http://kokesh.blogspot.com/…

My fellow patriots,

Thank you for all you have done to help me in my journey over the past years. It has been an honor to stand shoulder to shoulder with you. Slowly but surely, in our struggle for freedom from authoritarianism, we are making progress. As long as we continue to hang together, we will not hang separately!

After leaving the Marine Corps, I joined the monumental fight to end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, bring our troops home to defend America, and restore a Constitutional foreign policy. Having won the public to our side, it is time we take the fight to the capitol, to the real enemies of the Constitution. Posturing against war while voting to fund it is unacceptable! Tragically, we still have a government that behaves like it owns us, rather than serves us.

Since I was first politically active, people have been encouraging me to run for Congress, including a recent effort to “draft” me to run (draftkokesh.com). We need rallying points to keep our movement invigorated and growing, and if a run for Congress from my home town of Santa Fe can serve as one, I will gladly step up. In that spirit, I am excited to announce the formation of the Kokesh for Congress Exploratory Committee.

While I am asking for your financial support in this effort, I want to make it clear that I am willing to make the personal sacrifices necessary to raise the standard of our national leadership. If elected, I will not accept the Congressional salary of approximately $170,000, but only the national average income. It is unbearable in these difficult times, for Congress to tell the American people what is best for us economically while they vote themselves another pay raise and burden our children with impossible debt. Enough is enough!

There is a temporary website up now at kokeshforcongress.com. Please sign up and donate there as we prepare for the launch of a complete site on June 1st.

It is time once again to draw the line between patriots and loyalists. I am a patriot because I am committed to the ideals of liberty and equality this country is destined to achieve, loyal to no false authority. I know that much more than political resistance is required to achieve a paradigm shift, but we can do no wrong standing up for what we know to be morally right. Regardless of my decision, I remain eternally committed to the cause of liberty.

Love, faith, respect,

Adam Kokesh

http://www.ft.com/…

The Federal Reserve has been hobbled by at least two major shortcomings that were primarily responsible for the current and several previous credit crises. Its failure to spot the importance of changing financial markets and its commitment to laisser faire economics were big mistakes and justify a fundamental overhaul of the Fed.

Bill Bonner puts it well over at FleetStreetInvest.co.uk:

How about that? America’s largest car company is going to be state-owned… nationalized… presided over by the federal bureaucrats.

It’s just a part of the shift away from the free market and towards an un-free market. Free market capitalism has failed, say the pundits. Let’s give the feds a chance.

Even Henry Kaufman, writing in today’s Financial Times, says that the Fed’s “libertarian dogma” prevented it from controlling the banks properly.

But the Fed is hardly a libertarian organization. It’s a banking cartel. As a cartel, it looks out for its member banks – and doesn’t hesitate to use state power to do so. There is nothing libertarian about it… and no dogma associated with it – except as Greenspan’s eyewash – that is even vaguely libertarian.

The Fed colluded with member banks to fix interest rates. In so doing, it helped create the biggest bubble in credit the world had ever seen. It was a terrible thing for the average fellow – who was lured deep into debt by rising house prices and cheap credit. But it was a great thing for the members of the Federal Reserve cartel. Profits in the financial sector – notably, the big Wall Street investment banks – soared.

But bankers are vulnerable to too much of a good thing – just like everyone else. Soon, they made the classic Wall Street mistake – they came to believe their own hype. Not only did they gin up trillions of dollars’ worth of preposterous financial instruments… they actually bought these debt bombs from each other.

This posed a grave danger to the nation’s economy… and to the banking system. Henry Kaufman claims the regulators dropped the ball because they put too much faith in the free market. But the regulators were little more than front men for the banks themselves. After Alan Greenspan came Henry Paulson as head of the Fed. He was probably still replying to messages at his old address when the crisis began. And the head of the New York Fed – now, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner – was elected to his post by the very institutions he was supposed to be overseeing.

Neither of them was about to stop the party; they and their friends were having too much fun.

I agree it was inconsistency which helped lead to this. You can’t supercharge an industry and remove the governors (regulations) and not expect shit to hit the fan eventually.

Let’s be consistent. Remove the supercharger. Remove the governors. Stop tweaking with a system you can’t possibly control and leave it be. Get rid of the Federal Reserve and it’s monoply on interest rates and money and credit creation. Remove it’s monopoly on legal tender. Treat fractional reserve banking as the fraud it is (in its current form anyway). Allow the bubble created “too big to fail” failures to fail and go into bankruptcy. Oh and stop handing out our grandchildren’s future tax dollars on failed institutions.

Speaking of which… yesterday Obama said that the government should spend as much on R&D as on the military. On Slashdot someone asked why when we are already in debt would we be spending money on something that would help us but costs would be placed on our children. A response was that it would more likely help them because the advancements would come out later.

My question is… what moral authority does this guy have spending future generations money (which will be forcefully taken from them) regardless of who it will directly effect? Is that not taxation without representation? They have had no say in the matter. Why not let the bureaucrat tyrants of their own time decide how best to steal from them?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

Writes Katie:

So–my high school had a conference call today with the PA governor, Ed Rendell. Now, I already knew this guy was a true-blue thuggish socialist, and what’s more, he was holding this conference call to whip up support for his new state/taxpayer/theft-funded “tuition relief” program. Our journalism teacher told us to create a list of questions to ask about the new program. Most people asked if accepting this money would lessen their debt, how much would they receive, the whole “where’s my handout” spiel. A lot of kids did want to know where the heck this money was coming from, since our state has a budget deficit of over ONE BILLION DOLLARS.

Well, the conference call was at four o’clock, and I was the only student able to stay, so I got to ask the governor any question on the sheet. Now, since the questions were pre-reviewed, my teacher and I weren’t sure if he’d even let us ask any of them. We waited through many skim-the-surface kind of questions from other students about how much they would owe after the new program “helped” them and their families, how the state government would pay with it (they would tax video poker in bars–Fast Eddy loves to condemn gambling, then legalize it and tax it to death), and to ask if out-of-state residents could enjoy the same benefits.

My teacher and I were getting ready to pack up and hang up the phone when the moderator said, “Well, we have time for one more question, and this one’s from Katie…” We both leapt for the phone, and after pressing the speaker button, the moderator said that Rendell wanted to address the first question. I said, “Actually, governor, I want to talk about how government aid inflates college prices. Colleges can keep raising their prices because they know that the government will pick up the tab, and they’ll keep their same profit margins. But no responsible business would raise its proces above what its consumer base could afford! I think we should stop all government aid to make them lower their prices.”

“Cutting aid programs would be disastrous,” Rendell growled. “And colleges depend on the endowments the state gives them…”

“So they’re not profitable? They’re losing money? Every year?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes, they are,” Rendell said. He mentioned public AND private colleges not making any profit whatsoever. “None of the colleges in Pennsylvania are profitable. None.”

Even if he’s wrong and some are profitable it’s only because of the State and it’s subsidies.

The lack of basic economics or human nature is amazing. It makes one wonder if they are actually ignorant of fascists.

I like her honesty up till the end. She’s ignorant or disingenuous by calling the busts of times past cycles. If you look at the controlable events (government regulations, both statewise and nationally) and uncontrolable events (gold rush, etc.) you can find the causes. Those events which corrected quite quickly relative to everything since the Great Depression. Creating a system which creates a small (usually) stimulator (FRS, FDIC) and adds governors (regulations) which causes a true cycle and lengthens the periods between natural corrections by pushing through bad investments is not a solution. It’s a system which can not work. It is fundimentally flawed. It ignores human nature, distorts incentives, creates moral hazards, destroyes natural regulation, removes personal responsibility and risk, and allows the biggest debter, government, to get away with far more than they should if the current subjects had to pay rather than their great grand children. It doesn’t take a reading of Human Action to figure out the results of such policy… just to sit down and follow the chain of causation.

http://www.bloomberg.com/…

The following table details how the Fed and the government have committed the money on behalf of American taxpayers over the past 20 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

===========================================================
                                  --- Amounts (Billions)---
                                   Limit          Current
===========================================================
Total                            $12,798.14     $4,169.71
-----------------------------------------------------------
 Federal Reserve Total            $7,765.64     $1,678.71
  Primary Credit Discount           $110.74        $61.31
  Secondary Credit                    $0.19         $1.00
  Primary dealer and others         $147.00        $20.18
  ABCP Liquidity                    $152.11         $6.85
  AIG Credit                         $60.00        $43.19
  Net Portfolio CP Funding        $1,800.00       $241.31
  Maiden Lane (Bear Stearns)         $29.50        $28.82
  Maiden Lane II  (AIG)              $22.50        $18.54
  Maiden Lane III (AIG)              $30.00        $24.04
  Term Securities Lending           $250.00        $88.55
  Term Auction Facility             $900.00       $468.59
  Securities lending overnight       $10.00         $4.41
  Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility   $900.00         $4.71
  Currency Swaps/Other Assets       $606.00       $377.87
  MMIFF                             $540.00         $0.00
  GSE Debt Purchases                $600.00        $50.39
  GSE Mortgage-Backed Securities  $1,000.00       $236.16
  Citigroup Bailout Fed Portion     $220.40         $0.00
  Bank of America Bailout            $87.20         $0.00
  Commitment to Buy Treasuries      $300.00         $7.50
-----------------------------------------------------------
  FDIC Total                      $2,038.50       $357.50
   Public-Private Investment*       $500.00          0.00
   FDIC Liquidity Guarantees      $1,400.00       $316.50
   GE                               $126.00        $41.00
   Citigroup Bailout FDIC            $10.00         $0.00
   Bank of America Bailout FDIC       $2.50         $0.00
-----------------------------------------------------------
 Treasury Total                   $2,694.00     $1,833.50
  TARP                              $700.00       $599.50
  Tax Break for Banks                $29.00        $29.00
  Stimulus Package (Bush)           $168.00       $168.00
  Stimulus II (Obama)               $787.00       $787.00
  Treasury Exchange Stabilization    $50.00        $50.00
  Student Loan Purchases             $60.00         $0.00
  Support for Fannie/Freddie        $400.00       $200.00
  Line of Credit for FDIC*          $500.00         $0.00
-----------------------------------------------------------
HUD Total                           $300.00       $300.00
  Hope for Homeowners FHA           $300.00       $300.00
-----------------------------------------------------------
The FDIC’s commitment to guarantee lending under the
Legacy Loan Program and the Legacy Asset Program includes a $500
billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury.

Awesome. And Krugman says they aren’t spending enough. I guess we need to catch up to Japan with their debt being 170% GDP. Obama’s going to have to do better than $10 trillion deficit over the next 8 years to pull this off.