Published: May 18, 2009 07:42 pm      

STUMPTALK: The greatest hoax of all times

Hollywood has never scripted it. Only fools try to attach a partisan culpability. In fact every president for the last 100 years has been complicit in a hoax that changed America forever.

In 1910, some of world’s wealthiest bankers met in extreme secrecy to hatch an ingenious scheme to bilk the American people. As Christmas recess began in 1913, President Wilson signed into law the Federal Reserve System Act whereby Congress handed over its constitutional power to “coin and regulate money” to a cabal of private bankers. Contrary to popular belief, the Fed is not a government agency and to this day Congress has been unable to obtain its secret member list.

But control of our monetary system is the least of its damage to America. The Fed was also handed an array of regulatory powers to intervene into the American economy. As a consequence, the economy has exhibited ever since a history of booms which inevitably have to burst. In a recent speech, President Obama said, “We have to stop these boom-bust economies,” inferring these cycles are characteristics of capitalism and government must step in. It is laughable to suggest that Obama knows anything about economics. He has the laws of economics exactly reversed. The virtue of capitalism is that it self-correcting and boom-bust cycles would not exist were it not for government intervention. It is instructive to look at the current boom-bust history.

Carter’s economic bubble, created by Nixon’s inflation, predictably popped. He left with federal fund rate at 20 percent, the prime at 21.5 percent and unemployment reached 11 percent. Reagan came to power and ignored the crying from Congress and the press and thus let interest rates rise. By 1983, inflation fell to 3.2 percent. If Reagan had left it at that, it would have been a model for dealing with recessions. Sadly, as you build a solid financial footing, you also invite government to abuse the system, as Reagan did with record spending and deficits.

The “good Clinton economy” was an allusion, a bubble. Nevertheless, most people perceived it was happy days and went on a spending spree. George W. Bush took office in 2001 with a slight downturn, but in no time the Bushies’ out-of-control spending made the Clinonistas look like fiscal conservatives. The Clinton-Bush economy was a bubble built on sand, but yet the American people thought there was no end to the prosperity and whooped it up. They bought expensive house, cars and electronic toys, and ran up credit card debt. Public out-of-control spending was encouraged by government cheap money policies.

Previous presidents wrestled with Congress to advance their policies but Barack Obama ignored Congress and assumed full dictatorial powers. He fought tooth and nail to avoid bankruptcy of the auto giant Chrysler because traditional bankruptcy would leave his core power, the unions, out of the loop. Instead he violated contract law and engineered a so-called “surgical bankruptcy” in which the UAW was awarded 55 percent ownership. Part of this unconstitutional deal was to strip former owner Daimler Motors and merge Chrysler with the Italian firm, Fiat motors. Why? Fiat makes small cars. Though never mentioned on the campaign trail, Obama now makes no bones about his goal to make America a copy of Europe in every way: central-controlled socialism, nationalization of healthcare and the private sector and force Americans into small European cars.

Chrysler has 3,200 distributors across the country. Obama says he wants to scale this down to about 1,500, ostensibly because many don’t have sufficient capitalization. Can you imagine? The president of the United States plans to pick winners and losers among small business owners. What’s next, the government approval of which Crossville shop may thrive? “Sorry, Sunshine Steakhouse. Your tax base is too small, you will have to go.”

Despite a Labor Department report that 600,000 workers received pink slips last month, Obama at the same time had the audacity to boast his administration had created 150,000 new jobs. Credible economists found absolutely no evidence for this claim. Obama just makes up this stuff. There is no evidence that any of Obama’s massive spending has helped the economy. In fact, indicators such as the recent stock market rally are more likely is due to normal market corrections.

How did we arrive at point in history where the American people fell for Obama’s claim that the current crisis was caused by capitalism and only government was capable of solving it? Despite that free-market capitalism has thrived for 200+ years, building the most prosperous and freest society the world has ever known; despite that we owe everything to the free market, all material prosperity, all leisure time, our health and longevity and that capitalism alone has rescued the human race from degrading poverty, rampant sickness, and early death, why has America suddenly signed on to the myth that capitalism is evil and that the change we need is a socialist in the white House?

We can of course lay it on the public school system. But not so fast, public schools are a part of government and it is natural that they promote their own interest, e.g., bigger government. Teachers are products of the same mill. Years ago schools offered a course called Civics (later called Social Studies). But it makes no different, both teach the attributes of government power. Public schools provide no instruction about the wonders of capitalism. Sadly, there are only three major institutions in America that teach freedom and capitalism. The majority of colleges and universities teach Keynesian economics, a bogus system based on big and growing government power.

Looking still deeper we discover the real culprit. It is you, John Q. Public, who generation after generation have submitted your most precious gift, your children, to a propaganda mill that filled their head with myths about the glories of government and the evils of capitalism. Concerning congress, we voters should re-elect lawmakers, democrats or republicans, who support freedom and capitalism and recall those who don’t. However, we can never restore a truly free society until we separate government from education.