She was there day after day pushing mask wearing and social distancing that had not been shown to produce any net reduction in disease spread, mass PCR testing that proved unreliable, elimination of early treatment efforts, implementation of conveyor belt to death ventilators and remdesivir hospital protocols, production and distribution of Operation Warp Speed “ vaccines ” that proved to be both ineffective and dangerous, closure of businesses, prohibition of gatherings, and other tyrannical quackery. Birx also was conniving behind the scenes to strengthen national crackdown-related measures and traveling around the country promoting coronavirus fear and encouraging state governments to implement, maintain, and expand their crackdown measures […]

— Read More: ronpaulinstitute.org

President Biden called on Congress to pass legislation, sponsored by so-called moderate Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, to crack down on companies that reduce the amount of a good in a package. Biden and his congressional allies and media apologists think that this will stop shrinkflation. They think this because they believe shrinkflation is caused by corporate greed. In fact, shrinkflation is a rational response to increased prices caused by the Federal Reserve’s dollar depreciation.

Businesses reduce the amount of a product sold as a means to cope with rising prices of materials needed to make their products without directly raising the price paid by consumers. Unless greed is the only human emotion that fluctuates with the Federal Reserve’s policies, the fact that shrinkflation only occurs when Federal Reserve policies cause major price inflation should show anyone willing to think logically about these issues that the Fed, not greedy businesses, causes shrinkflation.

Making shrinkflation a federal crime would force more businesses to increase their prices. This would give the American people a more accurate picture of how the Federal Reserve’s price inflation is affecting their standard of living. Shrinkflation is impossible to quantify. Shrinkflation’s existence indicates that the impact of inflation is well above the Consumer Price Index’s report of a 3.2 percent increase in prices over the past year. The Federal Reserve’s interest rates increases have not been as effective in fighting price inflation as the government’s manipulated statistics make it appear.

If Biden wanted to stop inflation, he would start by reducing federal spending and paring down the over 35 trillion dollars national debt. These steps would allow the Federal Reserve to reduce its efforts to monetize the federal debt in order to keep borrowing costs low.

Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, President Biden’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget fails to cut spending. It also proposes the government borrow nearly two trillion dollars a year for the next decade. While congressional Republicans have declared President Biden’s “big spending budget” dead on arrival, the fact is that, with few exceptions, Republicans are just as addicted to welfare-warfare spending as their Democratic counterparts. Therefore, instead of fighting for real and substantial reductions in spending, most Republicans are happy to pretend that getting Biden and the Democrats to agree to a one or two percent reduction in the rate of spending growth addresses the problem with excessive spending.

The movement to shrink government must continue to grow. To achieve this government shrinking goal, Congress must cut spending. Congress must also pass the Audit the Fed legislation and legalize competing currencies such as Bitcoin and precious metals. Congress should also pass legislation forcing the government to live within its means by forbidding the Federal Reserve from purchasing federal debt instruments.

The overreliance on credit cards and the accompanying increase in consumer debt are consequences of our fiat money system. Since Richard Nixon severed the last link between the dollar and gold in August of 1971, the dollar’s value has declined by 87 percent based on the government’s understated Consumer Price Index numbers. This means that even though Americans’ nominal wages have increased, their real wages have declined as their dollars buy less.

The continuing erosion of the dollar’s value makes it impossible for many Americans to accumulate meaningful savings. Those Americans who can save may actually lose money by doing so thanks to the Federal Reserve’s inflation tax that erodes the value of savings. This is why Congress has felt it necessary to provide tax incentives to encourage saving for things like retirement, education, and health care.

Congress could help protect Americans from the inflation tax by forbidding the Federal Reserve from purchasing government debt instruments such as Treasury securities. However, since this would end Congress’s ability to run up huge deficits, thus forcing it to pare back the welfare-warfare state, it is unlikely such legislation would pass.

The reliance of so many Americans on credit cards for basic necessities is one reason why many Americans are dissatisfied with the economy. The large amount of consumer debt is also a reason the Federal Reserve will not increase interest rates to anywhere near what they would be in a free market. The problem is compounded by the fact that investors and businesses have become addicted to near zero or at zero interest rates. The Fed’s relatively modest rate increases over the last couple years caused many “experts” to warn that the Fed was going to throw the economy into a recession. The Fed, though, has been able to claim recession has been avoided because the Fed kept the rates relatively low, and because government statistics are manipulated to understate the real rates of unemployment and inflation.

The Fed cannot indefinitely keep interest rates low without causing a dollar crisis. This will either be caused by, or result in, a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. At that point, interest rates will skyrocket and consumers and businesses that have been relying on debt to cope with the Fed’s dollar destruction will find the piper at their doors, demanding to be paid.

The economic crisis will be worsened by the moral crisis caused by the belief among too many Americans at all levels of society that they have a right to government-provided economic security at the expense of their fellow citizens. This will result in violence and the growth of authoritarian political movements.

The collapse of the fiat money system and the accompanying welfare-warfare state also provide an opportunity for those of us who understand the truth to build a society based around the principles of liberty. We must continue our efforts to reach a critical mass of people with the message of liberty while making plans to ensure our families can take care of themselves when the next crash occurs.

Asked by CNN whether she believes that Congress will eventually pass the bill, Nuland responded that she has confidence that, “we will do what we have always done, which is defend democracy and freedom around the world…”

What Nuland is attempting here is what the neocons always do. They try to wrap their terrible policies up in the American flag and sell it to the American people as something reflective of “our” values. If you oppose another neocon war, well then you are unpatriotic according to their trickery.

But Americans are waking up to the lies of the neocons and more and more are realizing that there is no “we” when the neocons are trying to sell another war. It is “them.” The “we” in the equation are the people who are being robbed to pay for what will inevitably be another neocon failure.

Does any American still believe that Washington was “defending democracy and freedom” when it used a pack of lies to get us into Iraq, where a country was destroyed and perhaps a million people were killed? How about when, after 20 years in Afghanistan, we managed to replace the Taliban…with the Taliban? And Syria and Libya and all the other interventions?

Was Washington “defending democracy” when Nuland and the rest of the neocons successfully overthrew a democratically elected government in Ukraine in 2014?

It’s getting harder and harder for the American people to choke down the war lies of the neocons. That is something that should make us feel optimistic. In the same interview, Nuland said she was confident that when House Members return to session next week, “after they’ve been out in their districts hearing from the American people,” they will vote to send the $61 billion to Ukraine.

Looking at public opinion polls, however, it is far more likely that any Member meeting with constituents during the break will hear the opposite. It is likely they will hear a demand that not another penny be spent on the brutal, futile, and disastrous Ukraine war. According to a Harris poll taken earlier this month, some 70 percent of Americans want talks to end the Ukraine war!

Americans no longer support the neocon war project in Ukraine. That is something to celebrate.

Perhaps in a last show of desperation, Victoria Nuland debuted another argument for keeping the war money flowing for Ukraine. She said, “we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into this economy to make those weapons…”

Is this supposed to be attractive to the American people? The middle class and the poor are being destroyed by inflation and squeezed by a debased currency so that the wealthy, politically-connected weapons manufacturers can get even richer? Instead of money to rebuild this country and protect its borders, Americans should be thrilled to see their hard work go up in smoke, literally, in Ukraine?

Then, stocks fell at the beginning of the year when the release of the notes of the Federal Reserve Board’s last meeting suggested the Fed would not hurry rate cuts. The likelihood of a delay in cutting rates was further increased by a “positive” December Jobs report.

The jobs report did show unemployment remaining low and wages slightly increasing, but the news was not all positive. One of the report’s most troubling items is that a top source of increased wages is government. An increase in the salaries of government employees also increases government debt, which will have to be paid for by taxes. Since tax increases are unpopular, the government relies on the Federal Reserve to do the dirty work by purchasing federal debt instruments and thus creating more inflation. This inflation tax is the worst of all taxes because it is regressive and hidden.

If the Fed allowed interest rates to increase to anywhere near what they would likely be in a free market, interest rate payments on the federal debt would rise to a level causing a financial crisis. Even though the federal government will soon spend more on interest on the federal debt than on the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, few in DC are serious about cutting spending. Federal debt increased by one trillion dollars from mid-September to the beginning of the new year. It is expected to increase by around another trillion dollars by the end of March! To put this in perspective, consider that the federal debt did not reach a trillion dollars until 1981 — almost two hundred years after the Constitution was ratified.

Continuing increases in federal debt and Federal Reserve created inflation will lead to economic crisis caused by a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. There is already resentment over the US government’s use of the dollar’s reserve status to support US sanctions This is why Russia and Iran recently signed a deal to trade in their own currencies rather than in dollars and Russia is no longer accepting dollars for its oil.

President Biden has kept his promise to refrain from criticizing the Fed’s conduct of monetary policy. In contrast, his predecessor regularly took to Twitter to lambaste the central bank. This means the Fed will likely try to help President Biden by trying to keep interest rates low enough to not increase unemployment yet high enough to not increase price inflation.

While Donald Trump is more likely than Joe Biden to challenge the deep state and neoconservative foreign policy, the truth is neither Biden nor Trump will seek to reduce spending. Unless a critical mass of Americans demand an end to the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system, the soft landing sought by the Fed and the politicians will turn into a hard crash.

Trying to minimize the harm of inflation, some people in government and media will insist that, while many prices for goods are higher than they were pre-lockdown, they are still lower than were prices in the 1990s when you consider that the quality of these goods has increased. The argument is that buyers are getting higher value today than 30 years ago. Of course, any increased quality is because of market-driven innovation. If America had a free-market monetary system, instead of central bank-controlled fiat currency, prices would drop as quality increases.

It is also important not to ignore the fact that the Federal Reserve’s devaluation of the dollar’s purchasing power creates an incentive for individuals to spend money as soon as they receive it and a disincentive for them to save. This is because the dollar will have less value a year from now than today. Therefore, high levels of spending are a rational response to an irrational fiat money system.

High prices and supply shortages were inevitable after the lockdowns. However, prices would have adjusted back more if the Federal Reserve had not pushed interest rates to zero. While the Fed has raised interest rates, it has not raised rates to anywhere near where they would likely be in a free market. In fact, rates are not at historically high levels, yet many worry the Fed’s rate increases are pushing the economy toward a recession. This shows how addicted Americans are to the Fed’s “easy money,”

When the dollar’s purchasing power erodes, workers will seek higher wages. This is why periods of high price inflation are accompanied by strikes and other types of union activity aimed at increasing wages. This has made unions another popular scapegoat for price inflation when the truth is that Fed-caused price increases are the real reasons behind labor unrest.

Sadly, the increase in nominal wages gained by the recent series of strikes is unlikely to keep up with the declining real wages resulting from the Federal Reserve’s assault on the dollar’s value. This is why, contrary to the claims of many progressives, working people are the victims, not the beneficiaries, of price inflation. As a Texas union official once told me, “gold has always been the friend of the worker.” This makes sense because gold is money whose value cannot be manipulated by the central bank.

Inflation is the act of money creation by the Fed, and high prices are a symptom of inflation, not a cause, and not the fault of greedy business, consumers, and unions. The Federal Reserve is also the engine of the welfare-warfare state. Therefore, to restore a system of limited government, individual liberty, and free markets, Congress must cut spending and audit then end the Fed.

One way the BRICS hope to achieve its goals is to undermine the foundation of US power: the dollar’s global reserve currency status. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva called for BRICS nations to create their own currency, while India is pushing to have its trading partners, including Russia, trade in Indian rupees rather than US dollars. China and other BRICS countries have also reportedly taken steps to explore using gold instead of dollars for international trade.

After then-President Richard Nixon severed the link between the dollar and gold in 1971, Henry Kissinger negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia where, in exchange for US diplomatic and military support, Saudi Arabia would use dollars for its dealings in the international oil market. The “petrodollar” is the backbone of the dollar’s reserve currency status. Early this year, Saudi Arabia signed a deal with Brazil to accept Brazil’s currency instead of dollars for oil purchases. If Saudi Arabia signs similar deals with other BRICS nations it will hasten the end of the dollar’s reign as reserve currency.

The rejection of the dollar is also being driven in large part by resentment over the “weaponization” of the dollar’s reserve currency status. The US government uses the dollar’s reserve currency position in order to force other countries to comply with US sanctions against the latest “designated Hitler.” Sanctions are an act of war, so by forcing other countries to follow US sanctions the US Government is dragging them into conflicts that are not in their national interests. It was inevitable that the arrogance of our foreign policy elite would eventually cause a backlash. The backlash started last year when the US demanded other countries join in sanctioning Russia, regardless of the effects of those sanctions on their own economies.

The movement to replace, or at least create alternatives to, the dollar is also driven by concern over the long-term effects of the massive US national debt. Despite the claims of both parties that the recent debt ceiling deals showed that Congress and the President were getting serious about being fiscal responsibility, the US $33 trillion debt is still poised to grow by as much as $115 trillion over the next 30 years. Congress and the President refuse to cut spending in any area. They can’t even manage to stop shoveling billions into the no-win war in Ukraine even though this spending is opposed by a clear majority of Americans.

Sadly it will take a shock like the rejection of the dollar’s reserve currency status and the resulting dollar crisis to force the US government and the people to take steps to kick their addiction to welfare-warfare spending and fiat currency. This will mean some tough times ahead. However, the economic downturn may not last as long as people expect. The good news is the crisis could lead to a return to limited constitutional government, a true free-market economy free of corporations and cronyism, a foreign policy based on peace and free trade, and a  free-market monetary system.

Sound off about this post on our Economic Collapse Substack.

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

After President Nixon severed the last link between the dollar and gold, his administration negotiated a deal with the Saudi government. The US would support the Saudi regime, including by providing weapons. In exchange, the Saudis would conduct all oil transactions in dollars. The Saudis also agreed to use surplus dollars they accumulated to purchase US Treasury bonds. The resulting “petrodollar” is a major reason why the dollar has maintained its world reserve currency status.

Also this year, China and Brazil made an agreement to conduct future trade between the countries using the countries’ own currencies rather than dollars. Brazilian President Lula da Silva has called on more nations to abandon the dollar.

This de-dolarization movement is driven in part by resentment of America’s foreign policy, including, in particular, the US government’s increasing use of economic sanctions. Dethroning the dollar from its world reserve currency status makes it easier for countries to ignore these sanctions.

De-dolarization will negatively impact the US government’s ability to manage its over 30 trillion dollars debt. With a few exceptions, there is still no real support in Congress for spending cuts. Republican leadership members may say they will not support a debt ceiling increase unless it is tied to spending cuts. However, after the Biden administration accused the Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared a reduction in spending on Social Security and Medicare — big drivers of the federal deficit — “off the table.” Similarly, despite the growing skepticism of foreign interventionism among Republicans, the military-industrial complex maintains a viselike grip on congressional leadership and the White House. Therefore, do not expect any reduction in military spending. Instead, the Pentagon’s budget will likely increase.

The Federal Reserve will face continuing pressure to monetize ever-increasing federal debt and keep interest rates (and thus the federal government’s borrowing costs) low. The resulting inflation will lead to more support for ending the dollar’s world reserve currency status. As more countries abandon the dollar, the Fed will become less able to monetize the federal government’s debt without creating hyperinflation. This will result in a dollar crisis and an economic meltdown worse than the Great Depression.

This crisis will lead to the end of the welfare-warfare-fiat currency system. While history suggests this will lead to the rise of even more authoritarian political movements, the growing popularity of libertarian ideas suggests the collapse will also fuel the further growth of the liberty movement. This could mean that the crisis leads to a restoration of limited government and an advancement of liberty. The key to taking full advantage of the opportunity presented by the crisis is to keep spreading our ideas. Fortunately, we do not need a majority; we just need a tireless, irate minority committed to the cause to regain our liberty.

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

The FBI, we now know, was obsessed with Twitter. We learned that agents sent Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth some 150 emails between 2020 and 2022. Those emails regularly featured demands from US government officials for the “private” social media company to censor comments and ban commenters they did not like.

The Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), a US government entity that included the FBI as well as other US intelligence agencies expressly forbidden from domestic activities, numbered 80 agents engaged regularly in telling Twitter which Tweets to censor and which accounts to ban. The Department of Homeland Security brought in outside government contractors and (government-funded) non-governmental organizations to separately pressure Twitter to suppress speech the US government did not like.

US Federal government agencies literally handed Twitter lists of Americans it wanted to see silenced, and Twitter complied. Let that sink in.

This should be a massive scandal and likely it would have been had it occurred under a Trump Administration. Indeed, Congress would be gearing up for Impeachment 3.0 if Trump-allied officials had engaged in such egregious behavior. But since these US government employees were by-and-large acting to suppress pro-Trump sentiment, all we hear are crickets.

What is interesting about these Twitter revelations is how obsessed the FBI and its government partners were with satire and humor. Even minor Twitter accounts with small numbers of followers were constantly flagged by the Feds for censorship and deletion. But knowledge of history helps us understand this obsession: in Soviet times the population was always engaged in joking about the ineptitude, corruption, and idiocy of the political class. Underground publications known as samizdat were rich with satire, humor, and ridicule.

Tyrants hate humor and cannot withstand satire. That is clearly why the FBI (and CIA) was determined to see a heavy hand raised against any American poking fun at the deep state.

There is good news in all of this, however. As Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley wrote over the weekend, a new Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll found that even though the mainstream media has ignored the “Twitter files,” Americans have not. Nearly two-thirds of respondents believe that Twitter was involved in politically-motivated censorship in advance of the 2020 election. Some 70 percent of those polled believe Congress must take action against this corporate/state censorship.

As Professor Turley points out, although the First Amendment only applies to the US government, “it does apply to agents or surrogates of the government. Twitter now admits that such a relationship existed between its former officials and the government.”

So now we have proof that the FBI (along with US intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security) have been acting through “private” social media companies to manipulate what Americans are allowed to say when they communicate with each other.

Is there anything more un-American than that? Personally, I find it sickening.

We do not need the FBI and CIA and other federal agencies viewing us as the enemy and attacking our Constitution. End the Fed…and End the Federal Bureau of Investigation!

Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

The failure of Congress to offset spending on disaster relief with cuts in other programs is one reason why I always voted against disaster aid when I was in Congress, even when the spending was for disasters that occurred in my district. Of course, I also opposed these bills because disaster relief is unconstitutional and immoral as are all other income redistribution programs.

When I voted against disaster relief, my office would receive angry calls from constituents. However, within several months many of those constituents would call back to say that after dealing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) they realized that disaster victims would be better off without federal “help.”

Federally managed disaster relief is neither efficient nor compassionate. My office often heard from frustrated individuals whose plans to rebuild were put on hold because of delays in getting federal assistance.

My staff and I heard many horror stories of FEMA mistreating disaster victims. For example, FEMA was supposed to put a tarp on a house whose roof was destroyed in Hurricane Ike, but it put the tarp on the house next door, even though that house’s roof was fine. When the owner of the house that needed a tarp called FEMA, he was told it would be several weeks before FEMA could send someone out to correct FEMA’s mistake. The homeowner told FEMA that he would move the tarp himself with assistance of his neighbors. FEMA told him that anyone who touched the tarp without FEMA’s approval would be fined and maybe thrown in jail.

In the days following a hurricane, my staff and I also heard complaints from people about how government officials were preventing them from entering their own property. Of course, these restrictions were all claimed to be “for the people’s own good.”

FEMA’s failures are the inevitable result of placing authority over disaster relief in a large, centralized bureaucracy. Therefore, the problem cannot be fixed by changing personnel or updating or streamlining FEMA’s procedures. Instead, FEMA should be abolished, and responsibility for disaster relief should be returned to individuals, local communities, and civic and charitable organizations. Individuals should be able to deduct from their income taxes 100 percent of the costs of recovering from a natural disaster. Businesses affected by a natural disaster should also be provided generous tax relief. Tax-free savings accounts could help Americans accumulate funds for use in the event of a natural disaster.

In 1900, a major hurricane devastated Galveston, Texas. Despite the fact that FEMA or other federal disaster relief programs did not then exist, the people of Galveston managed to rebuild their city. This proves that there is no justification for federal involvement in disaster recovery. The federal government should return responsibility for disaster relief to the people by shutting down FEMA. Congress should also ensure people have the resources to take care of themselves by ending the welfare-warfare state, repealing the 16th Amendment and the associated income tax, and auditing then ending the Federal Reserve.

Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.