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07 July 2010 By Keith Johnson Luke: She's rich. Hello, boys and girls! Did you know that you and I can create millions,
billions and even trillions of numbers just as easily
as the Federal Reserve? All you have to do is use
your imagination. Let’s try it! I’ll use the number proposed by Obama for his 2011
Federal Budget. Its numerical value looks something
like this: 3,800,000,000,000,000 Translated into words, that number is pronounced as
three trillion eight hundred billion. That’s a big number, huh? It only took me three
seconds to produce that number. Let’s put a dollar
sign in front of that: $3,800,000,000,000 Now, let’s take that number and put it in the
deposit column of our checkbook ledger and add that in
to what we have on account. For me, that figure would
add up to be: $3,800,000,000,127.14 I’m RICH! Let’s do the same for the Federal government.
Let’s take that $3,800,000,000,000 that Obama wants
for his 2011 Federal budget and put it into the
deposit column of what the Federal government has on
account. Wait a minute! The Federal government has no money
on account. As a matter of fact, they are this many
dollars in the hole: $13,053,274,954,598 O.K., so if the Federal Reserve gives the
Federal government $3,800,000,000,000, does that bring
the number down to: $9,253,274,954,600? Well, it would be if the Federal Reserve actually
gave that money to the Federal government.
Unfortunately, that money is only a loan. So, if we
add what the Federal government already owes to the
Federal Reserve to what it wants to borrow in the
future, that number would be: -$16,853,274,954,600 Did you catch that minus (-) figure I inserted
before the dollar sign, children? That ((MINUS!!!))
represents what you and your children and your
children’s children and their children will be
expected to pay back to the Federal Reserve the minute
they’re born. Now, if you’d like to spare your children all that
grief and pay off your share of that debt right now,
all you need to do is cough up $42,265.41. But that
doesn’t quite get you off the hook because starting
next year, you’ll have to come up with about $1500.00
per month to pay for your share of the 2011 Federal
budget. Let’s pretend that this milk cow represents YOU and
that this CHAINSAW represents the Federal Reserve. Now, let’s pull this cord and get this baby warmed
up! Hear that? That’s the sound of TYRANNY! Smell
that gasoline? That’s the armpit of the policeman
who’s got you in a chokehold for exercising your 1st
amendment right to complain about it! See those
teeth? That’s just a reminder that they can
slice you into T-bone steaks any day you decide to
stop producing milk. Oh, now, stop crying! At least you get something
in return for all that money, right? Well, if your
name happens to be Israel then that may be true—they
get about a million dollars per day. If your
name isn’t Israel, then all you get are a bunch of
wars to die in, ugly buildings you aren’t allowed to
enter and a whole lot of alphabet soup agencies that
take away things you aren’t willing to give up
voluntarily. Here’s some examples: The NSA takes
away your privacy, the ATF takes away your guns, the
IRS takes away your money and the TSA takes away your
dignity. Any questions? Let’s break that Federal budget down and I’ll show
you what I mean. Wow, looks like I was right! The biggest chunk of
that bill is for war and alphabet soup—I
mean—national security. $721.3 billion goes to
the Department of Defense, $2.7 billion is for FBI
counter-terrorism, $54.2 billion is for International
Affairs, $20.9 is for defense related projects with
the Energy Department, Veteran’s affairs gets $66
billion, Homeland Security gets another $54.7 billion,
$8.5 billion pays for NASA satellites, $58.4 billion
for Veteran’s pensions (a good thing), $7.5 billion
for miscellaneous expenses and $228.1 billion goes
towards interest on the debt incurred in past wars.
That brings us to a grand total of 1.223 trillion
dollars or roughly 1/3 of the entire Federal budget. Get a pad and paper ready, kids, cause I have a lot
more figures to throw your way. Ready? 33,000,000,000 are the number of dollars the GOP
doesn’t want to spend on an unemployment
extension. The GOP wants the unemployment to rise so
they can use that number to embarrass the Democrats
seeking reelection this November. 58,900,000,000 are the number of dollars the GOP
does want to spend on additional war funding
in Afghanistan, but only as long as it doesn’t come
attached to an additional bill adding new education
funding that would avert teacher layoffs. You see? It’s all about priorities. War comes
first and you and I come last! Ready for some more numbers? 600 are the number of dollars spent each second on
the drug war. 145,000,000,000 are the number of dollars spent to
bail out Fannie and Freddie. 80,000,000,000 are the number of dollars spent to
bail out the automobile companies. 48,000,000,000 are the number of dollars spent to
bail out AIG. I think Senator Dirkson said it best, “A
billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re
talking real money.” Of course, the government doesn’t want you to be
aware of these numbers and will take every opportunity
to make the actual numbers appear much smaller. This
is what we call “Government Math.” Let’s take the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for
instance. The CPI is a list of things that the
average American needs—like a gallon of gas, a sirloin
steak, etc. It used to be simple to calculate the
CPI. You simply took the price from the previous
year’s list of goods and compared them with the
current price. However, in the late 1980’s, Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and friends tweaked
the model, adding an assumption known as “Product
Substitution”. In other words, they assumed that
people would switch to cheaper goods if the price of
any given commodity got too expensive. They assumed that if the price of steak went up,
people would buy hamburger, and the cost of living
would go down instead of up. So instead of using the
CPI to measure a standard of living, it was changed to
measure what it takes for one to survive. That way
the government could reduce everything from interest
payments on the national debt to cost of living
adjustments to social security payments. But that’s not the only thing they changed on the
CPI. Geometric weighting assumes that as prices of
goods got too expensive, people would simply stop
buying those goods and, as a result, were therefore
given less importance in the index. This is what is
known as a “Hedonic Adjustment,” which assumes that as
the quality of goods improves, the overall price in
those goods declines as well. The government also likes to play with the
unemployment numbers. Right now, the government tells
us that the unemployment rate is at 9.3%. Actually,
unemployment is more realistically somewhere in the
neighborhood of 22%. That’s a big difference, huh? The problem is how unemployment figures are now
calculated. The government low-balls the number by
excluding those who fall under the contemporary
definition of ‘discouraged worker’ and those who can
only find ‘part-time’ work. Today’s definition of a discouraged worker is one
who has not found work within the last year. Before
1994, a discouraged worker was defined as one who had
not found work within the last month. That’s a big
discrepancy isn’t it, children. If we add those
people back into the equation, we come up with a more
realistic unemployment rate of right around 22%. There are other numbers that the government likes
to play with as well—like the gross domestic product
(GDP), the money supply, the actual value of the
dollar, gold…. …am I losing you? O.K., I’ll tell you what. Let’s take a break and
view this short video that demonstrates how numbers
can be manipulated to produce any desired result. Did you like that, children? Now you know how the
Federal Reserve does it. All you need is an
imagination and a gullible public to believe anything
you tell them. If you have those two things? The
world could be yours! OOOPS—sorry! I forgot. This world’s
already taken. |
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