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Dr Ron Paul has long been a leading voice for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, sound money, civil liberty, and non-interventionist foreign policies.

His last term in the U.S. House of Representatives ended earlier this year, so we caught up with the former Congressman to get his latest perspective on how successfully our national leadership is dealing with America’s economic challenges.

Ron Paul: Rejecting Authoritarian Government Is Our Greatest Priority

by Adam Taggart

Dr Ron Paul has long been a leading voice for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, sound money, civil liberty, and non-interventionist foreign policies.

Mike Maloney: Today’s Low Gold & Silver Prices Are Not Realistic

by Adam Taggart

During this very tumultuous week for precious metals prices, Chris sat down with Mike Maloney, founder and owner of GoldSilver.com, one of the world's largest bullion dealers.

Mike is a true scholar of monetary history. His reasons for getting into the bullion business have their roots in a very predictable cycle that has happened time and again over the centuries (more accurately millennia):

Mike Maloney: Today’s Low Gold & Silver Prices Are Not Realistic

by Adam Taggart

During this very tumultuous week for precious metals prices, Chris sat down with Mike Maloney, founder and owner of GoldSilver.com, one of the world's largest bullion dealers.

Rise a Pauper

PREVIEW

by Chris Martenson

Because of exceptionally poor decision making on the part of Cyprus leadership both before and during the recent crisis, Cyprus is now consigned to a very dark future of economic depression and failure.

Whatever the jabbering from the Troika, a precedent has now been set.

The one genie that cannot be placed back into its bottle is the notion that bank depositor accounts are now fair game. The larger lesson here is that a wealth tax is now one of the solutions on the table for various government authorities across the EU, US, and other developed nations.

Rise a Pauper

PREVIEW by Chris Martenson

Whatever the jabbering from the Troika, a precedent has now been set.

Say Goodbye to the Purchasing Power of the Dollar

by Adam Taggart

On a long solo car trip this past weekend, I downloaded several podcasts to listen to as the miles passed. One was a classic: The Invention of Money, originally released by NPR's Planet Money team back in January of 2011. I highly recommend listening (or re-listening) to it in full.

The podcast is a great reminder of how any currency in a monetary system is a fabricated construct. A simpler way to explain this is to say it has value simply because we believe it does.

Say Goodbye to the Purchasing Power of the Dollar

by Adam Taggart

The podcast is a great reminder of how any currency in a monetary system is a fabricated construct. A simpler way to explain this is to say it has value simply because we believe it does.

Jim Rogers: We’re Wiping out the Savings Class Globally, to Terrible Consequence

by Adam Taggart

Jim Rogers decries the growing uncertainty and recklessness of global central planners as the world enters unchartered financial markets:

For the first time in recorded history, we have nearly every central bank printing money and trying to debase their currency. This has never happened before. How it’s going to work out, I don't know. It just depends on which one goes down the most and first, and they take turns. When one says a currency is going down, the question is against what? because they are all trying to debase themselves. It’s a peculiar time in world history.

Jim Rogers: We’re Wiping out the Savings Class Globally, to Terrible Consequence

by Adam Taggart

Jim Rogers decries the growing uncertainty and recklessness of global central planners as the world enters unchartered financial markets:

For the first time in recorded history, we have nearly every central bank printing money and trying to debase their currency. This has never happened before. How it’s going to work out, I don't know. It just depends on which one goes down the most and first, and they take turns. When one says a currency is going down, the question is against what? because they are all trying to debase themselves. It’s a peculiar time in world history.

The Forces That Will Reverse Housing’s Recent Gains

PREVIEW

by charleshughsmith

Executive Summary

Intervention in the housing market by central planners is experiencing diminishing returns
The four major trend reversals most likely to depress housing prices in the coming future
The power deflationary force of reversion to (or perhaps below?) the mean
Why demographics do not support rising prices

If you have not yet read Part I: The Unsafe Foundation of Our Housing 'Recovery', available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

In Part I, we sketched out the larger context of the housing market: the dramatic rise of mortgage debt, the stagnation of income for 90% of households and the unprecedented scope of Central Planning intervention in the housing and mortgage markets.

In Part II, examine what will likely cause this nascent rise in housing prices to reverse, and to resume the decline Central Planning halted in 2009.

Intervention Has Only One Way to Go: Diminishing Returns

As noted in Part I, every Central Planning support of the mortgage and housing markets has already been pushed to the maximum, so there is nowhere left to go. Interest rates are already negative, over 90% of the mortgage market is backed by Federal agencies, the Fed has already pledged to buy trillions of dollars in mortgages, etc.

Four years of this massive intervention has stripped the mortgage and housing markets of the ability to price risk, capital, and assets. This has created a culture of supreme complacency, as participants have come to believe interest rates will stay near-zero for the foreseeable future and Central Planning intervention is permanent.

But nothing is permanent in life. And the current extremes of intervention and complacency have set the stage for some important reversals:

The Forces That Will Reverse Housing’s Recent Gains

PREVIEW by charleshughsmith

Executive Summary

Intervention in the housing market by central planners is experiencing diminishing returns
The four major trend reversals most likely to depress housing prices in the coming future
The power deflationary force of reversion to (or perhaps below?) the mean
Why demographics do not support rising prices

If you have not yet read Part I: The Unsafe Foundation of Our Housing 'Recovery', available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

In Part II, examine what will likely cause this nascent rise in housing prices to reverse, and to resume the decline Central Planning halted in 2009.

Intervention Has Only One Way to Go: Diminishing Returns

But nothing is permanent in life. And the current extremes of intervention and complacency have set the stage for some important reversals:

The Unsafe Foundation of Our Housing ‘Recovery’

by charleshughsmith

What could go wrong with the housing 'recovery' in 2013?

To answer this question, we need to understand that housing is the key component in household wealth. And, that Central Planning policies are aimed at creating a resurgent “wealth effect,” as follows: When people perceive their wealth as rising, they tend to borrow and spend more freely. This is a major goal of U.S. Central Planning.

Another key goal of Central Planning is to strengthen the balance sheets of banks and households. And the broadest way to accomplish this is to boost the value of housing. This then adds collateral to banks holding mortgages and increases the equity of homeowners.

Some analysts have noted that housing construction and renovation has declined to a modest percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP). This perspective understates the importance of the family house as the largest asset for most households and housing’s critical role as collateral in the banking system.

The Unsafe Foundation of Our Housing ‘Recovery’

by charleshughsmith

What could go wrong with the housing 'recovery' in 2013?

The Trends to Watch in 2013

by charleshughsmith

Rather than attempt to predict the unpredictable – that is, specific events and price levels – let’s look instead for key dynamics that will play out over the next two to three years. Though the specific timelines of crises are inherently unpredictable, it is still useful to understand the eventual consequences of influential trends.

In other words: policies that appear to have been successful for the past four years may continue to appear successful for a year or two longer. But that very success comes at a steep, and as yet unpaid, price in suppressed systemic risk, cost, and consequence.

The Trends to Watch in 2013

by charleshughsmith

Acknowledging the Arrival of Peak Government

by charleshughsmith

Most informed people are familiar with the concept of Peak Oil, but fewer are aware that we’re also entering the era of Peak Government. The central misconception of Peak Oil — that it’s not about “running out of oil,” it’s about running out of cheap, easy-to-access oil — can also be applied to Peak Government: It’s not about government disappearing, it’s about government shrinking.

Central government — the Central State — has been in the expansion mode for so long that the process of contracting government is completely alien to the nation, to those who work for the State, and to those who are dependent on the State. Thus we have little recent historical experience of Peak Government and few if any conceptual guideposts to help us understand this contraction.

Peak Government is not a reflection of government services or the millions of individuals who work in government; it is a reflection of four key systemic forces that drove State expansion are now either declining or reversing.