Weimar Republic 2.0: The Obama Version. The Rentenmark, Glenn Beck, and The Future.

  This is a repost of a post I wrote almost exactly a year ago.  Glenn brought this up again a day or so ago, and I agree that this is all very likely.   Here is what he said on his radio show:

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/46725/ 

“PAT: And they seem to be setting up exactly what happened in the Weimar Republic to finally turn that situation around.

GLENN: Yes.

PAT: And that's after the hyperinflation, what saved Germany? They valued land. They went to a land standard and that's what -- they burned the rest of the money and they based it all on land and what is the Federal Government doing here now? But taking over all our property.

GLENN: They're taking the property. They're --

PAT: 98% of all new mortgages.

GLENN: They've got all -- 98% of all new mortgages are underwritten by the Federal Government. You will become a renter to the Federal Government. If there's any way you can pay off your house, you should pay off your house. And I know people will say that's nuts, but I'm telling you, you've got to own things, because that is what they did in Weimar. They just took it. I don't know if you're going to be able to keep it. We've never been in this situation before. Very few countries have and none of them have come out the other side. That's how dire this situation is.”

 Who Owns The Land in the United States, what is the Rentenmark?

The United States Government owns 30% of all land in the United States right off of the top (see map).  But more than that, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own half of all outstanding mortgage debt or about $6 Trillion worth.  Harder to get a handle one is how much of the still remaining mortgage debt is owned by banks that by virtue of receiving TARP money are run by the Government.  If the bank that you owe your mortgage payment to is run by the government then your mortgage is basically government owned.   The States also own land, one of the guvernator’s ideas in Caulifornya was to sell State parks to the Fed.  As State budgets get worse there may be more who start to think that is a good idea. I think it would be safe to say that very near 50% of land in this nation is owned by the Feral Government. So? In 1914 Germany abandoned Gold as the backing for their currency (we did it in steps finally abandoning it completely in the seventies) and began printing money based on “Trust” in the Federal Government (like the dollar) this was called the Papeiermark.    After WWI Germany was forced to pay reparations to the rest of Europe.  To pay their debt they printed money…well like we are.  This caused inflation to be so horribly bad… well here was the joke: “Grandma put her money in her grocery basket to go to the store, a mugger stole the basket and left the money.”   Soon this currency was totally worthless (this is what happens when you put your trust in the government). Along came Hjalmar Schacht.  He was basically the Hank Paulson/Tim Geithner  of Germany.  What the Germans did to get their currency under control was to create a new currency, the Rentenmark.  The new Rentenmark currency was based on Real Estate.  Horace Schacht mortgaged all the land owned by Germany and created money with the mortgaged land. He sold the German land.  He mortgaged the house.  He sold the farm.  My personal opinion of Schacht was that he did what he felt he had to do given the situation he was placed in.  It did work, but at what price? So…Germany owned a lot of foreign countries a lot of money…and they printed money as fast as they could…to pay their debt…causing their money to be worthless…so then…because they already owned a lot of the land in the country…they mortgaged all the land they owned…and made new money. Hey wait a minute… we are printing money fast enough to make ink worth more than oil…and we owe foreign countries a lot of money…and our country owns nearly half of land and homes in the country… hmmm Beck mentioned this whole scenario on his show one day a month or so ago and I have read up on it since then. My previous theory was that he would run our debt up so much we would go into a world bankruptcy court and and as a condition of accepting a world currency and losing stature in the world our debt would be written off. Obama would sell a Global Currency and Global Government to the American people by saying that we are so screwed we HAVE to accept the global currency, .  But this is even more plausible. Using this idea it also begins to make sense why we have laws preventing oil drilling even though there is a lot of oil left in our country we are just sitting on.  Ditto for coal mining, and many other resources.  IT MAKES THE LAND WORTH MORE. It has to be something similar to this, because no group of even marginally sane individuals could spend the kind of money they are spending without any thought to what will happen. Not that our politicians are sane. So what is the worst that could happen.  Zimbabwe could happen that is what.  All of the information is readily available so here is what happened in a nutshell. In the 80’s and 90’s despite droughts Zimbabwe had a decent economy.  It was largely agricultural but the country also had large mineral deposits which were lucrative.  They had adequate electricity and transportation was good.  Then the new ruler of the country decided to “spread the wealth around” and take all the land from the producers and give it to local “oppressed” people and the agricultural output fell over 50%. To help the problem the Government created they began to regulate, well, everything. As a result “Atlas Shrugged”  Now they have to buy electricity because they cannot fix their equipment.  Foreign investment is gone.  Interest rates are well north of 200% (fantastic but true) and unemployment is around 80%.  It is the Obama model.  It is the change I believe they believe in.

-Kook

Rachel Maddow “Paying” for Tax Cuts

Tonight on The  Rachel Maddow Show[to Ezra Klein]:

“On the issue of deficits do-does the base, either,  as articulated, through the tea party movement, or not, care enough about deficits that proposals like Marco Rubio’s, like all of these other, er ah um ah, candidates who are proposing BIG TAX CUTS WITHOUTH PAYING FOR THEM…”

[insert furious profanity filled arm flailing rage here] WTF?! Paying for what….So, the government could not possibly function with out all of the current taxes we have levied against us as of right now? We would run up the deficit if we didn’t pay for a tax cut….a “paid for” tax cut is NOT AN EFFIN’ TAX CUT!!! It is a….what in good gravy’s name would you call that?!?  It’s a shift, a tax shift from one group or business to another.  To “cut” implies some sort of removal, not exchange.  An exchange would result in no real cut at all.

This is some sort of “Freudian Admission”,(I think I made up a new phrase) where people who are incredibly ignorant of reality say something that to them is non-controversial and perfectly logical which spins rational knowledgeable logical humans off in apoplectic fits of slack jawed rage.  They do this all the time.

For a person who has a freaking PhD in Political Science this is utter willfull denial of all rational political reality, as proven by history.  Raising taxes while simultaneously increasing spending, no matter what group you shift the weight of the tax burden to, will a) LOWER actual revenue, and b) increase the deficit.

No, Maddow, and all her cohorts,  are in complete denial of the Laffer Curve,  and History. 

According to their theory of how the world works, you can NEVER reduce government spending, unless it is on the Military, and you can NEVER actually lower the effective tax rate across the board, and yet they somehow think that by raising taxes and raising spending we can lower the deficit.  Which of course, you know, you could, if you could remove human nature and incentive from the equation.

But here in the real world the only way to reduce the deficit is to simultaneously reduce SPENDING and raise Revenue…which history has proven to be accomplished by lowering the tax rate below the tipping point as illustrated by the Laffer Curve.  It seems to me that the T.E.A party movement is all about tax and spending cuts.  Cut Spending and Cut Taxes, or you know, Reaganomics.

Well, I got that out of my system,

C.L.

I guess I should add a post script to explain who this mystery guest blogger is: I am the cousin of the KOOK

Liberal Myth: Defense is Biggest in Federal Budget

I get so tired of hearing this.  Here is a chart I whipped up using a table I got from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2011/assets/hist03z2.xls.

I left out the Housing and Finance line items along with the post office because I could not make heads or tails out of that, serious book cooking going on there apparently.  Everything else looks extremely straightforward on this table.

Comparing 2008 (the last year of the Evil Bush, surely a year in which the warmongering Bush would have let little old ladies and children die to fund his thirst for blood) to the estimated 2010 final numbers; here is how it breaks down in Millions:

Social security edges out National defense for the last four years (actually going all the way back to 1993)  But that is not the whole story. 

Once you add all the Health and Human services budgets up, and even throwing the VA in with the Defense Budget here is how they stack up.  HHS is Social Security, Income Security, Medicare, Health, Education, Training, Employment and other Social Services.  Defense is National Defense and Veterans Benefits.  All other is Transportation, Administration of Justice, International Affairs, Natural Resource and Environment, General Science and Space Technology, Government, Community and Regional Development, Agriculture, and Energy.

So not only is our HHS outlay about three times that of our Defense Budget, but as the chart clearly shows all spending has went up appreciably since 2008, even defense. 

There is just no way to get around that…as long as you believe Whitehouse.gov numbers.  Which I don’t.  I am willing to bet it is much more money, and skewed much farther towards ‘benefits’

-KOOK

Deconstructing our Progress to Communism Pt. II – Commerce Clause

   We the People are engaged in a battle over our future.  Are we going to remain a Constitutional Republic, or are we going to devolve in a communistic tyranny ruled by a politburo of non -representatives elected through sham elections like Iran, Cuba, Russia, or Venezuela?   Yesterday the focus was on the faulty premise that the “General Welfare” clause allows congress to legislate anything and everything under the sun.  Today’s focus is on another clause that our current would-be Kings and Queens in Washington think gives them the power usurp all authority reserved to the states or the people.  The “Commerce Clause”, Article I section 8.3 which reads:

[the congress shall have power…] “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes”

The part of that statement which so much debate has been centered upon is “To regulate commerce…among the several states." Luckily we do not have to be confused as to what the framers meant, as they clearly laid out their intent in their writings.  reading their correspondence, there should be no debate at all what the proper understanding of those words should be. But as was pointed out yesterday, the small minority of our non-representatives who would hazard a guess as to where their unlimited power is derived from, will likely quote this clause.
Indeed Speaker Pelosi issued a press release on her website in September 2009 where she expressly said just that: Health Insurance Reform Daily Mythbuster: 'Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform'

“…  But the Constitution gives Congress broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce.  Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production. Since virtually every aspect of the heath care system has an effect on interstate commerce, the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.”

So according to this widely held interpretation these 16 words nullify the tenth amendment.  IF congress can regulate the commerce that goes on within a state because the prices and availability of a product or service in one state impacts the prices and availability in another, then there is literally no end to what they can control.  How convenient  for them.  This is clearly not what the founders meant. The original intent of the framers is clear.  Madison said to Cabell :

“For a like reason, I made no reference to the "power to regulate commerce among the several States." I always foresaw that difficulties might be started in relation to that power which could not be fully explained without recurring to views of it, which, however just, might give birth to specious though unsound objections. Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it.

Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.”
Allow me to translate into more easily understood language. 
I did not refer to the "power to regulate commerce among the several States."  [in my response].  I purposefully left that part out because I always thought that in the future people would misunderstand the meaning unless it was  put into context.  If not, it would be too easy to extend this power to the same level as the power reserved to the federal government to regulate relationships with other nations.  It is very clear that this language grew out of an abuse of power by states that had ports and harbors against states that did not. The language was intended as a protection to keep one state from harming another by restricting its trade, not as an additional power given to the Federal government over the states; however, the Federal government is the only agency we could give this authority to, and so we did.

   Remember, until the mid 20th century any goods received from a foreign nation were received by ship.  This put States without ports and harbors at a serious disadvantage to states who did.  Imagine Kansas or Oklahoma's vulnerable situation if they had to pay taxes  on every product imported to every state that was crossed en route to the final destination.  imagine a ship from China delivering products to the port in Long Beach, CA en route to Kansas.  California could then charge tariffs to Kansas, and every state subsequently after that could charge both CA, and KS, as the product moved across their borders.  What a nightmare that would be.  This is the reasoning behind the Commerce Clause.  The purpose of the Commerce Clause was to keep this internal turmoil out of trade, to allow all the states to access shipping and receiving points.  This is further explained in Federalist #42, and Madison mentions that one of the reasons for this language’s inclusion into the constitution was because it was a noted weakness of the articles of Confederation as well as several Nations in Europe at the time.
It was meant as a restriction on states from harming other states, not to create an  all encompassing evil overlord Fedzilla government. 
Unfortunately over the years the courts have wavered back and forth on this issue and the most recent passing of the buck by the court has been this:
Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528 (1985),

Of course, we continue to recognize that the States occupy a special and specific position in our constitutional system and that the scope of Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause must reflect that position. But the principal and basic limit on the federal commerce power is that inherent in all congressional action—the built-in restraints that our system provides through state participation in federal governmental action. The political process ensures that laws that unduly burden the States will not be promulgated.

The recent Firearms Freedom laws are set to test this theory, but it is unlikely from the above decision they will. Folks, if we don’t like Pelosi et. al. view of things, we have to vote them out, because the courts are likely going to take a pass on this.  This may be one of the most important litmus tests on a prospective candidate, “what is your opinion regarding the proper role of the Fed with respect to the Commerce Clause”
-KOOK

Environmentalism, Conservation, Animal Rights, & Stewardship

The difference between Environmentalism/Animal Rights and Conservation/Stewardship is that one is espoused by Progressive Politicians, Neo-Hippies, and members of the Glitterati and the other is lived day by day by people with Jobs and Families and Taxes and Bills to pay.

Part 1- Natural Resources Conservation

  Al Gore wakes up in the morning in his palatial estate, no doubt filled with all the opulence and decadence that being the worlds first Green Billionaire can provide, He is driven in his gas guzzling Limousine to his private Jet and flown to his destination where another Limo invariably picks him up for his speech about our Carbon Footprints (whatever that really means).  Meanwhile, Joe Blow gets up in the morning in his 1200 sq. foot house that was built in the fifties and walks to the bus station to get to his job collecting trash on the back of a truck or works in  a recycling business for aluminum cans, or works for a business that converts used oil into a useful product.  Who is actually doing  more for the environment?

  

Environmentalists chain themselves to trees and lie down in front of logging equipment.  Conservationists know that unless the deadfall and diseased trees are harvested they pose a serious risk of spreading fires when a lightning strike happens and choke out new growth.  Environmentalists stage protests and wield megaphones; Conservationists plant saplings after logging an area.  Environmentalists scream save the bison, save the wolves, save the polar bears, save the seals.  Conservationists know that when humans start living in an area that animals are going to have to be controlled, that is part of our responsibility as humans.  In order to control the Bison herds we have to help their population.  Bison do not know that they are supposed to stay in the parks.  They spread, this brings them and the domestic cattle into contact which is not healthy for either side (bison carry diseases that we vaccinate for in cattle, and  yet cattle can give bison diseases that are not normally in a bison herd) 

Everyone loves wolves, but wolves want to eat things.

We control the herd animals that wolves like to eat, so wolves want to eat domestic cattle, so we control the wolf population because if we didn’t they would a) starve and b) get into trouble in towns and cities.

Look at the Mountain Lion situation in California, California in its’ vast wisdom prohibits hunting mountain lions and yet opens up bicycle and hiking paths in prime Mountain Lion real estate.  The result, Mountain Lions have killed several bikers, hikers, and kids in the last decade.  We don’t want the mountain lion to go extinct, but clearly we do not want them eating our citizenry.  We also like for people to have recreation in the outdoors.  It is called Risk Management: you have to weigh the situation out and make appropriate decisions.  If the available habitat can easily support X mountain lions and we have 2X mountain lions in the habitat alongside people, guess what, Kitties are going to eat Folks.  So the solution is remove the people or remove an appropriate number of cats.  California needs revenue and hunters would pay money to take care of their cat problem.  It would be a Capitalist solution.  Or, they can continue to do what they are doing which is to have the fish and game folks to live trap the cat and put it somewhere else or kill it themselves at an expense.  Control the population and make money doing it, or control the population and spend money doing it. Hard Choices.  Of course, if we let hunters do it, there will be people in the  California woods and trails with GUNS, and apparently that is scarier than getting eaten by a big cat.   The more looney of the environmentalist herd believe that the Human population is the one that needs controlled.  Clearly we do have choices to make: We can limit our population, or limit and manage wildlife populations.  I am not willing to kill humans so there can safely be more deer.  That is the difference between conservation/stewardship and animal rights/environmentalism.  

Same deal with Polar Bears and Seals and every other critter.  Common sense management goes a long way.  This is why we have deer seasons, left unchecked deer would become a pestilence and their genetics would seriously suffer.  Hunting is part and parcel of good wildlife management.

Part II- Food Production:

I watched a program on animal production recently and the whole thing made me so irritated that I have not even been able to process it until now.  Let me talk a minute about animal production, specifically Hog and Poultry.  In the old days of Hog farming a farmer turned all the hogs loose out on the open range.  You marked your hog’s ears with a knife so you could sort out yours and everyone else’s later and let them fend for themselves.  The result was that the meat quality was different than we are now used to, and it was a willy nilly business with the genetics being decided by the hogs.  Now hogs are raised in houses and due to improvements in their diet and genetics grow rapidly and can be turned into delicious bacon in a short period of time. Likewise, poultry farming is now a big business instead of something that the Farmer’s wife does.  All of this means that we can feed more people and do it cheaper than ever before.  It also means that since the animals are in close proximity they are a little more susceptible to disease so many times they are given antibiotics in their food as a preventative measure.  This has the Neo-Hippies in a major uproar.

They see the antibiotics as the reason little Billy and little Sally are fatso’s (like me)…and believe it has nothing to do with the preparation of the food or the lack of exercise in Billy and Sally’s lives.  So if you follow the (il)logic:  antibitoics are bad, only necessary because the animals are too close, cramming animals together is bad for their mental well being.  So they propose to make laws requiring a certain space for every animal and to prohibit feeding animals antibiotics.  The Danish have discovered that they can get a hog just a big without antibiotics if they don’t put them too close together and give them more food.  Wel…DUH! of course they can.  The goal is not to get the hog bigger than they would normally get.  The goal is the get them that way Faster, and Cheaper.  People don’t like pictures of hogs and chickens in houses, and yet, they don’t like 8 dollar value meals and 6 dollar a pound bacon either.  Europeans don’t know the difference, their bacon has always been 12 dollars a pound (don’t quote me on exact numbers I know meat is exorbitant in Europe and that is my only point.)

Which brings me to my last point on the Hog and Poultry rant portion of this post.   If you regulate that every hog has to have X amount of living space or Lebensraum (a nice Nazi German word there) that will also translate into transportation space.  Now instead of 100 hogs going to the slaughterhouse in a truck, we will have 25.  Meaning we will need 4 times as many trucks and 4 times as much oil being used.  But that won’t raise prices at all will it?  Remember…we are going to EAT them anyway.

I am NOT saying it is ok to mistreat animals.  I love animals, and when I hunt, I understand that I am killing something, and there is a responsibility when I remove something from the circle of life to do it in a beneficial and humane way.  I also do not want to see an animal made needlessly uncomfortable or injured even right before I shoot it in the head, cut its’ throat,  and cut it up into pork chops and nuggets…but for Pete's sakes it is FOOD.  While researching pictures for this post I found a graph by some Neo-Hippie group that claimed in all seriousness that Vultures kill more Cattle than Wolves and Bears.  Vultures…!  Vultures DO NOT predate on cattle, they are SCAVENGERS…ridiculous.  But other folks will see that crap and take it at face value because they do not know better.

Farmers,  Ranchers, Outdoorsmen, and Arborists have been and continue to do  more to further Wildlife’s wellbeing and Animal Science/Food Production than the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, PETA, or Pam Anderson’s big boobies ever will.  Why do we listen to people who don’t raise animals, and do not live near the wild when it comes to raising animals and managing wildlife?

  Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs says it very very well and I think has his finger right on the issue:

“Like my friends who espouse all things  Green, I want to live on a healthy planet. I really do. But I’m tired of the guilt; I’m suspicious of the manipulation. And I’m weary of being lectured by people who seem to care more about the planet than the people on it. Hollywood and Washington have shaped the issue, and now, all things Eco-friendly are up for sale. Well, that’s fine. But when it comes to jobs, the people who make a difference aren’t covered in green. They’re covered in Brown – dirt, mud, grime, grease, or maybe something worse. I’m no expert, but if we’re going to save the Earth, the color of Dirt makes a heck of a lot more sense than the color of Envy. The way I see it, if we really want to get clean and green, we’re gonna have to get down with brown. In other words, we’re going to have to get our hands dirty.”

Well said Mike, well said.

-KOOK

The First Objective of Business by The Rational Jingo

 I got nothin to add to this, she says it right.

I am about to state something very controversial to the left. The first objective of a business is to stay in business. People do not risk everything they have, often times, to create entities to employ others. They only hire others when they have so much business the only way to continue getting and keeping new business is with additional bodies and brains. It is that simple. To believe anything else, is to engage in utopian thinking.

The left has zero understanding of this. Perfectly illustrated by Barack Obama's own words last week. Obama seemingly never having actually held a job, let alone run a business and has never left the left wing bubble of academia, rabble rousing and the political class.

OBAMA: “Despite the progress we've made, many businesses are still skittish about hiring. Some are still digging themselves out of the losses they incurred over the past year. Many have figured out how to squeeze more productivity out of fewer workers. And that cost-cutting has become embedded in their operations and in their culture. That may result in good profits, but it's not translating into hiring and so that's the question that we have to ask ourselves today: How do we get businesses to start hiring again?”

Let me also call in the words of pied piper of the deranged left, Michael Moore, to get a more thorough understanding of the mindset.

"F##k all these small businesses — f##k ‘em all! Bring in the chains. The small businesspeople are the rednecks that run the town and suppress the people. F##k ‘em all. That's how I feel."~Micheal Moore

Where do you even start with this stuff? The chief reason the left is able to get away with this is that our young people are absolutely clueless and have been brainwashed for most of their young lives to see the government as the source of all good things and private industry as the harbinger of all of life's ills. But it is one thing when it is a 21 year old college student who wants to throw a brick through the Starbuck's window. It is quite another when it is the leader of what is left of the free world saying hopelessly ignorant and irresponsible things such as:

”Many have figured out how to squeeze more productivity out of fewer workers…”

Obama is so completely and hopelessly ignorant of the real world he actually thinks that a businessman adjusting his operations in order to meet changing economic conditions is some kind of trick of exploitation and greed. He actually believes this stuff. What is next? Hiring quotas? Taxes on lay offs and not meeting quotas? 32 hour work weeks? [ok, I lied, I do want to add one thing…this statement is not even rhetorical, it isnt even satirical.  I believe very much that if Big O had his way this is absolutely where we would be heading.  Google “Blue Eagle” and read up on it.  It has been done HERE before.]

People are not hiring because of his administration. They have zero faith that things are going to improve. Some are even closing the doors in anticipation of how bad things are going to get.
These are common sense laws of supply and demand. Calling it the "new" economy, "green" jobs" or whatever collectivist code word is in vogue does nothing to change it. Supply and demand.

Say, I am a businessman, and once I reach a certain level of profit, I can and need to hire help. Employee and I make more money, and we soon reach enough profitability to hire employee #2. In comes Government with taxes, fees and regulations I must comply with. Profit level decreases. Government returns and taxes me even more. Now, I must lose an employee. Government is threatening me with more taxes by promising the country free stuff. I do not replace employee #1 and I think about losing employee #2.

The effects ripple. I am no longer as productive. The guy down the road where I buy product X to make my product Y is getting less orders from me and people in my similar situation. And there are many of us. He makes adjustments and has to reduce his workforce. Like dominoes we all fall.

It's simple, basic, and irrefutable common sense. There are no alternatives. They've all been tried. You can re-label collectivism, repackage it, re-brand it, and      villain-ize free market principles and business all day long but at the end of the day collectivism still fails everywhere it is implemented.

The Rational Jingo: The First Objective of Business

Who Owns The Land in the United States, what is the Rentenmark, and the Zimbabwe Economy.

  The united states government owns 30% of all land in the United States right off of the top.  But more than that, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own half of all outstanding mortgage debt or about $6 Trillion worth.  Harder to get a handle one is how much of the still remaining mortgage debt is owned by banks that by virtue of receiving TARP money are run by the Government.  If the bank that you owe your mortgage payment to is run by the government then your mortgage is basically government owned.   The States also own land, one of the guvernator’s ideas in Caulifornya was to sell state parks to the fed.  As State budgets get worse there may be more who start to think that is a good idea. I think it would be safe to say that very near 50% of land in this nation is owned by the Feral Government.

So?

In 1914 Germany abandoned Gold as the backing for their currency (we did it in steps finally abandoning it completely in the seventies) and began printing money based on Trust in the Federal Government (like the dollar) this was called the Papeiermark.

   After WWI Germany was forced to pay reparations to the rest of Europe.  To pay their debt they printed money…well like we are.  This caused inflation to be so horribly bad… well here was the joke: “Grandma put her money in her grocery basket to go to the store, a mugger stole the basket and left the money.”   Soon this currency was totally worthless (this is what happens when you put your trust in the government).

 

Along came Hjalmar Schacht.  He was basically the Hank Paulson/Tim Geithner  of Germany.  What the Germans did to get their currency under control was to create a new currency, the Rentenmark.  The new Rentenmark currency was based on Real Estate.  Horace Schacht mortgaged all the land owned by Germany and created money with the mortgaged land. He sold the German land.  He mortgaged the house.  He sold the farm.  My personal opinion of Schacht was that he did what he felt he had to do given the situation he was placed in.  It did work, but at what price?

So…Germany owned a lot of foreign countries a lot of money…and they printed money as fast as they could…to pay their debt…causing their money to be worthless…so then…because they already owned a lot of the land in the country…they mortgaged all the land they owned…and made new money.

Hey wait a minute… we are printing money fast enough to make ink worth more than oil…and we owe foreign countries a lot of money…and our country owns nearly half of land and homes in the country… hmmm

Beck mentioned this whole scenario on his show one day a month or so ago and I have read up on it since then.

My previous theory was that he would run our debt up so much we would go into a world bankruptcy court and and as a condition of accepting a world currency and losing stature in the world our debt would be written off. Obama would sell a Global Currency and Global Government to the American people by saying that we are so screwed we HAVE to accept the global currency, .  But this is even more plausible.

Using this idea it also begins to make sense why we have laws preventing oil drilling even though there is a lot of oil left in our country we are just sitting on.  Ditto for coal mining, and many other resources.  IT MAKES THE LAND WORTH MORE.

It has to be something similar to this, because no group of even marginally sane individuals could spend the kind of money they are spending without any thought to what will happen. Not that our politicians are sane.

So what is the worst that could happen.  Zimbabwe could happen that is what.  All of the information is readily available so here is what happened in a nutshell.

In the 80’s and 90’s despite droughts Zimbabwe had a decent economy.  It was largely agricultural but the country also had large mineral deposits which were lucrative.  They had adequate electricity and transportation was good.  Then the new ruler of the country decided to “spread the wealth around” and take all the land from the producers and give it to local “oppressed” people and the agricultural output fell over 50%. To help the problem the Government created they began to regulate, well, everything. As a result “Atlas Shrugged”  Now they have to buy electricity because they cannot fix their equipment.  Foreign investment is gone.  Interest rates are well north of 200% (fantastic but true) and unemployment is around 80%.  It is the Obama model.  It is the change I believe they believe in.

-Kook