Fear the Boom and Bust with Estonian subtitles

Nice video. The fractional reserve or credit economics was designed to enrich a select few at the expense of everyone else. It is a 100 year cycle. Kinda like you watering your wheat, making it grow until it is harvest time. The problem is YOU are the wheat, when the cycle is in grow(boom) period you THINK you are prosperous but then when the bankers and government want to harvest you it is a bust cycle for you. The entire system collapses at the end of the 100 years, and then they change the money from say dollars to spibbles and the game renews, every one is happy because it is new and you as the wheat are allowed to grow again.

NONE of this can happen with an honest exchange based in a set weight and measure, Silver, Gold, or other rare property from the earth. BUT people must be taught to NEVER allow a paper substitute that is not 100 % redeemable in rare metal coinage on demand.

The bankers of england that started and perpetuate this nightmare know that if they can get people attached to one of their credit schemes for pay, the bankers know they will be protected because very few will bite the hand that feeds them. Government and private insurance and investment schemes are designed to run prices up and cheapen whatever is insured. Laws are perverted to take earnings so the earner cannot consume. The vote of the people must become a fraud in total. The built in inflation is the most evil tax of all, you don't see the thief. BTW, Credit, debt and inflation all have the same definition. If you base your economics in debt you can never be free of debt or free. The nightmares get worse and worse, which is ok if its not your nightmare.
The fractional system totally destroys the middle class within the second cycle. Here in America we are in the first cycle from December 23, 1913, even though our nation has been under monetary attack since the end of the Revolution.

There can be no economic freedom, no real Liberty, and no Justice with the credit system of economics, it was designed that way. To the degree the exchange is corrupt, society is equally corrupted to make up their losses.
We are owned by the british empire and have been since March 6, 1933 and have been moribund since 1971 as a nation.

Only the people in mass can demand a return to THEIR real money. ONLY the people can demand that Congress pull the trigger on Article 30 of the Federal Reserve Act. The 14th Article of Amendment to the US Constitution stops those that you had elected from questioning the validity of the National Debt, only admit to it.

99% of that debt is the interest owed for printing those debt instruments meaning the fed note. The Fed note is a restricted note to its circulation, once we told the fed that we could only give them back what they gave us they took that debt and re monetized it, circulate it as the Euro with YOUR labor backing it as a fort knox, and! they have an additional fractional amount that YOU have to back.

Sorry I don't have a cute production to show.

Charles Brezina
antifed@comcast.net
antifed=antifederalist

That was great. Always enjoy listening to EconTalk. Keep up the good work Russ!

Thank you for blogging about this. I wrote about the video in Estonian at http://cuibonoblog.com/?p=168.

Forgot to credit you, Paul. My apologies. I'll update the post.

I never noticed this before - but why is "war" in the background with public works and digging ditches? Keynes spent some time in the General Theory talking explicitly about how the macroeconomic stabilizations he proposed would help contribute to the decline of war (much as, I believe, Mises contended for his position). You can disagree with him on the logic of that, but it seems odd to associate the sentiment with him.

I know I'm "the first commenter again"... but I figured it was relatively safe on another Boom and Bust subtitle post.

It's a good question, Daniel. In the song, Keynes says, "Public works, digging ditches, war has the same effect." We were putting forth the argument that a lot of Keynesians make that WWII got us out of the Depression. I don't agree with that (see Robert Higgs's work) but is it fair to attribute the view that war is good for the economy to Keynes himself?

Here is an excerpt from an article by Richard Hofstadter (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=541656...

"In 1940, Keynes himself published an article in the United States in which he somewhat disconsolately reviewed the American experience with deficit spending during the previous decade. "It seems politically impossible", he concluded, "for a capitalistic democracy to organize expenditure on the scale necessary to make the grand experiment which would prove my case--except in war conditions." He then added that preparations for war and the productions of armaments might teach Americans so much about the potentialities of their economy that it would be "the stimulus, which neither the victory nor the defeat of the New Deal could give you, to greater individual consumption and a higher standard of life.""

And I should note - the employment effects of war certainly weren't any significant component of the General Theory (that I recall at least). Insofar as this is argued by Keynesians, it's clearly a silver-lining afterthought, not a central position.

I think that is probably fair - that is a good point you make, that it's not so much attributing an advocacy of war as it is attributing an observation that war can have the same effect (I should have re-listened to that portion of the song). It would be attributing advocacy or even indifference to Keynes that would concern me, given what a major role the economic preconditions for lasting peace played in his entire intellectual career.

I recently reread Keynes's letter to Roosevelt for another discussion I was having about his views on inflation, and I think this section is relevant to this point:

"Thus as the prime mover in the first stage of the technique of recovery I lay overwhelming emphasis on the increase of national purchasing power resulting from governmental expenditure which is financed by Loans and not by taxing present incomes. Nothing else counts in comparison with this. In a boom inflation can be caused by allowing unlimited credit to support the excited enthusiasm of business speculators. But in a slump governmental Loan expenditure is the only sure means of securing quickly a rising output at rising prices. That is why a war has always caused intense industrial activity. In the past orthodox finance has regarded a war as the only legitimate excuse for creating employment by governmental expenditure. You, Mr President, having cast off such fetters, are free to engage in the interests of peace and prosperity the technique which hitherto has only been allowed to serve the purposes of war and destruction."

He seems to accept the potential employment consequences of war without ignoring the potential destructive consequences of war (as many Bastiat fans accuse Keynesians of ignoring), and stressing a fundamental, underlying, anti-war sentiment.

That's a very interesting Hofstadter quote. I think Keynes nails some of the back-and-forth over fiscal stimulus. Some view fiscal stimulus as soundly disproven. Many Keynesians are of the opinion that we haven't really given it a solid try in the first place!