By releasing your finger from the screen, the bird falls. The goal is to weave the pixelated bird into the opening between pipes. How does this apply to the Fed? Much like the bird deals with upward and downward pressures, so do banks under the traditional open operation method. The Fed buys assets, applying an upward pressure to interest rates, and sells them to apply downward.

The Fed is the player of Flappy Bird, tapping on the screen to move the bird the Federal Funds Rate or letting go selling assets to let rates fall.

We can apply a similar analogy to understand the new Federal Funds Rate mechanism post The mobile video game for this mechanism is called Geometry Dash.

Another game adored by younger generations! The point of this game is controlling a square, and tapping the screen as it runs along a horizontal map, jumping over obstacles. Now this may seem similar, but the trick is the arrangement of this map.

The game forces the cube to run along the bottom of the map and hop upwards to avoid obstacles. The floor that the cube runs along provides a lowest point that the cube can be at.

This is like the floor provided by interest on reserves. The cube is the interest rate, and it must rest above and cannot go below the interest on reserves. It can go higher at times, but it has a floor to run along. It is easy to criticize the Fed based upon talking points.

It is another thing to understand how it works. The Fed has an immense effect on the economy, and we had best understand it. That involves understanding the tools it uses to play surgeon with the economy. While they change over time, we can properly understand with a few analogies and some careful analysis.

Thursday offered a remarkable contrast between the two world leaders. Tucker Carlson released his much-anticipated interview with Vladimir Putin on alternative media hours before Joe Biden addressed the White House press on the question of whether he is a senile man suffering from significant Tucker Carlson released his much-anticipated interview with Vladimir Putin on alternative media hours before Joe Biden addressed the White House press on the question of whether he is a senile man suffering from significant mental decline.

On the one hand, Putin is one of the few guests that made Carlson seem, at times, out of his depth. The Russian president started the interview by responding to a question about the outbreak of the invasion of Ukraine with 1, years of Russian history.

In comparison, the American president confused Egypt with Mexico. In many ways the two men were fitting illustrations of their two nations. Putin, a strong autocrat, was composed and confident. In Biden, the American people were offered an angry and weak man being propped up by evil and desperate people by any means necessary.

The differences between Putin and Biden, however, are low-hanging fruit. What is more interesting is the similarities between the two world leaders. Putin, in particular, has developed one of the best online PR campaigns of any modern leader.

Before there was God-emperor Trump, there was macho, bear-riding Vlad: champion of Christendom, sworn enemy of the degenerate West, and the very embodiment of nationalist fervor that globalist elites despise. This projection from the very online, anti-regime right has always rested on insecure foundations.

While the Russian government condemns these facts while US officials often seek to normalize them, international branches of their official state media RT has had no problem elevating leftist narratives abroad.

Putin feared Western aggression, so he attempted to take Kyiv. Ukraine belongs to Russia because of its history. The entire notion of a separate Ukrainian identity is a fiction. They are a family, separated simply due to past failures of the Russian state, failures that Putin is now able to rectify.

Those who are slaughtered as a result are simply the costs of a family reunion. In their books, the people of the South were traitors that deserved to have their cities burned, economies devastated, and their right to self-governance stripped from them for years after the Civil War.

Biden has not yet launched cruise missiles into Texas, but he has threatened to bomb Texans with fighter jets paid with their tax dollars. Another commonality is the desire to erase historical figures that are inconvenient to the aspirations of imperial capitols.

This, of course, meant fighting on the side of the Axis. While there are hours of podcast fodder to be had debating the merits of the service provided by Ukrainian soldiers in the s, what really matters is the question of what de-Nazification means in as a condition for peace in Ukraine.

To his credit, Carlson pushes Putin on this point. While the Russian president failed to provide a clear answer, he seemed to favor similar approach to how Germany addressed its history — and how the left has treated the South.

This means the removal of any public displays or celebrations of historical figures that stand opposed to the victorious, conquering forces. Putin can no more stand a statue of Stepan Bandera than Joe Biden can allow a celebration of Robert E.

The plight of Ukrainian nationalists is one of the great tragedies of the war. On one side is an invading military that seeks to eradicate its existence. On the other, a Western-back government that aspires the cultural homogenization that is a key characteristic of the American empire.

Both Moscow and Russia are motivated by their own form of imperialism. While Washington tries to depict Putin as a cartoonish villain, a modern-day Hitler or worse, a more fit Donald Trump , in reality, he has a lot more in common with the most competent and entrenched figures of the American state.

Neither care about democracy or elections and will lock up political opponents if they become a real threat. Neither have any respect for nationalism or political self-determination if it thwarts their political ambitions. A combination of limited housing supply and increasing demand over the past few years has caused mortgages and rent costs to explode.

The Montana Miracle was a series of radical market-based zoning reforms proposed in that would have revolutionized the housing market by allowing denser developments, and reduced housing prices. The TV series Yellowstone and COVID made us a destination for political refugees and people looking for a trendy place to live, increasing demand by approximately 40, more people in only 3 years.

This paradigm is destructive and contrary to our historical values. For the next generation to access the American dream, we will have to once again prioritize the dignity of low income and young people. During the progressive era, however, America returned to the pre-enlightenment view without a clear intention to discriminate against low-income people.

The creation of HUD attached federal funds to zoning, pushing the ideas across the nation. During the push to secure the Montana Miracle, I spoke in front of hundreds of conservative grassroots activists from around the state to persuade them to support this effort.

I found the same two types everywhere I went: folks who opposed it because of their interest in keeping the housing supply limited and people with a coherent freedom philosophy that harkened back to the values of empowerment. The latter did not see young and low-income people as a threat to their prosperity, but as the future.

This is the culture we must encourage. To overcome rent-seeking, the housing reform movement must articulate the empowerment values of dignity and equality for young and low-income people into the larger culture.

The dream of home ownership and the promise of a better life can become a reality, but it will require a cultural values shift, a more robust property rights philosophy, and more than just code change.

We must return to the values that created our great enrichment to enable the American dream for the next generation. Since the horrific atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli civilians on October 7, , Israel has been engaged in a devastating military operation in the Gaza Strip.

Over 25, Palestinians The government of South Africa has filed an application with the International Court of Justice ICJ charging Israel with the crime of genocide.

There are two basic positions on this issue held by Americans. One is that Israel is justified in doing whatever it takes to eliminate Hamas in Gaza. The other is that, while Israel has a right to self-defense, it must exercise that right in accordance with international humanitarian law.

The only view compatible with the foundational ideal of libertarianism, the non-aggression principle, is the latter.

There is also the popular trope that Israel benevolently ended its occupation of Gaza in only to come under repeated attack by Hamas. But while Israel withdrew military forces and settlers from Gaza, it has remained an Occupying Power by virtue of its continued control of the strip.

Israel responded by assassinating him. Nevertheless, Hamas repeatedly reiterated its truce offer thereafter while also engaging in the political process by participating in municipal elections in In , though winning only a plurality of the votes, Hamas defeated Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority PA President Mahmoud Abbas, in parliamentary elections.

In response, Israel colluded with the US and Fatah to overthrow the elected Hamas-led government. That effort failed , resulting in Hamas taking total control of Gaza while the PA remained in power in the West Bank.

For over half a century, Israel has defied international law by maintaining a belligerent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that UN bodies and international human rights organizations have in recent years described as an apartheid regime.

Indeed, it should hardly be controversial to state that Israel exists as a Jewish supremacist state. To demonstrate this, it suffices to observe that the Jewish National State Law passed in literally defines self-determination in Israel as a right exclusive to Jews. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also long maintained a policy of utilizing Hamas as a strategic asset to block movement toward peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

The Palestinians would neither have equal rights as Israeli citizens nor independence in a state of their own. They would just have to accept their total defeat and indefinite subjugation.

As President John F. Self-described libertarians are in the meantime obligated by the non-aggression principle to oppose indiscriminate attacks on civilians regardless of the ethnicity or nationality of either the perpetrators or the victims.

Supreme Court rulings from the early s in order to enable prosecutors to convict people of crimes even though they did not break statutory law. According to the According to the New York Times :.

In convicting Jennifer Crumbley of involuntary manslaughter after her then year-old son Ethan Crumbley killed four fellow students and wounded several others in a school shooting, using a gun that his parents legally purchased for him, the jury urged on both by the prosecutor and the judge vastly expanded criminal law using common-law mechanism.

This overturns long-held policies by both state and federal governments to leave criminal law as statutory:. Criminal Law, though, has not been a true common law subject for many years. The Supreme Court, for example, announced almost years ago that there are no federal common law crimes.

As a result of the nineteenth century codification movement, every American state has for decades accepted the notion of legislative supremacy in Criminal Law-the idea that legislators rather than judges should create and define criminal offenses.

As I will point out in an upcoming article that takes an in-depth look at this case and its implications, Jennifer and James Crumbley were neglectful parents and they made numerous errors in judgment in how to deal with their troubled son.

They also are Trump supporters, which further casts them into a category of people progressives believe should be denied basic rights. However, neither of them broke any statutory laws with the gun purchase for Ethan or how they stored it in their home.

Nor did they break the law or defy medical or legal directives in their interactions with Ethan. Bad parental judgment is not necessarily illegal. If it were, most of us who have reared troubled children would be in jail.

Instead, jurors decided that Ms. In other words, government officials had both information and the legal authority to intervene but chose not do so, yet the mother is the one going to prison for many years while no government official will lose anything. The father, James Crumbley, is scheduled to go to trial next month.

We can add that the same political ideology that encourages progressive prosecutors to neglect existing law will encourage them to use criminal law to go after anyone who falls on the wrong side of the leftist political spectrum.

One can hope that the appeals courts or SCOTUS will see this verdict for what it is and overturn it, but given that US courts are as politicized as the rest of society, it is doubtful that they will do their duty.

But, as Murray also taught us, we have to decide how to cope with current realities to best advance the cause of But, as Murray also taught us, we have to decide how to cope with current realities to best advance the cause of liberty.

Right now, the big danger comes from brain-dead Biden and his gang of neocon controllers. They want to gain control over the entire world. How do we stop them? One tactic that can be very useful in doing this is to stress certain parts of the Constitution. The federal government possessed only limited and carefully enumerated powers.

Some libertarians object to this. They point out that only individuals have rights, not states. The President of the Mises Institute, the great Tom DiLorenzo, explains why not:. That vehicle, in the Jeffersonian tradition, is political communities organized at the state and local level.

That is how the people were to monitor, control, discipline, and even abolish, if need be, their own government. And how were the people to achieve this?

They were to achieve it just as they did when they adopted the Constitution, through political conventions organized by the states. The states, after all, were considered to be independent nations just as England and France were independent nations.

See this. That is why the political heirs of Thomas Jefferson, midth-century Southern Democrats, held statewide political conventions and popular votes to decide whether or not they would continue to remain in then voluntary union of the Founding Fathers. Article 7 of the US Constitution explained that the states could join or not join the union according to votes taken at state political conventions by representatives of the people not state legislatures and, in keeping with the words of the Declaration, they also had a right to vote to secede from the government and create a new one.

He saw in this concept a necessary bulwark for liberty. He said this in a letter he wrote to Robert E. Lee after the War Between the States:. The institutions of your Republic [i. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics.

Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

Read the full article at LewRockwell. A rare instance of an unexpected consequence of a bad policy advancing liberty is the growth in private schools enrollment and homeschooling that occurred as a result of the covid lockdowns.

An October study by Eloise Burtis and Sofoklis Goulas of the Brookings Institution found that An October study by Eloise Burtis and Sofoklis Goulas of the Brookings Institution found that 79 percent of American school-age children were enrolled in government schools in the school year, down from 84 percent enrolled in government schools in The decline in children attending government schools accelerated because of the lockdowns, and enrollment in government schools continues to decline.

Other researchers have found similar results. In October of last year, the Washington Post reported that since before the covid lockdowns there was a 51 percent increase in homeschooled children.

The lockdowns served no public health purpose. In fact, the social isolation imposed on children by the closures of schools and even playgrounds did more damage to children than covid ever could.

However, the lockdowns did have a long-run benefit by increasing the number of parents rejecting government schooling. The school closures allowed many parents to see for themselves the problems with government-controlled education. Parents were horrified to witness their children logging on to Zoom and then being force-fed woke propaganda instead of receiving a quality education.

Parents realized they had a choice: either allow their children to continue to receive an inferior education or seek out an alternative that would provide their children a quality, woke—free education. Many parents were inspired to seek alternatives to government schools when teacher union officials used their political clout to keep government schools closed even after most business and government offices were open.

It turns out that actions of Dr. Parents looking to provide their children with a quality home-based education that promotes real learning that does not push a political agenda but does instruct in the history and philosophy of liberty should look into my homeschooling curriculum.

My curriculum provides students with a well-rounded education that includes rigorous courses in history, mathematics, and the physical and natural sciences.

The curriculum also provides instruction in personal finance. Students can develop superior communication skills via intensive writing and public speaking courses. Another feature of my curriculum is that it provides students the opportunity to create and run their own businesses.

The government and history sections of the curriculum emphasize free-market economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of liberty. However, unlike government schools, my curriculum never sacrifices quality education to promote a political agenda.

Interactive forums allow students to engage with and learn from each other and give them an opportunity to interact with their peers outside of a formal setting. I encourage all parents looking at alternatives to government schools — alternatives that provide children with a well-rounded education that introduces them to the history and ideas of liberty without sacrificing education for indoctrination — to go to RonPaulCurriculum.

com for more information about my homeschooling program. But we may also apply it to other sectors of the federal government, including how the government funds defense, conducts a vast system of student loans, or pays the interest on the federal debt.

Consider the cost of the Pentagon, and the related cost of the CIA and the federal intelligence apparatus. Homeland Defense is no different — trillions spent since , and borders wide open, literally uncontrolled in a way unimaginable even 20 years ago.

The US taxpayer via Congressional authorization made this money available, and as it is paid back or not , more tax-funded loans go out. New money flows to all these programs every year, just as the USG seamlessly rolls over old debt for new , with no measurable value is created for anyone except for the government and banking elites running the scam.

This situation has existed and grown worse for my entire lifetime. I may not intellectually accept it, or even understand it, but I bear it along with every other American alive today. But I am curious. Legally, in dealing with an exposed Ponzi, the first thing the courts do is work up a clawback.

Investors, at least the more recent ones, will pay twice for the crimes of others. Most investors in your typical Ponzi are blissfully ignorant until the Ponzi scheme collapses. Most investors are also innocent of major crimes, and are truly considered victims.

In the case of the American taxpayer, long engaged in supporting the federal Ponzi schemes, he or she is ignorant, innocent, and victimized.

Astonishingly, the American taxpayer is, and always has been, unable to opt out of the fraud. When the several interrelated USG Ponzi schemes collapse, and they are moving in that direction rapidly, how will it be resolved?

Who will see a clawback from their more recent dividends and payouts from the schemes? What will be left to distribute? Will they go after people in their 80s and 90s who have collected far more in social security and Medicare than they ever paid for? Politically connected corporations and industries will be protected from clawback by their Congressional dependencies, lackeys and satraps, which is to say, the entire US Congress.

Nationalization of industries, as conducted under FDR and envisioned by every president since, with layer upon layer of executive orders, like this one signed by Obama , is another choice in a case of the USG Ponzi collapse. Inflationary monetary policies are part and parcel of the Ponzi scheme we Americans have been forced to fund.

The inflation tool itself is nearing the end of its useful lifespan. What will come next? I heard the term last week in an old episode of a crime show.

In the book, and the video, Webb explains the coming bankruptcy of the US government, and how its intensely socialized network of connected businesses, banks and beneficiaries plan to deal with it. This is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass.

Included are all financial assets, all money on deposit at banks, all stocks and bonds, and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment, land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property. Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will be similarly taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses, which have been financed with debt.

If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history. Webb has done a huge service to the American taxpayer, explaining how he and she are unwitting Ponzi scheme investors, pseudo-owners, and future victims of the bankruptcy trustees.

This whole project, quietly initiated several years ago, was paused in January as a result of pushback , but the battle in this space will continue.

A US government all encompassing Ponzi scheme is something we should think about and consider. All Ponzi schemes collapse. There are established procedures and predictable outcomes for these collapses. We may like to think that we, as taxpayers, will be able to clawback our ill-fated and wasted investments.

But that is not how clawback works. Webb describes an ongoing hybrid war, where only one side is prepared to win. Living inside a Ponzi scheme on its last legs, we will pay twice for the crimes of others, and we will probably be grateful to get out of it alive.

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