Tag Archives: Deflation

News

Michele Bachmann questions Ben Bernancke

Leave a comment

Awesome:

Partial transcript:

BACHMANN: So the Fed wouldn’t need to be buying all these treasuries then. We could find other buyers of our debt. Is that true?

BERNANKE: Yes.

BACHMANN: So then why are we doing it?

BERNANKE: To keep rates a little bit lower, to help support housing, automobiles, and other parts of the economy that need support.

BACHMANN: But if there are other buyers, why the FED?

BERNANKE: To get rates a little bit lower.

BACHMANN: So if my 18-year-old daughter was spending 40 percent more than what my husband and I were giving her, and she didn’t just do it this month but she did it the next month and the next month and the next month — and finally my husband and I said, ‘We’re just not going to bail you out anymore, we’re not going to continue to finance that overspending that you’re doing,’ and she said to me, ‘Mother, we need to align our solution with the problem,’ — in other words, you need to keep giving me that money because it’s really not a problem yet — I would say, I think you have a problem today.

And the reason why I would say that is because the analogy with the federal government, in January of 2007, our debt was 8.67 trillion. That debt today is closer to 16.5 trillion with the intra-government debt, according to your calculation.

Do you think that’s a problem, that in six years, we’ve gone from 8.67 trillion to 16.5 trillion?

BERNANKE: Certainly I think it’s a problem, and I think it’s important we have measures to bring down it down over time.

BACHMANN: But you said we need to align the solution with the problem. It seems to me we have a big problem. and I’ll tell you why. When I was home this last week and talking to a lot of women, they were telling me, ‘I don’t get this — gasoline at Christmastime was $2.99 a gallon, now it’s $4 a gallon.’ They say, ‘I can’t keep up with the price increases at the grocery store. And we just got our health insurance premium and its going to be $300-a-month more than what it was.’

And so all I want to say Mr. Chairman is that what I’m hearing from people is that they are having to deal with the inflationary pressure.

Inflation is nothing but a hidden tax on people who save their money so that they can be independent in their old age. It’s nice to see Michele looking out for savers like me.

Videos

What does “quantitative easing” really mean?

1 Comment

There are some mild curse words in this, but it is the awesome. (H/T ECM and Lex Communis)

The video has gone the viral. It has the 600,000 views as of the 10 PM.

“Of course not, they are the Goldman Sachs. They make their money ripping off the American people”. LOL!

UPDATE: 24 hours later, and close to a million page views.

Videos

MUST-SEE: The John Maynard Keynes vs Friedrich A. Hayek rap video

Leave a comment

This is from ECM.

I watched this about a half-dozen times so far. It’s awesome! I love it!

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to everyone that I come out on Hayek’s side on this debate. I like the Austrian School of Economics. I’m a supply-sider. I believe in the free market, free trade, private property, saving and investing, entrepreneurship, distributed power, small government, and freedom from government intervention.

Who was F.A. Hayek?

F.A. Hayek was the greatest economist of the 20th century. He won the Nobel prize in Economics. His greatest works are “The Road to Serfdom”, “The Constitution of Liberty”, and “The Fatal Conceit”. If you take a look at the list of the top 10 books that all conservatives should read, you will see that The Road to Serfdom is #1 and The Constitution of Liberty is #10 on the list.

And lucky you, because you can find a free condensed version of the Road to Serfdom here.

But wait! There’s more!

This is part 1 of a 3 part series produced for PBS called “The Command Heights: The Battle for the World Economy”. But the only part you need to watch to learn about Keynes and Hayek is part 1, which is 2 hours long.

This video is basically a history of the 20th century from the point of view of an economist. This is a must see for you young people who don’t know who Reagan and Thatcher were. These two leaders were the greatest defenders of freedom in the 20th century, along with Winston Churchill. And they’re both solid Christians, acting from a Christian and capitalist worldview that valued liberty, security and prosperity.

Today, Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada, best embodies the free-market, freedom-loving ideas of Hayek, while Barack Obama embodies the big-government, deficit-spending ideas of Keynes. Guess which economy is doing better?