Everywhere I turn, I see, read and hear how capitalism has
destroyed the American economy. The political Left blames capitalism outright,
while the political Right claims capitalism is the American ideal. The elitists
in banking, government, academia and the media give lip-service to the idea of a
free market, when they, in fact, have no use for it. The real purpose of
claiming that free markets are the American ideal is to give the collectivist a
scapegoat to blame for all their nefarious wealth redistribution programs. Too
many of today's activists have fallen for this intentional
misdirection.
Blaming free market capitalism for our economic problems is
accusing a ghost. It has been dead for a long time. It was first stabbed in the
back in 1913 when the U.S. Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act and
the United States Revenue Act (creating the IRS).
The Federal
Reserve Act gave a private cartel of international bankers control over the very
essence of a free market; our medium of exchange, our money. This put the free
market into a death spiral. Now factor in the Legal Tender Act which
prohibits any form of lawful money except the Federal Reserve Note. It is this
Legal Tender Law that gives the Federal Reserve bankers their money monopoly.
Without this law, individual enterprise could offer alternative commodity-backed
money and compete with the FRB head to head. But honest competition is not what
the elitist central planners want. Well, at least our new federal money still
had some value. It was backed by gold, but not for long.
The Federal Reserve can control interest
rates by expanding or contracting the quantity of money. It can control the
financial markets with its “Open Market Operations.” It can create new money to
increase its member's bank reserves at any time. It can negotiate with foreign
banks on monetary policies without congressional approval or knowledge. And it
can do all of this with virtually no oversight by any elected representative of
the people. Even the Government Accounting Office responsible for auditing all
government agencies, has no auditing authority over the Federal Reserve, a
private corporation not a government agency.
Without the ability to
judge the cost of capital by the true market value of interest rates, determined
by the availability of savings for investing and future consumption, no free
market can correctly judge its financial health. These false signals along with
government regulations are what create booms and busts in our economy, not free
market actions. The Federal Reserve and the government manipulate the appearance
of economic prosperity for personal and political gain and then blame free
market capitalism
when the inevitable adjustments occur (busts).
By creating the
Internal Revenue Service (collection arm of the Federal Reserve),
government makes the claim that our individual production, property and privacy
no longer, in any real sense, belongs to us. Congress can change the tax rates
and rules at any time, favoring some at the expense of others, and is about to
do so again. This privilege of the central planners has driven many a productive
individual to send their manufacturing and creative endeavors elsewhere. This
put American free market capitalism on life support, still breathing, but
barely.
In 1933, by Executive Order of the President (FDR), all
Americans were required to surrender their gold to the government. This took
away our right to trade in the most respected of all possible commodities used
to secure value in our economic exchanges. Not only did government confiscate
our gold, they also prohibited redemption of U.S. Dollars for gold by any
American. Of course, the international bankers were still allowed to exchange
dollars for gold. Now you know where our gold went. FDR pulled the plug on
value-backed money for American enterprise, dooming free market capitalism to a
slow and painful death.
In 1971, President Nixon reneged on the “Bretton
Woods Accord” removing the international gold redemption for the U.S. dollar.
Unfortunately, it was too late. It is probable that the international bankers
already own most of what was our country's gold. No longer would our dollars be
backed by anything other than our central banker's and government's “Good
Faith.” No free market can exist without the right to exchange productive value
for productive value. In the years that followed, no longer constrained by a
gold-backed dollar, big government warfare/welfare spending
exploded.
What we have today is not free market capitalism, it is
corporatism. Corporatism is a form of fascism, where big business and government
work as partners at the expense of the productive class. We have the
military/pharmaceutical/energy/media/industrial complex and the elitist central
planners of big government ruling our country. We see a revolving door of big
business CEO's and bankers taking key government positions of power. They then
move back into their private positions after accomplishing their goals of
amassing great wealth for their friends and themselves. This is the outward
signs of corporatism for everyone to see. But few are aware or care!
The
change we were promised, if we would just vote for anyone except a Republican,
is only a change in the national figurehead. Only in such an environment of big
government and corporatism is greed truly rampant. Free market capitalism and
the Rule of Law can not exist in the same society with either.
We who
believe in free markets under the rule of law can not argue against a lie unless
we expose it for the lie it is. The free market died when our money became
nothing more than the confiscation of our production. Tell America to stop
dragging around the corpse of free market capitalism as its whipping boy. We
should all have the decency to give the dead some respect for what might have
been.
