This is the transcript of my weekly State of the Union Address, delivered on my radio show.
My fellow Americans, we are in troubling times in our country, beginning with the state of our economy. The promise of freedom and the chance of success in business in this country are what has always brought new ideas to America from around the world. They are what always gave workers the ability to move up at their jobs, to go from employee, to manager, to CEO.
Yet our economy, which we know began struggling through the bursting of the mortgage bubble, will continue to struggle as long as the government believes their strategies are helping, or, at least, tells us that that is their intention; to help the economy.
But, according to the von Mises Institute, the Austrian economics theories, and plain common sense, we know that the only way for this economy to shed off its horrid debt and investments, and keep needed capital away from companies with failing strategies, is for the government to leave it alone. A company that fails should fail, both to keep its failing strategies from taking money from other companies and to act as a lesson for other companies; that the investment ideas and methods will not work. Instead, because of federal intervention, failing companies are propped up, by us, and the reallocation of capital to growing, successful companies that would use it wisely does not occur.
We, as a people, must hold our federal government accountable. My fellow Americans, it is not allowable that our government continues on its path of destroying, because that is what they are really doing, destroying our economy.
My fellow Americans, you and I are the people that fund this venture, this country. You and I are the ones who must necessarily keep our officials in check.
How does the federal government’s intercession into our economy actually hurt it? From Meltdown, a book by Thomas Woods, we learn some very important features of these stimulus and bailout plans that our country continues to employ.
First, the same plans were used during other financially troubling times. And each time these plans were used, they worsened the situation. In the Great Depression, FDR’s Progressive plans, which funded failing companies and established huge public works projects to supposedly improve infrastructure, helped to prolong what should have been an 18 month recession into a more than a decade major depression.
The Japanese also used these same Keynesian methods to attempt to prop up their economy during the 90′s, when their economy took a nosedive. The Japanese performed many of the same measures to try to forestall and possibly defeat the depression, including massive public works projects. During these projects 1 in 10 Japanese were employed in construction, and Japan poured as much concrete in a decade as the United States, despite having only a fraction of our population and even less land compared to the US.
Yet, despite all the taxpayer money pumped into projects, stimulus, and even bailouts of failing companies, the Japanese recession that began in the 90′s, which became a major depression, is still occurring today. The Japanese stock market, the Nikkei, is still below its high point in 1989. In fact it is ¼ the value as it was in 1989.
In Japan, as it is here now as well, the government took it upon to prop up values and prices that had escalated far too high in a government-determined system. The government made it too easy to get loans for real estate, by promising companies their backing, and threatening those that did not loosen their credit allowances. Then, when the stuff hit the fan, the government called it bad investments, took absolutely no blame, and spent (and still is spending) taxpayer money to try to keep the system intact. But the system, the constant inflation of prices, is the problem. And that system comes to us, as it comes to the Japanese, from our Federal Reserve.
My fellow Americans, like I talked about last week, it is the Federal Reserve that causes, deepens, prolongs, and then GROWS all of these bumps in the road, these hiccups, these depressions. It is the Federal Reserve that makes the policies, issues the credit, and decides the systems through which all of these economic functions operate. It is the Federal Reserve that has perverted and destroyed our economy: not once, but many many times. The Great Depression, the hiccup of the late 70s and early 80s, the dot com bust, and now this second Great Depression.
My fellow Americans, I promise you, despite the predictions of the Federal Reserve and our government, that this is not over. It is not even close to over. This is the INTENTION of the federal government and the Federal Reserve. This depression is what allows them to further inject themselves into the financial system of the US, and take control and power within many industries. It even gives them what they believe is the prerogative to take over more, like healthcare.
My fellow Americans, make a pledge to your country that you will do what you must to eliminate the Federal Reserve. And then make your federal representatives, both in Congress and in the Senate, propose and vote to abolish the Fed. We will not be a successful and secure with such a cancer within our borders. America cannot become the greatest country on Earth again until the Fed is gone.
My fellow Americans, this is our chance to begin taking our country back. The fall of the Federal Reserve MUST BE the first step in that process.
The buck starts and stops there.
God bless you, my fellow Americans. And God bless America.
