Freedom to Fascism - Questions.

follow the link there, and please discuss!
THE MORE I LEARN ABOUT GOVERNMENT
THE MORE I LOVE MY GUNS
FourWindsTradingPost

For questions number 1) and 2) I suggest "What has Government done to our money" by Murray Rothbard.
You can find it here as a free MP3-Audiobook:

http://www.mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=92

This is very easy to understand and you can listen to it on your I-Pod.

The mises.org-site is a treasure-island for free resources anyway.
After all, that`s where I first heard of Dr. Paul a couple of years ago :-)
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europe4ronpaul.blogspot.com
Hasta la libertad, siempre ;-)

Somewhere on the web with links to Amazon or whatever.. so I can just order with my RF chip.. um I mean CC..heheh.

1. I am currently finishing "The Case Against the Fed" by Murray Rothbard. Only about 150 pages but, right to the point.

2. All banks are connected to the Fed because the Fed controls the money supply. That said, I try to stick with a local bank rather than give money to the majors that are corrupt beyond belief.

3.The answer to this question lies with the fractional reserve system that banks employ. Simply put, banks can lend out ten times the amount they have on deposit. The FDIC only covers up to a certain amount. I forget the exact number but, if there is ever a run on a bank, there is no way the FDIC could cover all the funds given the fact that they have loaned ten times more than they have on hand.

4.No doubt about this one, pay off the stinkin' debt. Secondly, I heartily recommend using good ole cash as much as possible. Like the old saying goes, use it or lose it.

5. Precious metals. Personally I prefer silver since it's more affordable and readily available. Silver not only has intrinsic value, it has commodity value as well (used in manufacturing).

Hope this helps.

1. I've just started to really get into the deep economics research myself so I don't consider myself enough of an expert to say this or that book is the best but Mises is where I'm digging right now. The other posters who talk about Ron Paul's speeches etc give good sources too.

2. All banks are connected to the Fed in some way or another. For most of the industry this comes in the form of ownership. The private banks own the private Federal Reserve. I don't know of any banks who aren't partial owners of some sort but if there are any, they would still be connected through the fractional reserve fiat currency system.

3. I'm not a banker but I'll give you my understanding. The FDIC is a federal program which guarantees savings in a bank up to a certain level ($100,000 I think though that may have changed). With the fractional reserve system, banks are only required to have 10% of the money they have been entrusted with on hand. If there were a run on the bank, meaning that people went to the bank in large numbers to take their money out, leaving the bank with no reserves, then the federal government would give the people who couldn't get their money out their full balance up to the FDIC limit. When people say that this doesn't matter they are partially wrong. You would still get your money, so their is something of value there, but the value of that money would be reduced because the money given to you would be printed out of nothing. If we saw the same number of bank failures as occurred in the great depression, the level of inflation would be significant so you money would be worth less but you would still get something.

4. The short answer, not much. The long answer is to pay off all your debt, hold your money, or at least a good portion of it, in the form of physical specie. The truth is that not participating in this system is impossible and minimizing your participation is very difficult. I'm still working on figuring this out now so I don't have too many good answers which I can articulate clearly.

5. I'm sure others are going to have good suggestions so I'll just speak in broad categories. The first one is specie (gold, silver, platinum). The second is other physical assets like land or depression resistant businesses (food, energy or other necessities). At this point don't bother with securities or gold where you don't have it in your possession. The final one that I would recommend isn't really a financial investment but given our situation its not a bad idea to spend a couple hundred dollars on some good quality long term stored food. If things get really bad, which is possible, having some food around can be a real life saver.

To find out how to accelerate your way out of the home loan (and cut up those credit cards for good) learn from dave ramsey ..he has a sure fire plan that he shares with all to help us in our personal fights for freedom.
he has a tv show, a radio show, books, classes, and a website. daveramsey.com

Is a good video about banking to watch
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

hi... a good pook is called whatever happened to penny candy by richard maybury.... look it up and order the book.. it is a great book about economics and the fed!

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises

http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/HmA/msHmA.html

Rayster
Vijay, Another good basic book is "Healing Our World in An Age of Aggression". In Oct '06 at Amazon, it reached #1 in two catagories, Practical Politics and Economic Policy & Development. There is an endorsement on the back by Ron Paul. Hope this helps. Ray

there a link to down load it here
FDIC only insures deposits up to a 100K

Is a racket/rhetorical tool to convince people that their deposits are safe under a regime of fractional reserve banking.

This is inherently instable because any issues with banks being insolvent and unable to pay depositors would imply a more systemic issue where the minimal resources of the FDIC would VERY RAPIDLY be dwarfed by the claims put on it by a mass of "insured" accounts.

You can insure against accidents and "random" health issues, but you fundamentally CANNOT insure against "systemic" accidents. FDIC would work if bank failures happened in a predictable, limited, haphazard manner, but the reality is, bank failures are MASS EVENTS, where insurance fundamentally CANNOT work.

If you have savings or checking accounts at a banking institution, you SHOULD NOT be assuaged of any fear by FDIC insurance. If your bank goes down, FDIC won't be able to do a blessed thing, other than have the Fed print money - which would destroy fiat currencies relative to gold/silver anyway.

Like the post below says, keep safe cash reserves and some bullion. You can find resources online that point to more safe banking institutions.

One bank to avoid like the plague right now is Citigroup. They are in BIG trouble...

...is an invaluable text to aid in understanding our modern economic system.

That book will help you along the road to answer your remaining questions on economics. There are also many good Google and YouTube video presentations regarding economics that have been linked on posts here. I'm sure there will be a flood of suggestions for you. And congratulations on opening your mind that much further. I had to watch "America: Freedom to Fascism" several times to understand some of the topics which fly past the viewer.

"The Case Against the Fed" by Murray Rothbard. Breaks down its history, its origins, how it works and why it is wrong and unstable. It is also only around 75-100 pages so you can read it in a day easy. Very solid book for semi-novices.