Reply to the Daily Bell: Gold porn, lies, and misrepresentations

with Anthony Migchels

The Daily Bell appears to be quite obsessed with both Memehunter and Real Currencies, having exhibited a painful compulsion to refer indirectly but unmistakably to their past discussions with both of us in a series of articles, even though we have mostly left them alone for the last six months (in fact, Memehunter took a well-deserved break after the Daily Bell shut down its comment section).

However, these recent articles contain such blatant distortions that we deemed it necessary to attempt to rectify the situation. Furthermore, it is apparent that the elves over at the Bell cannot wait to debate again with us. It is our sincere hope that, by creating the Daily Knell, a blog dedicated to exposing libertarian lies, we have finally fulfilled their wish.

Social Credit, Mises-Rockefeller connections, and other falsehoods

Let us begin with the claim that Social Credit was promoted by the Fabian Society, which, to be fair, originates from Deadeye’s blog.

Although it is true that Alfred Orage, the editor of the New Age, promoted C. H. Douglas’ Social Credit, we learn from Wikipedia that “in an effort to discredit the Social Credit movement, one leading Fabian, Sidney Webb, is said to have declared that he didn’t care whether Douglas was technically correct or not – they simply did not like his policy” and that the British Labour Party resisted pressures to implement social credit, due to incompatibilities with “hierarchical views of Fabian Socialism”.

That does not sound like a ringing endorsement. It is also fairly obvious to anyone vaguely familiar with Social Credit that, partially flawed as this economic philosophy may be, it is most certainly not favorable to Money Power.

The Daily Bell, obviously still smirking from Memehunter’s “attacks against free-market thinking”, also brought back the issue of Ludwig von Mises’ funding by Rockefeller,implying that Mises had to beg Rockefeller for some money that was “given unwillingly and soon withdrawn”.

However, as we learned in Old Rothschild- and Rockefeller hands controlled the Libertarian-Communist dialectic:

“Already in 1926, Ludwig von Mises’s first tour in the United States was paid by the Rockefeller Foundation. The National Bureau of Economic Research, which supported Mises in the 1940s, was also heavily sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Mises’s salary in New York was paid by Lawrence Fertig, Kohlberg’s colleague at the AJLAC [American Jewish League against Communism], and by the Volker Fund.”

In fact, as this chart suggests, Mises was very much at the center of an entire network connecting Libertarian think-tanks and foundations all the way to the top of Money Power.

Among other falsehoods propagated by the Daily Bell are the following:

–          The annoying tendency to equate any non-commodity based currency with “governmental coercion”. Many alternative currencies, such as the Gelre or the Chiemgauer, are not based on governmental coercion and are not sponsored by the UN or UNESCO. Clearly, the Bell has a vested agenda in trying to equate any paper or digital currency with some kind of coercion, and in promoting the idea that the means of exchange should be commodity-based, an idea which is actually detrimental to free trade. Maybe this has to do with its partnership with a gold mining company?

–          The tendency to lump together Stephen Zarlenga, Ellen Brown, and “a number of blogs attacking Austrian-based free-market economics”. In contrast with Real Currencies and the Daily Knell, Ellen Brown does not consider interest to be a problem. Although it is a step in the right direction to have government earn the interest rather than a private banking cartel, interest-free currencies would be a much better option. Moreover, Brown’s scheme is associated with severe power centralization, which we do not favor.

–          Contrary to the Bell’s repeated assertions, we are not saying that interest should be banned. By offering interest-free mutual credit, people will naturally prefer to borrow in an interest-free currency rather than in an interest-bearing one. There is no need, in fact, for “coercion” of any kind. Memehunter frequently made this point on the Daily Bell (in the feedbacks), so we have to suspect that this is pure “sophistry” on the part of the elves.

–          The claim that “Money Power does not care whether its control is exercised publicly or privately”. Although it is obvious that governments all over the world have been corrupted, and that politicians “can be controlled and bought”, the fact remains, that, in principle, a public institution is accountable and should represent the interests of a nation, whereas there is no such obligation on a private institution. This is exactly why Money Power has worked hard to undermine the institution of government, and to progressively replace nations by larger economic blocs led by unelected technocrats instead of elected politicians, as is the case with the European Union.

Annunaki and Austrian “gold porn”

Moreover, the Daily Bell, together with other Austrian outlets, propagates various spurious economic ideas and myths which deserve to be exposed. For instance, this paragraph:

“People are free to find mines and dig up their own gold and silver. Drives the elites crazy. That’s why the elites are constantly trying to ban and confiscate honest money. The elites hate the free circulation of money metals.“

Of course, people can dig up their own gold and silver. But what good is that for? Will the world be a better place because everyone is busy mining gold and silver? Last we heard, Zecharia Sitchin and his theories had been debunked, but maybe some hardcore Libertarian goldbugs cling to the idea that humans were genetically engineered by the Annunaki to mine gold in South Africa…

In fact, this famous scene may be the ultimate fantasy of Austrian sympathizers favoring a return to an interest-bearing gold-backed currency:

“You see in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend. Those who loan gold, and those who dig. You dig.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a97cOa2Sy9A?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]


More seriously, we must remember that the means of exchange is basically credit, a record of an unpaid debt. There is no valid reason why the amount of credit available to a community should be limited by the amount of a scarce commodity. The Daily Bell unfailingly criticizes any monetary scheme involving some sort of human supervision with the oft-repeated argument that “no one can know how much money is enough”, but cannot justify why having the money supply tethered to the quantity of gold or silver available is in any way a guarantee that the money supply will be “monitored” more adequately and will correspond to the needs of a community.

Furthermore, whereas physical gold may be in some sense more “honest” than paper currency because it cannot be inflated so easily, it is debatable whether private gold-backed currencies are in any way more honest than paper or digital currency. Blogger FOFOA has explained this at length in “The Return to Honest Money”.

But the larger issue is that, although it may be an excellent store of value, physical gold is not well-suited as a means of exchange because of its scarcity. However, the Bell seems unable to distinguish between both monetary functions and refuses to understand why it is advisable to use different media for both, as brilliantly demonstrated once again by FOFOA.

Interest-free currencies as an “elite promotion”: look who’s talking!

Finally, over this series of articles, the Daily Bell repeatedly tried to drive home the point that because Margrit Kennedy worked at some point for UNESCO, and that some interest-free currencies are affiliated with ecological movements, interest-free currencies are necessarily part of some kind of “elite promotion”.

The fact that the UN does seem to have started to promote LETS lately is obviously an attempt to co-opt it and thus is a source of concern. Why would the UN do so? LETS has suffered from two major drawbacks, keeping it from really threatening Money Power domination. The first is that it uses a working man’s hour as a unit of account. As a result, nobody knows what 1 LETS is really worth. Therefore businesses have been hesitant to accept LETS units.

Secondly, LET Systems have been managed by amateur community organizers, who have proven themselves incapable of organizing local trade in a way that transcends the level of the most primitive service exchanges between individuals. By promoting LETS as a viable ‘complementary currency’, it’s likely that the UN has willingly promoted a non-threatening ‘alternative’. In no way has the UN been shown to promote, help develop or even investigate what is necessary to threaten the Money Power monopoly on currencies worldwide.

Given the Daily Bell’s own connections to large financial companies and gold mining concerns, as well as collaborators who worked for top “Anglosphere power elite” banks, one may also wonder whether the Bell’s strident goldbug propaganda, its unabashed justification of interest, and irrepressible “Hate the State” rhetoric may themselves be elite promotions of some kind. In fact, Austrian economics were, from the outset, an elite promotion, as we have shown in this series of articles:

The “Catholic” Arm of Libertarianism

The Satanic Core of Libertarianism

How the Money Power spawns Libertarians

Old Rothschild- and Rockefeller hands controlled the Libertarian-Communist dialectic

Conclusion

The Daily Bell in its discussions with both Memehunter and Real Currencies, but also with people like Ellen Brown, has resorted to misrepresentation and downplaying of valid points. Already in the early stages of the discussion, we pointed out that it was quite obvious that if government creates a monopoly, it is much worse to have it hand that monopoly over to a private banking cartel than to have Government use it to print its own interest-free currency. Notwithstanding the fact that such a monopoly is uncalled for, this simple transfer would save the taxpayer 450 billion per year. All this interest now ends up with wealthy “Anglosphere power-elite” bankers and foreign creditors and thus in no way serves the real economy.

Additionally, the Daily Bell did everything it could to downplay the interest issue. The elves ignored the fact that it’s a massive wealth transfer from poor to rich, to the tune of 5 to 10 trillion per year globally. They also tried to explain it away as irrelevant to the issue of manipulation of volume, which is not only untrue (interest does affect the volume issue, as ever more money is required to pay ever more interest, thus leading to an eternally growing money supply, a situation which is obviously terminally unstable), but also clearly is just a trick to get the issue off the table.

And lastly, how can it be that the swashbuckling elves of the Bell ridiculously need a politician like Ron Paul to implement their vaunted free market? How can it be that this man has been promoting the same crap for 40 years? Is that consistency or an acute disability to learn? Or is it perhaps a party line that had to be toed? Why do the elves need “violent statist coercion” to get what they want, while people all over the world are creating regional currencies based on agreement and not coercion?

We know the answer: Gold will not work as an everyday means of exchange in a truly free market. Ron Paul and the Daily Bell, through their Agora connection, are part of a large network parading as a grassroots movement. They both represent Gold interests and need state coercion to get their specie accepted for tax payments and thus get an unfair and almost decisive advantage in the ‘free market’ for currencies.

Nothing new under the sun…  Just some more Money Power special interest groups trying to manipulate the debate and buy votes in Washington.

Related:
Discussing Gold and Interest with the Daily Bell