Categories
folly free trade & free markets insider corruption national politics & policies

A $13 Billion Reward

The Federal Reserve, our central bank, hit the news big last week.

Beginning in August 2007 and continuing for the next two and a half years, the Fed lent the world’s biggest banks something like $7.77 trillion dollars at the barely perceptible interest rate of 0.01 percent. With that money, the banks bought Treasury bonds (federal debt) and made $13 billion in profit.

I reported on this multi-​trillion-​dollar loan figure in December 2008, a few weeks after the biggest day ever of Fed bailout fever. For some reason this information didn’t become widespread or understood until this December, when Judge Andrew Napolitano and Jon Stewart made a big deal of it on their respective TV shows, after Bloomberg reported the profits banks made off all that bailout money.

What does this figure represent? To me, it represents the outrageous amount of magic money a sick and corrupt fiat-​dollar/​bailout-​based system of moral hazard requires when it implodes.

I think we can all justifiably roll our eyes, now, when some rah-​rah boy for big government tells us how absolutely necessary it is to have a central bank. The old gold standard never fell apart this badly. The gold requirement itself placed a huge check on out-​of-​control banking.

But a $13 billion reward for the biggest financial mess in world history? That’s the very opposite of a check or balance on risk-​taking, greed, or downright stupidity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Today

Delaware First State

On Dec. 7, 1787, the U.S. Constitution is unanimously ratified by all 30 delegates to the Delaware Constitutional Convention, making Delaware the first state of the modern United States.

Categories
Thought

Marcus Tullius Cicero, who was assassinated on this day in 43 BC

“The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.”

Categories
general freedom The Draft

Following My Conscience

In 1984, twenty-​seven years ago this very day, three FBI agents pushed their way into my North Little Rock, Arkansas, home and placed me under arrest.

My crime? Violating the Military Selective Service Act — that is, absolutely, positively, publicly refusing to register for the military draft. (I’d have resisted civilian service just as ardently.)

Some folks might call it dodging the draft. But not so — I met the draft head on, and in the great spirit of civil disobedience, I resisted.

Of course, there was no actual draft of young men into the military, simply a bureaucratic and regimented preparation for conscription. Seemed like the optimum time to let Uncle Sam know not to plan on me.

Rest assured, had the country been attacked I’d have been there lickety-​split. It was not the military or defending the country to which I objected; it was doing it as a conscript — a slave — rather than as a free man.

I expressed my rationale in detail in several of my writings below, from 27 years ago as well as more recently. But my view was and remains neither radical nor alien, tracking, as it does, with what Ronald Reagan said in 1980: “The draft or draft registration destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.”

As is par for the political course, it was Mr. Reagan’s Justice Department that prosecuted me for continuing to stand up for those “values.” U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, today a presidential candidate, testified on my behalf at trial.

At the trial, the prosecutors freely admitted they had every stitch of personal information the government needed the better to spit me out a draft notice should they decide to conscript young Americans. They lacked only my signature on the form.

But that is what they wanted most: my acquiescence. The law said I must “present myself and submit” to registration. I had not submitted to it; I would not — could not in good conscience do so.

At 24 years of age, with wife and an eight-​month old daughter, it was certainly a bit disconcerting to begin my adulthood, my career, as a felon. Moreover, to take that risk simply on the principle of the matter, that conscription is un-​American, a totalitarian idea, and not because I was actually threatened with being drafted.

Had I wished not to serve, I could have signed up only to refuse to go when the draft notice arrived … or I could have quietly refused to register, and faced no threat of being prosecuted. But my goal wasn’t to personally escape the draft. It was to prevent the draft from coming back, to prevent the damage the draft does to our freedom and our country by enabling a foreign policy of acting as the world’s policemen.

Some disagree with the politics of my stand. They have a right to their opinion. But I think that what we ask of everyone should be to do what they believe is right. Not to be a silent spectator, but to speak up and, when necessary, to take action.

In the end, I was convicted and served five and a half months in a Federal Correctional Institution. For better or worse, the “correction” didn’t take.

And never for an instant have I regretted doing what I thought was right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

further reading:

Why I Refuse to Register, 5/​17/​1985

Draft the Congress and Leave My Kids Alone, 12/​28/​2003

Americans Gung-​Ho to Draft Congress, 1/​4/​2004


Categories
Thought

Daniel Webster, remarks in the U.S. House, Dec. 9, 1814

“Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it? Forbid it, Almighty God!”

Categories
Today

13th Amendment Ratified

On Dec. 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, officially ending the institution of slavery. It reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The ratification came eight months after the end of the Civil War.