Economic Metaphors: Three Plunders, Taxation, GNP, HSOM Episode 2

Economic Similes and Metaphors:

 

1) Hard working citizens are a big dog. Bankers, politicians, Wall Street, and financiers are the fleas and parasites on the dog. We have only scratch them off or shake them off for the blood sucking exploitation to end.

 

2) Our economy is a dead patient. Ben Bernanke is the physician trying to defibrillate the patient with Quantitative Easing. He has been defibrillating the patient not once, not twice, but 10-20x. The patient is not only dead he is charred. Then Bernanke confidently says, “I think he is improving.”

 

3) Bankers, Politicians, and World Leaders are Drug addicts. Bankers are addicted to money and Politicians are addicted to power. When they run out of both the solution is an IV injection of more money and more power. Cold Turkey is not an option.

 

4) Gold/Silver are the thermometers of our economy. They are not to be blamed or given credit when the economy is performing well or poorly.

 

5) Quantitative Easing is not like freshly printed Federal Reserve Notes is not like rain falling down upon us from the heavens evenly and uniformly.

 

6) Our monetary system is like a game of musical chairs. When the music stops one person is always left out to dry or is left with the short end of the stick.

 

7) The evils of Central Banking are like a monster ravaging a city and eating all the pigeons. Bernanke’s solution of Quantitative Easing is to simply supply more pigeons.

 

8) Central Banking is a cancer that has infected almost every country on Earth. In 2013 there are only 3 countries on Earth still healthy and free of the malignant tumor of Central Banking; Cuba, North Korea, and Iran.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLCbVv4l5Y (Preview)

 

9) “Divine Right to Rule” Things the government can do that citizens cannot.

 

a) We cannot steal. Government steals regularly and calls it taxation.

b) We cannot kidnap people. Government kidnaps people and calls it military conscription or NDAA detention.

 

10) “There are three ways to live society; everybody plunders everybody, some people plunder other people, and nobody plunders anybody.” For some reason everybody considers the second option to be the ideal, the height of morality, and the only way human beings can interact. And its considered insane extremism to think that maybe we can live with nobody plundering anybody.” Bastiat, The Law

 

11) When you have The Federal Reserve that is willing and able to bail out any corporation that acts like an idiot. Guess what, you have corporations acting like idiots!

 

12) The Federal Income tax goes to pay the interest on the National Debt. 100% of the money collected from income tax is gone before a nickel is spent on services the people expect.

 

13) Some people say “We need income tax system to fund government.” If that’s true then how did we fund the government from 1776 to 1913?

 

14) Education is mostly paid for by state and local property taxes. The tax on gasoline pays for American highways.

15) The income tax is a form of wealth redistribution of the middle and lower class.

 

16) The average “poor” household on government assistance today now receives about $168 per day from taxpayers. These welfare payments, cover food, housing, childcare, and healthcare, average out to about $30 per hour for 40-hour work week, which is far more than millions of working individuals and families make per week.

 

17) “Income is not wages or labor. It is capital gains or profits made from corporate activity.”

 

18) The Supreme Court has rules many times that the 16th Amendment gives the Federal government and IRS no new taxing ability. Therefore if the Federal government didn’t have the ability to tax the income of its citizens before the 16th Amendment and the 16th Amendment doesn’t confer it, then they don’t have the ability to require citizens to pay income tax!

 

19) “Governments have pumped $33 trillion in, over the past five years, and still the world economy stalls–just add more right?”

 

20) “Leaders walk ahead of the crowd; rulers govern from above.”

 

21) “There is nothing more dangerous than armed men with Utopian ideals.”

 

22) Tax revenues are counted once when the taxpayer receives his or her paycheck, and again when the government spends the tax revenue somewhere else. The result is that GDP provides an inflated view of the economy—inflated by the portion of GDP represented by government spending.

 

23) “The IRS selectively audited taxpayers who were poor and vulnerable…they routinely fabricated evidence against taxpayers…they encouraged agents to ‘stick it’ to taxpayers.” Jennifer Long, IRS agent

 

24) The lower courts will not allow people to bring in Supreme Court cases as their evidence.

 

25) “The pages of history shine on instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge…” US vs Dougherty 1972

 

26) “Inflation is the increase in the money supply. Price Inflation is the increase in prices. Stealth Inflation is the decrease in the quantity/quality of consumer goods or services in order to keep prices from rising.”

 

27) “During the Weimar hyperinflation the price of gold rose from 100 marks/oz to 80 trillion marks/oz.”

 

28) “Executive Order #10999 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation.”

 

29) “Executive Order #11000 allows the government to mobilize citizens into work brigades under government supervision.”

 

30) “Executive Order #11921 provides that the President can declare a state of emergency that is not defined and Congress cannot review the action for six months.”

 

31) “Senate Bill #1873 allows the government to vaccinate you with untested vaccines against your will.”

 

32) “Congressman Sensenbrenner’s bill (HR 1528) requires you to spy on your neighbors, including wearing a wire. Refusal would be punishable by a mandatory prison sentence of at least two years.”

 

33) “The government claims the power to seize all financial instruments: currency, gold, silver, and everything else if they deem an emergency exists.” Treasury Department Letter, August 12, 2005

 

34) “There are 190 countries in the world. America has military bases in 156 of them.”

 

35) “The Patriot Act permits: secret FBI and police searches of your home and office, secret government wiretaps on your phone, computer, and/or Internet activity, secret investigations of your bank records, credit cards, and other financial records, secret investigations of your library and book activities, secret examination of your medical, travel, and business records, the freezing of funds and assets without prior notice or appeal, the creation of secret “watch lists” that ban those named from air or other travel.”

 

36) “The constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper.” George W. Bush, November 2005

 

37) “During the 1990s President Clinton monitored millions of private phone calls placed by US citizens. He did this under a secret program code named Echelon. The widespread use of wiretapping Americans during the Clinton administration proves this practice was not started because of 9/11, but is standard procedure.”

 

38) “The Federal Reserve is buying $1 trillion of assets per year, half of which goes to mortgage backed securities and half goes to US treasury bonds. The growth of the money supply in the last 10 years exceeds the creation of all money from 1776 to 2003.” Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for the Reagan Administration

 

39) “The United States used to measure economic prosperity in terms of GNP. Since the first Bush Administration it has measured it in terms of GDP. With GDP you have the total value of goods and services produced within the territorial boundary of a country. With GNP you have the total value of goods and services produced by all nationals of a country (whether within or outside the country). The difference is GDP doesn’t take into account the trade deficit. It is kinder to a debtor nation such as ours.”

 

40) “The ancient coins are excellent in point of standard; they are assuredly the best of all moneys; they alone are well struck and give a pure ring; everywhere they obtain currency, both in Greece and in strange lands; yet we make no use of them and prefer those bad copper pieces quite recently issued and so wretchedly struck.” Aristophanes ‘The Frog’ written in 405 BC, page 344

 

41) “If you take in only 1000 coins and spend 2000 coins by melting them down and adding copper. This is the first example of deficit spending.” Mike Maloney, ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’ Episode 2

 

42) “Athens began to debase their coinage in approximately 434 BC during the 27 year Peloponnesian Wars with Sparta. They also had embarked on expensive public works such as The Temple of Athena Nike during war. This crippled the economy further as it did not allow Athens to heal from the great expense of the war.” Mike Maloney, ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’ Episode 2

 

43) “Our money supply has quadrupled in less than 5 years. The Federal Reserve has grown the monetary base from $827 billion to $3.1 trillion in five years. At the same time banks have stuck $2 trillion more than required in reserves at the Fed.” Doug French

 

44) “One quadrillion or $1,000 trillion yen in government debt has been accumulated in Japan.” Greg Guenthner, August 13th, 2013

 

45) “You can’t, forever, have more claims on assets than there are assets, and a financial system that’s in that condition is in a very serious situation.  And it’s true across the board, it’s not just in the gold market.” Paul Craig Roberts

 

46) “Due to Gresham’s Law gold and silver started to disappear from circulation from 431-404 BC as people spent the government enforced copper coins and hoarded the gold/silver coins. Suddenly it took a whole bunch of copper coins to buy a gold/silver coin. This is the first time gold or silver ever had a price. Before that everything was measured in a weight of gold/silver.” Mike Maloney, ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’ Episode 2

 

47) “Athens minted these debased coins until they were just copper flecks. This was the world’s first hyperinflation. It financially debilitated Athens until in 404 BC they surrendered to Sparta and eventually they became nothing but a satellite of Rome.” Mike Maloney, ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’ Episode 2

 

48) “The Seven Stages of Empire is essentially a pendulum that swings from Quality Money to Quantity Currency and back to Quality Money. It always ends with gold delivering a knockout blow to debased currencies. Stage One: a country starts out with good money, which is either gold, or silver or it is backed by gold or silver. Stage Two: as it develops economically it begins to take on more burdens adding layer upon layer of public works. Stage Three: as its economic affluence grows so does its political influence, and it increased expenditures to fund a massive military. Stage Four: eventually it puts its military to use and its expenditures explode. Stage Five: to fund the war it steals the wealth of its people by debasing their coinage with base metals or by replacing their money with currency that can be created in unlimited quantities. Stage Six: the loss in purchasing power of the expanded currency supply is sensed by the population and the financial markets triggering a loss of faith in the currency. Stage Seven: a mass movement out of currency into precious metals and other tangible assets takes place. The currency collapses and gold/silver rise in price as they account for the huge quantity of currency that was created. This process transfers massive wealth to those who had the foresight to position themselves beforehand in real money, gold and silver.” Mike Maloney, ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’ Episode 2

 

49) “The same deficit spending to fund massive public works and the debasement of their currency that was happening in Greece in 407 BC caused them to become nothing but a satellite of Rome. Today they are becoming nothing but a satellite of the banks.” Mike Maloney, ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’ Episode 2

 

50) “What follows is 140 years of monetary history explained in condensed form. It started in 1873 when Germany went on the classical gold standard where each unit of currency was 100% backed up by an equivalent amount of gold in the treasury. Currency was a claim check or receipt on money, gold/silver, and could be demanded at any time. This provides governments the ability to build the public confidence in paper currency. In WWI this link to gold was severed when they lit up the printing presses like mad to fund the war machine. Between world wars we went on the gold exchange standard. Since 1913 the Federal Reserve was allowed to print up $100 of bills for every $40 of gold, a 40% reserve gold ratio. During both wars Europe paid the US with gold in exchange for consumer goods, grains, tanks, weapons, and artillery. The US only entered WWI during the last year of the war. In WWII Hitler comes to power in 1936. He invades Austria in 1936 and Poland in 1939. The attack on Pearl Harbor was 1941 but we didn’t have troops on the ground until 1942 so again they are paying us in gold for 6 years. Thus the myth of “War is good for the economy” is born. War is good for the economy if you’re not in it and you are selling the tools of the trade! By the end of WWII the US owned 2/3 of the world’s monetary gold. The rest of the world had to share the other 1/3 and Europe had none. The global monetary system collapsed but we had made many loans to Europe in dollars. Europe was flooded in dollars.

 

The Bretton Woods Agreement was born out of a meeting of world representatives in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Every currency on the planet would be backed by the US dollar and the US dollar would be backed by gold at $35/oz. This gave confidence to the world’s currencies. There were no floating currencies. Exchange rates were fixed. This helped to boost world trade. Under the Bretton Woods system there was no reserve ratio established. The US was free to print dollars. We had done a bunch of deficit spending for Korea, Vietnam, and for President Johnson’s Great Society. The US exported its paper dollars to countries all over the world. In the late 1960’s President Charles De Gaulle of France realizes we don’t have the gold to back up the dollars and asked for their gold. Other countries saw this and joined in. The US lost 50% of it’s gold from 1959-1971. In 1971 we still had 12x more dollars we created than gold to back it. This was a run on the US bank for gold, a giant worldwide bank run. The US committed a fraud for the second time by printing more receipts for gold than there was gold. In 1971 President Nixon was forced to take us off the gold standard because if he had paid out the gold until it got to zero, once we couldn’t pay on some of those dollars, the entire worldwide monetary system would have collapsed.

 

On August 15, 1971 all the world currencies became fiat currencies. There has been thousands upon thousands upon thousands of fiat currencies in history and none have survived. It is a 100% failure rate. The world will have a new monetary system in this decade. The world will experience a huge deflationary crash. All countries will probably experience hyperinflation all currencies as the world’s central banks try desperately to print their way out of this. People will just lose confidence in currencies. What do people always go back to time and again for the last 5000 years? They always go back to gold and silver.” Mike Maloney, ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’ Episode 2

 

51) “All currencies bob up and down relative to each other but they are all sinking relative to gold. They are going to continue to lose value and purchasing power.” James Turk

 

52) “There is no way to fix what is coming. We can let it wipe us out or learn to benefit from it. I want to make sure it’s not just the big investors who are ending up with all the cookies. I want to make sure there are as many small investors as possible benefiting from it because that’s what makes society run, middle class, small investor.”  Mike Maloney, ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’ Episode 2

 

53) “The Seven Stages of Empire:

1) Sound Money

2) Layers of Public Works and Social Programs

3) Develops a Massive Military

4) Puts that military to use i.e. war

5) Currency Debasement to pay for the way

6) Which causes a loss of faith in the currency

7) Which then leads to a currency crisis and gold does an accounting of that expansion of that fiat currency supply that happened over all those years of the first 5 stages.

We are in the 6th and beginning the 7th stage. Gold started its accounting in 2001 when it was $250/oz but we’re still in the very early stages.” Mike Maloney, ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’ Episode 2

 

54) “Money was born in roughly 630 BC when it became fungible. It was free markets and sound money that lead to Athens’ great prosperity. Debasement of their money for deficit spending on wars and public works played a large role in their demise. Over the past 140 years we have debased our own currencies to the point where two generations of scholars don’t even understand gold. In recent history there has been a new monetary system roughly every 40 years. We are in the 6th stage of the 7 Stages of Empire.” Mike Maloney, ‘Hidden Secrets of Money’ Episode 2

About Danilo

A practitioner of Eastern Healing arts with degrees in Acupuncture and Chinese medicinal herbs, I have always questioned the status quo, a path which led me to peaceful anarchism. Through my journey, I have worn many hats, that of a classical pianist, avid chess player, philosopher, comedian, and now father of two little anarchists. My wife brands me as a Cultural Critic, but I am simply following my thirst for knowledge and passion for writing.

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Posted in Awesome Economic Quotes, Awsome Quotes.

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