I am just so sick and tired of people being fans of Ron and Rand Paul because of their explanations of the evils of fractional reserve banking. People think what the Pauls say about banking and the FED is brilliant, when in fact it is idiotic.

Here is the YouTube comment by slowpoke692 that finally got me to post this.

I mean does it realy take Bernie Sanders to tell you who is ripping you off! Anything you do or say is a waste of breath until something is done about fractional reserve banking and the federal reserve!

Fractional reserve banking was invented thousands of years ago. The apocryphal story you read in economics text books and the one that Ron Paul says he heard from an Economics Professor is that some people had a business of storing other people’s fungible valuables (gold) for safe keeping. Soon one of these businesses realized that most of the gold sat in the warehouse, and only a small fraction was ever requested at any one time by the depositors. So the business realized that they could actually charge for lending out some of the gold in the warehouse, and the owners of that gold would never be inconvenienced by the fact that not every ounce of their gold was all sitting in the warehouse. Not only would the customers never be inconvenienced by this way of doing business, but owners could even get a share of the money earned from the loans. In his own writings, Ron Paul says that when he heard this, he realized it was a massive fraud that needed to be stopped when modern day banks do it with their depositors’ money (and pay interest on the deposits). I don’t think he ever learned another thing about economics after this revelation stopped him in his tracks.

What Ron and Rand Paul and their adherents don’t seem to recognize is that this fractional reserve business is done in everyday transactions by individuals who have nothing to do with banking.

When you buy something from a company and hand your money over before they deliver the product, how do you know that the product is actually sitting in a warehouse at the time you make the purchase? If it isn’t, then that is just like borrowing money from a bank that isn’t actually sitting in the bank when you borrow it. Who is going to insist, check up on, and enforce a requirement that what the store just sold you is actually in the warehouse at the time they sold it to you? The cost of goods would be higher if businesses had to pay for the warehouse space to store a product before it could be sold. The whole concept of just-in-time delivery rather than storing inventory for future use in manufacturing is one of the Japanese innovations that let them build high quality cars more cheaply than the inferior product made in Detroit at the time.

The Pauls never tell you that doing away with fractional reserve banking would also do away with bank accounts that paid the depositor interest. The banks would actually have to charge you for the service of keeping your money safe.

So, do you still think that the Pauls are brilliant economists? Or do you realize what idiots or snake oil salesmen they are?

By the way, if you have ever held an interest bearing account in a bank, or ever received a “free” toaster for opening up an account, what does it say about your intelligence if you never stopped to even wonder how the banks could afford to do this?

The Real News Network has the story Bernie Sanders Decries Lack of Wall Street Prosecutions.

Former financial regulator Bill Black says it’s important to reimplement the Glass-Steagall Act – but it’s not enough to prevent another financial crisis.

Bernie Sanders will also provide the missing part when he becomes President.

I am not just blowing smoke when I say that breaking up the big banks is a better solution than just regulating them. Listen to this interview with William K. Black, an expert on prosecuting white-collar criminal fraud at banks.

I received an email from Elizabeth Warren that I think all of you should see.

Robert Reich has an important petition that you should consider signing, Sign Robert Reich’s petition: Support Bernie Sanders’s plan to break up the big banks and rein in Wall Street.

Plans by other candidates to try to regulate specific behaviors by banks are in fact weaker plans than the Sanders call to break up the big banks and reinstate a modern version of the Glass-Steagall Act.

The Sanders plan makes sure that no matter what devious scheme the banks come up with in the future, they will be too small to crash the world economy as they did in 2009.

On the other hand, if you try to foresee what their next scheme will be so that you can prohibit it, they will just come up with a different scheme that is not yet prohibited. As a criminal control method, trying to anticipate the exact nature of future con games is a losing battle.

are in the minds of Trump supporters. YouTube has the video The Largest Black Holes in the Universe.

Published on Sep 26, 2012

Our Milky Way may harbor millions of black holes… the ultra dense remnants of dead stars. But now, in the universe far beyond our galaxy, there’s evidence of something far more ominous. A breed of black holes that has reached incomprehensible size and destructive power. Just how large, and violent, and strange can they get?

MoveOn has posted MoveOn to Launch Presidential Endorsement Vote on Thursday.

This is a big decision, and one thing we’ve heard loud and clear from MoveOn members is that it’s important for us to stand together. To win the 2016 presidential endorsement of MoveOn members, a candidate must earn a supermajority—67%, or, technically, 66.67%—of votes cast. If no candidate hits that threshold, we won’t endorse in the Democratic presidential primary.
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If you already regularly receive emails from MoveOn.org, you are a member and eligible to vote.

If you are not sure if you are a member or know you are not yet a member and would like to become one prior to the start of voting, signing any MoveOn Petition or filling out the “your email*” box on the MoveOn.org homepage and then clicking the “Join MoveOn” button will ensure you are added as a member.

Be prepared to vote as soon as you can. This would be an important endorsement and an important organization to have working for Bernie Sanders. It took some tough words from many of MoveOn’s members like me to get them to the point of taking this vote.

This is what a political revolution of voters making their demands known looks like. Especially if we explain the consequences of defying our demands.

YouTube has the video Wall Street Reform and Financial Policy | Bernie Sanders

Streamed live 9 hours ago

Bernie Sanders discusses his vision for economic reform in America, including reigning in Wall Street and financial policies he would implement as president. “If Wall Street does not end its greed, we will end it for them!”

Note the mention of the $16 trillion no cost loans that the FED created to bailout the banks. How many of you knew the magnitude of what the FED created? How many of you knew this could be done? How many of you would have expected massive hyperinflation when this money got created by the FED? How many of you knew how astoundingly wrong Ron and Rand Paul are about economics and monetary policy? (This is not to say that under different conditions, such a vast amount of money creation would create inflation. How many of you know why it didn’t create inflation this time, and under what circumstances it would create inflation?)

If more people understood the facts that Bernie Sanders reveals in this speech, they would have no trouble figuring out that Bernie Sanders is the only viable candidate that will work in the interests of the middle class and the poorer people in this country. They will understand why Hillary Clinton won’t do it, and most assuredly Donald Trump won’t do it.

We must all ‪#‎FeelTheBern‬, and Wall Street must feel the burn of true justice from a Sanders administration. This may be the time to adapt a sports axiom, “If wall Street doesn’t feel the pain, then Main Street won’t see any gain.”

I think that these are words that Elizabeth Warren would also tell you. The oversight and exposure she did of the badly implemented bank bailout would not have happened without Bernie Sanders’ amendment to the legislation that created her oversight committee. You’d think she might come to endorse the guy who rocketed her to fame, and led eventually to her position as Senator.

Bernie Sanders wants people to know that he is raising campaign funds only through small donations. He does not seek money from billionaires. To prove his point he quotes the average donation size.

In what may be a cynical ploy on Hillary Clinton’s part, she is asking people to donate only one dollar to her campaign. This will skew any single statistical number she can quote to compare her donations with Bernie’s. Her comparison number will start to look a lot like Bernie’s number, but the situations could not be more different.

Here is a comparison between two different, simple scenarios. I hope this demonstrates the trap that Bernie has laid for himself by accustoming people to look at the size of the average donation as an indicator of what type of people are funding his campaign.

In the upper example we have 1,000,000 people contributing $1, and no large contributions (in this example – no other contributions). So all one million people have an equal financial influence on the campaign.

In the lower example there are 500,000 people contributing $1, and one person contributing $500,000. Obviously the one large contributor has as much financial influence on the campaign as the other 500,000 contributors combined.

The top example has an average contribution of $1, whereas the bottom example has an average of $2. In both cases, the median is the same. In other words half the people contribute a dollar or less, and half the people contributed a dollar or more. However, in terms of influence of large donors, the situation could hardly be more different.

In the top example, 100% of the money raised came from people donating $1. In the bottom case, only 50% of the money raised comes from people donating $1, and 50% come from 1 person donating $500,000. Could Bernie start using this type of comparison to ward off the his trap that Hillary is about to spring on him?

As a volunteer at the Worcester Rally, I was able to take a few photos.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette has the article Sanders supporters say his message will resonate in Worcester.

Steven Greenberg of Sturbridge, another volunteer for the North High rally, said he supports Mr. Sanders’ positions against economic inequality and “the rigging of the system in favor of the very rich.”

Finally, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette features people with whom we agree 100%.