*Update* Help me persuade my liberal friend about the importance of monetary policy

Once he realizes that the fed was JP Morgan's wet dream, there's a pretty strong chance he'll come around. Liberals tend to distrust Wall Street.

-jcr

Send him two books.

"Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hzlitt
and "The Case Against The Fed" by Murray Rothbard.

If he isnt persuaded by those books. Then he, sir, is one idiotic friend and should be given up on.

I've been thinking a lot and doing more research about how to further this conversation about the importance of understanding monetary systems and how they relate to every other facet of society. It's always important to try to reach people with facts that they can relate to based on their backround, career, interests, etc. I've often thought that a primer on spreading the message of liberty should be assembled somewhere (how to reach "party first" Republicans, how to reach Greenpeace advocates, or in my friend's case - how to reach educators). I've yet to come across such a primer, so perhaps this can be a start. Of course everyone is different and blanket statements will not always apply, but a resource like this could nevertheless be invaluable.

One thing I failed to mention in my original post is that my friend is a university professor of literature. Instead of focusing on his interest in literature I decided to dig up some info on our debt based money system and what actually collateralizes this debt. It wasn't long before I came up with this nugget (see the excerpt below), which explains pretty clearly how our children are being "assessed" for their future worth to society. I will be sending this to him soon and I will report back when I can.

Is Your Child ''Human Capital''?

Yes, According to the Architects of the New Global Economy
By Cindy Weatherly
December 10, 2003

What if your child's "assessed" worth doesn't meet
anyone's projected goal? Proponents of the Certificate
of Initial Mastery (CIM) and the Certificate of
Advanced Mastery (CAM) are, in truth, fleshing out the
skeleton of assigning a value to a person. Without the
CIM/CAM in those states adopting the concept a young
person will not be able to apply for a job, drive a car,
or do many other things which have never before been
predicated on governments' conferring a value on a
person's worth to society.

The People's Republic of China, a communist country,
uses "no conformity" -- "no job" policies to enforce its
"one child" policy. Have we understood the direction of
these changes? Is this constitutional or moral?...

During preparation for a workshop on educational policy
in 1982 I was asked by the host organization to prepare
a glossary of terms pertaining to my presentation. That
request seemed simple enough and a reasonable one, so I
set about compiling terms related to CBE (Competency-
Based Education) (forerunner of Outcome-Based Education
and promulgated by the same man Bill Spady), our fad-of-
the-moment in educational reformation toward illiteracy
in Georgia.

As I said, the task seemed simple enough. However,
while still in the "A's" of the alphabet, I developed an
overwhelming respect for professional compilers of
glossaries. The first word block I encountered was
"assessment". Sure it was familiar; we all knew it meant
'test'; but the longer I struggled to apply that
definition to CBE the more elusive "assessment's"
definition became.

The latest word for 'test' was "instrument" and that
proved easy to explain. But, "assessment" was a broader
term, "assessment" was the noun form of the verb
"assess". What did "assess" actually mean? The National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) had been in
use since its development in the latter 1960's. Had we
overlooked a change in emphasis by the Federal level of
education implied by the use of the word "assessment"
that could be significant?

Receiving no help from my small hill of accumulated
state department of education materials relating to
assessment, I decided to "read the instruction manual":
(Webster's New World Dictionary.) Webster's clearly
stated:

...

************
http://www.dvds4delegates.com

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."

~Ambrose Redmoon

Then "1984" by Huxley, and "The Art of War" by SunTzu. All of these books discuss finances, power and government. Indirectly perhaps, but they do discuss power. That is what has happened, war and finances are inextricably intertwined. Always has been, always will be. Since literature is his game, use literature to convince him. Also, remind him of the past, and point out the "let them eat cake" mentality of the elite now. The elitists are so far removed from reality now, and yet they claim that only they deserve to rule. Their attitute is "why don't those lazy poor people just pay thier bills and quit complaining all the time", not even understanding that with inflation and very little to no pay raises for the vast majority, that most people cannot make it anymore on what little we are allowed to earn.

that say: "Death To Liberals" and I'm proud of it.

I recommend you send him these links:

The Mystery of Banking:
http://mises.org/mysteryofbanking/mysteryofbanking.pdf
written by Rothbard. It provides an in-depth analysis of the American banking system.

The Case Against the Fed.
http://mises.org/books/fed.pdf
another one by Rothbard.

Ohh here's a quick documentary about the subject:
http://mises.org/multimedia/video/Fed.wmv

These should be plenty.

Ten Peter Schiff interviews.

here is one and he has an archive on his site as well.

http://www.europac.net/Schiff-Fox-8-6-08_lg.asp

Man was born to be free and independent

Not sure if same of the source info but two very good graphs here:

http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Long_T...

Looks similar to what I saw in thread here but not sure. There is a DIGG on this one too!
http://digg.com/business_finance/1_929_Inflation_Data_Graph_...

Meet the Fed

http://www.restoretherepublic.com/content/view/1240/71/

----
The Antidote to neoCon Koolaid: www.dvds4delegates.com

"We really do have...a once in a lifetime opportunity to take the Republican Party back to where it was." -Kent Snyder, 1959-2008

That's the main problem with our "monetary policy" -- it is a means of stealing VAST wealth from the people who create it, and funneling that wealth to bureaucratic empires and favored corporations and special interests. War is among the most profitable examples; see "War is a Racket" by highly-decorated Major Butler Smedley for more on that.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

Two columns that cover the topic of how our monetary policy harms Americans and others:

Fund Government Like We Fund Apple
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/allport/allport10.html
An excerpt:

"Among the most common objections to a non-coercive, civil society is the funding question: 'Where would money for X or Y come from, without taxes?' The obvious answer is that the money would come from the same place it comes from now: the people. There is no magic 'funding fairy' to supply government with money; all government money comes from the people, one way or another. Some of this money comes from user fees, but most of it is obtained in ways that are serious crimes – except when the government does them.

"The first of those crime-like ways is coercive taxation, including the income tax, sales taxes, and many other taxes, all of which come down to: 'Give us your money, or else. We'll use the money as we decide, and you have to pay even if you are appalled at what we do with the cash.' The second major funding method for the U.S. government is counterfeiting: printing up money from thin air, mostly by the government-chartered monopoly of the Federal Reserve (video; an excellent and recent Ron Paul interview on Fox News about the Fed; 8 min 48 sec [see original for link]). Each new dollar-from-nothing reduces the value of every existing dollar. The extent of this theft-via-inflation is seen in the staggering rise in prices since the Fed's creation in 1913 – when twenty dollars bought roughly an ounce of gold and bread was a nickel a loaf.*"

Money
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/allport/allport15.html
An excerpt:

"The destruction of money is a threat to both love and freedom; the death of a currency means poverty, hardship, and emotional pain for all but the most fortunate. Violence and even war are common side effects, as are political repression (including, in many cases, detention camps for dissenters and scapegoats) and other epic violations of human rights."