Arkady's Thoughts

Inevitably while exploring the nature of our frail financial system one gets awfully suspicious of the big bad federal reserve, an institution created by several bankers and politicians at the turn of the century in order to avoid banking panics.  Several core tasks of the Federal Reserve were to preserve and maintain the health of the American economy and avoid banking panics the likes of 1908.  A secondary and rather subjective task was to preserve the integrity of the US Dollar.  After eleven recessions, a great depression and the current financial crisis one would agree that the Fed failed.  Worse yet, since 1913 (The Fed's creation) the dollar has lost 95% of it's value, so that is another second failure.  A catastrophic failure of such proportion would send most private corporations into exile and permanent banishment, but since the Fed is the creation of Congress and the Fed's members are partially appointed by our Government - continued failure can be ...

A video has been circulating around the web and is currently available on YouTube. This is an absolute must watch and demonstrates the complete ineptitude of our government officials. In the video you see the inspector general of the federal reserve board being questioned. She is asked a very simple question, that is - can she explain why the federal reserve balance sheet expanded by one trillion dollars and where that money went. In other words, in the past half a year our federal reserve borrowed roughly one TRILLION dollars and the sole agency responsible for auditing this money has absolutely no clue as to where it is. We are talking about a devastating amount of money that will forever enslave this and further generations with crippling debt. Keep in mind that the entire existence of the federal reserve starting with the creation of this semi-private institution has been questioned for decades now. Due to the work of brilliant men like Milton Friedman and to a lesser extent the ad...

The Internet is a beautiful thing, most will argue that it is probably the most substantial technological advancement humanity has experienced since the automobile. The ability to communicate and disseminate information at such rapid rates has made our society more aware, more educated and regrettably more paranoid. I am talking about the emergence of conspiracy theories that seem to dominate our political landscape now more than ever. I have pondered much on the reasoning behind this rapid development and attribute the Internet as the catalyst. Still, the propensity for a human being to lean towards a conspiracy is still somewhat of a mystery to me and something I would like to explore. My first stipulation is that human nature since the beginning of time has gravitated towards explanations of events that are of a certain magnitude and significance. Ever since early man discovered the wrath of mother nature and without any scientific explanation was forced to turn to religion as the...

Ron Paul got up in front of Congress and very simply in about two sentences, stated that Israel created Hamas . (Video below) The problem of course is that as a politician he created himself some wiggle room in case he is ever confronted, after all he could spin this in a multitude of ways. He could easily say "Israel never stopped Hamas from forming, therefore they helped create them". Whatever, not the point. What Ron Paul did however is set off a virtual firestorm among his constituency and much more importantly, among the anti-Israeli crowd as if they need any additional encouragement. Just perusing the YouTube videos alone, will give you an indication of how passionate and emboldened his supporters are upon hearing this. They praise him for being a lone voice of reason, a hero, etc. The truth is that Ron Paul is either purposely spreading vague misinformation or somehow - I have a hard time believing this - truly believes this garbage. For now we have the effect ...

According to this story a violent series of air strikes has left the Gaza strip in utter destruction, with 200 people dead and another 200+ injured. It is unclear as to what prompted such a backlash, but apparently Hamas fired longer ranging rockets this time. UPDATE: I recognize that Hamas has been firing rockets for years and has launched thousands in that time. I was unclear as to why this last firing served as the catalyst for this war. What is disturbing about this development is the timing. Anti- semitism appears to be on the rise and with US continuing to defend Israel the anti-Jew crowd will have more to scream and shout about. My observations, and they may be purely coincidental is that a growing number of people are holding the Jews responsible for our financial crisis. I am seeing this on YouTube, specific websites and forums. There are circles that are known for hate - like the white nationalists or Nation of Islam Muslims , but now a group of disenfranchised Ron Paul s...