*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:

...

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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

than to offend a liberal and it's so easy. Can't wait for these fools to feel the pain once the tough times truly arrive here.

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.

We need not waste the time on people who don't have the ability to see. Put your time in those who are willing to do something. Here are some links of some comments I wrote. Maybe you can use something here:

http://www.dailypaul.com/...
http://www.dailypaul.com/...
http://www.dailypaul.com/...
http://www.dailypaul.com/...

See the book “The Creator form Jackal Island”.

JonQ.Publik

Live Free or Die! Because if you are not free you’re dead already!

Don't give up on your friend. He will get it eventually, though it may take some tough times to bring him through.

I like the Zimbabwe idea to get him started. Since he is so intent on a complete argument, with literary credentials, I would suggest you stop with the videos and give him something to read.

Mises.org has a number of great resources. Rothbard's "What Has Government Done To Our Money?" is the best starter, and comes highly recommended by Dr. Paul in "The Revolution". You can get it at mises.org/money.asp.

If he wants full arguments, its going to take tons of reading for both of you. Go take a look at the books, papers and audio files available at Mises.org. Start looking around at titles and abstracts to see what catches your attention. The Rothbard books on the history of money and banking are great.

Edit: He won't like libertarian sources? Then this is going to be difficult.
____________________________________________________
"Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered." -- Cicero

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/mysteryo...
written by Rothbard. It provides an in-depth analysis of the American banking system.

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

Ohh here's a quick documentary about the subject:
http://mises.org/multimed...

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/Sc...

Man was born to be free and independent

http://mschaut.wordpress....

-"Ron Paul cured me of my predilection for Che Guevara T shirts."

Many ideas can be wrapped up in "monetary policy". What does this phrase mean to you?

Does it mean:

who controls interest rate
who controls supply of money
how wealth is created/saved/lost
how gov't budgets are financed (tax or spend). (federal or state/local govt's)
availability of credit
fractional reserve banking
gov't sponsored/backed credit via fannie/freddie

Monetary policy affects everything.

This is an interesting subject, and it can be easy to discuss peripheral topics for hours with friends.
It takes time to shift our thinking. It may take your friend a year or more.

Consider asking your friend open-ended questions that may lead to the questioning of our monetary policy, such as:

I wonder if we didn't have the Fed to print unlimited money to finance the Iraq war spending, and instead had an explicit IRAQ WAR TAX, if we would still be in Iraq. (In other words, if you want to reduce our wars then reduce the facility to finance wars.)

Wow, my car insurance rates just went up, and I didn't have an accident. This inflation is affecting everything I need to buy!

The Fed was created in 1913. We got along without the Fed before that, so I wonder why we really needed the Fed? Was it was created to give favor to some special interests (elite bankers)?

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

http://www.inflationdata....

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

Thanks to everyone for your responses.

GREEDisBAD, I see that you originally suggested moving on to someone else. First of all, this is a good friend, and our conversations often get pretty involved in social and political topics. Second of all, this guy is one of the toughest nuts to crack that I've encountered, and rising to meet the challenge can only sharpen my skills (and perhaps win a new convert in the process; one who writes a weekly column in widely read newspaper to boot). I suppose I should have prefaced my original post with these thoughts.

Papillon2, your suggestions are well taken, and a little further down the road in the conversation I may go to those sources. For now, getting him to take a look at hard statistical evidence from as close to the source as possible is my first goal (hence my inclusion of links to two Fed sites and a CIA site). For now, he's too well read to point him toward anything with a libertarian bent without him sniffing it out (I will never forget the line of reasoning he once gave me a few years ago for dismissing libertarian thought: "I like many of the principles offered by libertarians, but who wants to pay an entrance fee every time they enter a public park?" I realized the weaknesses in this statement right away, but we haven't really discussed the topic much again until recently). He knows who Lew Rockwell is, and I while I heartily agree with the Strike the Root article, he will sniff out sentences like "The first of those crime-like ways is coercive taxation" as libertarian bias right off the bat, and will read the rest of the article with suspicion. The topic of how war nearly always relates to a sharp rise in inflation is something I am keeping in my hip pocket for now. It's the reason I sent him the Minnesota Fed page, hoping that he will stumble across this correlation be browsing through the numbers and picking out which years had the most inflation. On that note, I will read the Smedley Butler article and keep it stockpiled for the future if I find it useful. Thanks for the links.

dfwrider, you nailed it with this statement: "To get beyond "the argument" you need to track down stuff that just describes the mechanisms. Then you read a little history behind the mechanisms. Then you read some philosophy related to the history of the fed, banking in this country, monetary policy. Then you look at modern day action/reaction as The Fed does it's thing. Then you go back and look at history again. You won't find the answer in a single article or even dozens of them. The answer is spread across disciplines, media, time, etc." Thanks for providing a playbook I can go by.

Cameron_DeHart, I feel like you aren't completely sold on Ron Paul yourself yet. If you haven't seen the film, and you profess to not knowing much about monetary policy, the perhaps you should do some more investigation into the topic. In many peoples' opinions (mine included) it's the root cause of nearly everything that is going wrong with our society.

BeaReady, I'd love to see that graph you mentioned. Perhaps someone will dig it up.

Brit4RonPaul, thanks for reminding me about the Zimbabwe situation and the related issues. When the discussion comes back around to America, I would love to have some facts and figures about what percentage of our remaining manufacturing jobs are *defense* related. I will definitely use that line of reasoning (with the caveat that GREEDisBAD pointed out about the deflation that will occur when people stop using "money" (debt). It has often occurred to me that perhaps we should be collecting paper FRN's now, since they are only 3% of the "money" supply. Some day soon they may actually have value as collector's items!)

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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

Meet the Fed

http://www.restoretherepu...

----
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/ra...

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-roo...
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-roo...
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."

ing the argument against the Fed is propaganda like, while many found "Freedom to Fascism" inspiring and informational, I found it insulting, conspiratorial and slanted to the degree that it makes the viewer question everything said.

Free and Brave
or Cradle to Grave
You can't have both

curent monetary policy. It's only fair that you show you have done your homework and studied both sides of the issue.

Free and Brave
or Cradle to Grave
You can't have both

have him read this and check out the links,If he still doesn't understand he may never,but at least you tried.
http://www.dailypaul.com/...

Half way down on the right hand side of this page are the titles Bull Not Bull, The Fiat Money System, The Money Masters, America: Freedom to Fascism.

Other than that it seems your friend has come full circle. Not only has the indoctrination fully set in. But defense mechanisms have been installed to insure that he always falls back on a particular psychology. Pretty much no matter what you send him it will all seem like propaganda to him. I wonder what he actually considers to be a good "documentary."

If these don't snap him out of it. Then try Michael Ruppert - Truth and Lies of 911 and expose the CIA importing and selling drugs to prop up the US economy.

If he's non-religious try Zeitgeist on him.

Also, IOUSA will be in theaters soon.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever." - Thomas Jefferson

someone recently posted link to awesome graph showing century of activity and spike of inflation from 1970 to present, almost straight up. Don't remember where the site is??

I always recommend Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve. It's on google videos. This one did it for husband and me.

I wish I could shake this guys hand. Although I havent seen this video, nor do I know much about monetary policy, it seems like did a good job at identifying why 'conspiratorial' videos are sneeky and one-sided. I wish he would analyse Freedom to Fascism and Loose Change.

Cheers.

ASK your friend why the U.S. economy is in slow down mode when the interest rates are at a very low rate, while apparently, the populus sees no resonable rate of return on internal U.S.investing. At the same time the U.S. borrows money from foreign GOV'Ts at a higher rate, to pay the interest on the U.S.NATIONAL debt.
Why are we borrowing money from someone else when the Federal Reserve must be flush with money that they cannot give away ?
I am not an expert
TLF

the books. These are excerpts.

http://www.dailypaul.com/...
http://www.dailypaul.com/...

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin
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Don't try to tell him anything! He won't listen. Ask him questions.

Make him do the thinking. Put him on the spot. He will dance around the issue like crazy and go off on a zillion tangents. Be patient. Listen politely, but don't be diverted.

Start by asking him why Zimbabwe is screwed. He'll probably say something about government repression. Ask him where ZANU-PF gets the money to hire the forces that repress the people. See where I am going with this?

Move on to Weimar Germany. Same idea. Kuomintang China. Same routine.

Move on to America's permanent military bases and its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ask where the money comes from.

Move onto the American economy. Ask him why everything you buy in Wal Mart is made in China. What's up with that? What do the Chinese do with all those dollars?

When he is unable to deal with your constant questioning, make him a cup of coffee and show him this video:

http://www.youtube.com/wa...

Before reading Ron Paul, I got my political views from marx2mao.com.

If there is hope for me, there is definitely hope for your liberal friend.

-"Ron Paul cured me of my predilection for Che Guevara T shirts."

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin
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