Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Two Articles From 'Breaking All The Rules' Website





These two articles were submitted by an AWE viewer. If you enjoy these articles you can visit the editors website at http://batr.org

~ enerchi

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Federal Reserve May Pause Quantitative Easing

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 origination of debt created monies fundamental purpose is to save the commercial banks from insolvency. 

The trial balloon report, Federal Reserve could pause QE this year if US economy improves, avoids the risks that come from another expansive round of deficit spending. 

"St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, a voting member of the Fed's monetary policy panel this year, said a drop in the unemployment rate to 7.1 per cent would probably constitute the "substantial improvement" in the labor market that the central bank seeks.

"If the economy performs well in 2013, the Committee will be in a position to think about going on pause" with the asset buys.

Minutes from their December policy meeting showed that "several" top officials expected to slow or stop the so-called quantitative easing program, dubbed QE3, "well before" the end of the year - news that surprised some on Wall Street and prompted a drop in stocks and bonds, and a rise in the dollar."


The recent spike of equity prices after the sharp increase in taxes on high-end incomes just does not translate into improving the prospects of the beleaguered middle class. Temporary uncertainty relief does not make a healthy stock market alone. When the financiers of employment expansion must face the added costs of Obamacare and a drop in consumer disposable income, it simply does not follow that unemployment levels will drop in the near future. 

Yet, segments of the Federal Reserve offers optimism, as the labor market may show "substantial improvement" in the coming months. Could this forecast imply some newfangled governmental make work new spending programs? 

Surely, the financial media is pushing the success of the QE’s rescues. One example is the TV commercial where AIG advertises the end of its bailout.

"AIG has just launched a two-week, multimedia campaign seeking to reintroduce itself after its role in sparking the Great Recession," MediaPost reported yesterday. "The company got an $85 billion bailout as the government took about an 80% stake." 

The ballyhoo over paying back the loans steers clear of the real reason why AIG was "Too Important" to fail; namely, to salvage the incalculable derivative obligations. Rescuing the money center banks has always been the intent of the "Too Big to Fail" taxpayer salvage schemes.
But when will the limit of such gifts be reached? When the banks are satisfied or when the Treasury is emptied and looted, as the cost of extending the usury based financial system. Future generations do not have a chance for economic prosperity as long as the Federal Reserve continues the bond-buying thievery.


Read the entire article on the Negotium archive page

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Statist Philosophy the Scourge of Christianity

The normal condition of man ruling over men resorts to the practice of coercive force. Statism so aptly reflects this system of compliance. When you strip away all the rhetoric and institutional validation, what is left is a doctrine of kingship. Governments are fashioned to exert control over people. Contemplate the intrinsic contradiction of this structure of dominance with the message of the Golden Rule.
 
"The Golden Rule is based on the principle Jesus Christ taught in Matthew 7:12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. 

The significance of Jesus Christ's statement here is huge. What we call the Golden Rule is the summation of God's entire way of life."

Christianity professes that Jesus is divine. Earthly governments strive to minimize God’s authority and substitute temporal supremacy. "Fundamentally, the idea of Jesus being King of kings and Lord of lords means that there is no higher authority. His reign over all things is absolute and inviolable." This refusal to submit and humble oneself to our supreme creator is the essence of the worldly nightmare. 

The lessons from history are mostly ignored in the frantic diversions of modern life. Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD makes a perceptive observation in The Philosophical Basis of the Conflict Between Liberty and Statism

"Plato was the first statist. He offers his vision of the ideal state in the Republic. An elite group of philosopher-rulers run it. They are wise and all knowing. The rulers are not accountable to the public, and they require absolute individual devotion and submission to the good of the state. In Plato's republic only philosophers can have access to objective knowledge, philosophers being, as he puts it, people "who are capable of apprehending what is eternal and unchanging" — those few individuals who can sit down in a quiet place and think clearly. Everyone else, the rest of us, he describes as "those who are incapable of this [and] lose themselves and wander amid the multiplicities of multifarious things."
Note that the gods of the Greeks did not teach the purity of the Christian faith as revealed in the Sermon on the Mount. Natural law is predicated upon celestial creation and inspired purpose, designed to include every soul. When temporal powers impose arbitrary submission, their righteous claim on authenticity must be questioned and frequently resisted. 

Philosophical Statism and the Illusion of Citizenship by Frank van Dun expresses a basic departure from the academic tranquil Platonic vision of the Philosopher King.
"Liberals all too easily acquiesced in the state’s claim to represent or embody the law, in its usurpation and monopolisation of legislative, judicial and executive powers. In the end, few people were able to understand that law should be seen as the restraining condition of legislation rather than as its product. The state, the institutionalised form of (preparedness for) lawless war, came to be regarded as a necessary institution of lawful peace.
To the extent that liberals subscribed to this view—and they did so en masse—they conceded the main point of political ontology to the apologists of statism: that war, not peace, is the normal or natural condition of human life. This is perhaps the most basic axiom of statism. It implies that there can be peace only inside an organisation designed to fight and win wars. It implies that there is no natural society, no "spontaneous order" (as Hayek would say). Man plus man equals war. The whole of the statist philosophy is contained in that simple statement."

Statists have substituted the political order for divine worship. Christians accept the "Prince of Peace" as the alternative to perpetual warfare. While faith in His teachings is routinely ignored, the continuous wickedness that engulfs the planet expands as a prelude to the final conflagration. 

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