The latest FOMC statement announced another round of quantitative easing or money creation, without actually using those words.  It said that it would start buying an additional $40 billion per month in mortgage-backed securities (MBS), without saying for how long.  I wrote on this the day the statement was released.

One of the things I touched on was that I thought this might be a bailout for the banks.  I have not seen anything to the contrary to change my mind about this.  Let’s look at it further.

The Fed is going to buy $40 billion worth of MBS each month.  Or is is really $40 billion worth?

After the fall of 2008, the Fed started buying MBS, but they were paying the amount that was shown on the books of the banks.  In other words, the Fed was paying a much higher price than they were worth.

Mortgage-backed securities are essentially many mortgages lumped together.  It is like a mutual fund of mortgages.  When the real estate bubble crashed, starting around 2006, these assets went way down in value because many people were defaulting on their mortgages.

If someone gets a mortgage and makes a down payment in the purchase of a house, then the bank making the loan is usually safe.  They have the house itself as collateral, in case the person defaults on the mortgage.  However, the real estate crash caused a major problem.  If someone took out a loan for $200,000 and the house is now only worth $140,000, then the bank holding the loan is going to take an approximate hit of $60,000 if the person paying on the loan defaults.

In the above example, the bank was still holding the value of the loan on its books at approximately $200,000.  However, because there was a default, the bank can really only recover $140,000 (not counting other expenses and commissions).  But the Fed came in and bought this loan from the bank for $200,000.  The Fed paid the book value instead of the actual market value.

This is a bailout for the bank.  The crash of the real estate bubble and the major defaults on mortgages was probably the primary reason that so many major banks were on the brink of insolvency about 4 years ago.  (I am not including the fact that banks were lending on fractional reserves, which doesn’t help the insolvency.)

So the Fed bailed out the banks and one of the primary ways of doing so was by buying these so-called toxic assets.  It overpaid for these mortgage-backed securities.

So the big question is: what value will the Fed pay now with QE3?  I have seen nothing to indicate that the Fed will pay market value.  If anyone has anything to prove me wrong on this point, please present it.  As far as I’m concerned, the Fed will be buying these securities based on a previous value that is no longer realistic.  They might pay $40 billion for securities in a month that are only worth, say, $25 billion.

The Fed’s primary reason for its existence is to support the big banks.  Its secondary reason is to fund Congress and its deficit spending.  QE3 is being implemented to support the big banks, along with Fannie and Freddie.

It almost makes me laugh to hear everyone debating the reasons for QE3 and whether it will work.  The whole thing is a facade.  The Fed isn’t doing this to help the economy, except maybe in the sense that it is keeping the big banks afloat.

My theory is that the Fed took a lot of heat for the bank bailouts that happened almost 4 years ago.  So instead of calling this a bank bailout, they are just implementing policy to help the stagnating economy, or so they say.  However, the real reason is to prop up the big banks.

Now, I don’t know if the big banks are on the verge of collapse and this is being done to prevent that, or if this is just a way to make the banking executives richer.  But I am rather certain that the main purpose of QE3 is to bail out the big banks.

The rationale for buying mortgage securities doesn’t even make much sense.  Mortgage rates are already near all-time lows.  Is lowering the rate by another half a percent going to really stimulate the housing market enough to significantly affect unemployment?  If the Fed wants to create money out of thin air and stimulate the economy, why can’t it just buy government debt as it has traditionally done?  There is no doubt that there is plenty of it to buy.

In conclusion, QE3 is another bailout of the big financial institutions.  The Fed has pulled one over on the American people.  I do not see this being discussed elsewhere, even amongst libertarians.  While many people understand that QE3 will not work to help the economy and will only make things worse, QE3 will work exactly the way that the Fed intends.  It will help the big banks.

Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are often linked together.  Perhaps it is because they are both older, black, and conservative (at least viewed that way) and they both specialize in economic issues.  In addition, the two of them are friends and speak highly of each other.

As a libertarian, I have a strong preference towards Walter Williams and I always have.  Earlier this year, I wrote a rather scathing post about Thomas Sowell.  I am highly critical of him and I do not consider him to be a libertarian.

I am much more sympathetic towards Walter Williams.

Thomas Sowell is a great writer.  He is often witty and eloquent with his words.  If Sowell has any advantage over Williams, this is it.  That is not to say that Williams is not a good writer.

One major difference is that Williams sticks to his knitting.  He mostly focuses on the things he knows well and can explain well.  He particularly focuses on economic issues.  He also writes about cultural issues in the black community.  I agree with most of what he writes.

On a rare occasion, Williams will wander from his niches and write about foreign policy.  This is where he is weak (at least from a libertarian standpoint).  He doesn’t understand how many problems the U.S. empire creates throughout the world.  He doesn’t really understand the concept of blowback, or at least hasn’t shown that he does.  Perhaps he doesn’t know his history well enough.

I consider Williams and Sowell to be both pro war.  But Williams doesn’t talk about it much, so I can tolerate him.  Sowell wanders off into foreign policy quite a bit more.

But even aside from these issues, I have always had a preference for Williams over Sowell.  Last week, I read an article by Walter Williams that clarified it all for me.  In the article, Williams discusses the fact that the Constitution gave Congress the ultimate authority to tax and spend.  He says that a president cannot spend one dime that is not first appropriated by the Congress.

Williams goes on to stress a point that I often make and that we rarely see in the mainstream media.  He points out that a Republican-controlled House of Representatives controls the purse strings.  He even points out that if the Republicans were really against Obamacare, they could pass an appropriations bill that would deny money for it.

So this is the biggest difference between Sowell and Williams.  Williams is highly critical of the Republicans.  Sowell is mostly an apologist for the Republican Party.  Sowell will criticize Obama and Democrats all day long, but then barely says a harsh word about Bush or the Republicans.  (I say Bush because of the 8 years of damage that he did and the fact that Obama has simply continued most of his policies and spending.)

In conclusion, I will take Walter Williams over Thomas Sowell any time.  At least Williams sounds like a libertarian a good part of the time.  Sowell thinks we can get smaller government by turning to people like Newt Gingrich and other Republican hacks.  Sowell will never learn.  He will keep doing the same thing over and over again.  He thinks this time is different, but we keep getting the same results: bigger government.  Sowell is the definition of insanity.  Meanwhile, Williams understands that the Republicans are a major part of the problem.  He should pass the message along to his good friend.

With the announcement of QE3, gold and silver bulls are excited again.  While most people will not benefit from QE3, it is certainly a good idea to ease some of the pain by owning some investments in hard assets, gold and silver included.

I have always favored gold over silver.  It has more characteristics of acting as money.  Gold is primarily used for jewelry and for investing/ saving.  Only a small percentage is used for other purposes.  Meanwhile, silver is used more as an industrial metal.  It is also used for the purpose of investment and savings, but usually to a lesser extent.

Gold also has an advantage right now in that central banks are tending to buy gold instead of sell it.  It hasn’t always been this way.  But this alone has seemed to put a floor on the price of gold.  If there is a drop, a country such as China will buy some.  Central banks don’t buy and hold silver that I know of.

Gold tends to be far less volatile than silver.  This sometimes gives an advantage to silver in a metals bull market.  But when the crash comes, it comes hard for silver.  We have seen that just in the last few years.

Therefore, if you are going to invest in silver, I suggest a much smaller percentage than your gold holdings, in terms of dollars.  Silver is much riskier and you really don’t need the high volatility.

With all of that said, it would not surprise me to see silver outshine gold in the next few years, assuming we don’t have a big crash.

Aside from its history of higher volatility, there is another reason that I think silver might far outperform gold if QE3 continues.

QE3 will hurt the average American, just as QE1 and QE2 have.  While people like to see the stock market go up, this does not mean that much to the average American.  Most Americans don’t own a lot of stocks outside of their 401k plan.  Meanwhile, more money creation, which QE is, will only cause prices to go higher.

This is going to be a theme that I revisit often.  The average American is hurting.  We may not officially be in a recession, but it doesn’t matter.  I can see it on the street.  I talk to friends and coworkers.  I know how hard it is for people who are employed.  I can only imagine how difficult it is for the unemployed.

The average American is paying more and more each year for medical expenses and insurance.  It also costs more for a trip to the grocery store and to fill up a car.  While the price inflation index is going up only modestly, wages are not keeping up.  Real wages are stagnant or even down.  The average American is having trouble understanding why his standard of living seems to be going down, as long as you don’t count the new technological gadgets.

So what does this have to do with gold and silver?  Simply that most Americans do not have much in savings outside of the equity in their homes (which is far less now) and their retirement plans.  Most Americans do not have much in the way of liquid savings.  So if we hit a mania in the metals market and people think that inflation is getting out of control, they aren’t going to be able to buy gold if they want to.  It will be possible for someone to scrounge together $35 for an ounce of silver (who knows what the price will be a few years from now).  Not many people will be able to pay $1,800 for an ounce of gold.  Even a gold coin that is one-tenth of an ounce will still cost you almost $200 today.

The only thing that might counter my argument a little is the invention of ETFs.  It is possible for someone to invest in gold through an exchange traded fund such as GLD.  They could buy as many shares as they can afford, although it would be kind of crazy to buy just a couple of hundred dollars worth and pay a relatively high commission.

In conclusion, I favor gold over silver for your portfolio due to it being less volatile.  However, because struggling Americans will be able to buy silver coins easier, it would not surprise me to see silver do quite well if QE3 continues for a while.

I recently wrote about the so-called “fiscal cliff” that is supposed to be coming.  I pointed out that tax hikes and spending cuts are completely different, and that spending cuts would actually be beneficial to the overall economy, at least in the long run.

Frank Shostak recently wrote a piece for the Mises Institute.  He also discussed the “fiscal cliff”.  I would recommend that you read his article, if you haven’t done so already.

I do have one point where I have somewhat of a disagreement with Shostak.  I will first get that out of the way.  Shostak wrote, “What about the fact that we will also have an increase in taxes as a result of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts?  To the extent that government outlays are going to be curtailed the increase in taxes should be regarded as a monetary withdrawal from the economy.  In this sense it is like a tight monetary policy.  A tighter monetary stance in this respect should be seen as positive for wealth generators since it weakens various bubble activities that sprang up on the back of past loose monetary policies.”

I think I understand Shostak’s point there.  He is saying that a smaller budget deficit is the equivalent of a tighter monetary stance.  If there is a smaller deficit, the Fed would not have to buy as much government debt to keep rates low.

My area of disagreement is in regards to the Laffer Curve.  Higher tax rates can lead to less economic activity, including labor and investment.  So regardless of government spending, higher tax rates can reduce productivity due to incentive.  If you accepted static scoring and human behavior did not change, then I would agree with his assessment.

Aside from my one point of contention, Shostak’s main point in his article is that government spending is what matters the most and a cut in government spending is good news for the economy.

I think this point is lost on most everyone, including many libertarians.  Conservatives especially do not understand it, or at least do not stand by it.  Conservatives seem to care so much about the so-called Bush tax cuts, yet any benefit from the tax cuts is extremely small compared to the vast damage of the massive spending done during the Bush years.

It is important to understand Shostak’s article.  All government spending hurts wealth generation, except, arguably, if the government spending is protecting life and property from aggression.  Government spending misallocates resources and hurts productivity that will most benefit consumers.

It doesn’t matter if there is a balanced budget or huge deficits.  If government spending is huge, then it is going to have a huge detrimental effect on productivity and wealth generation.  It doesn’t matter if it is funded through taxation or debt or inflation.  Government is spending resources when it spends money.

Think of a group living on an island where they have a finite number of coconuts, bananas, and fishing poles.  If the government there pays someone one coconut, one banana, and one fishing pole in order to  build surfboards, then this would be a misallocation of resources, unless everyone agreed that they wanted surfboards (in which case government action wouldn’t be necessary).  Perhaps, if left to the market, people would have chosen to pay the person to build stronger shelters, instead of surfboards, because that was more important to them.

Again, it shows that government misallocates resources.  And you can see in this example, the government had to seize one coconut, one banana, and one fishing pole from someone else in order to pay for its surfboard program.  It doesn’t matter if the government uses taxation, or inflation, or promises to pay back the food and fishing pole at a later date.  It is spending resources at that time and it is misallocating them.

In conclusion, the main point of Shostak’s article should be understood by anyone who is studying free market economics.  Do not get distracted from the big picture.  Total government spending is perhaps the most important figure, as it alone shows the resources being consumed and/ or misallocated.  The less government spending there is, the more wealth generation we will see.

I shared some thoughts on QE3 on the day that the FOMC statement was released.  Overall, it is bad for the economy.  There may be some short-term excitement with gold and the stock market going up, but it is going to turn into a nightmare.  It is misallocating more resources, it will lead to higher price inflation, and it will prolong the agony.  In fact, it will make the inevitable correction that much more severe.

There was one bit of good news that I saw when reading an article on QE3 on the day it was announced.  I read the first dozen comments or so at the bottom of the article, and every one, except one, was negative towards the Fed.  Even the one exception was not in favor of QE3, but a simple comment from a naive (yet open-minded) reader asking where the Fed will get money to buy the mortgage debt.

Not only were the comments negative towards the Fed, they were mostly well thought out and articulated.  Some people ridiculed Bernanke and the Fed, while others gave more serious input.  But most everyone understood the negative consequences associated with more money creation.  I thought it was encouraging just in the fact that the commenters understood that QE3 was simply more money created out of thin air.

The best news is that this article was on Yahoo Finance.  I am not aware that it was linked by any popular libertarian website like LewRockwell.com.  It was just a standard article talking about the FOMC meeting and statement.

I don’t think we would have seen comments like this 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago.  There might have been a few, but it would not have been the vast majority.  I credit Ron Paul to a large degree.  He has educated millions of people on the subject of the Fed.  I also give credit to all of the libertarians and their educational efforts who set the stage for two successful Ron Paul campaigns (in the sense that millions were educated from his campaigns).

The cat is out of the bag.  Bernanke and the Fed cannot hide.  It is funny that the term “quantitative easing” or “QE” was first used as a technical term for money creation.  Now it seems that Bernanke and the Fed avoid using the term because of its negative connotation.

This is why I think hyperinflation is not only not inevitable, but actually unlikely.  If we start to see any signs of serious price inflation, then there will be a lot of pressure on the Fed to stop.  Perhaps we might see double digit price inflation like there was in the 1970’s, but I can’t imagine that it would get worse than that.  Everyone and their brother who has any understanding of this would be posting messages on Facebook and spreading the word, explaining that the rising prices are due to Federal Reserve monetary policy.  I think the Fed would be too embarrassed to go any further, or else people would start marching in Washington DC.

In conclusion, QE3 will cause more pain down the road for the economy and our overall standard of living.  The good news is that I see some hope for the future.  The Fed can no longer hide.  It has a spotlight on it like never before and it is not going to be turned off until the Fed is no longer in existence.

There are certainly a lot of pros and cons to consider when deciding on whether to try to start a business.  It is hard enough to start a successful business at any time.  During the current economic environment, it is very difficult.

The good news is that we are living during this time when the web exists.  You can accomplish so much more now using the internet.  It actually gives the little guy a chance at competing.

If you are going to attempt to start a business, my recommendation is to start small.  The restaurant business is brutal.  Many other types of businesses are really tough to start, especially when you are competing against franchises.  Instead, you should look for small things where you can develop a niche.  It doesn’t have to be completely unique, but it shouldn’t be something really common either, otherwise it will be too hard to compete with existing businesses.

I don’t recommend taking loans, but I never say never.  I’m sure there are quite a few business owners worth many millions of dollars who started out by taking a loan.  But you better be sure that it has a really good chance at succeeding.  For every one business that is worth millions, there are hundreds of businesses that failed.  In other words, the odds aren’t good.  I don’t say this to discourage people, but only to keep them from taking huge risks that are likely to fail.

If you are going to start a business, try doing it without hiring anyone.  Keep it simple, at least in the beginning.  Invest your time instead of your money.  Even if you have money to blow, you still need to invest the time.  You can spend a few bucks on a website and a few necessary tools to run your business.  But don’t start spending thousands of dollars on something that hasn’t even been tested.

Of course, it is best to spend time outside of your regular job in setting up a business.  Start it small and see if you can get it to be profitable.  You should only quit your day job if you can get your business to a point where it is making you as much money as your job, or at least something close.

There are a lot of things to think through when starting a business.  You need the right idea or product.  You need a way to market your product.  You need to attract customers and actually get them to buy.  In addition to all of this, you need to know some accounting and some basic business skills.  If you do a poor job at any one of these things, then your business will likely fail.

In conclusion, I think it is a good idea to attempt starting a business.  You should understand that most business attempts fail.  Therefore, you should start small.  You should not take out loans.  You should invest time and little money.  You should take small steps each day to work towards your goals.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) concluded its two-day September meeting and released its statement.  The big news is that the Fed is planning another round of quantitative easing (money creation out of thin air).  This is the third round of it since 2008 and is therefore referred to as QE3, although not in the FOMC statement.

The statement contains the usual fluff, so there is no need to go over the entire thing.  I’ll just cover the major parts.

The FOMC stated, “To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at the rate most consistent with its dual mandate, the Committee agreed today to increase policy accommodation by purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month.  The Committee also will continue through the end of the year its program to extend the average maturity of its holdings of securities as announced in June, and it is maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities.”

In other words, the Federal Reserve will roll over expiring debt, but into longer-term securities.  This is a continuation of Operation Twist.

The new base money being added is the $40 billion per month.  In other words, we should see the adjusted monetary base increase by approximately $40 billion each month.

The FOMC statement continued, “The Committee will closely monitor incoming information on economic and financial developments in coming months.  If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability.”

So QE3 is essentially open ended.  But they added the caveat that it is “in a context of price stability.”  In other words, the Fed will keep buying debt to help unemployment and it won’t stop until either there is an improvement in unemployment and the economy or if price inflation becomes a problem.

The FOMC statement also said that the federal funds rate will remain low until at least mid-2015.  That means the rate will be near zero for almost 7 years if they stick to that.

The most interesting part of the whole statement, aside from the announcement of QE3 itself, is how they are implementing it.  They are buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) as opposed to the more typical buying of regular government debt.  But why would this help the economy?  The explanation doesn’t make any sense.  Mortgage rates are already at or near all-time lows.  If a 30-year fixed rate mortgage drops from 3.5% to 3.0%, is that really going to turn the economy around?

Ironically, immediately after the statement was released, the stock market went up, gold went up, and the 10-year yield went up.  The 10-year interest rate is highly correlated to mortgage rates.  So the Fed’s announcement actually sent rates up for a brief time, in opposition to what it is supposed to achieve.  The rate did come back down before the day was over, but bonds did not boom on the announcement the way that stocks and commodities did.

My big question is if the Fed’s buying of MBS will be like it did back almost 4 years ago.  Will the Fed pay the current market value for the securities?  Or will the Fed pay the old value for the MBS?  If it is the latter, then we know why the Fed is doing this whole thing.  It is another bailout of the major banks.  Perhaps the Fed knows something about the banks.  Perhaps it is afraid of the big banks being insolvent and is secretly bailing them out with this announcement.  If anyone knows with any certainty the answer to whether or not the Fed intends to pay the current market value for MBS, please drop a comment.

To put this whole thing in context, QE2 was about $600 billion over 8 months.  If the Fed does QE3 for one year, that will be $480 billion.  But this is still a huge number.  It is over 50% of what the Fed’s assets were back about 4 years ago.  I really believe that this could finally be the start of bigger price inflation.  There is a cost to this destructive policy and price inflation will be one of the costs.

Another anniversary of September 11 has just passed.  Americans have lost a lot of liberty since that time, while the U.S. government has gained power.

There is an ongoing debate about what happened on that day, now over 11 years ago.  Some people think it was an inside job.  Others think that the conspiracy theorists are nuts.  There are a few in the middle and probably a few who have never heard these theories.

There would not be much debate on this in a past era.  The internet has changed everything.  It is because of the internet that we can see some of the footage of 9/11, plus hear competing theories on what may have happened.

The one thing that has always baffled me is the collapse of the buildings.  These buildings collapsed at near free fall speed.  It didn’t seem right that this would happen.  You might expect a partial collapse, but it is bizarre for skyscrapers to fall into their own footprint without planned explosives being involved.

Of course, it wasn’t just the twin towers that fell that day.  Later in the day, World Trade Center building 7 collapsed, which wasn’t hit directly by an airplane.  You can view one video here.  If you go to YouTube and search for “WTC 7”, you will find many different videos, including a few trying to counter the conspiracy theorists.

WTC 7 was 47 stories high.  That is a huge building.  While it was less than half the size of the twin towers, it would have been one of the tallest buildings in many major U.S. cities.  For that thing to fall in less than 10 seconds is incredible.

If you believe that WTC7 came down because of explosives, then this leads to a whole series of questions and answers.  If that is the case, there wouldn’t have been time to plant the explosives between the time the planes hit and the time it collapsed.  This means that some people knew what was going to occur that day, at least a day or more in advance.  It means that some people knew an attack was coming and didn’t try to do anything to stop it or warn people.  Again, it leads to a lot of questions.

I find conspiracy theories fascinating.  I’m sure that some are true and some are not.  But as a libertarian, I’m not sure how much good and how much bad they do.

It amazes me that some people believe that 9/11 was an inside job that was orchestrated by the U.S. government, and yet some of these people are not libertarians.  Some of them believe we should have socialized healthcare.  I have to ask them: So you think that the U.S. government secretly murders innocent people and covers it up and uses it as an excuse to terrorize more people, and yet you trust the same people to provide you with good medical care?

The same goes for the JFK assassination.  Many people believe that it was a conspiracy.  Yet, if that is the case, then there was a coup that day.  There was an overthrow.  It means that the establishment guys at the top did not like where JFK was taking the country.  Could it have been his comment that he wanted to tear apart the CIA?  In any case, why would you believe in such a conspiracy and yet still be in favor of handing over power to these people?

In some ways, talking about potential conspiracies doesn’t do any good and can sometimes move the liberty agenda backwards.  You might persuade someone that 9/11 was an inside job, yet it won’t make him a libertarian.  Plus, there will be many people that will just be turned off at the suggestion that their government could do such a thing.  This will just make them firmer in their beliefs that government is there to help.

On the other hand, I think talking about potential conspiracies with some people might help the cause of liberty.  If you get someone who is open-minded and interested in the subject and you convince him that 9/11 was an inside job, it would probably at least make him more distrustful of his government.  While it may not make him an instant libertarian, it might move him one step closer and encourage him to do more research.

In conclusion, I think libertarians really need to be careful in picking their audiences when discussing conspiracy theories.  It would be interesting if a smoking gun appeared that implicated the U.S. government in the 9/11 attacks.  Would that be enough for Americans to withdraw their consent or would they just blame a few bad apples and continue to clamor for more government help?

Since the fall of 2008, the economy has struggled and unemployment has gone way up.  One interesting statistic that is frequently shown is government jobs.  Since the recession hit, the total number of government jobs has declined significantly.

Take a look at the last page of this report from the BLS.  The second to last graph clearly shows that employment in government has gone down in the last 3 or 4 years.  At the bottom, it says, “Since the end of the most recent recession in June 2009, government employment has declined by 670,000 or 3.0 percent.”

Here is the major problem.  These statistics are referring to overall government employment.  They are combining federal, state, and local.  If you look at the last chart, the total government employment went down from the previous month.  But the top bar shows that federal employment went up.

Back in May, Mitt Romney made a statement that we have 145,000 more government workers under Obama.  He has been criticized by some for this comment.  Some of his critics say that the total number of government workers has declined.  But Romney was technically near correct if he was just referring to federal government workers.  And in reality, that is what the president would have more control over, as opposed to state and local workers.

So while the federal government continues to expand (although perhaps more slowly than in the past), state and local governments have cut back drastically.  What is the reason for this disparity?

There is one main reason and that is the Federal Reserve (“the Fed”).  Since the recession hit, tax collections for governments at all levels have gone down.  This leaves them with a few choices.  They can raise tax rates, but even this may not lead to higher tax collections.  While this has been done by some state and local governments, it also hasn’t worked for many.  People don’t like tax increases, particularly when they are already struggling.  Another choice is for governments to cut spending, which has happened at the state and local levels, at least generally speaking.

The last main choice is to fill the gap by issuing debt.  But this is a problem for state and local governments.  They are limited in how much debt they can run up, whereas the federal government is far less limited.  The federal government can rely on the Fed to create money out of thin air to buy government bonds.  If the Fed did not exist, then the federal government would not be able to continue spending so much money for so long.  It would have had to cut spending by now or else face bankruptcy.

This is why it is so important to end the Fed.  The federal government would be forced to act more like state and local governments.  Sure, it would still do much damage and infringe on our liberties in many ways.  But its resources would at least be somewhat limited to its power of taxation.  It would not be able to run massive deficits and continue spending like we are in a boom.

State and local governments have had a real correction.  It hasn’t happened yet in Washington DC.  It has been prolonged and worsened by the Fed.  End the Fed.

Paul Craig Roberts writes frequently for LewRockwell.com.  He has been really solid on foreign policy and civil liberties from a libertarian standpoint.  Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for his economics.  He reminds me a bit of Pat Buchanan.  He understands some economics, but he makes some fundamental errors that are critical and it ruins much of his analysis.

In his latest article, Roberts writes about the latest unemployment numbers.  He discusses the fact that the unemployment rate is vastly understated, particularly due to it being much lower because of people being discouraged and giving up on looking for work.  So while I have my criticisms of some of the economics, there are some interesting statistics he points out.

Roberts really starts to get off track when he talks about the types of jobs that were created.  Of course, the number of jobs he is talking about (96,000 jobs) is insignificant.  It is practically a rounding error in a country of over 300 million people.  Regardless, he offers his opinion on the types of jobs being created.  He says they are “lowly paid third world jobs”.  He says, “52% of the new jobs created by the American superpower are lowly paid waitresses, bartenders, practical nurses, and hospital orderlies.”

But who is Roberts to say what jobs should and shouldn’t be created?  Is he trying to central plan the economy himself?  If that is where consumer demand is, then the market is responding.  The fact that some of these are low paying jobs shouldn’t matter either.  Unemployment is high right now, so we should expect lower wages to allow the market to clear.  It is supply and demand.  The demand for jobs is high, so we should expect wages to come down to clear the excess supply, which in this case is labor.

Roberts then goes on to make another statement showing his ignorance in economics.  After asking where the remainder of the jobs are, he answers, “A few thousand jobs in finance and insurance, jobs that absorb consumer incomes but produce no product.”

This statement makes absolutely no sense.  If there is no product being produced, then why would consumers spend any money on them?  Are they just not products that he is interested in?  Does he not believe that companies which provide services should be entitled to pursuing a profit?  Does he think that if something tangible that can be held in your hand is not being produced, then it doesn’t count for anything?

I discussed this subject over a year and a half ago.  I referenced an old article by Harry Browne.  Why do jobs have to be in manufacturing to count?  Roberts, and others with the same thought processes, do not understand that this is actually a blessing of the free market.  We live in a society dominated by “services” because we are relatively rich.  We don’t need everyone farming, sewing clothes, and building houses.  These things can be done with a relatively small number of people because of new technology and past capital investment.

Paul Craig Roberts is certainly correct to be concerned about the American economy.  But he should not pretend to know which jobs should be created and what they should pay.  If the free market does not create any new manufacturing jobs, that is because consumers are demanding something else, or else there is no free market (which certainly is the case now).  It means that the manufacturing needs and wants of consumers are already being taken care of, whether it be by other Americans, Chinese workers, or technology.  If it is the case of too much government interference, then the solution is to get the government out of the way.  But nobody should pretend like he knows what jobs should be created and how much they should pay.  That is central planning.