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

murray sabrin

Murray Sabrin: Shutdown Has Unintended Consequences

Murray Sabrin: Shutdown Has Unintended Consequences

Regarding Mike Kelly's column, "More have died from COVID – 19 than in Vietnam," Opinion page, May 3. This is the most egregious non sequitur title I have ever seen in the nearly 40 years I've been a subscriber to The Record.

We can all agree that the coronavirus has taken a huge toll on the American people, especially in both New Jersey and New York. I am thoroughly confused what that has to do with the Vietnam War. The undeclared Vietnam War was President Johnson’s misguided – and immoral – military intervention that caused the deaths of millions in Southeast Asia, including the 58,000 Americans who died in the war.

The coronavirus, on the other hand, primarily targets the elderly with comorbidities, that is, individuals with underlying medical conditions like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.

Trump’s Embrace of ‘Bubblenomics’ May be his Downfall

Trump’s Embrace of ‘Bubblenomics’ May be his Downfall

By Murray Sabrin

Two days after Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 he told “Morning Joe” on MSNBC: “We have a big, fat bubble coming up, you watch. We have artificially induced low interest rates … I borrow money … You pay like nothing; they give you free money. Now that’s bad, that’s not good.”  

Despite sounding like a “hard-money” critic of the Federal Reserve as a presidential candidate, President Donald Trump has been reminding the American people in tweets and chats with the press in the Oval Office that the stock market has boomed during his presidency, and he really is a “low-interest person.”

Here is some background to Trump’s 180-degree pivot from Fed critic of easy money to Fed critic of “normalizing “interest rates.

The increase in short-term interest rates since late 2015 did not stifle the stock market’s climb to an all-time high in January 2018. After having a mild correction in the first quarter of 2018 the stock market, as measured by the S&P 500 index, rocketed to an all-time high in September 2018 at 2940.91.