The Humble Libertarian original

Dr. Ron Paul, who served 12 terms in the US Congress and became famous when he ran on a libertarian platform for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, has been on a rampage this Spring, excoriating both President Trump and the Republican-held Congress on one issue after another. Carol Paul must be putting something in her husband's coffee, because the libertarian firebrand (who turns 82 this year) spent the month of April challenging the political establishment with the kind of gusto and pointed criticisms that gained him a devoted global following when he ran for president in 2008 and set two records for the most online donations in a single day to a political candidate in US history. Let The Shutdown Happen. Forever. On the latest government shutdown drama over appropriations, which has become more banal with each passing year since 1995, Ron Paul accused Congress members of using a dysfunctional policy-making process as an excuse for why Washington keeps spend...

MONEY FOR NOTHING: Inside the Federal Reserve is an independent, non-partisan documentary film that examines America's central bank from the inside out - in a critical yet balanced way. http://www.moneyfornothingthemovie.org/ Had a friend pass this along. Looks great.

Lindsay Lohan talking monetary policy and arguing against the Federal Reserve's inflationary bubble? It's got to be The Onion, right? Wrong. In a tweet this Monday, the Hollywood star said one of the smartest things I've ever heard of an actor saying: "Have you guys seen food and gas prices lately? U.S. $ will soon be worthless if the Fed keeps printing money! http://spn.tw/t1exbE #ad" Now before getting too excited, do note that the tweet was an ad for the National Inflation Association (who must have a savvy marketer working or consulting for them), served via SponsoredTweets.com , which allows celebrity users to make revenue by tweeting paid links to advertiser's websites. But when one of Lindsay Lohan's followers tweeted that she doesn't really care about food and gas prices, Lindsay insisted that even though her tweet was a sponsored ad, she really does care about monetary policy and its effects on people, and that inflation is something...

Unemployment continues to plague our economy. In spite of constant claims that we have just turned the corner into recovery, the jobs reports remain grim with no real signs of improvement. While Keynesian economists and big government apologists scratch their heads about persistent unemployment in spite of unprecedented government “investment” in the economy, free market economists understand the problem perfectly well. In short, they understand that we are looking to the Federal Reserve to solve an unemployment crisis that the Fed itself largely created. For example, the Fed is supposed to maintain full employment as half of its “dual mandate”. But the Fed simply has the wrong tools to do this. In fact, its credit expansion and manipulation of interest rates cause harm when they are applied to “help” the economy. As we saw with the housing boom and bust, Fed-created inflation cannot be sustained without harmful consequences. The Fed’s artificial boom led to the unemployment we’...

In the following video Texas Congressman Ron Paul offers his opinion on raising the national debt ceiling, congressional accountability and the FED. Daryl Luna , Regular Columnist, T H L Articles | Author's Page

“In the latest sign of an economy addicted to artificial stimulus,” writes Fortune's Colin Barr, “the Federal Reserve on Monday posted a record $81 billion profit for 2010.” Barr points out that the central bank’s take is “more money than the entire U.S. banking industry has made over the past three … years.” ... “Hegemonic intervention,” wrote Murray Rothbard, “substitutes chaos for … order,” that order being the “mechanism of harmony, adjustment, and precision” that he located in the consensual conduct of self-managing individuals. The chaos that is symptomatic of the “hegemonic principle” is evidence of not just the impracticality of controlling people and free society, but indeed of its impossibility ; the state — the people and institutions that, through acting aggressively, comprise it — simply can’t know all of the things it would have to know to successfully “manage” the interactions within society. Read the rest of David D'Amato's article at The Center for a Statel...

Hello my fellow Humble Libertarians, The Atlas Economic Research Foundation is sponsoring an essay contest for undergraduate and graduate students, junior faculty, and policy writers under the age of 36. The general topic is sound money, but there are variety of more specific topics about the relevance of sound money which are outlined in the link below. The prize for the overall winning essay is $2000 with prizes of $500 for other outstanding undergraduate essays. The deadline for submission is January 15th. Further information is provided HERE. The length of the essay is at least 1500 words, which is about 6 pages. I encourage everyone to try your hand at this to brush up on your writing skills, and maybe even win $2000! Atlas's Sound Money Project recently published A Guide To Sound Money by Judy Shelton which is a great and short read on the subject if you're looking for ideas. Remember the deadline is next Saturday. In Peace, Love, and Liberty, Eric Sharp Eric Sharp , Re...

The Canadian Senate finance committee has recently set about determining whether to do away with the penny . The committee has determined that a century of inflation has eroded the value and usefulness of the penny. Since 1908 the coin has lost 95% of it's value according to the statistics of the Bank of Canada. There seems to be overall support for abolishing the penny (and the Senate too). After all, why maintain a useless and expensive coinage? But I will submit that this discussion and conclusion misses the point that inflation caused this devaluation of the penny . And who, pray tell. is the master and supreme arbiter of inflation in Canada? Why none other than Mark Carney and his Bank of Canada of course. Inflation has in effect killed the penny, so how much longer will it be until the loonie (Canadian dollar) is "revalued" and considered useless and valueless? Will it be 30 years? 20 years? Perhaps 10 years or less? Why should Canadian's idly watch their money ...

Since the announcement last week that I will chair the congressional subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve, the media response has been overwhelming. The groundswell of opposition to Fed actions among ordinary citizens is reflected not only in the rhetoric coming out of Capitol Hill, but also in the tremendous interest shown by the financial press. The demand for transparency is growing, whether the political and financial establishment likes it or not. The Fed is losing its vaunted status as an institution that somehow is above politics and public scrutiny. Fed transparency will be the cornerstone of my efforts as subcommittee chairman. Thanks to public pressure earlier this year, Congress did pass legislation that requires the Fed to disclose some information about its bailout of select industries and companies following the 2008 financial crisis. So two weeks ago the Fed released data concerning more than $3 trillion of assistance it offered to banks th...

Rep. Mike Pence and Sen. Bob Corker recently spoke out in opposition to the Federal Reserve , seeing it's powers as too pervasive, opting to introduce legislation to cancel it's dual mandate of maintaining full employment and stable prices and instead have the Fed just focus on controlling inflation. As far as the stated reasons for this spark of expediency, Pence was more combative when the Fed "unilaterally' announced its new spending, which he said was 'at odds with the goals of the American people..." Corker on the other hand "opted a much more restrained tone, saying he merely wanted to provide clarity to the Fed’s mission and maintained that, while concerned about QE2, the legislation was not in response to it," saying further of QE2, "None of us really will know, until we look in the rearview mirror [after] these policies have played themselves out as to whether these were good or bad policies.” Essentially it is ambiguous why Sen. Cor...