Abolish the FED. Get the Gold.

Article by Gary North.

Excerpts:

Politicians want to spend lots of money, but they do not want to get blamed for collecting taxes necessary to fund all of the projects that they plan to fund. So, they can go to the central bank, and if the central bank wants to, it buys the debt of the government. The government can increase the amount of its debt, because it has the cooperation of the central bank.

When the central bank increases its holdings of government debt, this increases the nation’s monetary base. When the monetary base increases, commercial banks make more loans. But when they increase loans, they increase the money supply. They expand those loans with fiat money. When fiat money gets into the economy, this tends to raise prices.

As prices rise, individuals decide that the price of gold will also rise. If the price of gold rises, it pays someone to own gold. So, people begin to buy gold. Gold-using producers start buying. The banks find that digital money is flowing in from the buyers of gold, and the gold is flowing out. This creates a crisis, because they have expanded the money supply based on the expansion of Federal Reserve credit, not based on the expansion of deposits by owners of gold coins.

So, when the common man goes down to his bank and turns in an IOU for gold, and he takes his gold coins home, this is a bank run. It is the same when the common man turns over his IOUs to gold to someone who sells gold to the general public. The IOUs’ buyer also presents the IOU to gold to the commercial banks. This is a run on the banks.

This means that the holders of gold coins can exercise a veto over the central bank’s decision to expand its ownership of government debt. This indirectly transfers a veto to the common man over the size of the government’s deficit. If the government cannot sell its debt to the central bank, it has to sell its debt to private investors. This tends to raise the interest rate, because the government has to offer a higher interest rate in order to persuade investors to buy its debt.

The essence of a gold coin standard is the veto. Where should the veto be lodged? Defenders of the gold coin standard say that it should be lodged with those people who use gold coins, or who use IOUs to gold coins in their economic decisions. The defender of the gold coin standard says that the individuals who use gold coins or own IOUs to gold coins are the most reliable people to exercise a veto over the commercial banks, and therefore over the central bank, and therefore over the national government.

[. . .]

I believe in decentralized political authority. I believe that governments are more responsive to voters at the local level than they are at the state or national level. But I also believe that the transfer of economic authority in the form of private property, especially the ownership of gold or silver coins, is more important for the preservation of liberty than the transfer of political sovereignty back to local units of civil government.

People are more careful about spending their money than they are about voting. They spend their money constantly. They vote only occasionally. They spend their money on aspects of their lives that they are closely familiar with. They are barely familiar with local politicians.

So, with respect to that crucial resource, knowledge, it is more important to decentralize ownership than it is to decentralize political power. They both should be decentralized, but if local voters do not have authority over the monetary system, by means of a gold coin standard, their right to vote locally will be compromised politically. The major decisions will still be made by the central government.

[. . .]

If we were to abolish the Federal Reserve System, and if the government would then transfer to American voters of all of the gold presently said to be in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Fort Knox, we would see the restoration of liberty. I can think of no other pair of laws that would transfer more authority to the voters and the abolition of the Federal Reserve system than the transfer of the gold in the form of tenth-ounce coins back to the voters. This is why this essay is hypothetical.

Who are the opponents of such a procedure? First, the Congress of the United States. Second, all the bureaucrats who work for the Federal government. Third, all of the decision-makers of the Federal Reserve System. Fourth, the vast majority of all commercial bankers. Fifth, the entire academic economics profession. This is why we are unlikely to see this pair of laws passed in our generation.

The Powers That Be fear the transfer of authority over money to the general population, because that would transfer enormous power politically into the hands of the people. It would let them veto the spending policies of the Federal government. The fear of that veto is great inside the Washington Beltway.

Every Great Civilization Collapsed the Same Way

Due to diminishing returns on complexity

Video by ‘The Archivist’s Journal’ (7 minutes)

From the transcript:

Joseph Tanter is a historian who’s pretty much spent his whole career trying to identify how all this went down. And he landed on what he calls diminishing returns on complexity.

Every problem Rome faced, they solved by adding something. More soldiers, more administrators, more subsidies, more regulations. Each solution worked, but each one also added a permanent cost. And once you build those systems, you can’t really walk them back. You can’t cancel grain subsidies without riots. You can’t cut the army without losing territory. So, the machine just keeps getting bigger and more expensive every year. And eventually, the cost of maintaining it outpaces what it can produce. 

Gary North disagrees.

Climate Hysteria Update | Tom Woods Show

Interview with James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute.

From the video description:

We cover the “97% consensus” playbook and why alarmists stopped debating the facts, why today’s temperatures are still unusually cold compared to most of the last 6,000 years of human civilization, and why recovering from the Little Ice Age is good news, not a crisis. Plus:

  • Extreme weather truth check: hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, and wildfires — including NASA satellite data showing 24% less land burned since 1998, and 2026’s record-quiet Atlantic hurricane season
  • Trump EPA wins: repealing the Obama-era “endangerment finding” and unleashing American energy
  • Why wind costs 7x and solar 10x more than natural gas when you count full system costs (Rice University 2022), and why electricity prices jumped 22% from 2020-2024
  • Nuclear power, Fukushima, and why the arguments against it are ideological
  • What the Obama EPA actually found on fracking
  • Energy prices and the affordability crisis
  • “Climate reparations” — why cold kills 19x more people than heat, why CO2 at 420 ppm is starving plants that thrived at 1,200 ppm, and record corn, rice, and wheat yields
  • Data centers, AI, water/land scaremongering, and why a low-tech future means China wins
  • Are we winning? Glacier National Park’s still-there glaciers, Kamala Harris dropping climate from the campaign, and that absurd New York Times oyster story debunked

5 Reasons Why the Renaissance Began in Italy

Article by Lily Johnson.

Note in particular point 3: ‘Its city-states allowed art and new ideas to flourish’

Quote: ‘The Medici family had a huge hand in the explosion of arts and culture that occurred in their city, leading Florence to be widely considered the home of the Renaissance itself. Founding the eminent Medici Bank in 1397, the family became valuable patrons to some of the country’s greatest artists.’

That’s just a few decades after the Black Death, which made individuals (those who had survived) much more valuable, thus starting ‘individualism’.

BTW here’s the AI answer:

The Renaissance began in Italy primarily due to the region’s unprecedented wealth from Mediterranean trade, its direct physical connection to the legacy of Ancient Rome, and a competitive political structure of independent city-states.

  • Economic Prosperity: Italy’s strategic location made it a hub for commerce with Asia and the Byzantine Empire, creating a wealthy merchant class capable of funding the arts.
  • Classical Heritage: As the heart of the former Roman Empire, Italy was filled with ancient ruins and texts, sparking a revival of classical ideals known as humanism.
  • Political Competition: Independent city-states like Florence, Venice, and Rome fiercely competed for prestige, while powerful families like the Medici and the Vatican acted as major patrons of artists and scholars.
  • Intellectual Influx: The fall of Constantinople in 1453 brought Greek scholars and classical manuscripts to Italy, further accelerating intellectual and artistic innovation. 

What Climate Science Actually Says vs. What You’ve Been Told It Says

Steve Koonin gives a talk at the ARC conference.

Some guy refutes what Koonin says, to some degree, here.

What the second guy does not refer to is Koonin’s description of how things get ‘blown up’ from science report, to IPCC summaries, to media reports. He also does not refer to the huge increase in young people’s mental health problems caused by climate change apocalyptic talk.

Nobody Goes To War for the Rules-Based Order

Article by J.B. Shurk.

Excerpt:

Are all cultures equally worthy of our respect?  Globalists say, “yes.”

Are all religions equally worthy of our respect?  Globalists say, “yes.”

Are all nations equally worthy of our respect?  Globalists say, “yes.”

Globalists speak of “multiculturalism” as if it were a virtue and equate Western civilization with “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” and “imperialism.” They believe Christians should celebrate Islamic holidays. They believe national borders are “racist.” They believe that anybody who rejects globalism promotes “hate.”