Patrick
The Fed (and Central Planning) Are Fueling ...

By Doug French

Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, included ten planks required to create a socialist dictatorship. Number five on the list is “Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” America’s Federal Reserve satisfies this requirement, especially the modern version, which grows exponentially in size, scope, and power, engineering financial repression “for governments to increase tax income and domestically-held debt.”1

While socialism continues to creep from university classrooms to replace once-upon-a-time laissez-faire in everyday America, opioid use has grown to be termed an epidemic.

The Fed (and Central Planning) Are Fueling Substance Abuse
Patrick
Why You Need F-You Money

By J.L. Collins

Those who live paycheck to paycheck are slaves. Those who carry debt are slaves with even stouter shackles. Don’t think for the moment their masters don’t know it.

Why You Need F-You Money
Patrick
Teachers Unions Are Bad for Teachers. Here’s Why

Rigid pay scales, high dues, lousy pension system: Membership has its privileges.

The New Jersey Education Association, the state chapter of the largest teachers union in the country, boasted more than 200,000 members and $154 million in revenue last year. You might think it focuses on helping teachers become more effective and making the public schools better—especially now, with more than 80% of the state’s districts still not offering full-time in-person instruction 13 months after the pandemic began.

Teachers Unions Are Bad for Teachers. Here’s Why
Patrick
Value Is Subjective: Neither Gold Nor Crypto ...

By Connor Mortell

A major hurdle to the adoption of bitcoin is that while the average person may be at least open to the idea that fiat money is not the ideal, they still struggle to see a difference between fiat money and cryptocurrency. And this lumping together is not just held to the average adopter but includes many brilliant household names such as Peter Schiff and Elon Musk. This widespread conflation of cryptocurrency and fiat currency comes from two vital misunderstandings: a lack of an understanding of what exactly fiat is and a lack of understanding of value’s subjectivity.

Value Is Subjective: Neither Gold Nor Crypto Have "Real Value"
Patrick
Understanding the Fed's Balance Sheet

By Robert Aro

The Fed’s balance sheet could easily be replaced with the phrase abracadabra; truly, there is little else in the world which works as magically as it does. Often cited, seldom understood, few seem to realize that as the balance sheet expands, so too does the power of this central bank at the expense of the entire nation.

Understanding the Fed's Balance Sheet

debt

A Black Swan With Teeth

A Black Swan With Teeth

By Peter Schiff

For years I have been warning that during the age of permanent stimulus (which began in earnest with the Federal Reserve’s reaction to the dotcom crash of 2000), each successive economic contraction would have to be met with ever larger, increasingly ineffective, doses of monetary and fiscal stimulus to keep the economy from spiraling into depression. I have also said that the enormity of the asset price gains over the last 10 years had increased the danger because reflating the bloated stock, real estate, and public and private debt markets would bring on doses of stimulus that could prove lethal for the economy. But even though I expected that the next financial crisis would be catastrophic, I thought that it would come into the world in the usual way, as a credit crisis triggered by over leverage. But the Coronavirus ripped up those stage notes, and instead ushered in a threat that is faster and deeper than I imagined, and I imagined a lot. It’s a perfect storm, a black swan with teeth.