On February 3rd, 1913, one of the two most historic events in US history took place: the ratification of the 16th amendment, which established Congress' right to impose a Federal income tax on Americans, and overturned Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution which explicitly prohibited a general income tax. The amendment was brief and to the point, and read as follows: "The Congress shall have power to ...

An obscure report that the Federal Reserve may suspend the monetization of purchasing Treasury Bonds has the smell of disinformation. The perennial efforts to lift economic spirits with the beginning of a New Year often are packed with wishful thinking. Quantitative Easing is being treated as a useful tool for turning on and off the spigot of liquidity infusion. In reality, the results of the massive origin ...

Political Washington theater continues. Republicans and Democrats agreed years ago to erode America's social contract en route to eliminating it altogether. Crisis conditions create opportunities. Former White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, explained. "You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste," he said. "What I mean by that is that's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." He did ...

  The joke is that the maximum volume is usually 10, but this one goes a stage higher. “Turning it up to 11” has since become a way of talking about extremes, or reaching beyond what is normally possible. I recite the origins of the term because, unlikely though it might seem, it recently cropped up in conversation with a senior Bank of England policymaker. In his view, monetary policy, not just in Bri ...

  Americans intuitively comprehend that something is radically wrong even if they don’t understand why it is happening or what caused the economic implosion and calamity. As the economic misery piles up and government becomes increasingly powerless to solve problems, folks are indeed justifiably scared and trembling as they comprehend that life as they know it is has never been more gravely threatened. ...


 Alternative financial media have noted for years that: Fraud caused the Great Depression and the current financial crisis, and the economy will never recover until fraud is prosecuted Criminal fraud is the main business model adopted by the giant banks. See this Largely because they are out-of-control criminal enterprises, economy cannot recover unless the big banks are broken up. The Obama administration ...

  Gold was down (at press time) $2.70 (-0.2%) for the week to $1,697.40, and silver was down $0.48 (-1.5%) to $32.59. GoldCore argued that gold’s decline was curious after “The Fed said that it will maintain ultra-loose monetary policies for the foreseeable future, and the Fed will in effect double the pace of dollar creation.” “Essentially, the US central bank now IS the market for US government debt, ...

  It's time to admit that we live in a false economy. Smoke and mirrors are used to make us believe the economy is real, but it's all an elaborate illusion. Out of one side of the establishment's mouth we hear excitement about "green shoots", and out of the other side comes breathless warnings of fiscal cliffs and the urgent need for unlimited bailouts by the Fed. We hear the people begging for jobs an ...

  The most effective way to finance the reconstruction of stricken areas in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and other states in the wake of the October 28-29 Superstorm Sandy is to mobilize Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve System to provide cheap, long-term federal credit for the rebuilding. Hurricane Sandy represented a once in a century natural calamity impacting the lives of 60 milli ...

In “The Biggest Myth About the Fed,” David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Western Kentucky University, suggests that the pessimists are wrong to be concerned about what Mr. Bernanke and Co. are up to. There many myths about Fed policy over the past few years, but the biggest one has to be that the Fed has been monetizing the national debt.  This simply is not true, but it does not stop so ...