It’s true what they say about following the money. With the release of the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Financial Statements, we can take a closer look at their income and expenses to find that the central bank functions like a federal embezzler as much as it does a federal counterfeiter.
It begins on page 7: Revenue of $170 billion.
College campuses have long been battlegrounds between due process for those accused of sexual misconduct (innocent until proven guilty) and legal privileges for alleged victims who many automatically believe (guilty until proven innocent).
To understand the economy, most financial experts and commentators rely upon gross domestic product (GDP). The GDP framework looks at the value of final goods and services produced during a particular time interval, usually a quarter or a year.
This statistic is constructed with the view that consumption, not wealth production, drives an economy. Since consumer outlays are the largest part of the overall demand, it is assumed that consumer demand drives economic growth, a fundamental assumption in Keynesian economics.
Sound money advocates are rejoicing as House Bill 1718, the Arkansas Legal Tender Act has become the law in the Natural State.
Backed by the Sound Money Defense League, Money Metals Exchange, and sound money advocates and supporters throughout the state, HB 1718 reaffirms gold and silver as legal tender, as well as ends all taxes on purchase, sale, or exchange of specie, including state capital gains taxes.
In a recent column, I discussed an argument about secession made by Abraham Lincoln and sympathetically expounded by Michael P. Zuckert in his important book A Nation So Conceived. Lincoln maintained that a nation once formed could not allow secession because doing so would open it to unlimited fissiparous tendencies, culminating in anarchy. This argument did not address the problem of slavery, surely relevant to the concrete circumstances of the Civil War.
Thirty years ago, FBI tanks smashed into the ramshackle home of the Branch Davidians outside Waco, Texas. After the FBI collapsed much of the building atop the residents, a fire erupted and 76 corpses were dug out of the rubble. Unfortunately, the American political system and media have never honestly portrayed the federal abuses and political deceit that led to that carnage.
What lessons can today’s Americans draw from the FBI showdown on the Texas plains 30 years ago?
