The Case for a Gold Standard, More SEC Revolving Door, 24 Types of Libertarians, and Ghost of Rothbard Haunting Bernanke?

For a little bit of educational entertainment, check out this nice little video on why we should return to the gold standard:

There is a conflict of issue in this video since it has been put out by Gold Resource Group, but regardless the overall message is correct.  Fiat funny money finances poverty-perpetuating welfare programs and war-mongering acts of imperialism.  WWI, WWII, and the Vietnam War didn't have to be fought.  The Civil War saw the introduction of the non-gold/silver backed "greeback."  FDR confiscated gold from the public and devalued the dollar to pay for the New Deal.  Fiat money has a rich history of being used to finance the  ever growing U.S. government and has been simultaneously used to benefit Wall Street and the banksters for nearly a century.  Why the left trust the government with the money despite this mounting evidence is beyond me.

The same kind of leftist blind faith can be applied to government regulators as well.  Check out this aptly titled article "The SEC's Revolving Door" from the Project on Government Oversight:

If you’re looking for evidence of the revolving door that spins between the federal government and Wall Street, look no further than Daniel Gallagher, President Barack Obama’s recently announced nominee for Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner.

Gallagher certainly appears qualified for the job. He previously worked at the SEC as a counsel to then-Chairman Christopher Cox, and later played a key role in organizing the SEC’s response to the financial crisis. Yet Obama’s nomination of Gallagher to help lead the agency during a critical time in its history is also the latest example of the agency’s coziness to the industry it oversees.

Gallagher is currently a partner at WilmerHale. The pricey law firm’s high-profile clients have included Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and other Wall Street giants regulated by the SEC. If the Senate confirms him, this would be Gallagher’s second spin through the revolving door — he previously left WilmerHale to join the SEC in January 2006, only to return to the firm in 2010. And he would be the latest on an ever-expanding list of WilmerHale alumni at the SEC, including the current general counsel, deputy general counsel, associate general counsel, corporation finance division director, enforcement division chief counsel and deputy secretary.

Of course, the revolving door spins in both directions. Many former SEC employees leave the agency to join WilmerHale and other legal, accounting and consulting firms that represent clients in the securities industry. Several recent reports by the SEC Inspector General have raised troubling questions about whether the promise of future employment representing Wall Street causes some SEC officials to treat potential employers and their clients with a lighter touch.

So what's the sum of all this SEC revolving door action:

All told, POGO’s database shows that 219 former SEC employees filed 789 statements between 2006 and 2010 announcing their intent to appear before the SEC or communicate with its staff on behalf of private clients. One former employee had to file 20 statements during this time period in order to disclose all his clients and the issues on which he expected to appear before the SEC. Another former employee filed his first statement just two days after leaving the agency.

Well this must be baffling for all the Paul Krugman and Robert Reich's out there who seem to think angles work at the federal government.  Don't worry though, as long as Barney Frank keeps writing regulatory bills, that should put an end to financial crisis.  Remember now, Barney Frank clearly saw the 2008 financial crisis coming and warned the public about the insolvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...

Well even as a libertarian, you gotta have a sense of humor about yourself.  With that in mind, it's always nice to be acknowledged:

Someone special told me I was the "more libertarian than thou" type, I figured I was more the "atlas" type.

Now for the most idiotic comment of the day from W.W. at The Economist:

Although sophisticated Austrian-school monetary economists such as George Selgin and Larry White defend rule-based inflation-targeting policies not all that different from Mr Sumner's neo-monetarist nominal GDP-targeting rule, the ghost of Murray Rothbard looms much larger on the free-market right.

Are you freaking kidding me?  Who the hell besides Ron and Rand Paul still promote Rothbardian monetary policy to a mainstream audience.  Sure Robert P. Murphy and Tom Woods make the occasional appearance on Freedom Watch, but does this guy seriously think that when Bernanke turns the printing presses on he thinks WWRD (What Would Rothbard Do?)?  Even after making a statement like that, W.W. attempts to correct himself:

Now, I don't claim that the right, loosely defined, is chock full of Murray Rothbard fanatics. And whatever it is that is keeping Ben Bernanke's Fed from loosening up, it's not the enduring intellectual legacy of Murray Rothbard. At least, not directly. But I do believe elements of Ron Paul's Rothbardian monetary philosophy enjoy a great deal of currency on the grassroots right, and I believe this exerts a considerable gravitational force on the institutional right, such that arguments for zero or very low inflation are accorded more weight than they would were Milton Friedman still in full effect.

At this point he may be right in that many tea partiers (by grassroots right, I assume this is what he is talking about) hardly even know who Rothbard was, but if Rothbard did indeed still have a lasting mainstream impression, we would not have seen the huge expansion of the monetary base that proceeded the financial crisis that we did.  As much as I would love to believe that Rothbard has a huge amount of influence on everyone else as he has had on me, that is simply wishful thinking.

I will end with another great video interview with Jim Rogers who, though not saying anything new, continues to stay on point: don't trust the rating agencies, the U.S. is bankrupt, and the debt ceiling fiasco is a sham: