TEA PARTY ECONOMIST

The TEA PARTY ECONOMIST Ron Paul's original staff economist, Dr. Gary North! Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Gold As Legal Tender for States In a dozen states, there are bills to make gold legal tender. Nothing much will come of this. First, the concept of legal tender is anti-free market. A state should not declare anything as legal tender. It should limit itself to declaring the proper currency for the payment of taxes. Second, most of these bills [...] READ MORE How the Big Banks Stripped Cyprus Clean Before the Collapse The big banks in the eurozone started pulling money out of Cyprus’ banks a year before the ultimatum. They made sure they got paid. Then the European Central Bank announced the ultimatum. At first, all depositors were to take the loss, but the parliament refused. So, they got the big depositors. These were private depositors. [...] READ MORE California’s Mini-Boom in Housing Cannot Be Sustained — Ritholz California’s housing prices have rebounded over the last year. Why? Barry Ritholz, an astute observer, lists the artificial conditions that have caused this. The Federal Reserve system has prompted an enormous amount of money in order to purchase Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds. This initially had the effect of lowering mortgage rates, but in [...] READ MORE Ammo Rationing Is Here Ammunition is in such short supply (at today’s prices) that police departments in east Texas are not able to buy it. Officers are not issued ammunition. They have to buy their own. There is something strange with a market when any item becomes so scarce that rationing is required. Under normal circumstances, the manufacturer would [...] READ MORE Beating Obamacare: Strategies That Work Some businesses are cutting full-time people to part time. Others are going to pay the $2,000 a year fine. Result: no health care insurance. Nancy Pelosi thought she could get health care for all. She got Obama to front the program. He did, but she clearly was the ramrod behind it. It has not worked. [...] READ MORE Mr. Second Amendment: Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America Larry Pratt runs Gun Owners of America. He has run it for almost 40 years. If there is another lobbyist in Washington who has run a lobbying organization as influential as GOA longer than Pratt has, I have not heard of it. Yet the New York Times only discovered his existence recently. It ran a [...] READ MORE The Liberal Newspaper Industry Is Still Dying, But Slower Half of the American newspaper industry reported a revenue loss in 2012 of only 2%. This was reported as a triumph. We don’t know how well the other half of the industry did.. The story said that some newspapers are charging online subscriptions. I know the New York Times is. I don’t pay anything. Do [...] READ MORE Budget: Obama Pretends to Surrender. President Obama’s budget was due in February. It is now promised for next week. Of course, key facts — all favorable to Obama — have been conveniently leaked. The media play along. There will be changes in Medicare that will save $400 billion. Then comes the inevitable qualification: over the next 10 years. This is [...] READ MORE Hopeless Savers: 0.26% on Money Markets The plight of savers in America is hopeless. We know that price inflation is over 2% per year. What do investors get in a money market fund? A pathetic 0.26%. Then they pay income taxes on this 0.26%. What if they do not want to tie up their money for a year? Then they get [...] READ MORE Essay Exams Can Now Be Graded by a Computer College professors love true/false exams and multiple choice exams. These can be graded by a machine. It saves so much time for overworked professors who teach 9 hours a week in the top universities. (Actually, they teach 8.5 hours: ten minutes in each class are for getting to the next class.) Now, this intolerable teaching [...] READ MORE