Opinion> Pat Buchanan> A Conspiracy Of Counterfeiters

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A Conspiracy of Counterfeiters

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens."

"Lenin was certainly right," John Maynard Keynes continued in his 1919 classic, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace."

"There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

Keynes warned that terrible hatreds would be unleashed against "profiteers" who enriched themselves through inflation as the middle class was wiped out. And he pointed with alarm to Germany, where the mark had lost most of its international value.

By November 1923, the German currency was worthless, hauled about in wheelbarrows to buy groceries. The middle class had been destroyed. German housewives were prostituting themselves to feed their families. That same month, Adolf Hitler attempted his Munich Beer Hall Putsch.

Today a coterie of economists is prodding Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to induce inflation into the American economy.

Fearing falling prices, professor Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, is pushing for an inflation rate of 5 to 6 percent while conceding that his proposal is rife with peril and "we could end up with 200 percent inflation."

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner and columnist for The New York Times, is pushing Bernanke in the same direction.

Bernanke, writes Krugman, should take the advice he gave Japan in 2000, when he urged the Bank of Japan to stimulate the economy with "an announcement that the bank was seeking moderate inflation, 'setting a target in the 3-4 percent range for inflation, to be maintained for a number of years.'"

And who inspired Bernanke to urge Tokyo to inflate? Krugman modestly credits himself.

"Was Mr. Bernanke on the right track? I think so — as well I should, since his paper was partly based on my own earlier work."

But Krugman is not optimistic about Bernanke's injecting the U.S. economy with a sufficient dose of inflation.

Why is Ben hesitant? Two words, says Krugman: "Rick Perry."

Krugman believes Bernanke has been intimidated by Perry's populist threat in Iowa after his first day of campaigning:

"If this guy (Bernanke) prints more money between now and the election, I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.

Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous."

Perry was indulging in Texas hyperbole, and the press came down hard on him for language unbefitting a presidential candidate.

Yet Perry has raised a legitimate series of questions.

What should be done to high officials of the U.S. government who consciously set out to dilute and destroy the savings and income of working Americans? What should be done to those who have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution and then steal the wealth of citizens by secretly manipulating the value of the currency, the store of wealth upon which those people depend?

Is inducing inflation — debauching the currency, the systematic and secret theft of the savings of citizens — a legitimate policy option for the Federal Reserve? Has Congress authorized official thievery?

Who do these economists think they are?

Inflation rewards debt — and erodes savings. It is legalized counterfeiting, the deliberate creation of money with nothing to back it up.

If a citizen printed dollars bills, he would be tracked by the Secret Service, prosecuted and imprisoned. Why, then, is the Fed's clandestine printing of money with nothing to back it up a legitimate exercise and, according to Krugman & Co., a desirable policy for Bernanke and the Fed?

Schooled economists such as Rogoff, Krugman and Bernanke know how to shelter their wealth from the ravages of inflation — and even to get rich. But what about widows whose husbands leave a nest egg of savings in cash and bonds? What are they supposed to do as the value of their savings is wiped out at 4, 5 or 6 percent a year — or whatever annual rate of ruin the Rogoffs and the Krugmans decide upon?

This is not only an economic issue but a moral issue.

To inflate a currency is to steal the money citizens have earned and saved and entrusted their government to protect. Any government that betrays that trust and steals that wealth is not only unworthy of support. It is worthy of being overthrown.

On this one, as Keynes said, Lenin was right.

Perry and Ron Paul deserve the nation's gratitude for putting this issue of the unfettered power and the amorality of our unelected Federal Reserve on the political docket.

To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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"If ever again our nation stumbles upon unfunded paper, it shall surely be like death to our body politic. This country will crash."
- George Washington

The beautiful face of Lady Liberty will soon manifest the fearful visage of Goddess Kali's dance of destruction, as the American people righteously rise up to demand an overthrow of the communist government which directly threatens the national security.
May the ugly, toothless hag of the French Revolution come forth, as these banking swindlers are brought before the guillotine.
The revolutionary ideal must be death and imprisonment for banking swindlers, who prey upon the lifeblood of a people, as a national cancer.
Since the earliest days of the republic, the Founding Fathers were confounded by the practice of usury, as they sought to throw off the chains of debt bondage imposed by the international bankers.
That same struggle against the Rothschild central bank, now animates the awareness of a new generation of Americans, bent on fulfilling the mandate of Thomas Jefferson, given over two hundred years ago.
Thomas Jefferson called for an amendment to the Constitution, abolishing the practice of borrowing from private banking cartels, under a predatory lender of the “deadliest hostility.”
With 97 percent of the value of the dollar already eroded under the inept administration of the Federal Reserve; the question comes to the fore as to whether the American people will end the Federal Reserve, before it ends the republic of our forefathers.
The great dream and vision of the United States of America, stands for the self-determination of the world's
peoples to live free from debt slavery to the international bankers.
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Thomas Jefferson
This American revolutionary ideal encompasses not only this nation, but shines as a beacon for the survival of the nation-state concept, as a bulwark against a return to feudalism.
The American people are a deliberate and revolutionary people, who now resist the encroachments of the cheeky central molesting bank.
The American revolution stands for the liberation of mankind from the chains of usury, so that the robber baron may no longer run his financial steed roughshod over the tilled fields of the American worker.
The state of our Union is such that a Manchukuo puppet emperor of the Council on Foreign Relations, has been illegally installed to rule over the American people.
This agent of finance capital—the usurper, Obama—was deliberately drafted as a useful idiot, to throw a wrench into the machinery of our ship of state.
The Second American Revolution must now be initiated in earnest, with a military occupation of Washington D.C., to depose the corporate-occupied government.
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is The People vs. The Banks."
- Lord Acton, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1875
That fateful day has now arrived and it demands that the spearhead of the American people--the United States military--step forth and roll into Capitol Hill, to deliver the American people from bondage to the international bankers and the Mexican occupation army, which infests American soil.
Can the United States military handle the truth?

Comment: #1
Posted by: T.H. Asgardson
Mon Aug 29, 2011 12:23 PM

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Okay, whiz economist Buchanan. Please describe what happens if we go into a deflationary cycle, which freezes consumer buying.

That is what we are looking at if we do not get the right amount of inflation to stimulate consumer buying. You are full of rhetoric and empty of understanding of how to understanding the larger economic picture.

This is what is sinking the American dream. If you want to analogize to Germany, look at what they have been doing over the last decade, not at an irrelevant period that occurred 9 decades ago as the country had barely survived a communist revolution.

Germany now is a polar opposite of what the U.S. has been doing and what right wing hip-shooters are advocating. And guess what. They are the ONLY healthy macro economy in Europe.

They have preserved their heavy manufacturing industrial base and used socialist strategies here and there to ensure adequate access from all sectors of their population to the middle class. They learned their lesson, they have planned, and they put us and silly pundits like you to shame.

Comment: #2
Posted by: Masako
Mon Aug 29, 2011 7:08 PM

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Our country is being invaded,and this time the enemy is already inside the gate !
More at www.thelibertytrust.com

P.S.However,I can smell victory in Tea Party movement !

Comment: #3
Posted by: Ioan Dirina
Wed Aug 31, 2011 7:57 AM

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This is a wonderful article. It describes what is occurring and Mr Buchanan gives historical examples so we can further study on our own. From my point of view, I considered these same traits in business since the 1990s. Educated businessmen were glibly walking around saying, "greed is good," a line from the motion picture Wall Street. Another popular saying was, "the purpose of a corporation is to earn profits for investors." So ludicrous is this statement that businessmen should mimmic Al Pacino in Scarface when they say it. Hence, as Mr Buchanan points out, the public begins to view businessmen as profiteers rather than as great men who built factories to feed and clothe the world. I feel awe and pride when I watch a TV show called "How It's Made" and see intricate machines making a thousand light bulbs an hour or other equally fantastic products. To think that there are exponentially growing numbers of pencil pushers feeding off those production lines like insurance clerks grabbing cash from medical systems causes people who were once termed "the workers" to start practicing fighting maneuvers with their sickles. We need better law enforcement in our businesses to uncover fraud and theft. This will restore the public's opinion of businessmen. Also, law enforcement can prevent the siphoning off of the money supply by the government or anyone else, as currently, since 1989, businessmen have been the ones siphoning off the wealth from the middle class.

Comment: #4
Posted by: Mike Hayne
Fri Sep 2, 2011 9:31 PM

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