Annnnnd...its GONE.

In this clip from South Park, Stan discovers that something isn't right about the banking system:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/222624/?tab=related

Of course, in real life its the government and not individual savers who keeps hearing the words "Annnnd...its GONE."

Fiat money cannot last forever.

There is way too much defeatism in the ranks of the Liberty Movement. That defeatism stems from a failure to realise that the achievement of some objectives is absolutely assured. The global fiat money system that has existed since 1971 will eventually fail. Its demise may be hastened by astute political activity, but even if everyone on Earth were content to let the status quo continue, it could not. The following article sums it up nicely:

http://goldprice.org/silver-and-gold-prices/2009/03/we-will-see-silver-and-gold-restored-as.html

Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)

In the year that Richard Nixon removed the last vestiges of the gold standard, Marvin Gaye sang an anti-government diatribe entitled "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDckI2P_DPA

The first verse points out that both the space program and the welfare state require taxpayers to foot the bill:

Rockets, moon shots
Spend it on the have nots
Money, we make it
'fore we see it, you'll take it

The second verse links the inflation tax with the military industrial complex:

Inflation, no chance
To increase finance
Bills pile up, sky high
Send that boy off to die

The third verse complains that life is hard enough without government adding to our troubles:

Hang ups, let downs
Bad breaks, set backs
The natural fact is
Honey, that I can't pay my taxes

The fourth verse warns us how security concerns are used to put us on a totalitarian path:

Crime is increasing
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God knows where, where we're heading

An Inconvenient Debt.

While I doubt that Glenn Beck is entirely sincere about his conversion to Libertarianism, I like the way that meaningful issues are actually getting air time on the mainstream media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw1hkEor6sM&feature=related

The fact that real issues are being discussed on Fox suggests that Americans have more pressing concerns than celebrity gossip.

BBC article compares Britain to Zimbabwae.

If the video that accompanies this article is anything to go by, I think that "most economists" must be sniffing petrol fumes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7924506.stm

Printing money can be defined as the central bank financing of government debts. This is what happened in both Weimar and Zimbabwe and what the British government will insist it is not doing, although the short-term effect is similar.

According to the Maastricht Treaty, EU member states are not allowed to finance their public deficits by printing money. That is one reason why the Bank of England will buy government bonds from financial institutions, not directly from the government.

The Bank believes this form of QE is different because they are "printing money" as part of monetary policy - to prevent deflation. They are not printing money to help the government finance its deficit. Also, unlike Zimbabwe, this is a temporary policy: the Bank expects to sell the government bonds back into the market when the economy recovers.