Free Market Capitalism Killed Our American Economy? A Ghost Story

By Author: Harry Harmon
Total Articles: 4
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Everywhere I turn, I see, read and hear how capitalism has destroyed the American economy. The political Left blames capitalism outright, while the political Right claims capitalism is the American ideal. The elitists in banking, government, academia and the media give lip-service to the idea of a free market, when they, in fact, have no use for it. The real purpose of claiming that free markets are the American ideal is to give the collectivist a scapegoat to blame for all their nefarious wealth redistribution programs. Too many of today's activists have fallen for this intentional misdirection.

Blaming free market capitalism for our economic problems is accusing a ghost. It has been dead for a long time. It was first stabbed in the back in 1913 when the U.S. Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act and the United States Revenue Act (creating the IRS).

The Federal Reserve Act gave a private cartel of international bankers control over the very essence of a free market; our medium of exchange, our money. This put the free market into a death spiral. Now factor in the Legal Tender Act which prohibits any form ...
... of lawful money except the Federal Reserve Note. It is this Legal Tender Law that gives the Federal Reserve bankers their money monopoly. Without this law, individual enterprise could offer alternative commodity-backed money and compete with the FRB head to head. But honest competition is not what the elitist central planners want. Well, at least our new federal money still had some value. It was backed by gold, but not for long.

The Federal Reserve can control interest rates by expanding or contracting the quantity of money. It can control the financial markets with its Open Market Operations. It can create new money to increase its member's bank reserves at any time. It can negotiate with foreign banks on monetary policies without congressional approval or knowledge. And it can do all of this with virtually no oversight by any elected representative of the people. Even the Government Accounting Office responsible for auditing all government agencies, has no auditing authority over the Federal Reserve, a private corporation not a government agency.

Without the ability to judge the cost of capital by the true market value of interest rates, determined by the availability of savings for investing and future consumption, no free market can correctly judge its financial health. These false signals along with government regulations are what create booms and busts in our economy, not free market actions. The Federal Reserve and the government manipulate the appearance of economic prosperity for personal and political gain and then blame free market capitalism when the inevitable adjustments occur (busts).

By creating the Internal Revenue Service (collection arm of the Federal Reserve), government makes the claim that our individual production, property and privacy no longer, in any real sense, belongs to us. Congress can change the tax rates and rules at any time, favoring some at the expense of others, and is about to do so again. This privilege of the central planners has driven many a productive individual to send their manufacturing and creative endeavors elsewhere. This put American free market capitalism on life support, still breathing, but barely.

In 1933, by Executive Order of the President (FDR), all Americans were required to surrender their gold to the government. This took away our right to trade in the most respected of all possible commodities used to secure value in our economic exchanges. Not only did government confiscate our gold, they also prohibited redemption of U.S. Dollars for gold by any American. Of course, the international bankers were still allowed to exchange dollars for gold. Now you know where our gold went. FDR pulled the plug on value-backed money for American enterprise, dooming free market capitalism to a slow and painful death.

In 1971, President Nixon reneged on the Bretton Woods Accord removing the international gold redemption for the U.S. dollar. Unfortunately, it was too late. It is probable that the international bankers already own most of what was our country's gold. No longer would our dollars be backed by anything other than our central banker's and government's Good Faith. No free market can exist without the right to exchange productive value for productive value. In the years that followed, no longer constrained by a gold-backed dollar, big government warfare/welfare spending exploded.

What we have today is not free market capitalism, it is corporatism. Corporatism is a form of fascism, where big business and government work as partners at the expense of the productive class. We have the military/pharmaceutical/energy/media/industrial complex and the elitist central planners of big government ruling our country. We see a revolving door of big business CEO's and bankers taking key government positions of power. They then move back into their private positions after accomplishing their goals of amassing great wealth for their friends and themselves. This is the outward signs of corporatism for everyone to see. But few are aware or care!

The change we were promised, if we would just vote for anyone except a Republican, is only a change in the national figurehead. Only in such an environment of big government and corporatism is greed truly rampant. Free market capitalism and the Rule of Law can not exist in the same society with either.

We who believe in free markets under the rule of law can not argue against a lie unless we expose it for the lie it is. The free market died when our money became nothing more than the confiscation of our production. Tell America to stop dragging around the corpse of free market capitalism as its whipping boy. We should all have the decency to give the dead some respect for what might have been.

Rest In Peace, Free Market Capitalism!

Harry Harmon, Entrepreneur and Author of Economic Vampires Parasites and Cannibals, What you are not supposed to know about Economics and Politics available at Amazon.com
Website: www.economicvampires.com