The Squirrel and the Grasshopper

The text below was forwarded to me a few years ago and I rediscovered it today. I’ve edited it to take out Australian specific references. The Squirrel and the Grasshopper story really resonated with me when I first heard it as a kid. I thought the squirrel was prudent. I’m sure other kids felt sad for the Grasshopper. I propose everyone can be divided into two groups – those who side with the squirrel and those who side with the grasshopper.
ORIGINAL VERSION

The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building and improving his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MODERN VERSION
The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed.
A social worker finds the shivering grasshopper, calls a press conference and demands to know why the squirrel should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate, like the grasshopper, are cold and starving.
The media shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper; with cuts to a video of the squirrel in his comfortable warm home with a table laden with food and informs people that they should be ashamed that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.
Do gooders demonstrate in front of the squirrel’s house. A Lefty Politician rants in an interview that the squirrel got rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the squirrel to make him pay his ‘fair share’.
In response to pressure from the media, the Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer, and creates The Grasshopper Housing Department. The squirrel’s taxes are reassessed. He is taken to court and fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as builders, for the work he was doing on his home, and an additional fine for contempt when he told the court the grasshopper did not want to work.
The grasshopper is provided with a Grasshopper Housing Department house, financial aid to furnish it and an account with a local taxi firm to ensure he can be socially mobile. The squirrel’s food is seized and re-distributed to the more needy members of society – in this case the grasshopper.
Without enough money to buy more food, to pay the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, the squirrel has to downsize his home.
A 60 Minutes special shows the grasshopper finishing up the last of the squirrel’s food, though spring is still months away, while the Grasshopper Housing Department house he is in, crumbles around him because he hasn’t bothered to maintain it. He is shown to be taking drugs.
Inadequate government funding is blamed for the grasshopper’s drug ‘Illness’.
The grasshopper gets arrested for stabbing an old dog during a burglary to get money for his drugs habit. He is imprisoned but released immediately because he has been in custody for a few weeks. He is placed in the care of the probation service to monitor and supervise him.
Within a few weeks he has killed a guinea pig in a botched robbery.
A commission of enquiry, that will eventually cost $10 million and state the obvious, is set up.
Additional money is put into funding a drug rehabilitation scheme for grasshoppers.
The grasshopper dies of a drug overdose.
The usual sections of the press blame it on the obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity and his traumatic experience of prison.
The squirrel’s taxes are increased to pay for law and order, and they are told that they will have to work beyond 65 because of a shortfall in government funds.

Audit The Fed And Apportionment

Friday 25 September 2009 had two significant events.  First, there was a full committee hearing on Ron Paul’s bill H.R. 1207 to audit the Federal Reserve.  Second, Chief Judge Edith Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, directly under the United States Supreme Court and covers Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana and Texas, issued an order for a three judge panel to hear an issue brought about apportionment regarding the House of Representatives.  Both of these actions, should they be brought to fruition, would seek to restore essential checks and balances found in the United States Constitution and reduce the centralization of power.

END THE FED

Murray Rothbard argues in The Case Against The Fed that because depositors are entitled to demand their deposits at any time and because by its nature fractional reserve banking cannot sustain all depositors demanding their deposits at the same time therefore fractional reserve banking is fraud.

Because of the inherently fraudulent nature of fractional reserve banking bank runs were a common occurrence before the FDIC and Federal Reserve system.  However, because of the cartel nature of the FDIC and Federal Reserve system individual bank failures are no longer to be feared by depositors because of the implicit guarantees.

These implicit guarantees have been turned into actual guarantees with the $100k limit being increased to $250k, which returns to $100k on 1 January 2010, the FDIC’s reserve fund being depleted and the Treasury extending a $500B line of credit to help placate owner’s of $13T+ of FDIC insured funds.

This has introduced tremendous moral hazard.  Moral hazard is the economic principle that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk.  As a result, people do more due diligence on the movies they watch than the banks they deposit their currency in.

For example, with FDIC insurance the moral hazard occurs often without conscious or malicious action.  Depositors have been trained to seek out the highest yields without regard to the underlying stability of the bank because when there is a bank failure the losses are socialized through increased FDIC insurance premiums, inflated away by the Federal Reserve through increasing the currency supply or a myriad of other fraudulent, deceitful, immoral or often illegal means.  The lynchpin of the current banking system, which is inherently unstable and will fail, is the Federal Reserve.

Consequently, the Federal Reserve is built on a fraud and the attendant effect on the rest of the economy is to distort normal market operations through both the supply and cost of currency.  This is illegally and unconstitutionally perpetuated through legal tender laws which violate the Constitution in regards to the monetary provisions in Article 1 Sections 8 and 10, the 10th Amendment and confounded the definition of a dollar and serve to centralize power.

But this immoral system, conceived in iniquity under cloak and dagger as explained by G. Edward Griffin in The Creature From Jekyll Island, has been perpetuated for nearly 100 years and despite humanity doing just fine for thousands of years many cannot conceive of an economy should the Federal Reserve be razed.  Nevertheless, because the system is built on fraud and because sunshine is the best disinfectant therefore the Federal Reserve has strongly challenged any type of public audit, accountability or oversight despite it being in the best interest of American citizens.

AUDIT THE FED

As the wretched vampire squid is dragged into the sunlight and revealed for the parasite it is then increased political pressure will be brought to bear on the immoral institution.  Ron Paul’s bill, which received a full committee hearing, is the first major step in this direction in a long time.

During the hearing testimony was heard from both Austrian economist Tom Woods, author of Meltdown, and Scott Alvarez the general counsel for the Federal Reserve.  As the general public becomes aware of the tremendous damage this institution and those on Wall Street have done hopefully they will adopt the spirit of the Founding Fathers.

Mr. Alvarez, or should we say Chicken Little, decides to terrorize those who advocate in favor of H.R. 1207.  He testified:

These concerns likely would increase inflation fears and market interest rates and, ultimately, damage economic stability and job creation. … Higher long-term interest rates would further increase the burden of the national debt on current and future generations.  Adoption of H.R. 1207 also could disrupt the nation’s relationships with foreign central banks and governments, relationships which are helpful in supporting the Federal Reserve’s efforts to fulfill its statutory missions, and erect barriers to official cooperation among central banks and governments.  Foreign central banks and governments likely would be less willing to engage in financial transactions with the Federal Reserve if these transactions were subject to policy review by the GAO as H.R. 1207 would allow.  These transactions, such as the deposit of international reserves and bilateral currency swap arrangements, help support the role of the dollar as the worldwide reserve currency

For example, first comes the audit of the Federal Reserve system.  Next comes the legislation to end it.  Then comes a reenactment of legislation like the Coinage Act of 1792 to prevent future similar behavior which reads:

SECTION 19. And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same ought to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, * * * every such officer or person who shall be guilty of any * * * of the said offenses, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death.

APPORTIONMENT

Bicameralism is the practice of having two legislative or parliamentary chambers.  The United States Congress is modeled after the British system which was composed of the House of Lords and the House of Commons.  The United States Senate is composed of 2 Senators from each state while the House of Representatives is under Article I Section 2 to be “chosen every second Year by the People of the several States”.  Under the doctrine of apportionment the House is to grow as the population grows and it did for the first 130 years of the Republic except in 1840.  But the Reapportionment Act of 1929 limited the size of the House to 435.

Currently, Congress Critters have a constituency of about 700,000 instead of about 50,000 like they did before the Reapportionment Act.  This has served to consolidate power and make the Congress Critters less responsive to The People.  The 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913, the same year the Federal Reserve Act was passed, and provided for the direct election of Senators.  The eviseration of these two checks and balances in the American political machenirey has made it easier for special interests and lobbyists to influence elected officials.

With the House often gridlocked with 435 members imagine the chaos of getting everyone aligned if there were over 1,300?  Ironically, increasing the number of Congress Critters through proper apportionment would likely have the effect of greatly decreasing the size of government because special interests would have much less influence and control with politicians likely much more accountable to their constituency.  Therefore, I find this order by Judge Jones for a hearing on the apportionment issue to be extremely interesting and a positive development regarding the decentralization of power.

CONCLUSION

The auditing of the Federal Reserve system would be very beneficial for the powers of truth and justice.  The Federal Reserve system should be viewed as counterfeiters because they enjoy a legalized counterfeiting franchise and are able to engage in creating new fiat currency with legal tender status and doing so amounts to confiscation through inflation which is a form of taxation without representation or due process of law.  Unmasking these costumed terrorist counterfeiters will bring to light and the conscience of The People the degree to which they are being stolen from.

Likewise apportionment could result in Congress Critters being more responsive to their constituency who could demand the repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the implementation of legislation like Section 19 of the Coinage Act of 1792.  Humanity has survived and thrived for thousands of years without a Federal Reserve.  Consequently, auditing and abolishing the Federal Reserve will be a great development for humanity and reduction in the centralization of power.

Disclosure:  Long physical gold, silver and platinum and no position the problematic GLD or SLV ETFs.