Lew Rockwell, M3, and Writing Your Congressman

Lew Rockwell is one of my favorite writers out there. The man is a poet, pure and simple.

He wrote a review of the book, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis, by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin for the magazine The American Conservative. Read it. It’s a good article. Here is an excerpt:

The authors not only provide a frightening picture of the mess that the U.S. government has made at home and abroad, they also understand the crucial role that the monetary regime has played in this debacle. They show how the legal right to counterfeit—that’s what the Federal Reserve grants the government—has changed the structure of the government and led to the loss of liberty and the rise of an imperial power unlike any in history.

In the commercial republic of Jefferson, money was gold and silver. Government had no power to print currency. It was not even allowed to tax directly. What money it had came from tariff revenue, and pressure from exporters and importers kept it low. Even if Jefferson had wanted to establish a tyranny, there was no means to do so. If the wall of separation between money and the state was not as high as it might have been, there was still a barrier that put a curb on power-mongering.

Today, however, all the money government could ever want is easily available via a monetary policy that depends critically on the capacity of the Fed to create currency out of thin air. The Fed’s printing presses back every debt note issued by the Fed, and the new currency is sopped up by foreign central banks and private holdings around the world, particularly among Asian nations. The dollar is, for now, the world reserve currency, which permits the U.S. to sustain a world empire without paying the price—again, for now.

Ironically, beginning tomorrow, the Federal Reserve is going to stop publishing a critical statistic that gauges the inflation of the money supply, known as M3. Now, I know that most of you out there reading this are thinking, so what? Why should I care about some obscure statistic only important to academics? Well, you should. Without going into a 10 hour class on the economics of money, banking, and currency, let’s just say that if you value the strength of the dollar, and are concerned that it will still be worth something tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year, then it is absolutely critical that we keep track of all the factors which help us to measure its value. M3 is critical to the measure of inflation. If you don’t like inflation, and want to do something about it, then we must measure M3.

Coincidentally, Downsize DC is organizing a “contact your Congressman” campaign to get some support for a bill that’s being introduced by none other than the Honorable Ron Paul (R-Tx, Former LP candidate for President) to force the Federal Reserve to continue reporting this figure.

I would encourage everyone to go over there and drop a line to your congressman to get them to support this bill. You may do it here .

Read the article. Send a letter. What could a be more simple way of doing something for liberty today?


...Oh, yeah… and here is another excerpt from the Rockwell article. Enjoy!

The paranoia of the Bush circle has infected the whole regime. The entire government—elected officials, appointed staff, permanent bureaucracy—has shifted in the last decade from pretending to be the people’s servants to admitting that they regard the people as a threat. Thus do we see the stream of legislation permitting ever more powers to spy, confiscate, and jail without trial.

Never has sociologist Franz Oppenheimer’s view of the state been more clearly on display: it is there to dominate, exploit, and protect itself against any challenges to its power. It clings to power like Gollum holding the ring. And that power is deployed not for the purpose of protecting people but for protecting the state and its interests. When Oppenheimer theorized in 1908 that this was the true nature of the state, he was shouted down and pilloried for denying the doctrine of government as a social compact. Now his claims read like a description of the day’s political news.