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Michael E. Lewitt 2009...

“In other words, monetary policy that kept interest rates low for an extended period of time, tax policy that favored debt over equity, regulatory policy that allowed financial institutions to operate opaquely, and social policy that pushed home ownership regardless of affordability, all combined to create artificial economic demand that could only be financed with debt because the savings (i.e. equity) to purchase them did not exist.” ... “Following conventional economic thinking, the government believes that the solution lies in policies designed to reflate the value of these assets. The problem with this approach is that it is based on the incurrence of trillions of dollars of additional debt to create the demand needed to purchase these assets. Debt begetting more debt is a poor prescription for sustainable long-term economic growth.”

Thomas Jefferson 1802 ...

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Ernest Hemingway, in September of 1932 ...

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."

John Maynard Keynes, in 1920 in the Wealth of Nations ...

"By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose."

George Bernard Shaw ...

"You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the government. And, with due respect to these gentlemen, I advise you to vote for gold."

Ben Bernanke, in November 2002 ...

"The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press — or today, its electronic equivalent — that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost."

"Under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation."

Macroeconomists including Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, have agreed that cheap credit in the 1920s was one of the root causes of the Great Depression

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Privacy&Rights

U.S. Totalitarian Regime A Danger

Could America be slipping into dictatorship? Former Republican Congressman from Georgia and CIA official, Bob Barr, a leading conservative, says he believes there is a real possibility that America is slipping into a totalitarian society and that the Bush administration is pushing the nation in that fateful direction. Former US Rep. Barr said that the PATRIOT Act and its pending re-authorization and expansion were more of a threat to the American way of life than any terrorist attack could ever be.

Meanwhile a coalition of civil rights groups, right and left, are urging Americans to mount an 11th hour rally against PATRIOT Act renewal. With the US Congress expected to renew harsh portions of the Act this week, they are highlighting serious flaws in the new legislation. Hopefully public sentiment and political action will sway enough lawmakers to force changes in the law. The reauthorizing bill contains new, far too broad and expanded surveillance provisions that will unconstitutionally curtail personal freedoms. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights advocate, says Congress should let every sun setting section die. "Several provisions can be used against Americans in a wide range of investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism," the group said in its analysis of fifteen provisions scheduled to expire on Dec. 31. Others, they charged, are too vague, jeopardizing legitimate activities protected under the First Amendment. The American Civil Liberties Union in a statement agreed, calling the joint Senate-House Conference Committee report a "concession to the White House and a curtailment of the Constitution."

You can do your part -- contact your US Senators and Congressmen and urge them to support the Senate version of the PATRIOT Act that curbs the worst excesses of the law. LINK: http://www.senate.gov LINK: http://www.house.gov

Reprinted from Sovereign Society Offshore A-Letter 12/15/05

Privacy&Rights

Bush Tears Up US Constitution

WASHINGTON: As we go to press the US Senate has mustered its collective courage and refused to go along with Pres. Bush's demand that the PATRIOT Act not only be renewed, but made worse. The Bush preferred version gives the FBI unchallenged authority to request business, library or medical records for not only counter-terrorism investigations, but almost anything else. It also allows FBI "national security letters" which the FBI can issue to demand records without any judicial review. The Senate battle will continue this week.

Now comes the amazing news that Pres. Bush signed an executive order more than a year ago authorizing the top secret National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on American citizens in spite of a clear prohibition against domestic spying by that agency. Bush's view seems to be that the US Constitution can be suspended whenever he wishes. The NY Times article that details this presidential usurpation of power is a must read at LINK:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html

Reprinted from Sovereign Society Offshore A-Letter 12/19/05