Now Showing: Zeitgeist

Friends from Mogwai hosted us today to show the classic Peter Joseph film: Zeitgeist.

The crowd was a mix of students and various non-profit groups. We lacked time to have a more in-depth discussion but it was a good start.

For those who want to review the now cult classic film, here it is with subs:

Thanks to Mogwai for having us.

“Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld”

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Hubris and Crisis

On MarketWatch, an interesting recap of Alan Greenspan’s testimony regarding the financial crisis:

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — In one of the most dramatic moments in the global financial crisis, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before Congress in October 2008, just weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers spread fear and panic around the world.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) bluntly asked him, “Were you wrong?”

“Partially,” replied the humbled Greenspan, who once sat at the commanding heights of the world’s economy.

Read the rest of the account here.

We were witness to this fateful testimony before and with interesting discussion as well. Just as the exercise of juxtaposing Greenspan’s execution against the tenets of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. Hubris is a virtue to Objectivists, arguably the same hubris that brings us ever closer to the brink with every new crisis.

“Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld”

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Are you Fed Up with the Fed?

According to the youtube write-up, this interview was on March 19, 2008. At that time Jim Rogers was fed up with the Federal Reserve, are you?

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Peter Schiff vs the Federal Reserve

Remember Peter Schiff complaining about the Federal Reserve in the previous blogs. Well he’s here now debating with people from the Federal Reserve.

Remember to watch all the five videos!

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Yaron Brook On The Great Depression

In this conference conducted by the Ayn Rand Center, Dr. Yaron Brook responds to a query regarding The Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States. The salient points of Dr. Brook’s talk relate to the establishment and the consequent actions of the Federal Reserve beginning in 1914 which ultimately culminated into the stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting depression. This talk is very timely now that the United States and Europe are entering a contracting phase in their economies in the wake of the crash of subprime mortgages and the bursting of the housing bubble and stock market crashes.

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Is The Government Spending Your Money Wisely?

An interesting panel: Peter Schiff author of “Crash Proof”, Dr. Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute, Victoria Barrett associate editor for Forbes Magazine, and Gary Kaltbaum of garyk.com. The panel criticizes the actions of the U.S. government, Federal Reserve, and discusses the future of the economy.

Watch Peter Schiff plug in Ron Paul and Yaron Brook remind the audience of what should be government’s core functions with regard to individual rights under capitalism.

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Weekend Viewing: A Primer On Money

In a similar vein as films we have featured here before such as Money as Debt, Money Masters, and criticism posed by Zeitgeist Addendum, here is a documentary featuring personalities from the Mises Institute about the nature and flaws of the present monetary system. This is Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve.

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Uncle Sam Now Owns U.S. Banks — Capitalism Has Become Socialism

Latest news is that the US government has unveiled its intention to buy about USD250B worth of bank equity–to recapitalize their banking system. This in effect, nationalizes the US banking system, and after its absorption of Federal institutions Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Indymac, and recently AIG, puts the once proudly capitalistic country closer to its European counterparts: socialist.

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Feds Pump Billions into the Financial System

I am not a Finance man, but the article below seems quite bad. Just fixing this seems to be a big problem, and other bankruptcies can occur anytime.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahwz_k5JvuB8&refer=worldwide

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed’s emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

The Fed’s expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, came hours before the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone.

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