Why We Should Throw Away Our Dollars

Here are a few very telling articles concerning our (soon to be worthless) currency

Senate must raise debt ceiling above $12T

Dollar hits low for year as gold tops $1,000

China alarmed by US money printing

UN wants new global currency to replace dollar

To tell the truth I'm a little scared at the effects of our currency being destroyed. I talked earlier about how hyperinflation destroyed Zimbabwe here, and its real stuff. Just hope it can wait till I can actually afford some gold...

Michael Moore's New Movie Misses Point (once again)

"Capitalism is evil," says new Michael Moore film - Reuters Link

How many movies is this guy going to make where he totally misses the big picture? In his latest release, documentary star Michael (theres no way I'm paying for his fat ass's health care) Moore tackles the "evil" system of Capitalism in "Capitalism: A Love Story". However, Moore focuses more on Fascism than Capitalism but hey, they're just terms right?

Wrong. With Moore focusing on the recent billion dollar bailouts he exposes not the evils of Capitalism, but the evils of Fascism. Fascism is the unholy alliance of big business with big government, resulting in Wall St. essentially owning Washington. The men with the money controlling the men with the guns. This is not free-market Capitalism, this is a failure of government. Moore should attack the enabler, not the enabled. Peter Schiff has a brilliant anaolgy summing this up:

"If a kindergarten school teacher leaves the classroom and gives the kids pixie sticks and soda pop and when the teacher comes back and sees the classroom wrecked and all the kids have gone wild, who are you going to blame?"

The point is that greed will not simply disappear with more regulation, more control, and more intervention. Combining the greed of money in Wall St. with the greed of power in Washington you do not cancel out greed, but exponentially increase its effects. I wholehearted agree with Moore when he claims AIG, Goldman Sachs, and the rest stole from the taxpayer, but it was only through the force of government we had our money stolen from.

Moore misses the point in this movie as he did in his last movie, SICKO, in that he attacks what he claims are "free-market failures" but what are in reality the effects of bad government policies. It's amazing how people can attack an ideology by simply blaming all the problems of theirs on it. Guess it works when you have a nation of sheep willing to listen to anyone with catchy slogans and entertaining "documentaries".

New Blog Up

Hey all (meaning me)

I have a new blog up documenting my internship experience at the Heritage Foundation at http://campus.albion.edu/mrgentilegoestowashington/ so check it out if you want.

As for my personal thoughts about the internship: First of all I'm extremely happy to get an internship this semester (especially one that pays its interns). I'm also happy to get one at one of the more well known political think-tanks in D.C. for that all important resume booster. Second of all being in Washington at this time will be quite insane with Health Care, Afghanistan, and "Climate Change" all being hotly debated (well I hope Afghanistan becomes more debated actually. How the Left can protest madly when its Bush than shut up fast when its Obama is hypocrisy at its worst, but I digress). Thirdly, I'm hoping this internship will give me some real direction for future career ambitions. I'm very passionate about politics but have no desire to make it a career. I'd much rather do something in property management/development, but I don't know if its more important for me to fight for what I really believe in before I see our country (and world) fall apart. Only time and reflection will help me out.

Anyways, I hope to get back to my early days of blogging where I would post at least once a day. I've been quite lazy but think I'll be able to enter a good routine while on my internship. I've done a bit of writing on a few subjects this summer but they are much too long to post on a blog.

Check out the new blog soon, and I'll be writing soon.

Fractional-Reserve Banking: An Analysis from an Ethical and Economic Standpoint - Part 1: Introduction and History

(This is part 1 of a 8 part series on Fractional-Reserve Banking)

Fractional-Reserve Banking: An Analysis from an Ethnical and Economic Perspective

Our current system of banking, a centralized system of money production and control, is one of mystery and will be discussed for this essay. This system of money creation and its implications will be analyzed for their ethical dexterity and economic effects. The modern system of banking, where a Central Bank controls the entire money supply of a country, must be understood and explored since money is the lifeblood of any economy. However, our monetary system is not well-understood and met with confusion and ignorance rather than curiosity and knowledge. The fractional-reserve system will be the focus of this paper as I examine its history, process, legality, economic and ethical rational and criticisms, and also present a discussion on possible alternatives.

History

The beginnings of fractional-reserve banking go as far back as 8th century China1
(Rothbard 91) but the emergence of standardized practices did not exist till around the seventeenth century. While the practice was not the same everywhere the basic story follows this pattern: Gold and silver coin were the prevailing currency at this time and people would carry their coins around with them and keep their stores somewhere in their home. Goldsmiths would keep their extra gold in vaults at their shops and customers would ask to keep their extra currency in there as well for safe keeping. The Goldsmiths would charge a fine for the service and in return for the deposit of gold would issue deposit receipts to the customers for the amount of gold placed in the vault (typically one note per ounce of gold). As more people began using these “money warehouses” the more people began having deposit receipts. As a result, it was found that by just exchanging deposit receipts for goods and services, instead of the actual gold, transactions could be made easier in the marketplace. The exchange of notes proved much more convenient instead of having to carry around gold, or transfer large amounts of precious metals.

The Goldsmiths realized this trend and decided to take advantage of the situation. Since very few customers actually took their gold out of the vaults and instead used the deposit notes as a medium of exchange, the Goldsmiths were able to issue more notes than actual deposits as loans with interest. Thus the Goldsmiths moved from 100% reserves to fractional-reserves since they could not redeem all the notes from the gold reserves. They justified these actions by calling the extra notes an IOU liability that they would pay back to the depositors’ accounts. However, these money warehouses (becoming the equivalent of modern banks now that they lent out depositors money) still recognized depositors’ right to redeem their gold on demand. It is not hard to see as Murray Rothbard put it, “But the legal claims issued by the bank must then be fraudulent, since the bank could not possibly meet them all” (ibid 99). These practices continued and soon became legalized banking practices and are the base to the modern system that exists here in America and around the world.

Here in America our Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, controls monetary policy and the supply of money in the economy. The Federal Reserve (commonly known as the Fed) conducts monetary policy through tools such as open-market operations and the required reserve ratio. The Federal Reserve controls the operations of commercial banks by changing this reserve ratio, thereby affecting the amount of credit, or new money, that can be created. This process of making new money, of how money is created out of thin air, will be detailed in this next section.
First off, it is important to understand why a Federal Reserve is needed in a fractional-reserve system. Since banks cannot possibly redeem all deposits at the same time (the phenomenon know as a “bank run”) the system is inherently unstable. Recognizing such instability, bankers pushed for, and got, the Federal Government to establish a central bank to act as “lender of last resort”. The purpose of the central bank is one of providing liquidity to banks during times where the banks would have otherwise become insolvent and declared bankruptcy. Having such a power allows banks to continue fractional-reserve practices without the worry of going out of business.

Getting b(l)ogged down in the technology

Well it's official.  I have a blog, a facebook, and a twitter.  I can update them all with a touch from either my new browser Flock, or from Ping.fm.  I must admit, I can get a little overwhelmed at it all but that's how it should be.  Easy but complicated all at the same time.  Hopefully people will start paying more attention to me through the use of these new technologies and I can make my mark.  Tweet, Blog, and Flock on people.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Part 7: Conclusion

(This is the 7th and final part of a 7 part series on my final term paper for Ethnics. Click here to start at part one)

Conclusion

In this paper I have tried to show the history of the Maori people and their relations with the Crown and local government. At first the Maori and early settlers coexisted in relative peace and harmony (outside the few cases of cannibalism). It was not till British Imperialism entered the picture that the Maori found themselves on the defensive. Acting under the guise of a partnership, the British quietly declared their sovereignty over the whole Maori Nation and began to establish their dominance over the native people. Starting with questionable land deals the British soon took their opportunity for major land grab during the Land War with massive land confiscation—much of which we saw was unfairly done—and began to marginalize the Maori into the minority they are today. If it were not for the major activism of the 1960s and 1970s there is much evidence to suggest the Maori people would eventually be phased out to extinction. However, they began to use the club of the political power against those who used it upon them and asserted their rights as established in the Treaty of Waitangi. Government entities such as the Waitangi Tribunal and the Maori Language Commission serve to restore Maori land and language ownership. Such steps are in the right direction for the Maori to reestablish themselves as a culture. The question is which philosophy is the best one for the Maori: To use the existing government and try to slowly gain political power in order to achieve Maori ideals? Or declare independence from the Pakeha majority and become a true Maori Nation through a declaration of individual sovereignty from the rest of New Zealand? Only time and the Maori will decide which path is right for them.

Part 6: Waitangi Tribunal

(This is the 6th part of a 7 part series on my final term paper for Ethnics. Click here to start at part one)

Waitangi Tribunal

The Waitangi Tribunal was commissioned as an independent judicial body set up to review actions of those acting under the authority of the Crown in New Zealand, who may have broken agreements set out in the Treaty of Waitangi. However, the Tribunal was given power only to make recommendations to the government and none to implement their recommendations. The Tribunal’s lack of jurisdiction produced as few as four cases by 1981 and the Maori were unsatisfied with such results. In 1985, Parliament amended the Treaty of Waitangi Act so that the Tribunal would serve as the one body for Maori claim review. Most importantly the act established jurisdiction for the Tribunal for actions taken as far back as 1840. With such power granted, the Tribunal could make significant and historic claims. Claims could be made against “confiscations, expropriations, title grants, and Crown and some private purchases” (Ibid 237). The Tribunal marked the first real recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi since the late 1800s which concluded the Maori had no recognizable system of government to claim sovereignty to: “hence, in legal terms, the Treaty was ‘a simple nullity’” (Alves 58).

Ever since the Treaty of Waitangi was drafted there have been arguments over the difference in translations of the treaty and, subsequently, the meaning of such differences. At the time of the Treaty the Maori had the understanding that the British had the right to make laws and maintain order, but they maintained their sovereignty. In regards to land the English version of Article II guaranteed Maori:

The full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties which they may collectively or individually posses so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession; but the Chiefs yield to Her Majesty the exclusive right of Pre-emption over such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate at such prices as may be agreed upon…

The Maori version, stated:

The Queen of England agrees to protect the Chiefs, the sub-tribes and all the people of New Zealand in the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship over the lands, villages and all their treasures. But on the other hand the Chiefs of the Confederation and all the Chiefs will sell land to the Queen at a price agreed to by the person owning it and by the person buying it (the latter being) appointed by the Queen as her purchase agent.

This right of preemption, which was in the English version but not the Maori, gave the Maori only one buyer—the Crown—and also contributed to the Maori being persuaded to sell their land (Bourassa and Strong 232). The large amount of land lost to such misunderstands became major Maori cases in the Tribunal’s hearings.

However, major questions arise with what compensation is acceptable for both the Maori and the Pakeha. There exist two separate, and very different, ideas about this issue. On one hand you have the Maori having suffered the full wrath of European invasion: Losing (either through legal land sales or illegal confiscation) 95% of their original land holdings, experiencing an almost complete disappearance of their native language and parts of their culture, and a limited representation in the current political system. To the Maori they feel every entitlement for restitution of their land and culture, using the government that took everything away to gain everything (and possibly more) back. On the other side you have those (mainly Pakeha) who feel to give back land to the Maori is in itself an unfair distribution of land to those whose only claim to it lies in their ancestral heritage—even though many of the Maori have mixed with the Pakeha complicating the matter further. It is these types of opinions the Waitangi Tribunal must deal with, and try to make amends with.

In the Tribunal’s short history, there have been several important decisions made concerning Maori recognition from the government. In a claim brought by the Maori organization Te Kaiwhakapumau I Te Reo Maori, the group stated that the New Zealand government had failed to protect the Maori language and such a failure went against a promise in the Treaty of Waitangi. The Tribunal (Waitangi Tribunal 1986) declared: “The ‘guarantee’ in the Treaty requires affirmative action to protect and sustain the language, no a passive obligation to tolerate its existence and certainly not the right to deny its use in any place” (qtd. in Spolsky 564). With the Tribunal’s ruling on the Maori language the Maori Language Act 1987 passed. “The purpose of the Act was ‘to declare the Maori language to be an official language of New Zealand’” (Ibid 564). It allowed the language to be spoken in legal proceedings and for an interpreter to always be available. It also set up an official government institution for the promotion of the Maori Language, the Maori Language Commission. Again we see the Maori use the government—this time to help promote the language that was almost wiped out completely due to State policies.

The biggest settlement on land claims was the Waikato Tainui Raupatu (confiscation of land) Act 1995. Under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 the government confiscated 1.2 million acres of the Tainui land, and the Tainui finally had an opportunity for restitution with the Waitangi Tribunal. The claims process began in 1987, negotiations started in 1992 with the National government, and finally in 1995 the deed of settlement was signed. The Crown gave out an official apology that included a personal one from the Queen when she visited the Island in 1995. The Crown recognized they unfairly labeled the Tainui as rebels and confiscated their land unfairly and by depriving the tribes of their land have caused them much suffering. Through this settlement, the Maori “sought not just money, but the removal of that stigma” (Bourassa and Strong 249) of being labeled rebels when they were merely protecting their land from the unfair confiscation from the government during the land wars. Tainui’s principle negotiator expressed the Maori sentiment about the settlement:

Our settlement is not about replacing the responsibility of the government, nor is it about short term remedy. The Crown still has a duty to provide for proper standards of health, welfare, housing, employment and all the basic needs that Maori people along with other citizens require. (qtd. in Alves 99)

I believe it is type of thinking that most Maori believe, and it makes sense. They have sworn their sovereignty over to the Crown and expect the same rights and priviledges as every other group under Crown governance. However, they have experienced time and time again, the government taking more from them than giving to them. The Waitangi Tribunal is a start in the people’s process towards a more just system, the question is to what end will this process take them?

The Waitangi Tribunal continues to this day to be the foremost entity working for equity and restitution for the Maori people. The Tribunal hears claims on a daily basis but few ever actually make it to any type of real legal process. It is interesting to note how once even just a little power is given to such a minority group as the Maori they are able to make substantial gains in terms of gaining land or changing existing policies. It strengthens the arguments of those in favor of separate Maori governance in order to achieve Maori ideals; especially those that have been trampled on from the European-run governments in the past.

Part 5: Political Resurgance

(This is the 5th part of a 7 part series on my final term paper for Ethnics. Click here to start at part one)

Political Resurgence

In the early part of the twentieth century, the Maori began to slowly rebuild their numbers and settled into a socio-economically disadvantaged group. A major movement began after World War II towards urban areas from rural to pursue job and educational opportunities (Ausubel 222). Those who lived in cities struggled to adjust to the vastly different life of mortgages and contract agreements. Maori standards of living remained well below national averages with low health and living conditions. Many Maori volunteered to fight in World War II and came back with worldwide recognition of their deeds, providing them with confidence to demand equality with the returning Pakeha servicemen (Alves 38). Here we see the first signs of Maori demanding restitution from the government; in this case the first Labour government provided unemployment and pension benefits standards for everyone. As quoted in an article from the times, “the Maori cannot live without government aid and enterprise” (Hawthron 46). Continual pushes for government action in Maori affairs resulted in such enactments such as the Maori Welfare Act 1962, creating the Maori Council. The Council’s main adjective was to provide an overall Maori opinion and to help with ending discrimination but also looking to help in assimilation (Alves 39).

With the moves away from traditional, rural tribal settings, the Maori experienced a major loss in their language. Moving from a monolingual Maori setting to the monolingual English city settings led to language mixing and gradual dissipation and erosion of the Maori language. Also at this time the Maoris’ land holding had been shrunk to 3.1 million acres, a mere 5% of New Zealand. Efforts had been made to try and begin a process of restitution of land to the Maori, but the efforts were half-hearted and no real justice was served. With Maori culture standing at the brink of extinction, it “made many people, especially the youth, responsive to calls for pan-Maori mobilization” (Sharp 88) and the calls to Activism resonated clearly within the people. Ausubel states, “the determination of the Maori people to preserve their cultural identity was implemented by the perpetuative mechanism of almost complete physical, social, and psychological withdrawal from erosive contact with European culture” (227).

The 1960s and 1970s brought about a global surge in ethnic and social identity recognition and equality. Calls for woman’s and black rights in America could be seen reciprocated in the cultural movements in Australia, Canada, South America, and in New Zealand. Given the new communication mediums of television and radio, people from around the world could see the efforts made by similar groups and find inspiration in them. The Nga Tamatoa, a Maori group, lobbied for Maori language to be taught in schools (Spolsky 560). The Land Rights Movement, led by Maori women, conducted protests and marches for Maori land restitution (Bourassa and Strong 237). These movements intensified in 1975 and the Labour Party moved quickly to address the growing protests by establishing the Waitangi Tribunal—a governing body to address grievances concerning the Treaty of Waitangi.

Part 4: Land Wars and Aftermath

(This is the 4th part of a 7 part series on my final term paper for Ethnics. Click here to start at part one)

Land Wars and Aftermath

The New Zealand land wars took place intermittently between 1860 and 1872, and nearly 18,000 British troops were deployed to the Island to combat the Maori. The British forces found the Maori extremely well organized and difficult to defeat since the tribes relied on guerrilla warfare instead of open battlefields where the British had the advantage. The British, blinded by sheer arrogance of their own superiority, could not believe that the Maori posses engineering and military expertise and thus could not defeat the Maori warriors easily.

During the War, Parliament passed the Suppression of Rebellion Act 1863 which allowed the punishment of rebels and the confiscation of their lands. Under this act nearly 3.5 million acres were taken, even though later many of the Maori were found to have not been in rebellion against the Crown. Some of this land was returned to a few of the Maori tribes after the war, but in the form of Crown title (Bourassa and Strong 234). The Waitangi Tribunal stated long after the fact in 1996 that:

The wars, in our view, were not of Maori making. The Governor was the aggressor, not Maori…In terms of strict law, the initial military action against Maori was an unlawful attack by armed forces of the Government on Maori subjects who were not in rebellion and for which, at the time, the Governor and certain Crown officers were subject to criminal and civil liability. (7)

The Crown also passed the Native Land Acts 1862 and the Native Land Act 1865 mandating that individual Maori men needed to own land in order to be eligible to vote. The Maoris did not posses the same ideas of the individual as the Western British did, and these acts posed problems for the Maori since Maori land was communal and owned by every member of the group. Many refused or were unable to individualize their shared land holdings into a fashion deemed appropriate to the English and were excluded from parliamentary participation (Fleras 555). This effectively excluded a large majority of Maori from any political bearing and contributed to causes of the Land Wars. There were continuing laws enacted to further undermine the Maori property rights. The Public Works Act 1864 allowed the Crown to take up to 5% of the land without compensation for roads and public works projects. The expansion of the road system into Maori land enabled the local governments to impose taxes on the Maori lands that led to further land confiscation.

The Maori Representation Act 1867 created a duel system of representation that gave the Maori some form of representation. The Act divided the land into four districts and allowed Maori men with voting rights to elect one representative from each district to the parliament. This was viewed by the Maori as a “Pakeha commitment to racial harmony through more equitable sharing of political power” (Ibid 556). However, the British desire was not so much to create racial harmony as to assimilate the Maori into acceptable British citizens. By establishing Maori representation the British were able to achieve four goals: pacify a formidable military opponent, quickly assimilate the Maori with low cost, provide safety for settlers while the government acquired land to secure a frontier, and keep the Maori from creating their own power base which could undermine parliament control.

The Crown wished to ease the Maori into their view of a better society—Christian and civilized—which would be achieved by the “Europeanization” of the Maori. As Augie Fleras states, “Maori representation arose as a politically deceptive strategy of indirect control which co-opted the Maori population while simultaneously conveying the illusion of democratic power sharing” (558). Groups like the Young Maori Party, who bought into the British and Western culture superiority over their “out-dated” customs, worked to change their culture. Being mostly European educated, these Maori would join political parties in efforts to enhance Maori life through acceptance of European ways of life. These groups were supported by the Pakeha and local governments but were eventually labeled as “sell-outs” during the 1970s activist movements and phased out.

Since the missionary schools had been weakened by the wars the government passed the Native Schools Act 1867, establishing English as the school language medium (Spolsky 557). These schools were created in order to force English monolingualism onto the Maori-monolingual speakers. The goal being to educate and civilize the Maori so that the British could control them easier and future wars could be averted. The government run schools provided another way for the Crown to assimilate the Maori into the ideal British citizen, making them “brown-skin Pakeha” (Fleras 557). Maori reaction to such policies were mixed. Separatists wished to completely reject such policies, which, they felt, undermined Maori autonomy. On the other side you had those who wanted such policies and felt the need to reject Maori language completely in favor of the dominant, English language and culture. Those in-between who favored both English and Maori language teaching, seeing the benefits of acquiring English but still wanting to maintain Maori culture. These three views remained prevalent in Maori language and political movements and can help us understand the Maori opinions today. The separatists were the ones who insisted on the revitalization of Maori language in the 20th century and played important roles in the language revitalization movements (Spolsky 558).

Part 3: Waitangi Treaty

(This is the 3rd part of a 7 part series on my final term paper for Ethnics. Click here to start at part one)

Treaty of Waitangi

The Treaty of Waitangi continues to this day to be the most important documents in New Zealand law concerning the Maori directly. The Treaty established three main tenets: 1) Land title would only have legitimacy if given through the Crown, 2) the establishment of Preemption by the Crown through an appointed committee, and 3) the Maori received the same rights and protections as citizens of England. Over 500 Maori chiefs signed the document, ceding sovereignty to the British, yet the document has been debated and deliberated over ever since its execution. Arguments over the meanings of particular words and how the document was translated have major impact on current claims against the Crown and will be discussed later in the section about the Waitangi Tribunal. The British were (and still are) suspected that their main intentions for the treaty for the Crown to have control over all the land sales so they could sell it cheaply to themselves than sell it to future settlers at much higher prices (Bourassa and Strong 232). Since they gave the right of Preemption to the British in the treaty, the Maori were given little choice but to basically hand their land over for little to nothing to the British controlled land committees. As David Ausubel states,

In acceding to colonization and British sovereignty, and in placing their trust in treaty guarantees the Maori failed to reckon realistically with the predatory designs of the colonists who were determined by any means, fair or foul, to obtain the most desirable land in New Zealand and to establish the supremacy of their own economic and political system. (219)

The more settlers that began to arrive to the island put more and more pressure on demand for land and the Crown set out to acquire vast amounts of land. From 1844 to 1864, the Crown bought 34.5 million acres of land from the Ngai Tahu at a price less than what 30,000 acres sold for in Canterbury (Bourassa and Strong 233).

At the same time the New Zealand Government began to support the mission schools, implementing policies to control and pacify the Maori. The government aimed to replace the Maori language with English so as to assimilate Maori into what they considered to an acceptable British colony. The Maoris wished to learn English so as to effectively deal with the new settlers and government. Such motivations were seen as Maori willingness to give up on their culture and as threats to the integrity of their social and economic institutions (Ausubel 219). The Pakeha wished to rule the colony completely, “aware that Maori resistance to land sales limited the extension of British sovereignty while preserving Maori autonomy” (Alves 25). The British colonists, refusing to be denied the land that they desired, took up arms against the Maori who they felt blocked their ambitions. The Maori resisted such attacks, considering the white settlers arrogant and greedy, and the events culminated into a series of deadly Land Wars.