The Alternative

Time to prioritize
     Much is made of the grave threat of Islamic extremism, but an ordinary day in Chicago where handguns are illegal puts Islamic terrorism in its place next to diesel exhaust as a threat to mankind.
     People don’t like to find out they’ve been hoodwinked, so they react to that fact with various versions of disbelief and disgust. They also prefer villains who we can blow to smithereens over solutions where our own people are simply thrown out on the streets. I’ll try to make this information as romantic as I can.
     Our banking system is costing us way more than any of the subjects being addressed in the major media today. Easy money makes for bad decisions. Committees setting interest rates are not as accurate as savers lending money to borrowers without political influence. Defenders of central banks cite political influence as the reason to retain a central bank. The opposite is true.
     As we age we become less able to produce, but our savings can replace that ability by helping the less affluent achieve their dreams through loans. The loans cost money reflecting the needs of the saver to sustain himself and the borrower in potential profit versus risk. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
     This system stops working as soon as politics enters the picture. What would seem like minor details become major disasters when compounded by politics.
     There is no reason for a Federal Reserve System except for sustaining programs that people wouldn’t invest in if they were allowed to govern themselves. Woodrow Wilson’s administration created the Federal Reserve because people valued life over European banks. The Fed printed the money needed to fund our entry into World War I because direct taxation would have created an insurmountable backlash. We still have The Fed because the same is still true. The federal government finds things to spend money on that ordinary people find ridiculous.
     Funding these things through money creation hides the waste by making it appear as lost purchasing power rather than out of pocket expense. Congressmen are smart enough to know this, so they continue to allow The Fed to manipulate our currency (cost of money), so their pet projects will go on and they can claim to be “doing something” that doesn’t cost us anything. Interest rates will not be increased by The Fed because that would stifle economic growth and make the politicians unpopular.
     Saving for the future is now a rarity because low rates mean the value of our savings shrinks. As savings disappear, the capital borrowed by entrepreneurs is replaced by government fabricated wealth. Such wealth doesn’t have the constraints that personal wealth does. It is too cheap and so it is borrowed for projects less viable than if the risk were assumed by the saver or even the saver’s bank.
     Another way money is wasted on foolish projects is because of fractional reserve banking. Most people have never heard of such a thing. A bank can loan 10 times as much money as they actually possess. Try doing that without the law on your side.
     Millions of retirees see their savings disappear. We stand in a line at an airport among hundreds of vulnerable people who are not scrutinized for weapons. Then we are searched before we can get on an airplane with a fraction of those numbers. We wait for the garage door opener because if it worked at a longer distance like it did before the so-called terrorist threat, it could trigger a bomb. We waste billions of dollars on emissions rules that increase oil company profits.
     The enemies we are told to fear by the federal government are small potatoes compared to the federal government itself.
     Please share your thoughts with a letter to the paper or by email to 4selfgovernment@gmail.com. My blog can be fun: www.alternativebyfritz.com.