Brock, you can't miss if you say that Jet has a strange childhood. In his comments he usually exemplifies this kind of bitterness that psychologists would normally trace to an early upbringing of a child -- maybe a dysfunctional childhood.  I am not saying that this is true to this personality in question.  Anyone who wants to know can source this in the Internet. Besides, my commitment is not to attack the person of the writer, not matter how tempting it turns out to be.

Cheers!

Lolo

To Ernie,

     This observation you posted attracts my attention because it is a sample of a legitimate response that doesn’t resort to a hammer and tong attack of the emotional on the person of the writer even though you don’t like or against the writer’s opinion [I hope this model is fair enough for others to learn from and follow on how to react to contrary opinions in a civil manner without necessarily indulging in savage name-calling and mudslinging]:

      “Free-Market advocates _know_ that the Federal Reserve isn't a free-market entity. Try to compete with something else (even backed by precious metals) and you'll get a jack-booted understanding of how the money monopoly really works.”

      That the Fed “… isn’t a free-market entity” … [I described lengthily in the articles itself the structural-operational identity of the Fed banks under the Federal Tort Claims Act that they are not], is partially correct, but only to the extent that its governmental functions created by Congress are supervisory and regulatory.

       When profit-motivated greed leads the powerful to control and monopolize the industry, the Fed intervenes using its supervisory and regulatory power to see to it that the market system is free of monopoly. With this required “intervention”, it is the Fed that makes the market free.

This is not even my call.  It is Adam Smith’s.

      Neither is it the call of free market advocates whose struggle is just narrowed down to the pursuit of profit using the Neumann-Morgenstern’s Theory of Games where players strategically cabal to increase their joint pay-off … but rather the call of learned macroeconomists to declare and let the public know the need of the Federal Reserve that implements fiscal and monetary policies – the Central Bank like every civilized nation have, which is the backbone in the grandiose plan for socio-economic development, especially in a free enterprise society like ours. Like the few others in this economic discipline, I would have wasted my time in graduate school if this is not true.

      But any required federal “intervention” was the first shot that attracted Libertarians to a war with any interventionist government.  I should no longer wade into the deep waters of this on-going war on idealism for it would only detour away from the simplest issue at bar as to whether or not the Fed is a public or a private entity.

      It is quite a stale argument for me to hear that our great forebears brought us freedom – a Libertarian battle cry I too cherished. But the argument has forgotten that our forefathers also brought us Government – the kind we chose under the concept of freedom and liberty, that we alone should govern ourselves, not the Crown of England.

      Why our great forefathers needed a Government so different from the rest – especially the kind they forged in the anvil of a bloody revolution – is I think not that too difficult to understand.

      If anarchy is the price of absolute freedom, then we cannot afford to lose our freedom and liberty to anarchy … to disorder and chaos, just because there is no governing authority to pull us through. 

      We may revolt against a totalitarian authority, but it should not be just a revolt against authority.  A revolution just for its own sake, would stir our forefathers in their grave in protest for misinterpreting their legacy of liberty and freedom and exhibiting it only in the museum of the vain and in the spatial void of the mind.

      I would like to respond to a couple of comments that I could not support my position in the published editorial report that the Federal Reserve is a government institution created by Congress.

      Below are the declarations of the high courts that the Fed is government entity.  I want them to know the truth.  I did not make it up.  It is not even mine.

      If upon knowing the truth it created a shock, the outraged should take a deep breath and stay cool.  Barking at the wrong tree usually triggers a high blood pressure right after discovering that it was the wrong tree.

     Peace. 

     Lolo/06/25/09/

Know the Truth

Those who do not want to be denied the truth that the Fed is a public entity, can read the Lewis case.

It is not I but the high courts who said that the Fed is a public, not a private institution, except only when a tort claim is filed against the employee of a Federal Reserve bank, when the Fed regional banks are ruled as private, not public, entities.

Here are the high court cases declaring that the Fed is a government, not a private, institution – the truth that hurts.

Brinks Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 466 F.Supp. 116 (D.D.C.1979), held that a Federal Reserve Bank is a federal instrumentality for purposes of the Service Contract Act, 41 U.S.C. § 351.

U.S. Supreme Court, Dixson v. United States 465 U.S. 482 (1984) 465 U.S. 482. http://supreme.justia.com/us/465/482/case.html 

Under the Federal Bribery Statute, a public official is defined to be liable for bribery.  It is a U.S. Supreme Court dictum superior to any court of the land under the Federal Bribery Statue, which is directly opposed to the 9th Appeals Court’s judgment in Lewis case that a Fed bank employee is not a public official under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

In United States v. Hollingshead, 672 F.2d 751 (9th Cir. 1982), this court held that a Federal Reserve Bank employee who was responsible for recommending expenditure of federal funds was a "public official" under the Federal Bribery Statute.

The Reserve Banks are deemed to be federal instrumentalities for purposes of immunity from state taxation. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston v. Commissioner of Corporations & Taxation, 499 F.2d 60 (1st Cir. 1974), after remand, 520 F.2d 221 (1st Cir. 1975); Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis v. Register of Deeds, 288 Mich. 120, 284 N.W. 667 (1939). The test for determining whether an entity is a federal instrumentality for purposes of protection from state or local action or taxation, however, is very broad: whether the entity performs an important governmental function. Federal Land Bank v. Bismarck Lumber Co., 314 U.S. 95, 102, 62 S.Ct. 1, 5, 86 L.Ed. 65 (1941); Rust v. Johnson, 597 F.2d 174, 178 (9th Cir. 1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 964, 100 S.Ct. 450, 62 L.Ed.2d 376 (1979). The Reserve Banks, which further the nation's fiscal policy, clearly perform an important governmental function. #

Brock,

Childhood?  What ever do you mean, Sir?  I think The Grateful Dead say it best:  "What a long, strange trip it's been."  

Jet, you must have had a very strange childhood. 

Jesus H. Christ. 

I get so sick and tired of these, dare I say 'authors', who post opinions on Freedom's Phoenix that are better suited for (the CFR Journal) Foreign Affairs in order to get a rise out of the readership.  Then, to make matters worse, they bleat like the sacrificial lamb when they get a heaping dose what they are ultimately begging for.

There are many of us that actively try to ignore you, but oftentimes you simply will not allow us to.

Say what you're gonna say and write what you're gonna write, I'm all for that; but for God's sake quit whining like some sad-sack, "woe is me" child that got busted for finger-painting in their own feces. 

 I hope Ernie leaves your article on the Fed, which proclaims that FED is not a privately run organization, on the site in perpetuity. 

Your article serves as reminder of the volume of work that Dr. Ron Paul and others in the movement have to left to do in the name of waking the people up to the profound abuses which presently plague the American people.

Dave