The death of Isaiah

The following is a brief narrative loosely based on the “Ascension of Isaiah”, an early Christian text:

“You are around a campfire on a mountain after fleeing Bethlehem, which you had fled to after you’d fled Jerusalem.  You are with Isaiah and other prophets who have come under persecution by Manasseh, and you are overjoyed.  Not because of your current circumstances, but by what the Lord has spoken to you and your brethren who are sitting around the fire with you this cold night.

Isaiah has just told you and your brethren about his ascension to the seventh heaven, where he was permitted to see the Son of Man descend, undetected, through the heavens and down to earth to come to his own as a babe in a manger.  He then tells how he saw the Son of Man nailed to a tree and then descending into Sheol, only to return victoriously to the seventh heaven in unimaginable glory to sit at the right hand of the Eternal One.

Indeed, it is a terrible and wonderful time.

As you are rejoicing with your brethren over the promised Messiah and the Lord’s final victory over death, you see torches and hear shouts coming from the valley below, you and your brethren quickly extinguish the flames and run to hide wherever you can.  As you crouch behind a rock, out of the corner of your eye you watch Isaiah slip into a hollowed out tree. 

The men in torches appear and begin to search the area around the smoldering campfire.  You see that they are led by none other than Manasseh, the king of Judah.  You then recall that Isaiah had prophesied that indeed he would die by Manasseh’s hand.  As you are piecing this together in your mind, one of Manasseh’s men passes the by the rock which is your cover and strides up next to the tree in which Isaiah is hiding.  As he searches the branches above, he notices a light emanating from within the trunk of the tree.

It is Isaiah. 

You fix upon Isaiah’s face and watch as a holy calm and radiance comes over him.  A radiance that would later be recognized on the face of Stephen, the first Jew to be martyred for giving testimony to the messiah that Isaiah foresaw some 700 years earlier.

Then the unthinkable happens…

{Editor’s Note:  For those unfamiliar with the story, it is widely believed that Isaiah was sawn in two by Manasseh’s men while hiding in the tree.  This is testified to in the Jerusalem Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud, and the early Christian psuedepigrapha “The Ascension of Isaiah,”}

Of Money and Metals, Part II – The Keynesian Nightmare

1/18/2012 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

{Editor”s note: The following is a continuation of the series “Of Money and Metals.”  Please click here to view the Part I

In 1913 the US Congress passed the now infamous Federal Reserve act.  Not unlike the recent passage of the 2012 NDAA, it happened during the winter holiday when the populace was largely distracted by the festivities.

While the Federal Reserve act has wrought many injustices on the earth, undoubtedly the greatest injustice which continues to cause the greatest amount of damage to mankind was the subtle replacement of money proper with Federal Reserve notes.  This action effectively declared that debt is money, in direct violation of natural law.

The Federal Reserve, in direct violation of Natural Law

 

While this fact may have seemed like a minor detail with regards to custodianship at the time, the declaration was, in essence, handing Frodo’s One Ring to the financial and governmental authorities of the earth.  For it gave them largely unfettered access to the accumulated savings of the entire earth and, in the case that the savings ran dry, the unhindered ability to incur debts against the future production of the entire earth as well.

The only thing that they needed was to compel the entire earth to accept debts as money in everyday exchange.  In the west, they have largely succeeded.  In the east, the acceptance of debt as money has been violently forced upon the populace through a series of wars.

Yet as we stated yesterday, debt and money are polar opposites.  To declare that debt is money was not only insane, it was a direct violation of natural law.  This violation of natural law began to reap its terrible harvest in 1933 with the onset of the great depression.  Yet instead of admitting defeat and leaving the quantities of debt and money in the hands of the people, where it naturally belongs, the authorities presented an academic apologist to confirm for them that debt was indeed now money and that all that was required was more of it.

Enter John Maynard Keynes, best known as the father of the Keynesian school of economic thought.  Mr. Keynes developed a thesis which “correctly” diagnosed that the economic problem facing the earth was a lack of money.  What Keynes and those who subscribed to his theories have failed to realize is that the Federal Reserve, in declaring that debt was money, had placed a significant impediment to the creation of money, the remedy which the earth desperately needed.

Instead, Keynes and his colleagues skipped over the only viable solution, namely, allowing the free market to determine what constitutes debt and money and in what quantities each was needed, and offered the world a solution which has been the equivalent of injecting poison directly into the veins of the ailing economy.  The poison of which we speak was injected as a result of the testing erroneous hypothesis:

 “The problem is that there is not enough money.  Because debt is now money, it follows that more debt must be incurred to create the money necessary to spur production, employment, and all the things that people now associate with a healthy economy.  Further, there is not enough money precisely because the people are not sufficiently indebting themselves.  Since the people are not inclined to further indebt themselves (Editor’s note:  the people are naturally reacting to natural law, which naturally calls for less debt and more saving), it is the duty of the government to increase overall indebtedness, and therefore the money supply, on behalf of the people.  It must force the people to do what they cannot (or more accurately, will not) do for themselves.”

As insane as this line of thought sounds, it is today generally accepted as natural law by nearly every Harvard trained economist, and therefore government and central bank official, on the planet.  The only difference between the 1930’s and today is that today, circa 2012, this disastrous line of thought is practiced on a much grander scale.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment:  The Barbarous Relic and Trust Jesus!

Stay Fresh!

 

David Mint

 

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

 

Key Indicators for January 18, 2012

 

Copper Price per Lb: $3.73
Oil Price per Barrel:  $100.77

 

Corn Price per Bushel:  $5.93  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  1.90%
FED Target Rate:  0.08%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

 

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,660 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

 

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  1.50%
Unemployment Rate:  8.5%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  0.0%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  12,562  

 

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,380,300,000,000 RED ALERT!!!  THE ANIMALS ARE LEAVING THE ZOO!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,829,100,000,000 YIKES UP $1 Trillion in one year!!!!!!!