Agenda 21 Materials

Tom Sipos of Hudson Valley Focus interviewed me this morning on WKIP Poughkeepsie talk radio.  The topic was Agenda 21.  Tom asked that I post some links to educational material concerning Agenda 21. Incredibly, there are people who believe that Agenda 21 is a conspiracy theory. As I mentioned on the air, that claim is the conspiracy theory.  Agenda 21 is as real as you and me.

Here are some useful educational links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WmG1txDsVs


http://www.williamsontngop.org/Fighting_Agenda_21/

http://www.republicanassemblies.org/rnc-adopts-resolution-exposing-agenda-21/

http://www.patriotupdate.com/articles/totalitarian-program-agenda-21-now-in-effect#.TocezvLmoXI.facebook http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEEgtOFFlM 


http://www.freedomadvocates.org/research_center/ http://www.freedomadvocates.org/ 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZz1H6TWB5g&feature=related 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuJwQyZ2pHk&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRv6yOWEyTQ&feature=related  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEHWsdimVO4&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEzbQotyu9k&feature=related

http://mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com/2012/07/rosa-koire-speaks-to-town-of-olive-on.html

http://mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com/2011/09/hudson-valley-focus-interview-re-agenda.html

Http://mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-2nd-hudson-valley-focus-interview-re.html

Pancho, Lefty, and the Free Market

Townes Van Zandt

 Someone in my Sunday Introduction to Management class raised the point that the original creators of a musical work are not always the ones who profit. Is this a shortcoming of capitalism?

In response, I mentioned Townes van Zandt. The Wikipedia article about Van Zandt's life is here.

In 1983 Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson made Van Zandt's most famous song, "Pancho and Lefty," a number one hit on the country charts with their Pancho and Lefty album. In contrast, Van Zandt had suffered from bipolar disorder and alcoholism, and he died at 53 in 1997. Mostly touring bars and other small venues, he was little known during his lifetime, although he gained some fame because famous artists, including Bob Dylan as well as Haggard and Nelson, performed his work.

Even if you dislike country music, you'll enjoy these two versions of the song. See if you agree that Van Zandt's version, which appeared in the documentary Heartworn Highways, is better than country giants Haggard and Nelson's.

Haggard and Nelson's version: http://youtu.be/CvdmxszsDM8

Van Zandt's Version: http://youtu.be/zprRZ2wFQD4

Is it a failure of the market system that creators like Van Zandt are often not the ones to benefit financially  from their creations?  Westinghouse, not Tesla, profited most from Tesla's discovery of AC electricity, for example.

It is only the free market system that allows innovation to flourish on a broad scale; even under the Rome-like state capitalism of today's America, artists often do profit to some or a large degree. Could Townes Van Zandt or Jackson Pollock have existed in North Korea or the USSR?

In her classic novel The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand describes the life of an innovative architect Howard Roark, who is modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright.  Roark is not as successful as his less talented but more conformist colleague, but he creates major new concepts in architecture. Like Van Zandt, Roark gradually wins recognition. 

Those who seek profit over greatness may be the ones making the suboptimal choice; only in a free society is the choice to innovate possible.

Turkey's Banking System Begins to Use Gold as Money

Kitco interviews Jeff Christian, who reports that the Turkish central bank now allows its commercial banks to use gold as reserves for deposits, and about 7% of deposits in Turkish banks are backed by gold. Christian believes that other countries will imitate Turkey's move, which he describes as pure genius. Christian is a modest gold bear, predicting a $1540 bottom over the next two years. It seems to me that if banking systems begin to imitate Turkey, monetary demand for gold will be a bullish factor. Christian also predicts a move away from the dollar as banking systems embark on a multicurrency regime.  Over the long run the dollar will slide.  This is going to devastate Social Security and pension payments, leading to a meager old age for the baby boom generation.

My Prediction on the Price of Gold

 I made the following prediction about the price of gold to the German financial website Focus-Money:

The US monetary base has more than tripled in the past six years;*  the large commercial banks can multiply each dollar that the Federal Reserve Bank creates up to tenfold.  The banks’ lending often has been ill advised.  The collapse of Lehman Brothers** and the survival of other large Wall Street firms through public subsidization evidence misallocation of wealth, which has caused income inequality and slowed the free market system’s creative processes. The resultant income inequality and growth reduction have increased demand for welfare entitlements.   Whether, in the short run, there is deflation due to loan defaults or inflation due to monetary expansion, there will be dollar instability.  Recently, the dollar’s reserve currency status and China’s trade policies have mitigated inflation,  but this lucky (for the U.S.) arrangement can change overnight.  Because of public demand for entitlements--caused by injudicious, state-guided economic policies--the US government, like several European governments, is borrowing at an unsustainable rate and lacks the political will to contract its borrowing.  Economic and dollar instability coupled with government’s unquenchable thirst for debt to subsidize entitlements will lead to expansion of the recently created bank reserves to monetize government’s debt.  The result will be depreciation of the dollar and an end to the dollar’s reserve currency status, much like the end to the pound’s role in the early twentieth century.  The ultimate price of gold is unpredictable in dollar terms, and it may go to infinity.  As with many economic phenomena, the difficult question is when my predictions will unfold.

I will say $2,000 in two years, $4,000 in ten years.

  

*http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE/  .

**Larry McDonald, A Colossal Failure of Common Sense.