Feeding “the Flame”

Social Sundays has had a tough time finding a regular venue since the decision to move on from Vendetta was made. Abunara (which means “the flame” in Arabic) is a private, middle-eastern themed cultural club located at the Center at Keene. They will begin opening on Sundays this week. They offer a great selection of Mediterranean cuisine, made from scratch. Open carry is fine. For more information visit them on the web. http://www.abunara.com/

Membership is $20 per year, which allows you to bring two guests. As a member, you can come in and merely hang out without being expected to spend money. Until further notice, it is BYOB, but cigarettes are not allowed. Hope to see you all Sunday at 5.

Editor’s note: This is a special Private Club edition of Social Sundays. Abunara accepts members over 18 years of age and younger people are allowed with their parents. This event is in addition to the current 3pm public event at the other location. See this forum thread for details.

In Nothing We Trust: Part 3/5

Part three in the on-going saga of posting a paper no one wants to read.

PART THREE: THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM – THE MAGICAL MONEY MAKING MACHINE

“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by
those who are not behind the scenes.”   – Benjamin Disraeli, English Statesman 1844.

In the preceding pages, a quick sojourn through time has shown the many seemingly innocuous and worthless items that have been used as money.  We have also taken a brief jaunt alongside the continued attempts to build a centralized banking regime in America and the subsequent fall of each. In this section, that basic framework becomes the context with which the merits of the Federal Reserve System are called into question. The question was posed in the opening paragraphs of whether or not there should be an all-mighty arbiter that controls the creation and flow of money. That is precisely what the Federal Reserve is.

Llewellyn Rockwell, Dean of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, has a less flattering view: “It’s no different from a burglar in your home wanting to steal your money – that’s what the Federal Reserve does. It depreciates your savings, it takes away your economic security and it ought to be treated as an institution that does that rather than something of alleged benefit.”

(more…)

In Nothing We Trust: Part 2/5

Here is part Two of the my piece on banking, gold standard, and the Fed.

PART TWO: THE UNITED STATES, THE GOLD STANDARD AND CENTRAL BANKS – A BITTER MENAGE A TROIS

The first coins to be struck in the New World, the Spanish dollar, were pressed at a Spanish mint in Mexico City in 1536. (MBFR) These silver coins eventually found their way up to the English colonies on the eastern coast of the North American continent.  The mercantilist policies of the British Crown deliberately tried to keep precious metals out of the colonies, fostering a dependence on Bank of England notes and the debt they inherently carried. In light of such policies, the Spanish dollar became the unofficial currency of colonial America.  For smaller transactions, the Spanish dollar was often divided into eight pieces termed bits, hence the term “pieces of eight.”

The American governments first foray in to the realm of paper money came with the Revolutionary War and the need to fund it. Continental dollars, with no standard of value to back them, were printed out of thin air and at such a rapid rate that the currency quickly depreciated to no value. In 1781, at the height of the Revolution, Philadelphia merchant tycoon Robert Morris was given a charter by Congress to establish a privately run central bank. That institution, the Bank of North America, was granted the monopoly privilege to print and issue paper notes, and was the depository of all congressional funds (Rothbard, “The Case Against the Fed” p.70).

(more…)

In Nothing We Trust: Part 1/5

Part one of a paper I wrote this past semester on the nature of money, central banking, and the Fed. I’ve broken it up in several sections so that it will be able to be read and critiqued in installments, probably one every few days. Feedback is of course appreciated. Enjoy.

IN NOTHING WE TRUST: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FEDERAL RESERVE

by Joshua R. Kern

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”   — Thomas Jefferson
(more…)

In Greater Detail

I was leaving my political science class today, and my professor  – NH State representative Charles Weed – had commented on his frustrations with a one Barack Obama. This sparked a conversation that, as we walked, got quite heated as it ran the gamut from national socialism to the legitimacy of a social contract which he seemed to suggest was not only acknowledged by using the roads, but that that act became my signature on it. We departed on the topic of public schools. The following is a response for Professor Weed articulating some points about libertarianism it was apparent he either did not understand or could not see.

Professor Weed,

I’ve been having a tough time in class, as evidenced in my brief and sputtering tirade today.  I feel the need to explain what the political landscape looks like to a large amount of people in this country (numbering in millions) that have no voice in the pageantry called democracy. These people, myself included, can no longer turn a blind eye nor participate in, nor give our sanction to a system that has perpetrated the greatest evils the world has known. It has empowered and enabled the kinds of dictators around the world that it itself claims to protect us from.

(more…)