the most important (though least discussed) factors in the “Arab Spring” revolutions that have toppled governments. The banking establishment profits by investing in third world hunger.

22. For these reasons, any Occupy Wall Street supporter, any honest progressive, any purported friend to labor and working class interests, any humanitarian who seeks to relieve the world of poverty and hunger should make ending the Federal Reserve central banking system his or her number one priority.

23. Inflation has other perverse macroeconomic effects that make us all less prosperous. For example, it rewards people who live beyond their means at the expense of people who save because it is easier to pay off today’s debts with weaker future dollars.

24. This is why inflation encourages borrowing and debt while discouraging lending and saving.

25. In this way, inflation fuels rampant consumerism while keeping productive capital out of the market.

26. As a result, inflation slows economic growth and the creation of real value.

27. This is one of the major factors in what caused the economic contraction that Americans are currently still suffering through.

28. Before the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, economic contractions were called “Panics” and were usually very short lived. It was after the creation of the Fed, that the United States would sink into multiple, deep, and long-lasting recessions and depressions.

29. American economist Milton Friedman said: “I am myself persuaded, on the basis of extensive study of the historical evidence, that… the severity of each of the contractions – 1920-21, 1929-33, and 1937-38 – is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities and would not have occurred under earlier monetary and banking arrangements.”

30. The Federal Reserve System pumps bank reserves full of paper “money” that it prints out of nowhere- as a result, banks over-lend because a bank lends on the basis of its reserves, and with an artificially-growing reserve, a bank will extend an artificially high amount of credit.

31. This is exactly what fueled the over-speculation that would ultimately cause the Great Depression. That’s right- the Fed caused the Great Depression.

32. American financier Bernard Baruch said: “Nothing did more to spur the boom in stocks than the decision made by the New York Federal Reserve bank, in the spring of 1927, to cut the rediscount rate. Benjamin Strong, Governor of the bank, was chief advocate of this unwise measure, which was taken largely at the behest of Montagu Norman of the Bank of England….At the time of the Banks action I warned of its consequences….I felt that sooner or later the market had to break.”

33. The Great Depression sunk the entire world into a global depression, creating the economic circumstances of desperation and dire poverty that allowed autocrats like Hitler and Mussolini to rise to power and assume to themselves “temporary” emergency powers.

34. Among other reasons, this means that the activities of the Federal Reserve may have been a contributing factor to the rise of National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and World War II.

35. The Fed is a major contributor to the start and duration of many other wars, as its unchecked ability to create money and lend it to the United States Treasury helps the regime in Washington to fund its protracted, interventionist wars overseas via borrowing and deficit spending, without overtly raising taxes on the American people so that they feel the immediate costs of war.

36. Knowing they have a seemingly endless reserve of money to borrow from in order to profit from war, the Fed’s very existence encourages rent-seeking behavior from major corporations in the military-industrial complex, who have every incentive to lobby for more war and bigger contracts for the weapons of war, while enlisting the media and an unwary public in the beating of the war drum.

37. The Fed and the currency it creates are likely responsible for many other wars in a more direct way. There is ample evidence to believe that Washington went to war in Iraq and Libya to topple regimes that threatened the hegemony of the dollar as the world’s currency for trading oil. The reason Washington has to go to war to protect the value of the dollar is because its value is a fiction to begin with, the result of its militarily and politically supported role as the world’s reserve currency, not the result of any real measure of productivity and wealth creation.

38. In this way, the Fed and the secondary and tertiary effects of its machinations on global politics and the economy result in the destruction of wealth, not only by theft via inflationary increments, not only by the resulting misallocation of resources to their less productive uses, but by the overt destruction in fiery explosions of capital and labor (labor here, is a euphemism for people’s lives, by the way) that happens in the course of war.

39. Meanwhile, the endless funding spigots of the Federal Reserve Bank serve as the source of the endless stream of “foreign aid” that Washington sends to its client states abroad by the tens of billions, despite having no money itself. This foreign aid mostly ends up in the hands of wealthy and corrupt military dictators like recently-deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

40. For all of these reasons, if you are earnestly antiwar, if you believe that the effects of war are destructive, horrific, unnecessary, and evil, then one of the most important things you can do to end the madness is cut off the funding for it by supporting an end to the Federal Reserve Bank.

41. In addition to the Great Depression and subsequent world-historical events that happened as a result of the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve was responsible for the stagflation of the 1970s, a period of economic contraction that happened concurrently with high inflation, something that was considered impossible according to the entire economic philosophy behind the Federal Reserve.

42. In a 2003 speech, even Ben Bernanke admitted this about the 1970s stagflation: “… the Fed’s credibility as an inflation fighter was lost and inflation expectations began to rise.”

43. The Fed also caused the over-speculation that happened during the 1990s Dot-Com bubble, which crashed and burned when the party was over and very little real value had been created by many of the Dot-Com companies.

44. The Fed also fueled the housing bubble which collapsed in 2008 along with the credit market, pulverizing the U.S. economy and hurting the lives of millions of honest, hardworking Americans.

45. The economic crashes caused by the Federal Reserve are always used as a justification for the government to get bigger, assume more powers, nationalize more industries, spend more money, and control more of our lives.

46. With a record like this, you’d think the failure of central banking would be universally accepted as true. The Fed’s twin mandates are price stabilization and job creation. With the dollar so radically diminished in value since the Fed’s creation and positively abysmal job creation over the last decade, the decade in which the Fed has been most active, the Fed fails to accomplish even its own goals on its own terms.

47. The Fed is quite literally an even bigger Ponzi scheme than the one Bernie Madoff perpetrated.

48. The Fed is not even a part of the U.S. government. It’s a secretive, private, central bank.

49. You heard that correctly: all of this power is concentrated in the hands of wealthy, private bankers, not the American government.

50. In fact, in Lewis vs United States, June 24, 1982, the 9th Circuit Court ruled that “the [Federal] Reserve Banks are not federal … but are independent privately owned and locally controlled corporations… without day to day direction from the federal government.”

51. As such, the Fed’s members and decision-makers are unelected officials who wield immeasurable power over our lives, property, and future.

52. Such power concentrated in the hands of so few is opposed to the republican values of the United States.

53. American economist Milton Friedman argued: “The power to determine the quantity of money… is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power… Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes – excusable or not – can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic – this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.”

54. As Congressman Louis T. McFadden said when speaking in the U.S. Senate: “The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen. There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this nation is run by the International bankers.”

55. American Founding Father, James Madison said: “History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it’s issuance.”

56. “It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” -Industrialist, Henry Ford

57. “Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.” -U.S. President, James A. Garfield

58. The Federal Reserve is secretive and lacking in transparency, a quality nearly universally accepted by Americans as a necessary part of proper governance and as a measure against corruption. There has never been a full, top-to-bottom, public audit of the Federal Reserve Bank.

59. The Fed’s apologists are constantly claiming that there is already plenty of transparency in the Federal Reserve System (even though there really isn’t) and fighting a full Fed audit tooth and nail, scare mongering about the politicization of monetary policy. What are they so afraid of the American people learning?

60. We audit the books of every publicly-traded corporation, but not the biggest and most powerful central bank in the world. Does that make any sense at all?

61. The Federal Reserve has spent even more money than the U.S. Congress in the last year without your vote, without your consent, without your power to stop it, and without any oversight from the American people.

62. “Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.” -English historian, Lord Acton

63. “Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.” -American author, Robert A. Heinlein

64. U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater said: “Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside of the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States.”

65. When the American people recently did get a partial, one-time audit of the Federal Reserve in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and consumer protection bill, they learned about all kinds of corruption and suspicious activity at the Federal Reserve, which shows just why Fed apologists are so opposed to a full audit. Any observer cannot help but wonder what the partial audit didn’t uncover.

66. For instance: at the height of the financial crisis, from 2007 – 2010, the Federal Reserve created over $16 trillion out of thin air and loaned them out at functionally zero percent interest to foreign central banks and big Wall Street banks.

67. This might have been the largest single transfer of wealth in human history, the single greatest financial event to have ever happened, and it happened in secret, without your knowledge, without your consent, without your oversight, and when it was uncovered by the partial, one-time audit, even then it was hardly reported or discussed in the mainstream media.

68. This shows that even when the information is available, the Federal Reserve system has been uncannily insulated from public criticism, scrutiny, or even discussion. One is reminded of some cultures where it is considered bad luck to speak out loud of the devil.

69. The one-time Fed audit also revealed shocking conflicts of interest at the Federal Reserve that the public had not been aware of and would not have been without this public review of the Fed’s policies. At the New York Fed, for instance, many employees and contractors were allowed to keep investments in companies that received Fed loans. Think that might be a recipe for corruption?

70. The Federal Reserve System is unconstitutional.

71. American historian, George Bancroft wrote: “Madison, agreeing with the journal of the convention, records that the grant of power to emit bills of credit was refused by a majority of more than four to one. The evidence is perfect; no power to emit paper money was granted to the legislature of the United States.”

72. U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson said of chartering the first Bank of the United States (a precursor to the Fed we have today): “To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution.”

73. The Federal Reserve bank is a coercive monopoly, and coercive monopolies are bad.

74. Think about this: the Federal Reserve does with money what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did with housing.

75. Actually… the Federal Reserve does with housing, what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did with housing.

76. The Fed has perpetrated more abuse on the American people than Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and Enron combined, while hemorrhaging money like oil spilling out of the Gulf of Mexico (with just as much complacency from the federal government about doing anything to stop it).

77. In fact the Fed has played a direct role in creating the climate, circumstances, and means that made so much abuse from these other financial companies possible.

78. Woodrow Wilson, who was President at the time of the Federal Reserve’s creation, came to deeply regret signing the Federal Reserve Act into law.

79. He said: “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by it’s system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world– no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.”

80. The Federal Reserve allows the government to overspend by lending it money out of thin air.

81. In fact, as Congressman Wright Patman said: “The Federal Reserve bank buys government bonds without one penny.”

82. This fuels and incentivizes the growth of big government to the detriment of small business and civil liberties.

83. “This [Federal Reserve Act] establishes the most gigantic trust on Earth. When the President signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized….the worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill.” – U.S. Congressman, Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.

84. For these reasons, if you are an honest, limited-government conservative, if you believe government has gotten too big and overstepped its bounds, you should make abolishing the Federal Reserve System your number one priority.

85. The U.S. existed for over a hundred years without the Fed- the world will not end without it now. I promise.

86. The world certainly wouldn’t end as a result of auditing it.

87. “Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.” – Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920′s, the second richest man in Britain

88. “The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.” -Lord Acton

89. American reformer and abolitionist, Horace Greeley wrote of independent central banking: “While boasting of our noble deeds, we are careful to conceal the ugly fact that by our iniquitous money system we have manipulated a system of oppression which, though more refined, is no less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery.”

90. “To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.” -Economist, Fredrich von Hayek

91. “If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.” -U.S. Congressman, Robert Hemphill

92. “The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government … are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.” -U.S. President, Andrew Jackson

93. “If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.” -U.S. President, Andrew Jackson

94. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” -U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson

95. “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.” -U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson

96. “Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value — zero.” -Enlightenment philosopher, Voltaire

97. “Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice.” -U.S. President, George Washington

98. “We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors and a ruined people.” -U.S. Senator and politician, Daniel Webster

99. Auditing the Fed makes practical sense. Why would Democrats or Republicans want so much power in the hands of a small group of wealthy bankers? It is antithetical to both their political platforms and respective ideologies. Auditing and abolishing the Fed is a non-partisan solution to a serious problem.

100. If we don’t end the Fed soon: mark my words- THE DOLLAR WILL COLLAPSE. Period. No- exclamation mark!