galtgulch

When I read the title I thought it might refer to a new breakthrough in regeneration of a limb that had been cut off or amputated. For those interested, there are flatworms called Planaria which have the capacity to regenerate any part of themselves which have been removed. One can cut the worm in half the long way and each half will regenerate the other half! Google planarian regeneration. Someday this might become possible for humans to regenerate lost limbs.

Ms Teller, Welcome aboard! I wonder which books about Objectivism you have read so far, with the intention of recommending others to you. Many of us discovered Ayn Rand's works years ago. My first non fiction work of hers was The Virtue of Selfishness and then Capitalism:The Unknown Ideal. All of the articles in both of those originally appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter. At the time I wondered if it made sense to purchase the Newsletter having read so much of it elsewhere. Let me suggest that it is very worthwhile as there are questions in the Intellectual Ammunition Department, book reviews by other authors which are enlightening and lead to paths of discovery which are fruitful. Enjoy your journey! galtgulch

I wonder how any of those in the running would deal with the problems associated with the real national debt. I heard Rand say in his speech today that we have to stop spending more than the revenue that comes in. That is fine to balance the yearly budget but doesn't address the 18 plus trillion dollars being held by US Treasury Bond holders who have to be paid interest each year or when the bonds become due. Not to mention the growth of promises to be paid to those in the post WWII baby boom cohort which is only beginning to reach their age of eligibility to receive their retirement money and their bills paid through Medicare. That all adds up to another 200 trillion dollars on top of the 18 trillion dollar official national debt. Rand Paul doesn't hint at how that problem will be addressed. It will be larger by the time someone gets elected and takes office just less than two years from now. When the winner is made aware during his orientation he or she will realize the options include raiding the retirement accounts of those who had the wisdom to contribute to IRAs, 401Ks and 403bs and the like. The raid could be or is being contemplated at present by those in power to simply legislate that all such accounts must hold a certain percentage in Treasury Bonds. That would mean forcing those with such accounts to buy and hold with virtually no interest and no hope of ever being able to sell them. One other consideration has come to my attention. It is alleged that Obama plans to start a war just before the presidential election in 2016 which would enable him to postpone the election and extending his position as president, which is said to be Constitutional. I don't remember reading about that in the Constitution but I will take a look. There are still many people who think that Obama is doing a good job, saved us from the Great Recession, reduced unemployment, gave millions of people health insurance, got us out of Iraq, called Yemen a victory, stopped Al Quida with drones causing acceptable collateral damage, etc. This link is to a cartoon by Michael Ramirez of IBD and is a classic: http://www.investors.com/editorial-cartoons/michael-ramirez/741517-negociations I don't know if the link will work. In the first panel Obama says "WE WANT YOU TO STOP ENRICHING URANIUM..." and the head of Iran answers "NO" Second panel. Obama says "WE WANT YOU TO PROMISE NOT TO BUILD A NUCLEAR WEAPON.." answer is "NO." Third panel. Obama says "WE WANT YOU TO PROMISE YOU WILL EVENTUALLY PROMISE NOT TO BUILD A NUCLEAR WEAPON.." answer is No. Last panel. Obama meekly says "all right DEAL." answer is "OKAY." http://www.investors.com/editorial-cartoons/michael-ramirez/741517-negociations I am reminded of Obama telling the Russian ambassador to tell Putin that after the re election he will be able to be "more flexible." It is amazing that there are so many people who still don't see the president for what he is. I am reminded of FDR who evidently thought he could charm Stalin at Yalta. At least Rand Paul is willing to name our enemy. I disagree with whomever had disparaging things to say about him. It does trouble me that he has pushed for a bill that would grant rights of personhood to fertilized ova. If he ever did want to implement that I hope he decides not to.

To whom it may concern, David Stockman is interviewed on kingworldnews.com and believes that the limit has been reached in 2015. There is an audio interview to click on at the end of the written intro. His contribution is entitled David Stockman-Yes, Western Goverment's Do Plan To Steal Money As The Financial System Collapses I think it is just a matter of time. Not a question of if rather of when. I suppose removing one's savings, if you have any sitting in a bank, would reduce that risk of government theft, but you still have to store it and that might subject it to other forms of theft. So it is not confiscation of your gold bars and silver coins to worry about rather expropriation of your bank accounts.

Actually the US Treasury prints up Treasury Bills, Bonds and Notes which it auctions off to willing buyers which might be foreign governments, mutual funds, or individuals who then pay for say the Bonds in dollars and are owed a return of their investment plus interest. The interest these days is around 2% which is hardly enticing for the purchaser. On the other hand the total interest on the sum total of all those Treasury Bonds has to be paid and is referred to as the debt service. Consequently the lower the interest rate the easier on the budget, which is probably the main reason the Federal Reserve or Ms Yellen keeps the interest rate at one quarter of one percent for years now. It still costs because the balance is over 18 trillion dollars. One percent would be 180 Billion so one quarter is 45 Billion. If the rates set by Yellen were allowed to go to a more normal rate that would just cost so much more each year in the budget. If there were signs of asset inflation then the rate might have to be much higher and so much more costly. Anyone notice how the Federal Budget has been growing astronomically recently? Printing more money to avoid bankruptcy could or would just cause a hyperinflation which would be devastating especially in the midst of a Depression. Did you notice that the actual unemployment number is not the official 5.6% because those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits are no longer counted nor are those who have stopped looking for work, and half of those 120,000 who found jobs were actually second jobs! Shadowstats.com reveals the true unemployment number is more like 23% already. GDP growth is also anemic because of all the government regulations and interventions under the present administration. The purchasing power of the dollar keeps going down as more dollars are authorized by the Fed to be printed by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Its all paper and ink with no gold or silver to back it up! Have I mentioned that the government has the power to manipulate the gold market thanks to FDR's Gold Reserve Act of 1934 and its 1970 amendment authorized government manipulation of all other markets as well. Fascism anyone? Here is a link to an interview on King World News with Chris Powell who discusses the secret trading in the futures markets in the US which is authorized by law: Less than ten minutes. I wonder if the Institute For Justice would have the courage and expertise to challenge the manipulations or whether the GOP would submit legislation to repeal the empowering laws so we would have markets again! I can imagine that if the GOP did so, that the President would think twice before casting a veto! Maybe Rand Paul as Senator would be interested in knowing about this. http://kingworldnews.com/chris-powell-3-1-15/ gg

Despite the details mentioned, which I consider a distraction, the point remains that there is no authorization in the Constitution for there to be a central bank whether it is privately owned or as a branch of the government. I realize that there are a host of other things the government does which are also not explicitly authorized among the enumerated powers in Article 1 Section 8. For example a retirement function, a disability function, a health insurance function, an art function, an education function, a research function among others. I suggest that that is how come the country is bankrupt. I gather it has to borrow close to fifty cents in order to spend a "dollar". Incidentally, what passes for dollars is not Constitutional money, which would be only gold and silver coins. See Coinage Act of 1792 first paragraph. My concern is that the actual debt is underreported since they don't count the unfunded promises and liabilities which are in the 200 trillion plus range. Either taxes will have to be raised substantially and or spending would have to be cut to the bone or else default would happen with a prolonged depression. A book by Timberlake entitled: Constitutional Money: A Review of Supreme Court Monetary Decisions shows how nine Supreme Court decisions have turned the Constitution on its head meaning that the result of those decisions yields just the opposite of what the Founders intended when it comes to money. gg

Brant, You said, "All US FDIC banks--that's almost all US banks--are merely extensions of the US Federal Reserve, an arm of the US government." That is not my understanding. I thought that JP Morgan and friends wrote the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 which granted sole authority to a private banking cartel to create the Federal Reserve Note. That is not constitutional as you might discover by reading Article 1 Section 10 gg

The world is suffering in a sea of debt and one way for those who have lent money to failing countries is... to help themselves to the savings of the citizens who have trusted their earnings to the banks. It usually happens over long holiday weekends such as this Easter weekend. As I have come to understand it records are kept and monitored by such entities as the EU which has been loaning money to Greece and other countries. They track the upward slope of the amount they have loaned and also the amount of deposits in banks. If the two trend lines reach a point, that would mean there is just enough money in the banks to cover the amount which was loaned to that country. It did happen in Cyprus where the banks held deposits of retired former KGB operatives, so most of us didn't care. But a precedent was set and now Greece is on the verge of a similar fate. If and when that does occur then other countries will follow. Your money residing in your trusted bank may not be safe for much longer. This phenomenon may begin in European countries which we know have been in financial crisis for some time. Listen to this interview with James Turk, a former commercial banker, with Eric King of www.kingworldnews.com: http://kingworldnews.com/james-turk-4-4-15/ Could it conceivably happen here? gg

palebirch, Thank you for your feedback. I have attended only one of the SFL conferences last year and met only a handful of the many attendees. I found them to be intelligent, ambitious, caring, motivated and determined to participate in the activism and goals of the organization. They were aware that they were not alone in the endeavor which gave them encouragement to think of effective ways to pass the torch. They had learned a great deal already from their own reading of the books recommended by SFL which did include Ayn Rand's non fiction. So my impression was far more optimistic about the kinds of young people attracted to SFL and YAL. I plan on attending another conference in my area and will try to interact with more of those who come to such events to see if I can get a better sense of their interests especially regarding philosophy. gg

When I first discovered Objectivism back in 1968 in Brooklyn NY there were just Ayn Rand's books to read and The Objectivist Newsletter with its Intellectual Ammunition Department. Life was simpler for a short time. Then the split occurred and I guess there were those who took sides. I didn't see the point in giving up the wisdom of either Branden or Rand and cannot imagine how anyone would feel otherwise. After Rand passed away and Peikoff established the ARI and then Kelley started whatever it was called, at first, The Objectivist Center, so we were confronted with another choice. One or the other, or both. My sympathies were with Kelley although I found Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels worthwhile in that it demonstrated the role of philosophical ideas throughout history and provided a more satisfying explanation for the rise of National Socialism than any of the other traditional attempts. I still consider Objectivism to be the antidote for the ills of the world. I don't have any idea how many people are committed to Objectivism yet or how rapidly it is growing. Not fast enough although there is hope. "Necessity is the mother of invention" comes to mind in this regard. But there are already competitors on the field and they already number over one billion adherents each. The battle rages among these ideologies. A couple of days ago it would have been handy to know the Islamic prayer militants asked school children to recite to show their religion. Those who didn't know or weren't able to recite it were shot to death. Closer to home if there were a voice raised against the unconstitutional policies of our Congress they were drowned out over the decades. Social Security and Medicare come to mind as well as a host of other social programs which make up the safety net so supported by both major parties. Our growing national debt exceeds the official announcement of 18 trillion dollars and is closer to 240 trillion according to the calculations of Lawrence J. Kotlikoff, former senior Council of Economic Advisors to Ronald Reagan. "If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That's the fiscal gap," he says. "That's our true indebtedness." Link: ttp://tinyurl.com/3mbl28z That article was written four years ago "What you have to do is either immediately and permanently raise taxes by about two-thirds, or immediately and permanently cut every dollar of spending by 40 percent forever. The [Congressional Budget Office's] numbers say we have an absolutely enormous problem facing us." So now I read that certain techniques are being considered such as mandating that everyone must hold a certain percentage of their retirement account, say ten percent to begin with, in US Treasury Bonds, to enable the government to have the money to pay its bills so that it wouldn't have to cut its spending. Needless to say that means you would never be able to sell those bonds or get your money back either. Not to mention that troubled banks will soon be able to help themselves to depositors savings to "bail-in" those banks without having to use taxpayers money. Both methods would be a form of theft but if such laws, or enabling legislation, were signed into law and uphold by the Supreme Court our only recourse would be to have the state legislatures declare such laws unconstitutional and therefore null and void. In addition the states could pass laws to forbid implementation of such unconstitutional "laws." That would be a form of nullification first mentioned by Thomas Jefferson in The Kentucky Resolves of 1798 along with James Madison's Virginia Resolves. That was in response to John Adam's Alien and Sedition Act. Have enough citizens become aware of nullification as yet in order to be armed with the antidote when their bank accounts and retirement accounts are being fleeced by the Feds? Once again for the benefit of those new listeners here who may not have heard this before. There are two groups in the colleges, universities and even some high schools, entitled Students For Liberty, which is on over 1500 campuses in the US and worldwide, and Young Americans For Liberty which numbers over 204,000 student activists on over 500 campuses. Both groups are growing daily and I daresay reading the right stuff. They are affiliated with The Atlas Society and other crucial entities within the pro individual freedom movement, e.g. the Foundation for Economic Education, etc. So there is reason to be hopeful but not complacent. I hear my grandson age 4 is now awake so I will stop here for now. I am counting on all of you to do whatever you consider to be your share to help the cause. I just cut my hours at work to 32 plus five overtime, so I may have the time now to write a book. gg

"It is ritual that carries the religion from one generation to the next." Some rituals are utterly irrational and the cost of keeping the one about no flame should be lit during the Sabbath led to the death of seven Orthodox Jewish children. Admittedly a functioning smoke alarm properly placed in the kitchen and the top of the stairs where the children were asleep might have enabled them to awaken and find their way out to safety. Egress should have been anticipated as well with education and fire drills! Judaism will survive although the fate of Israel is uncertain given that it is surrounded by so many fanatics who strive to destroy it. Have you read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book: Heretic. She also announced that she may try to convert to Judaism again. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali-says-Islam-by-Thomas-Farrell-Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali_Catholic_Fundamentalists_Islam-150322-826.html gg

In my work I have to interview people every day. One of the questions on the list is race. I don't ask the person in front of me directly what is your race. Instead I ask: "If someone were to ask you 'what is your race?'what do you tell them?" It is a thinly veiled attempt to remove myself from being the questioner. I get all kinds of answers. Mostly they mention what country they were born or raised in. Sometimes they mention many. Only once do I recall anyone saying "Human Race." As we all ought to know by now inbreeding leads to homozygous recessive genes coming together and causing illness or disease, such as Tay Sachs, which is usually fatal early in childhood, or Sickle Cell disease which can protect against Malaria on the one hand but also can cause a severe anemia on the other hand. It is best from a biological standpoint to procreate with another from a different gene pool in order to produce the healthiest offspring. Of course these days it is possible to examine the genome of potential parents to discover a great number of possible disease causing genetic abnormalities before deciding whether to go ahead and make a baby. One solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict would be for their children to meet, befriend, go to school together, perhaps to even fall in love with each other. That would present problems of its own but besides the fact that it is unlikely to generate any Romeo and Juliet stories it might pose a threat to maintenance of the identities of either peoples Today adherence to orthodox ritual led to deaths of seven siblings in a fire in Brooklyn because of the prohibition of lighting a flame on the Sabbath. Instead Orthodox use hotplates to cook or keep warm food overnight which in this case caused a fire from which only the mother and one child escaped, the father was not home. There was only one smoke detector found in the basement and none on the main or second floors which the the children were sleeping and succumbed to the smoke. I think one can maintain a strong identity with one's religious roots without mindless perpetuation of meaningless rituals which supposedly accomplish that. It is inconceivable to imagine how the survivors of this horrible tragedy will endure or cope with such a loss.

As i understand it Britain was not doing the Jewish people any favors when the land which is now Israel was given to them. I think the Britishleadership thought this would not really work nor would the Jewish people survive. The Nazis did not have a monopoly on antisemitism. I just wish that the US had offered to establish Israel within its own borders. Have you ever driven across northern Nevada? Its not too late to extricate Israel to a safer place. They could take the wall of the second temple with them and rebuild it here. There is always the hope that the Islamic people will undergo a renaissance and an enlightenment as the Church did.

David C., as I understand it there were a number of issues or concerns which led the Founders to realize that there was a need for there to be a government over the newly independent sovereign states which were formerly British colonies. There are hints in Article 1 Section 10 where certain things were forbidden to the states. Why were they forbidden? Evidently at least some of these things had been done after the states became independent. I am not knowledgeable enough about the details to give explicit examples. In general we know that some states "impaired contracts" meaning that clauses in contracts were crossed out. Men who had borrowed money, in the form of coins, had included a written condition that the loan be paid back in coin. Some debtors evidently approached their legislators to have such conditions crossed out and instead a clause included enabling them to "repay" in paper currency. Such impairment of contracts became explicitly forbidden in the Constitution. The king of England had issued bills of attainder by which a man could be imprisoned and all his property taken and disposed of. Such Bills of attainder were also forbidden in the Constitution although I am unaware that any such bills of attainder were issued under the Articles of Confederation. The new constitution also forbid imposition of taxes on goods traded among the states under the Commerce Clause which sought to make trade among the states "regular." This has been misconstrued to empower the Feds to regulate trade quite contrary to the original intent. All that I can think of at the moment. gg

Yes, there was no Israel for FDR to support. For that matter the British establishment was antisemitic and it is likely that they chose the location for Israel with the expectation that the Jewish people would not survive there, surrounded as they would be by enemies. Generations of people lived on the land that once was the land of the Israelites, where they had built their temples. I wish the radicals who want them to be killed and Israel destroyed would change their minds which it has been suggested should have been what Netanyahu advocated in his speech yesterday.

In the speech today by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he mentioned that every President since Harry S. Truman has supported Israel. Does everyone now know why he left our any mention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt? FDR turned away a ship carrying thousands of Jewish refugees escaping from Nazi Europe. There is no excuse for his antisemitism. I think i learned about FDR by reading reviews in The Objectivist Newsletter of John Flynn's The Roosevelt Myth and George Crocker's Roosevelt's Road to Russia as well as Eugene Lyon's Russia's Paradise Lost and Anthony Sutton's Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1917-1935 which demonstrated how contracts with Western businessmen who sympathized with the Soviet Communist system gave their plans and blueprints to the Soviets so their factories could be built there and did so again even after their property was exploited. Still FDR remains on a pedestal in this country and is credited with saving the country from the Great Depression which his policies prolonged. Still hopeful.

http://kingworldnews.com/chris-powell-broadcast-interview-available-now-3-1-15/ No time to explain. Have to get ready to go to work. Someone sued the government including the Fed, the Treasury, etc. whose lawyers claimed that even if they did what they were accused of doing, manipulating the markets in gold, etc., that they had the legal authority under an amendment to the 1934 Gold Stabilization Act in 1970. So, although we are now living in a fascist dictatorship, it is all legal! Not funny. Question is if a bill were submitted by the Republicans, to REPEAL these fascistic, interventionistic ACTS, would Obama or his replacement sign it or veto it?

No sooner did Scott Walker "punt" when asked in London where he stood on the issue of evolution, than my wife said, "That does it, I will not vote for him!" Virtually all the men and women in the history of science were and still are heroes to me. Some who were once on a pedestal did lose that honor such as Thomas Edison who failed to keep his word to pay Nichola Tesla for his work. Walker tried to tweet his way out by stating that science and religion both recognize that God created Man and are compatible! I recall all the hands that shot up among the candidates for the nomination of the GOP in 2008 when asked who did not believe in evolution. Still there is no way I would vote for a Democrat even if they do accept the truth about evolution. at least O recognizes the deeds done by the Christians during the Crusades and mentioned the Inquisition too. As I understand it the Inquisition went on and on for centuries to this day. Darwin does deserve the respect of thinking people. Too bad there aren't more of them.

I have found that women find this much more amusing than the men I have told it to. There are so many distractions from what will be obvious in retrospect to be an historic occurrence. The prevailing ignorance of the populace to the consequences of the failure of the law makers to adhere to their solemn oath of office, the passage of unconstitutional laws which have led to an unsustainable burden on the taxpaying productive members of society, the existence of a private central bank posing as an arm of the federal government which granted to it the sole authority to create the currency of the country, the nearly complete loss of purchasing power of the dollar since the Feds creation one hundred years ago, the acceleration of the printing presses generating four times the money supply which existed a few short years ago, an unavoidable worldwide inflationary depression which will wipe out the savings of everyone who failed to challenge the conventional wisdom that gold is a "barbarous relic" which has no place in the modern world. In order for gold to back the amount of currency which has been printed the price of gold would have to rise to $20,000 an ounce! See the article at www.kingworldnews.com on January 28, 2015 for the analysis.

I attended a public elementary school and a public technical high school in Brooklyn NY. I have always appreciated the opportunity that provided for me. It is clear to me that the founders of America realized that the central government they were creating had to have limited powers and they had to know that there would be forces at work to have that federal government extend its powers beyond the powers granted. Try as they might with the enumerated powers clause and the inclusion of the oath of office for lawmakers it quickly became evident that they had opened Pandora's Box. The key was the necessity for the population to become educated without indoctrination. These civics courses teach what passes for wisdom and the questions on the civics test do not address more crucial issues at all. As is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, when asked what form of government was given to us, he said: "A Republic, if you can keep it!" Our country is virtually bankrupt because of spending programs not authorized in the Constitution. Millions benefit from those give aways so it is difficult to eliminate them without causing pain if not an uprising. Nowhere in the Constitution is there authorization for a central bank, but we have one in the Federal Reserve Bank which has caused the loss of purchasing power by over 98% since 1913. Only gold and silver coins are Constitutional money or redeemable paper backed by gold and silver. Our "dollar " is about to collapse. The dollar was defined in the First Coinage Act of 1792 as a coin containing 371 grains and 4 sixteenth of a grain of silver. Now thanks to several US Supreme Court monetary decisions there is no gold or silver behind the fiat paper Federal Reserve Notes. Be prepared. gg

Brant, You said: " I'm not talking about US Treasury debt which can be paid off at will by manufacturing dollars but dollar debt that cannot be inflated away and will be paid off in dollars acquired in trade." I do not know the total worldwide amount of US Treasury bonds held by other governments as well as by retirement plans or individuals. But you suggest that US Treasury debt can be paid off by mfg dollars. A percentage of this debt is held by the Federal Reserve itself. The Federal Reserve lent money to the US Treasury by buying US Treasury Bonds with "dollars" the Fed simply created by making an entry on its balance sheet, took possession of the Bonds printed up by the Treasury which then was able to do the printing itself. So I wouldn't mind if our govt defaulted on those bonds held by the private banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve Banking System. But all the other USTreasury bonds held ought to be honored since they were purchased with dollars earned in production or trade. Evidently the powers that be have in mind a method of confiscation of assets you hold in traditional retirement accounts. Here is the link: http://kingworldnews.com/exposed-dangerous-2015-ahead-global-governments-plan-steal-money/ gg

Baal, I appreciate your comments as usual. <<<"Exponential growths again???? You are an optimist.">>> My wife thinks I am a pessimist because I worry about the disaster which awaits us as things continue in the wrong direction with virtually inevitable depression, inflation, shortages, civil unrest, roving bands of desperate starving former civilized humans, higher massive unemployment, failure of the currency. So I am glad that I have reason to be optimistic regarding this pro freedom movement because of the realistic growth to date which is truly exponential. Both YALiverty.org and studentsforliberty.org began in 2008 on a literal handful of colleges and now number in the thousands and are on every continent! They are both composed of student activists who are all about recruiting other students to join the cause, educate themselves and recruit others. That is their whole raison d'être. And grow they will and they each know it which serves to help motivate them and gives them the confidence to keep plugging and find better ways to recruit on campus. It is even on some high school campuses as well. There is no doubt that it will double and go on redoubling until it is in the tens of millions and beyond. Just you wait and see. It will happen in our lifetimes, ten or twenty years or so. I donate money to each organization among others like IHS, FFF, FEE etc. I also tell young people wherever I encounter them. gg

When I first encountered Ayn Rand's philosophy as explained to me by a colleague during an argument over lunch regarding potential job actions doctors in city hospitals might take to get a raise, my reaction was: "How come its not front page headlines in the New York Times?" The explainer had simply said that:"No man's need constitutes an obligation on the part of another man to fulfill his need!" I have not found that statement anywhere in Ayn Rand's writings but it captures the essence of the Objectivist view of Man's relationship to other men. That he or she is free to deal with others if he sees fit and is also free to refuse to enter into any relationship as well. This does fly in the face of the Judeo-Christian ethic of Altruism which encourages each of us to hold the needs of others above our own. Some would say demands rather than encourages. Back in the late sixties I calculated that the roughly 20,000 subscribers to The Objectivist Newsletter 1962-1965 would double their number at a rate exceeding once a year. At that rate there should have been 10 million advocates of Objectivism after nine years. That could have happened and should have happened, and still should but the next generation was simultaneously being indoctrinated with other ideologies and theologies so it is no surprise that the doubling and redoubling has yet to happen. After all Objectivism has reason on its side. Now my wife and I were shopping and I was paying for an item my wife wanted with a few dollar bills. I asked the lady behind the counter if she minded if I paid with Federal Reserve Notes instead of Constitutional money. That led to a conversation about the existence of the Federal Reserve which was not authorized in the Constitution. I suggested that I knew of a movement in the colleges which was growing and held the promise that enough young people would learn what the Founders vision was and would be able to restore our country in the near future. I mentioned the Students For Liberty and the Young Americans for Liberty and she said that her daughter was in college and was one of the Young Americans in her college! YAL just began in 2008 and grew from a handful of colleges to several hundred in the intervening years. In a society of over 320 million people what are the chances that I would encounter the mother of one of the young people in this new movement? I know that both of these groups of student activists are allied with The Atlas Society which makes them aware of Ayn Rand's ideas and books in addition to others in the pro individual freedom network. I have no doubt that this time the growth will not stop, this time it is taking root in the colleges, the universities and the high schools. It will not die out but will keep growing until it is on each and every campus, not only in America but all over the world and every young intelligent freshman entering schools of higher learning will encounter the existence of the pro freedom movement and Ayn Rand's ideas will be part of their intellectual ammunition. Things are bound to get worse before they get better, given the failed ideology which still prevails.The failed policies will still be advocated by the politicians and pseudo intellectuals who still are in positions of power and influence. But this time, in time, enough men and women all over the world will be enlightened and motivated to take control and will create free societies all over the world. Thomas Jefferson said: If you think you can remain ignorant and free you wish for something that never was and never will be. Or words to that effect. In that quote resides the clue to the restoration of a free society. This movement has the horses to generate exponential growth which is what is necessary to grow fast enough to succeed in the little time we have in which to get society back on the rails. gg

As I understand it, the purchasing power of the US dollar has diminished over 98% since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 as that institution has slowly at first but surely increased the money supply. The politicians are all too willing to have more money to spend than they take in in taxation. The Fed is under control of chairmen who subscribe to an ideology, perhaps Keynesianism, which justifies creation of fiat paper currency which it loans to the US Treasury in return for Treasury Bonds. In the process the dollar loses value so that the recipients of Social Security retirement benefits or disability benefits receive checks which keep losing purchasing power over the months and years as prices keep going up as well. Other countries have a better understanding than our leaders and realize that buying our debt (Treasury Bonds) is foolish because they will lose as the money they receive when they cash in the Bonds will not have the value of the dollars they used to buy the Bonds in the first place. The dollar is at risk to lose its world reserve currency status as a consequence, not years from now but sooner than you may think. Did you know that other countries must covert their own currency into US dollars in order to buy oil from Saudi Arabia? This creates an enormous demand for the dollar but if and when the world reserve currency status of the US dollar is lost, the demand for the dollar will decline and with that the standard of living we take for granted here in America. gg

I wonder if it is true that the recent trillion dollar funding law includes the enabling legislation so that a bank facing bankruptcy may help itself to the assets of its "creditors" meaning its depositors savings in order to bail itself out or is it "bail-in?" I assume, if that is the case, that the rationale is that that would spare the Federal taxpayer from coming to the rescue to keep the banks solvent thus helping to reduce the growth of the national debt. I gather that there is some consideration to pass a law mandating that a certain percentage of ones bank account savings must henceforth be held in the form of U.S. Treasury Bonds, Bills or Notes. It is not yet clear how small one must keep one's account to avoid such confiscation as Treasury Bonds are becoming worthless and less. There are some people who contend that the fearsome economics collapse is decades away in the distant future while others who have some credentials purport that it is upon us sooner than we think, as in within the next year. I gather that such disasters happen fast, unexpectedly and are so sudden that they take most people by surprise. I am thinking about the Weimar Republic's hyperinflation. Workers were demanding that they be paid twice a day so they could run out lunchtime to buy goods before the prices went up by dinnertime. Lifetime savings became worthless overnight. You could hear the printing presses running around the clock. It is hard to imagine supermarket shelves being empty. Will the blame fall on those truly responsible meaning Federal Reserve Chairmen and the Congressmen who passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 and those who subsequently voted not to Audit The Fed ever since? I just came across the fact that JFK had issued an Executive Order number 11110 which created a silver backed currency which were printed up but upon his assassination were never circulated and were destroyed. The Act was never eliminated and still stands! I found the reference which shows a five dollar Federal Reserve Note and the JFK silver backed alternative which never saw the light of day. Here is a link to many articles regarding the Federal Reserve which are critical of it: http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/fed.html I couldn't find the one which shows the JFK paper but silver backed dollar. gg