Federal Reserve » Patrick J. Buchanan

The True Believer

Jan 122012

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Last May, Ron Paul filed his financial disclosure form, and The Wall Street Journal enlisted financial analyst William Bernstein to scrutinize his investments.

“Paul’s portfolio isn’t merely different,” said an astonished Journal, “it’s shockingly different.”

Twenty-one percent of his $2.4 to $5.5 million was in real estate, 14 percent in cash. He owns no bonds. Only 0.1 percent is invested in stocks, and Paul bought these “short,” betting the price will plunge. Every other nickel is sunk into gold and silver mining companies.

A Conspiracy of Counterfeiters

Aug 302011

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”

“Lenin was certainly right,” John Maynard Keynes continued in his 1919 classic, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace.”

Who's Really Downgrading America?

Aug 082011

By Patrick J. Buchanan

The decision by Standard & Poor’s to strip the United States of its AAA credit rating, for the first time, has triggered a barrage of catcalls against the umpire from the press box and Obamaites.

S&P, we are reminded, was giving A ratings to banks like Lehman Brothers, whose books were stuffed with suspect subprime paper, right up to the day Lehman Brothers fell over dead.

The Long Retreat of Liberalism

Jul 192011

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Though President Obama has run rings about the Republican Party in the debt-ceiling debate, that party can yet emerge victorious, if it will stick to its guns.

Clearly, the Republican strategy was not thought through, when the party chose the debt ceiling as the legislative terrain on which to fight its fiscal war.

The Dirty Old Man and the IMF

May 172011

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Saturday was a bad day for the New World Order.

New York police boarded the first-class cabin of an Air France jet bound for Paris to collar Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, a Grand Master of the Universe and the Socialist Party’s hope to defeat President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012.

Obama Blows up the Bridge

Apr 152011

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“Rather than building bridges, he’s poisoning wells,” said Rep. Paul Ryan, after listening to Barack Obama’s scathing attack on his deficit reduction plan as a shredding of America’s social contract with the elderly and poor.

Ryan is right. Yet, with Obama’s partisan savagery, virtually calling the GOP plan immoral, we have clarity.

There will be no grand bipartisan bargain on taxes and spending.

Is a Bond Crisis Inevitable?

Dec 312010

By Patrick J. Buchanan

With Christmas shoppers out in force and the stock market surging to a two-year high, talk is spreading that the long-awaited recovery is at hand.

Perhaps.

But gleaning the news from Europe and Asia as U.S. cities, states and the federal government sink into debt, it is difficult to believe a worldwide financial crisis that hammers governments, banks and bondholders alike can be long averted. Consider.

The Fed Trashes the Dollar

Nov 162010

By Patrick J. Buchanan

If it is the first responsibility of the Federal Reserve to protect the dollars that Americans earn and save, is it not dereliction of duty for the Fed to pursue a policy to bleed value from those dollars? For that is what Chairman Ben Bernanke is up to with his QE2, or “quantitative easing.”