Hitler's unknown big idea could restore our economy

WARNING! This article contains shocking photographs and descriptions of war crimes that may not be suitable for all readers. That content is necessary to understand that Germany was not the only major perpetrator of crimes against humanity in Europe around World War 2, thus raising the question of how the United States chose it allies and enemies in that conflict. Teachers typically omit one crucial explanation: economics. Grab a cup of coffee and perhaps your spouse for emotional support as you read this piece that will likely rock you to your core and make you think, changing how you view the world.

This article is part of the
$100,000 Challenge Series

People often think they are enlightened even when they believe things that should have been left in the Dark Ages.

In this series, I will challenge conventional wisdom and explore some odd and unjustifiable beliefs that persist, offering $100,000 to the first person who can solve each challenge, proving me wrong. My opinions are bound to ruffle some feathers and make you think.

Adolf Hitler was one of the greatest monsters of all time, but was he also one of the greatest economists? He killed more people than anyone in history except for Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Emperor Hirohito, so the temptation is to dismiss everything he did as evil. Hitler's brain wasn't wired correctly; he was indeed a murderous madman. He is rightfully loathed for his atrocities during World War 2, but he did something that would leave even the brightest modern leaders awestruck: take a bankrupt economy in total collapse and transform it in just four years into Europe's strongest economy. The German Weimar Republic left Hitler “some of the most serious economic problems ever experienced by any Western democracy in history, [with] rampant hyperinflation, massive unemployment, and a large drop in living standards.

On the verge of civil war, social order broke down as large mobs of half-starved townsmen descended on farms to seize food. Some elderly couples gassed themselves to escape the misery.

It is difficult for most Americans to understand how moribund the German economy was at the time Hitler became Chancellor. It wasn't just worse than our Great Depression, but much worse. Compared with Germany, Americans were living in a Shangri-La. Yet in just a few years, Hitler engineered what is probably the greatest rapid economic reversal in history. People went from starving to full employment and so prosperous they were given vacations abroad. Germany went from hopelessly bankrupt to massively restoring its infrastructure and expanding it, such as by building the world's first extensive superhighway: the Autobahn. The USA had nothing like it until decades later.

German money plummeted in value so much that it was virtually worthless. The following images show children playing with bundles of it, a woman burning it to heat her home, and a man using it as wallpaper.

German children playing with bundles of money

German woman burning money to stay warm

German man using money as wallpaper

It requires staggering amounts of money to fund a first-rate military. So how did Germany do it?

Our current problems in the United States are trivial compared with what Hitler faced. To use a medical analogy, Dr. Hitler took a woman on the verge of death from lung cancer and heart failure and transformed her into a beauty queen who won the Boston Marathon. In comparison, Dr. Obama has a patient with a pimple that he cannot cure without causing kidney failure and bankrupting the country. However, it is a monumental mistake to think that President Obama deserves most of the blame for our economic problems (see my article, Stop blaming Obama and start thinking).

Four major points:

The facts paint a different picture about what massive military spending does to economies: it helps destroy them. The Soviet Union weakened and eventually dissolved as a direct result of spending too much on arms, and the United States is following the same recipe for self-destruction. (I discussed this in another article in a section entitled, “The endless wars we cannot afford.”)

Military spending is clearly no economic panacea, so how did Hitler perform his economic miracle? And, more importantly, why won't our leaders do the same?

Obama has done nothing to dispel the notion that he is some sort of a once-in-a-lifetime genius—a political Einstein, in other words. He was foisted upon the world as a brilliant graduate of a prestigious law school even though he made errors that few elementary school students would make. During the campaign, he said, “I've now been in 57 states, I think one left to go.”

As Obama is thinking and guessing about the number of states we have, he is spending trillions of dollars striking out in his attempts to reinvigorate our economy while Hitler hit one home run after another in figuratively turning economic lead into gold. Had he not spent so much on his armed forces, Hitler could have given Germans even more luxuries.

We need a match that lights an economic fire that continues to burn without government incentives, which are just exorbitantly expensive short-term gimmicks. If Obama knows how to truly stimulate the economy, where the hell are those good ideas? Obama looks to business leaders for ideas on how to kickstart our economy and save money, and those roundtable discussions only generate ideas that kids could propose. In other articles, I showed how outside-the-box thinking can generate better solutions than Obama and CEOs, why big shots are often close-minded, why CEOs have big heads, not big ideas, and gave an example of a pigheaded CEO who is fettering our economy.

Obama's fans say he is some sort of a genius who can perform miracles, but if Hitler spent as much as Obama did to create one job, the Führer would have struggled to defeat Boy Scout troops.

How could Hitler take a country in shambles and make it roar to life? If you follow that link (a spellbinding one by Ellen Brown, JD, author of The Web of Debt), you will realize that what your teachers taught you about World War 2 was hardly the full story.

The U.S. federal government has a long history of using crises, real and manufactured, to manipulate public opinion. For example, evidence strongly suggests that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor but he allowed it to happen so that Americans, still war-weary after World War I, would clamor for revenge. President Roosevelt also said, “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

My girlfriend, a psychologist, said one of her colleagues asks his patients to “name three good things Adolph Hitler did” to challenge their black-and-white thinking. Black-and-white thinking is common in kids but it persists in too many adults who continue to think like children. So let's analyze this subject in shades of gray, not black and white.

Our strange bedfellows

U.S. propaganda poster
U.S. propaganda poster calling for revenge against Japan for the Pearl Harbor attack

Most historians think that Roosevelt desperately wanted war with Germany and Japan because he viewed them as being evil, but here is something interesting to ponder: If exterminating evil were the sole explanation, why did we welcome the Soviet Union as a World War 2 ally instead of fighting it, too? Its leader, the bloodthirsty Joseph Stalin, was just as murderously deranged as Adolf Hitler. Yes, Hitler was unimaginably evil and eventually killed many millions of innocent people, but so did Stalin. More importantly, at the beginning of the war, Stalin had killed far more people than Hitler, whose atrocities were primarily in the future. Roosevelt had no crystal ball to see what Hitler would later do. So why was Hitler our archenemy and Stalin our ally? For the solution to that mystery, you need to go beyond the Disney version of reality in most history textbooks that conveniently omit the one thing Hitler did right: transform Germany from a seemingly irreversible deep depression into the most vibrant economy in Europe. If Obama could do as much for the United States as Hitler did for Germany, some Tea Party supporters would carve Barack's face into Mount Rushmore.

Not-so-great Britain

Price of Britain's slave trade revealed
Excerpt: “Letters and papers revealing in detail how human beings were priced for sale during the 18th century Transatlantic Slave Trade have been made available to researchers and the public.”

Time magazine September 9, 2022: After Queen Elizabeth II's Death, Many Indians Are Demanding the Return of the Kohinoor Diamond
Comment: Mined in India, taken by the British who took so much from so many.

September 10, 2022: Why some people are refusing to mourn Queen Elizabeth
Excerpt: “‘I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating,’ Uju Anya, associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, wrote in a tweet …”

Tea, Biscuits, and Empire: The Long Con of Britishness

The Secret History Behind England's Deadly Sarin Gas Plant

If we fought Germany to punish it for its empire aspirations (which we could not have fully known at the onset of the war), why was Germany our enemy and Great Britain our beloved ally? The British empire dwarfed what Germany had, and when the Brits came knocking on your door to tell you what to do or to put you in chains, as they did to millions of slaves, they didn't bring tea and crumpets; they brought guns and other less-than-civilized means of persuasion. Were the lives shattered by the British government any less valuable than the ones shattered by Hitler? The British people aren't evil, but their wayward government has earned a special place in Hell.

Most Americans think of the British as nice guys except for what they did to us during the Revolutionary War, but if they pointed a gun at you and put a chain around your ankle, you wouldn't think they were morally superior to Hitler; you'd call them barbarians and worse. One could fill an encyclopedia documenting all British atrocities, such as the Amritsar massacre in which 1000 unarmed men, women, and children were slaughtered without warning, and hundreds more wounded.

Non-trivia:

In 1814, years after the Revolutionary War ended, British soldiers burned The White House (then called the Executive Mansion), Library of Congress, United States Treasury, and the buildings housing the Senate and House of Representatives. The savage British incursion into Washington DC was ended by a tornado, which undoubtedly saved other government buildings from destruction by the Redcoats.

George III of Great Britain had declared American forces traitors in 1775, which denied them prisoner of war status.” According to a television documentary, more Americans died in British prisons during the Revolutionary War than on the battlefield (6800); the conditions were intentionally atrocious. Of the 18,000 Americans taken prisoner, almost half died, many from starvation. Men were so hungry they ate their own lice, and rats were considered a delicacy.

Yet another example of Great Britain's barbarity

“The British took their anger out on St. Augustine, the residents of which were hiding inside the Castillo. ‘The English took over the town but they were never able to take the fort,’ says the historian Susan Parker at St. Augustine's Flagler College. ‘So they burned most of the town as they left.’ They tried to level the fort again in 1740 with the same result.”
— Excerpted from a fascinating article (The Mystery of Florida's Cannonball-Eating Spanish Fort: The secret is inside the walls themselves.) revealing how coquina's strength stems from its weakness in yielding to an overwhelming force, rather than trying to resist it. If you ponder that, you will realize it has implications for life in general.

Semi-deep thought of the day

Of all the history teachers and professors I had, precisely zero said anything bad about Great Britain. In other words, they distorted reality by not telling the whole truth, and thus were propagandists.

Every nation and person is an amalgamation of good and bad, to varying degrees. By cherry-picking what to report and what to bury, one can make a nation or person seem anything from wonderful to abominable. Although we like to think we base our opinions on facts, we usually don't know anything close to all of them, so assessments of others are typically based on half-truths.

According to the Smithsonian Channel documentary America's Hidden Stories: Pearl Harbor Spies (S1 Ep4), British spies supplied Japan with information helping them attack Pearl Harbor.

English author George Orwell referred to the British Indian Empire as “a despotism with theft as its final object.

Lord Salisbury said, “If our ancestors had cared for the rights of other people, the British empire would not have been made.”

In The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781–1997, Piers Brendon wrote, “Its purpose was not to spread sweetness and light but to increase Britain's wealth and power. Exploitation involved computation: 'as India must be bled, the bleeding should be done judiciously.' British rule must be imposed by persuasion if possible, by force if necessary.”

I used to wonder why President Obama was so upset by British colonialism; now I know. My teachers—and likely yours, too—conveniently neglected to utter a single word about the myriad wrongs committed by Great Britain, which ranged from supreme arrogance (thinking Irishmen were as incapable of self-rule as “Hottentots”—properly termed the Khoikhoi) to crimes against humanity, such as looting, vandalism (e.g., burning the Chinese emperor's summer palace in Beijing and the destruction of the Mahdi's tomb at Omdurman), rape, torture, slavery, kidnapping of children, wholesale butchery, retributive homicide, starving children to death in concentration camps, use of poison gas, mass murder, ethnocide, and genocide. While Great Britain was becoming increasing civilized by the onset of World War 2, their empire was still vast, ethically unjustifiable, and something that profoundly irked President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hitler's motto could have been might makes right, but that would also apply to Great Britain.

If you think Great Britain has fully learned the error of its ways, find the Cayman Islands on a map and try to guess who runs that territory. Themselves? No. A nearby country, such as Cuba, Mexico, or the United States? No, it's Great Britain! The Wikipedia states, “A Governor is appointed by the British Government to represent the monarch”—clearly to represent the interests of the monarch. If you read my article on the bloody roots of royal power, you know that monarch has no ethical right to rule Great Britain and other countries—unless you believe that might makes right.

To put it bluntly, Great Britain kicked ass because they could, and because they thought they could get away with it. When they declared war on Germany in 1939, Hitler's future crimes were unknowable (no crystal ball) and his past crimes were a molehill compared to the mountain of evil committed by Great Britain. Germany invaded Poland, but so did the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union put 13.5 million Polish citizens under its control, arresting and summarily executing thousands of them, and sending hundreds of thousands of people to rot in Siberia. If evil is measured by the number of people killed and lives ruined, Hitler was a distant second place to Stalin. Why didn't the United States declare war on the Soviet Union instead of making them our ally?

If it is reasonable to justify the war against Germany for the evils they committed later in World War 2, wouldn't it also be reasonable to question why we supported instead of fought the Soviet Union? Later in the war, their soldiers raped millions of German and Polish women and children as young as 8 years old. Soviet soldiers also raped Catholic nuns—182 in one city. Gang rapes were common; some women were violated 60 to 70 times per day and about 240,000 died from their sexual assaults. Even women and girls liberated from German concentration camps were raped. Some women and girls were taken as sex slaves. Many women committed suicide to escape the sexual abuse. These mass rapes inspired the film, A Woman in Berlin. The Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn participated in the invasion of Germany and wrote a poem about it: Prussian Nights. Part of it reads:

The little daughter's on the mattress,
Dead. How many have been on it
A platoon, a company perhaps?
A girl's been turned into a woman.

A girl's been turned into a woman” … by rape. Others were turned into hamburger. In what was termed The Horror at Neustettin, 500 German women were butchered by having their breasts cut off, and savagely mutilated in other ways, screaming until they died:

“The next girl cried for mercy, but in vain, it even seemed that the gruesome deed was done particularly slowly because she was especially pretty. [...] A thin iron rod was shoved into her vagina. [...] The last of them was still almost a child, with barely developed breasts. They literally tore the flesh off her ribs until the white bones showed. Another five girls were brought in. They had been carefully chosen this time. All of them were well-developed and pretty. When they saw the bodies of their predecessors they began to cry and scream. They sliced the body of one of them open lengthwise and poured in a can of machine oil, which they tried to light. A Russian shot one of the other girls in the genitals before they cut off her breasts. Loud howls of approval began when someone brought a saw from a tool chest. This was used to tear off the breasts of the other girls, which soon caused the floor to be awash in blood. The Russians were in a blood frenzy.”

Islamic beheadings are undeniably savage, but practically humane compared with how the Soviets slaughtered these German women.

From another account: “In Berlin stood a charity institution, the Haus Dehlem, an orphanage, maternity hospital, and foundling home. Soviet soldiers entered the home, and repeatedly raped pregnant women and women who had just given birth. [... A] teacher reported that her niece, 15, was raped seven times, and her other niece, 22, was raped fifteen times.”

These atrocities were committed by our allies, the Russians. Without our assistance, they would have lost the war and been unable to commit these crimes against humanity.

Two German women showing signs of rape
The original caption of this picture taken by the Sicherheitspolizei states
that the two German women show signs of rape (higher resolution image).

It may be difficult to emotionally connect with the horror of what happened after seeing a grainy black-and-white photo of German women killed decades ago, so look at this photo of a pretty German model:

pretty German woman

She obviously wasn't one of the ones raped or butchered, but the victims were just as real as she is.

If the United States were willing to fight a war to stop or punish evil, why didn't we attack the Soviets for their millions of war crimes? The Soviets committed more war crimes during World War 2 than Germany did before Great Britain and the U.S. declared war on them, so it is utterly simplistic and erroneous to say we fought to defeat evil.

The millions of war crimes before and during World War 2 committed by Soviets included the Katyn massacre and these Finnish children killed in 1942:

Finnish children killed by Soviets in 1942

Here's what a Finnish child should look like, minus the massacre:

child

UPDATE September 11, 2012: Years after I wrote about the Katyn massacre, the Associated Press released this article: AP Exclusive: Memos show US hushed up Soviet crime. Here's an excerpt:

“Documents released Monday and seen in advance by The Associated Press lend weight to the belief that suppression within the highest levels of the U.S. government helped cover up Soviet guilt in the killing of some 22,000 Polish officers and other prisoners in the Katyn forest and other locations in 1940. The evidence is among about 1,000 pages of newly declassified documents that the United States National Archives released and is putting online. Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who helped lead a recent push for the release of the documents, called the effort's success Monday a "momentous occasion" in an attempt to "make history whole."”

Note that:

  1. This atrocity occurred long before we entered the war after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
  2. Our leaders (including the Roosevelt administration) knew of this massacre yet sided with the Soviets who committed it.
  3. American Captain Donald B. Stewart, who “witnessed overwhelming proof” of what the Soviets did, “was ordered … never to speak about a secret message on Katyn.
  4. I knew of this suppression (and others like it) years ago. In this article, Japanese war crimes, and Hirohito: the war criminal who got off scot-free, I presented loads of evidence with a common theme: that our leaders repeatedly sweep war crimes under the rug when they want to side with barbarians.

American history is part reality and part fiction, carefully woven to dupe Americans and others into believing that we and our allies are the good guys who fight evil, and that we choose our allies based on whether or not they're good like us. In addition to the Cold War that helped bankrupt the United States, we fought the Korean and Vietnam Wars to oppose communism, yet we sided with the most dangerous communist country (the Soviet Union) and helped it survive by giving it aid before and during World War II.

Does. Not. Compute.

One of my friends in Europe, whose relatives faced the Germans and Russians, said that as bad as the Germans were, the Russians were even worse.

The “we fought for freedom” explanation of World War 2 does not explain why we sided with the Soviet Union and showered it with military aid. If I ridiculed the gaps in Obama's education that led him to think we have 57 or 58 states, he might rightfully ridicule the gaps in my education that left me thinking we fought World War 2 for freedom when we sided with two nations that operated at home and abroad on the might makes right principle: the antithesis of freedom. Nazi Germany had the abominable idea that non-Aryans, especially Jews, were inferior, while Great Britain had a long history of tacitly justifying their targets when those targets had darker skin. Isn't it odd how the PC police are so busy trashing people who make occasional inadvertent slip-ups while they ignore what Great Britain has done?

Pat Buchanan, a conservative political commentator and syndicated columnist, is the author of Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War, an eye-opening book that will likely make you realize that the “we fought for freedom” explanations presented in the Disney textbooks of history are woefully one-sided propaganda. If you disagree, take a minute to read one of Buchanan's articles: Did World War II Have To Happen? The answer is a resounding NO!

History teaches us lessons of what not to do, and what to do. Our leaders are ignoring the lessons of history because they are obligated to serve their masters, the elite (who really rule the world), not us, despite their campaign rhetoric about being for the little guy. I was once ingenuous enough to believe that baloney, but there is an overwhelming amount of evidence proving that this Disney view of the world is hopelessly naïve.

Hitler was a terrible human being but an amazing economist. Bush and Obama have spent considerably more than Hitler, yet our economy is stagnating, not soaring, and it is bound to collapse. When your neighbors are eating like kings yet spending much less than you do, it is wise to consider that their bounty results not from spending more, but from following better recipes. The recipes favored by Bush and Obama are guaranteed to give us heartburn, not a feast.

If Hitler's military talent equaled his economic ability, we would all be speaking German now. Hitler suffered from various health problems that hampered his effectiveness, quite likely including an untreated syphilis infection that produced tabes dorsalis, which can cause personality changes and progressive dementia. Evidence suggests that Hitler's mental faculties were slipping as the war progressed, so the fact that he lost World War 2 does not negate the earlier miracle he achieved in stimulating the German economy. It simply was not in the cards for Germany to prevail in a fight with so many powerful nations.

Historically, the United States has been amazingly tolerant of nations led by leaders who did evil things, so why did they get a pass while the United States bombed Germany almost back to the Stone Age? Some people strongly suspect that Hitler had to be stopped because he sidestepped the international bankers and created his own money. Indeed, that was his secret sauce for economic revival. If you've listened to Professor Walter E. Williams fill in for Rush Limbaugh, you may have heard him give his brilliantly simple explanation for what money really is: a voucher indicating you did a certain amount of work that you can use to obtain the goods and services you need. There is nothing magical about it, and nothing that requires that it be issued by bankers, who muck up the system so they can profit when others use money.

My father frequently said that lazy people are always looking for the easy road to riches, and bankers have found it. This especially applies to central banks, such as the United States Federal Reserve System which is, strangely enough, not part of the United States government. Interestingly, the web sites for each of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks end in .org, not .gov.

Speaking to a delegation of bankers in 1832, President Andrew Jackson explained why he wanted to rescind the federal charter of the Second Bank of the United States (then a powerful central bank analogous to the current Federal Reserve System):

“Gentlemen [...] When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.”

Jackson opposed the bank because it exerted too much control over Congress, allowed foreign interests to control us, and primarily served to make the rich richer. Sound familiar? Jackson gained public support for ending the Bank's charter when its leader, Nicholas Biddle, was overheard boasting in public about the Bank's plan to crash the economy (see note #1). Jackson ultimately prevailed and the U.S. economy improved to the point that all U.S. debt was paid and we accumulated a surplus—something that has never been done again in the United States.

In a speech before the House of Representatives on June 10th 1932, Louis McFadden (R-PA), former Chairman of the United States House Committee on Banking and Currency from 1920 to 1931, accused the Federal Reserve of deliberately causing the Great Depression, saying:

“We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. The Federal Reserve Board … has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board has cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it. Some people think the Federal Reserve banks are United States Government institutions. They are not. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into States to buy votes to control our legislation; and there are those who maintain international propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us and of wheedling us into the granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime. The sack of the United States by the Fed is the greatest crime in history. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers, but the truth is the Fed has usurped the government. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will.”

Several decades later, the Federal Reserve is still strongly resisting attempts to audit it. He who has nothing to hide, hides nothing. Genius Robert Heinlein correctly noted that “Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny.”

McFadden also said that the Great Depression “was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence [...] The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as rulers of us all.”

Would-be assassins twice attempted to kill McFadden, once by shooting and once by an apparent poisoning that made him “violently ill.”

Other people who've opposed the Federal Reserve have also had curiously bad luck. For example, Justice Martin Mahoney died from a poison in a mysterious accident soon after presiding over a trial that exposed the way that banks create money—which is so questionable that most folks would wonder how such a scam can be allowed to continue. Why? Because some people get very rich by participating in this scheme, and many politicians are either too stupid to realize what's going on, or unprincipled enough to accept payoff/campaign donations to keep quiet.

In his decision, Justice Mahoney wrote (see note #2):

“There is no lawful consideration for these Federal Reserve Notes to circulate as money. The banks actually obtained these notes for the cost of printing. A lawful consideration must exist for a note.

The activity of the Federal Reserve Banks … and the First National Bank of Montgomery, is contrary to public policy and contrary to the Constitution of the United States, and constitutes an unlawful creation of money and credit for no valuable consideration. Activity of said banks in creating money and credit is not warranted by the Constitution of the United States.

The Federal Reserve Banks and National Banks exercise an exclusive monopoly and privilege of creating credit and issuing notes at the expense of the public, which does not receive a fair equivalent. This scheme is obliquely designed for the benefit of an idle monopoly to rob, blackmail, and oppress the producers of wealth [that's us, folks].

The Federal Reserve Act and the National Bank Act are, in their operation and effect, contrary to the whole letter and spirit of the Constitution of the United States, for they confer an unlawful and unnecessary power on private parties; they hold all of our fellow citizens in dependence; they are subversive to the rights and liberation of the people.

These Acts have defied the lawfully constituted Government of the United States. The Federal Reserve Act and National Banking Act are not necessary and proper for carrying into execution the legislative powers granted to Congress or any other powers vested in the government of the United States, but on the contrary, are subversive to the rights of the People in their rights to life, liberty, and property.

No rights can be acquired by fraud. The Federal Reserve Notes are acquired through the use of unconstitutional statutes and fraud. The law leaves wrongdoers where it finds them. Slavery and all its incidents, including peonage, thralldom, and the debt created by fraud is universally prohibited in the United States. This case represents but another refined form of slavery by the bankers. Their position is not supported by the Constitution of the United States.”

The Federal Reserve System is basically a scam to enrich private middlemen who create money out of thin air. If you created money, the government would call you a “counterfeiter” and put you in prison. When the Federal Reserve bankers create money, Congress calls them “boss.” Congress, the President, and the Federal Reserve System form a triad that is essentially a collusion to enrich the elite while screwing Main Street. Don't expect any of them, or anyone representing their interests (e.g., the mainstream media or even Fox News), to admit to this scam. Skeptics: Read Modern Money Mechanics, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Henry Ford said, “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

In From Bailout to Bliss, I mentioned how Marine hero General Smedley Butler said that he eventually realized how he had spent most of his time “being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it.”

The Federal Reserve System literally creates money out of thin air. In a fascinating article, the author of The Web of Debt terms this “perhaps the greatest scam ever perpetrated.”

In a speech given at the University of Texas in 1927, Sir Josiah Stamp, who was then the president of the Bank of England and the second richest man in Great Britain, said the following:

“The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin [...] Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. [...] Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. [...] But, if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.”

The Campaign For Liberty wrote that the ability of central banks (such as the Federal Reserve System) “to create money out of thin air transfers wealth from the most vulnerable to those with political pull, since it is the latter who receive the new money before the price increases it brings in its wake have yet occurred.”

Isn't this obvious? It should be, but so many people are so clueless about economics that they actually applaud things that will penalize them now and for many years to come, such as the incessant bailouts. Adam Hartung wrote, “Bailouts serve only to keep the unproductive competitor alive. Which actually harms the more competitive company that subsequently must fight the subsidized competitor.” (Read more from Hartung's superb blog)

Blunders by the Federal Reserve System caused or contributed to the dot-com bubble, the real estate bubble, the stock market bubble, and now the money bubble. After factoring in inflation and the erosion in the value of our money, all of our hard work in the past decade or so has not increased our real net worth: we aren't gaining, we are falling behind. Is something wrong with this picture?

Yes, obviously. Many years of hard work should give you more than just more debt and less net worth, but the Federal Reserve System, in collusion with the federal government, has engineered a system that is wonderfully designed to screw you. They know that people will revolt if economic reversals caused by their idiotic policies result in sudden and significant declines in the standard of living, so they camouflage our economic problems with bubbles to make things seem much better than they really are. However, we are rapidly reaching the point where bubbles can no longer artificially inflate consumer and investor confidence. This will pop the money bubble, which will trigger an economic collapse the United States cannot survive.

We could reinforce the economy by getting rid of the Federal Reserve System. However, expecting the bankers who own the Fed to shut it down is as realistic as expecting a prostitute to stop screwing her customers. When you screw people for a living and don't have enough talent or brainpower to make equivalent money by doing honest work—or you're simply too lazy to do that work—you do everything you can to keep screwing people.

Besides bankers, other elite have figured out how to live like kings without producing any tangible goods or essential services. They are like ordinary criminals, but much smarter, creating financial schemes—such as derivatives—so complex they go right over the head of politicians. These elite can make more money in a week than you make in your entire life, and they can do it without lifting a finger. They help no one but themselves, but if that was all they did, they would be less of a threat to our nation. Similar to what President Jackson said about when they win, they divide the profits amongst themselves, and when they lose, they have Main Street people foot the bill to pay for their losses. How? The elite use some of their money to bribe, um, donate to politicians, buying favors such as bailouts and continued control of the Federal Reserve System.

This financial complexity puts a big gap between money as a simple voucher attesting that you worked and money as a mind-bogglingly complex tool by the elite who dream up schemes to pull the wool over the eyes of politicians and bribe the ones they can't dupe. Some elite grow up sheltered in such wealth they didn't even know people got up in the morning and went to work! One man didn't realize this until he was drafted into military service. Imagine that: Becoming an adult without seeing a single person go to work!

Work is an unfamiliar concept to some of the elite, but not to Adolph Hitler. For all of his many unforgivable flaws, the one big thing he got right was figuring out an economic system that bypassed the leeching of the world's elite and created an equitable system that created incentives for people to create necessary goods and services.

wasting time, not working
Wasting time, not working

Here's an easy way to understand how a new monetary system can stimulate prosperity. Imagine that you are one of a dozen people living on an island. Initially, you're all sitting around and twiddling your thumbs, complaining about your lack of food and shelter—similar to what many people were doing in the German Weimar Republic before Hitler came to power. Now imagine that some captivating figure appears and creates an incentive for everyone to work: someone goes fishing, someone collects coconuts, someone plants a garden, someone fetches firewood, and another figures out how to collect rainwater for drinking and irrigation. You get the picture: work gets done; necessary goods and services are provided. That incentive could be Island Bucks or anything else (orange marbles would do) that can't be feasibly counterfeited and was recognized by all as a medium of exchange.

With a sufficiently small group, it is easy to see why the Island Bucks or orange marbles wouldn't be needed; people could be assigned tasks and share in the community bounty. Everyone could receive the food, water, shelter, and energy they need. That's clearly much better than when they spent their days twiddling their thumbs, à la the Weimar Republic. However, with a larger group—say, 10,000 people—it is much more difficult to determine who is sitting on his butt all day and who is working, unless some tangible voucher (Island Bucks or orange marbles) is used to quantitate work, which is really just useful contributions to society. Vouchers earned by working can be exchanged to purchase the products of work by others.

Germany had no gold, so Hitler's monetary system could not be based on the gold standard. Instead, he based it on the work standard.

Seems odd, doesn't it? Yes, but it worked like magic. Other nations based on the gold standard were mired in the Great Depression, while Hitler took an almost hopelessly broken economy and turned it around in a couple of years. Had Obama gotten in gear as quickly as Hitler, the U.S. economy would have boomed and just about everyone would be singing his praises.

Hitler's Germany and the current United States have more people able to work than gold, so it makes sense to base an economy on the work standard instead of the gold standard. Gold has value because it has value. Please pardon my circular logic and look at the obvious truth in that statement. Work has value, too—obviously. The products and services produced by working are much more valuable than gold. If American streets were paved with gold but no one worked, we'd be so poor that we'd perish. However, if we didn't have an ounce of gold in the entire country, we could still be very prosperous if everyone worked, producing products and services to the best of their ability.

spot a typo?
If so, please tell me about it.

The United States has a shortage of gold but not of workers. We have plenty of unemployed and underemployed workers, along with many who've simply given up and hence don't show in the official unemployment rate of 9%, which is actually closer to 22%. Thus, it makes sense to base our economy on the work standard. It worked for Hitler, and it would work for us. It would be great for everyone except the elite who control the world's central banks. President Andrew Jackson hated them, as did Representative Louis McFadden and Justice Martin Mahoney. Jackson was correct when he called them “a den of vipers and thieves.” McFadden was correct when he called them evil, corrupt “financial pirates” and “moneyed vultures” who “prey upon the people of the United States.” Justice Mahoney was correct when he said their scheme is a “refined form of slavery by the bankers” that “is obliquely designed for the benefit of an idle monopoly to rob, blackmail, and oppress the producers of wealth.” That's you, me, and the hundreds of millions of other Americans like us.

Economies get in trouble when they are based on something that doesn't represent real value. We were once based on the gold standard but that eventually morphed into what was essentially the bubble standard. As bubbles pop, they take people down with them, shattering lives that had nothing to do with the inflation of those bubbles, but the “moneyed vultures” who control the central banks are still rich and powerful—and that's no accident. As President Jackson knew, they created a system to make others pay for their mistakes.

We could stop our incessant slide into poverty if the 99.9% of the world that are under the thumb of the 0.1% in the ruling class would realize that if you go back far enough in tracing most political power and great fortunes, most of it is based more on might makes right ruthless power than honorable principles of ethics. Here's one glaring example: how royal families are no more legitimate than the Mafia.

The elite want you to work so they don't have to.

However, the elite aren't stupid; they foster the careers of politicians they can control. Obama's checkered past is the noose around his neck that keeps him doing the bidding of the powerful people who control the world by selecting who has a viable chance of becoming President. Candidates with damaging secrets to hide are more valuable because fear of their dirt being revealed keeps them doing what the powerful people want, which is to perpetuate an economic system that enables people who control money to live like kings by sponging off people who do real work. The elite think they are too good to do real work, so they want you to do it for them.

Obama could become the greatest President ever by freeing Americans from the economic nooses around our necks, but he doesn't think he has that freedom. As I discussed in From Bailout to Bliss, if Obama did this for us, we would return the favor and shield him from retribution by the elite. The Tea Party principle of limited government means a lot to me, but fairness and gratitude mean even more. Some Tea Party people may disagree, but President Obama is just one of many politicians who have used their power to reward their supporters. Obama and the current federal politicians will be replaced by others who continue to do the bidding of the elite who really rule the world, so the fat cats are a much bigger threat to us than Obama. If Obama took them on, it would be stupid to not support him.

I once was naïve enough to think the big differences were between Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and liberals. The reality is this: the similarities of Main Street Americans are much greater than their differences. Almost everyone wants a good job, fair pay, financial security, a nice home, and the hope for an even brighter future for their children. Very few people want to get ahead by screwing others—except, of course, for the fat cats who would gladly see you and your kids starve so they can feast. The elite have warped the world so that the people who do most of the real work get nothing but peanuts and ulcers while they can sit on their asses, create money out of thin air, and live like kings on that money that is literally stolen from us by diluting the value of our money.

You might think that Hitler created money out of thin air like our Federal Reserve does, but there is a huge difference: Hitler's dollars (actually, marks) were just vouchers representing real, useful work. You could get one or more by doing work, and thus adding value to the system. In contrast, Federal Reserve dollars created out of thin air represent nothing but air. They can make trillions of dollars just by typing numbers into a computer and hitting the ENTER button. It's smoke and mirrors, not real money representing real value.

A mountain of money will enrich a nation when it is backed by something of value, such as a mountain of work, but a mountain of money will impoverish a nation when it is created out of thin air and backed by nothing. The money isn't important; it is just a voucher that represents useful work (à la Hitler) or inflating bubbles bound to burst, à la our Federal Reserve System. The Feds are fond of their bubble standard because it is so easy to counterfeit money by inflating bubbles out of thin air, but work cannot be counterfeited.

Hitler was evil but his understanding of people and economics was light-years ahead of Treasury Secretary Timothy “TurboTax” Geithner and thousands of other economists who are so stuck thinking inside the box that they can't see any way out of our current economic mess.

“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”
— Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher (1770 – 1831)

In The Good Society?, Matt Koehl wrote, “By making a moral distinction between productive capital and speculative capital, Hitler set himself on a collision course with those international financial interests, whose ox he had gored and whose very existence as parasites was now threatened by the success of the National Socialist model. They were prepared to do anything—indeed, drag the entire world into war—to maintain their parasitic existence and not allow other countries to follow the National Socialist example.”

Thanks to Hitler's nuttiness, National Socialism is now almost synonymous with racism, eugenics, anti-Semitism, Nazism, mass murder, and war crimes. However, the Wikipedia states that “National Socialism is a complex ideology that seeks to be an alternative, or Third Position, to both international capitalism and international communism.”

However, a nation need not adopt National Socialism to base its economy on the work standard, which Hitler demonstrated to be an effective antidote to a Great Depression that could not have been ended as quickly by using pure capitalism. No capitalists were eager to invest their money in Germany at that time; it would have gone up in smoke. Germans were literally burning their money because the paper it was printed on had more value as fuel for fires than as money.

National Socialism is indelibly tarnished and I am not advocating a return to it, but as Ivy League economists look at our current economic predicament and scratch their heads in befuddlement as they wonder how we might solve economic problems that will likely crush us, perhaps it is wise to look at the history of the 20th century for a tried-and-true remedy. Ellen Brown, JD, author of The Web of Debt, discussed this in an article entitled, Thinking Outside the Box: How a Bankrupt Germany Solved its Infrastructure Problems.

“We were not foolish enough to try to make a currency coverage of gold of which we had none, but for every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark's worth of work done or goods produced. … we laugh at the time our national financiers held the view that the value of a currency is regulated by the gold and securities lying in the vaults of a state bank.”
— Adolf Hitler, 1937 (CC Veith, Citadels of Chaos, Meador, 1949; quoted in Hitler's Monetary System)

Commenting on this, another person wrote, “Hitler had it right when it comes to money. Ultimately, money is backed by production rather than gold. Germany became a powerhouse. The rest of the world, mired in the gold standard, remained in the throes of depression.”

President Obama said he wants “to invest in what works.What works is workers. Hitler invested in them and turned his economy around, baffling the experts then and now who cannot think of any other way to achieve such an economic miracle.

One more thing: Hitler's solution incurred no inflation and no debt. Our government spent trillions of dollars that will soon kickstart inflation that will devastate many people and impoverish future generations as they struggle to repay a national debt that cannot be repaid if we limit ourselves to inside-the-box ideas.

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee and the man who Obama initially selected to be Secretary of Commerce, is talking about possible “bankruptcy for the United States. There's no other way around it. If we maintain the proposals which are in this budget over the 10-year period that this budget covers, this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt; our dollar will become devalued.”

Senator Gregg said that “we’re basically on the path to a banana-republic-type of financial situation in this country” within 10 years. “We're going to undermine fundamentally the quality of life for our children by doing this. [ … ] It will be hard for our kids to buy a car, buy a house, or send their kids to college. The standard of living will drop.”

In a radio interview on Bob Brinker's Moneytalk, Thomas Mackell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, discussed the possibility of intergenerational warfare in the United States. It is alarming to hear such a dire forecast from a mainstream person, but it, unfortunately, conforms with predictions from other experts. In 1998, I predicted the same thing in True Emergency Room Stories.

“It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.”
— Robert Heinlein

Unless we are willing to accept a reduced standard of living and forget about the American Dream, we need good outside-the-box ideas and the courage to implement them. Great new ideas are usually met with ridicule, not praise. Hitler's work standard is no longer new, but most people don't know about it, so they will ridicule it, thinking it can't work. But it did.

“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”
— John Locke

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.”
— Eric Hoffer

“It is easy to stand with a crowd, but it takes courage to stand alone.”
— Unknown

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.”
— Albert Einstein

“And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.”
— Henry Louis Mencken (1880 – 1956)

“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to prevailing superstition or taboo.”
— Henry Louis Mencken

Fear of being different forces most people to lead conventional lives filled with conventional thoughts. Those who don't conform and think outside the box are often shunned by those who are bereft of novel ideas or act as if they are. Conformity breeds mediocrity. To be a standout, one must do what others don't do, or think what others don't think.

Inside-the-box thinking will not save our nation and give your children the future they deserve. We will learn to embrace good outside-the-box ideas—or we will wish we did.

“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.”
M. C. Escher

Consider the illogic of a nation like ours that elects thousands of federal politicians per decade, none of whom have good outside-the-box ideas for quickly restoring our prosperity. We hear nothing but endless rehashes of old ideas: simplify the tax code, cut taxes, reduce regulation, and downsize government—as if that will ever happen! (Republicans blew every chance they had when they controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.) Those ideas are good, but they won't suffice to give us any feasible way to pay our massive federal, state, and local debts and unfunded liabilities. Expecting them to save us is like expecting a vitamin pill to cure a terminally ill cancer patient. It's too little, too late.

When Plan A won't work, it is wise to consider Plan B. Instead of looking for Plan B, most of us are content to find a different candidate who rebrands Plan A ideas. Changing the messenger but not the message is a sure-fire recipe for failure.

“There's a way to do it better — find it.”
— Thomas Edison

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
— General George Patton

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater

Anyone who rejects the work standard just because Hitler invented it is foolish enough to reject the obvious benefits of mass production of automobiles on assembly lines. Why? Because the latter was developed by Henry Ford, who was anti-Semitic and fond of Adolf Hitler. In fact, Hitler and Ford were virtually members of a mutual admiration society. Henry Ford was the only U.S. citizen mentioned favorably in Mein Kampf, parts of which are eerily similar to prior anti-Semitic publications by Ford.

The Dearborn Independent, May 22, 1920
The Dearborn Independent, May 22, 1920

In the early 1920s, Ford also published a four-volume set of booklets entitled The International Jew. Some of its chapters were:

  • Will Jewish Zionism Bring Armageddon?
  • The Jewish Question—Fact or Fancy?
  • “Jewish” Plan to Split Society by “Ideas”
  • How Jews in the U.S. Conceal Their Strength
  • The Jewish Associates of Benedict Arnold
  • “Jewish Rights” Clash With American Rights
  • Jewish Gamblers Corrupt American Baseball
  • How the Jewish Song Trust Makes You Sing
  • Dr. Levy, a Jew, Admits His People's Error
  • Jewish Idea Molded Federal Reserve Plan
  • Jewish Idea of Central Bank for America
  • How Jewish International Finance Functions
  • Jewish Power and America's Money Famine
  • How the Jews Use Power — By an Eyewitness
  • How Jews Ruled and Ruined Tammany Hall

One of Hitler's aids said that Ford would be “received like a King” if he ever visited Germany. According to The New York Times, Hitler had a large picture of Henry Ford on the wall beside his desk and a well-thumbed copy of The International Jew in his personal library.

Thus, Henry Ford possessed ideas that would now brand him as an anti-Semitic nut. That tarnishes his overall image, but not the value of his other ideas, each of which can be judged on their own merits. Some of the most productive geniuses stand apart from others not only in the brilliance of their ideas, but also in their flaws. Genius, like drugs, sometimes has side effects. That may be a bitter pill to swallow, but if you want genius, you must put up with its imperfections.

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
Albert Einstein

The bland geniuses, such as child prodigies with stratospheric IQs, might speak multiple languages and earn doctorate degrees before their first pimple, but they usually do nothing with their intellectual gifts that amounts to a hill of beans. In contrast, the highly productive geniuses that advance the world are often eccentric if not more than a bit kooky.

That's likely no coincidence. True geniuses think far outside-the-box in many ways; their mental forays are not limited to the circumscribed rules that define the boundaries of ordinary thought. The price of productive genius is often the price of being labeled as odd for not thinking the same as everyone else. Cultures reward inside-the-box thinking to enforce their behavioral norms of conformity because most roles in society are best filled by people who don't think for themselves; people who are followers, not leaders; people who implement ideas, not originate them.

“If I had observed all the rules, I'd never have gotten anywhere.”
— Marilyn Monroe

“Wise people are willing to question rules. Instead of accepting things as they have always been, wisdom involves asking whether there's a better path.”
— Wharton professor Adam Grant in How to Think Like a Wise Person

Ford was avidly interested in materials science, engineering, biofuels, and soybean-based plastics, cultivating a relationship with George Washington Carver for that latter purpose. He was far ahead of his time in championing engineered woods, saying “Better wood can be made than is grown.” He was also “instrumental in developing charcoal briquets, under the brand name Kingsford.” He was awarded 161 U.S. patents. His book, My Life and Work, shows that he had a fertile mind that would leave most energetic young people in the dust. He dressed up as Santa Claus at Christmas time and gave sleigh rides to children on his estate. He doubled the already-high wages of his workers without any pressure to do that, but he also used thuggish tactics to oppose union activity, such as in the bloody brawl that became known as The Battle of the Overpass.

How do you reconcile Ford's genius and selective kindness with his anti-Semitism? You don't. The same anti-Semitism found in Ford is found in many other people, many of whom have room-temperature IQs.

Ford became increasingly less mentally competent as he aged. Some people suspect that heavy-metal poisoning or a series of strokes affected his judgment. We now know that damage to (or temporarily turning off) certain parts of the brain can enhance creativity. Certain brain tumors can do it, as can frontotemporal dementia, which can result in “a torrent of creativity.” Researchers are now investigating whether epilepsy and migraines can spark inspiration and enhance creativity.

However, some conditions that enhance creativity impair judgment, so some very innovative people might do things that make others raise their eyebrows. Geniuses are usually no more odd than benignly eccentric, which is often a small price to pay for the ability to do things that most people can only dream of.

The location of a brain injury is often more important than its cause in terms of determining its effects: usually negative, but occasionally positive. Perhaps the same cerebrovascular disease that weakened and eventually killed Ford's mind produced limited damage much earlier in an area that stimulated his creativity. And perhaps not. Perhaps he was naturally a curmudgeon and a genius. However, the United States Postal Service still honored Ford with a Prominent Americans series (1965–1978) 12¢ postage stamp.

Ford is hardly the only flawed genius. Einstein didn't like socks and toothbrushes but he couldn't get enough women. After nearly 3500 sealed pages of his personal correspondence were made public, the press had a field day with Einstein, calling him a “Phys-sex Genius,” a “Scientific Pimp,” a “Stud Muffin,” a “galactic womanizer,” and even a “sex-fiend.” Einstein's weakness for pretty women was indulged by chasing skirts that culminated in many affairs, including one with a “beautiful Soviet spy.” After infidelity ended his first marriage, “he spent some time deciding whether to shack up with his 42-year-old cousin, Elsa, or her 20-year-old daughter, Ilse.” Einstein was a light-year ahead of most people in terms of brainpower, but also in scandals.

Curiously, NPR didn't sensationalize Einstein's love life, but they did call me at home, evidently not knowing that sex is one of the many subjects taught in medical school. That's a story for another day.

Other eminent physicists, including Richard Feynman, Erwin Schrödinger, Marie Curie, and Robert Oppenheimer, formed “a roster of lamentable philanderers.” Feynman, “probably the only Nobel Prize winner to befriend porn stars,” claimed he had “a foolproof manner for bedding women and do his calculations on napkins in strip clubs.” Judging by what buxom porn star Candi Samples wrote on her picture given to him, she was more impressed by the size of his anatomy than his mind: “To Big Dick, Love from Candi.”

Oppenheimer, head of the atomic bomb project in Los Alamos during World War 2, “tried to run off with the wife of Linus Pauling and bed the wife of another colleague.

Schrödinger's Nobel Prize-winning idea came to him while shacked up in an alpine villa with an old girlfriend during a “late erotic outburst.”

Founding Father Ben Franklin consorted with a number of women other than his wife, and was no stranger to prostitutes. As he put it in his autobiography, “that hard-to-be-governed passion of youth hurried me frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in my way, which were attended with some expense and great inconvenience, besides a continual risk to my health.”

Franklin wrote a letter in 1745 advising a young man that relationships with older women conferred several advantages, citing their inability to get pregnant and the relative preservation of their vaginas compared with the aging of their faces and breasts, making intercourse with them at least as pleasurable as with younger women. Franklin wrote:

“Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.”

Franklin was indisputably a polymath: “a leading author and printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat.” Walter Isaacson called him “the most accomplished American of his age,” and he was the foremost heartthrob of the 18th century.

Franklin “freed his slaves and became one of the most prominent abolitionists.” He refused to patent any of his inventions, reasoning that he was already rich enough. He discovered the principle of conservation of charge and originated the concept of positive and negative electrical charges. A list of Franklin's other accomplishments could fill a book; he wasn't just a genius, but a multifaceted super genius.

To Americans who are more comfortable discussing the sex lives of celebrities than their own, it may be difficult to reconcile Ben Franklin the Founding Father and super genius with Franklin the patron of prostitutes and lifelong womanizer who wrote about the sensate characteristics of vaginas as women aged, but Franklin unabashedly discussed sex because he viewed it as part of human nature—which it clearly is. Franklin fit in as well with royalty as he did with tradesmen because he was an intellectual superstar but down-to-earth.

Our Founding Fathers are often idolized and revered as saints or demigods, but some of them had Clintonian sexual appetites. Besides Franklin, there was Thomas Jefferson—another polymath—who had a longstanding affair with Sally Hemings (one of his slaves) that produced several children.

“No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.”
— Aristotle

Unusually fertile minds sprout great ideas but also occasional weeds. Your garden is not fatally flawed if a weed appears; you can harvest the useful plants and discard the rest. In other words, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater: don't throw the good out with the bad; don't discard something valuable in your eagerness to get rid of some useless or undesirable thing associated with it. Just as Einstein's ideas were no less valuable because he behaved like a teenager in heat, Hitler's idea on how to restore a broken economy should not be reflexively dismissed just because it came from him. We can toss his wacky ideas into the dustbin of history while salvaging the one big thing he did right.

“Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.”
— Robert A. Heinlein

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
— Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
— George Orwell

I am not an economist, but I sometimes see things they overlook in their zeal to fit in with the conventional wisdom. When I traveled with a friend to Chicago in the late 1980s, she showed me public housing that seemed to go on forever, all filled with people she said made careers out of sponging off taxpayers, not working. I thought of all the money I saw frittered away on defensive medicine and catering to oddballs in the ER, such as a woman on welfare who dialed 911 for an ambulance because she wanted to know if her vagina was “too loose.” I added that to all of the government waste I'd heard about, and then I put 2 and 2 together, leading to one unmistakable conclusion: the USA was headed for economic disaster when everyone else thought we were headed for a stock market of 20,000 and beyond.

With this in mind, perhaps I have more justification for skepticism when I see others pinning their hopes for our economic revival by reconstituting freeze-dried ideas from bygone American politicians. Their best pixie dust cannot begin to compare with what Hitler did in terms of restoring the German economy: a feat that seemed almost impossible.

The $100,000 challenge: If we fought World War 2 for freedom and to punish Germany for its war crimes, justify why it was right for the United States to turn a blind eye to Soviet crimes against humanity before, during, and after World War 2, such as raping and butchering millions of women and children. Obviously, this simplistic explanation fails to explain who we target for annihilation, and who we assist.

Might the fact that Hitler created his own currency, thereby sidestepping the international bankers, explain why we fought Germany while assisting the Soviet Union? I report, you decide.

Eric Hoffer (who was an “intellectual giant” according to Thomas Sowell and one of my professors, who raved about his intellect) said, “In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

Even the dimmest among us know we are living in times of change, yet even the brightest usually don't realize they are beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. We need to get in overdrive stat, but we cling to Plan A politicians with their Plan A ideas. As Edison said, “There's a way to do it better — find it.”

An advertising slogan created for Apple Computer in 1997 brilliantly explained how “the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently” who are “crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Now that you have your thinking caps on, try to think what infrastructure project is the perfect complement to the work standard. It would kickstart our economy and put people back to work, literally transforming our nation, rocketing it well into the 21st century, and doing just as much for the physical world as the Internet did for the information world. Hint: It's not roads, bridges, trains, or other relics from the 19th century, but it could obviate them. I previously touched on this subject and will later reveal it in another article. Want to read it? Subscribe to my blog.

Related topics

Why fight Communism?

Notes:

  1. Source: The Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free, by Ellen Hodgson Brown, JD. I highly recommend this book.
  2. The First National Bank of Montgomery v. Jerome Daly, December 7, 1968: (See 17 Am. Jur. 85, 215, and 1 Mer. Jur. 2nd on Actions, Section 550).
  3. When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-inflation
  4. When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse (available free online).
  5. Dying of Money: Lessons of the Great German and American Inflations (available free online).
  6. Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story NEVER Told
  7. Book: Economic Science Fictions
    Amazon promo excerpt: “An innovative new anthology exploring how science fiction can motivate new approaches to economics. … editor William Davies … [asked] how we might harness the power of the utopian imagination to revitalize economic thinking.”
  8. December 26, 2021: In 1933, when banks closed, Detroit printed its own money
  9. Researchers found that doing great things won't help people escape blame. What's the best way to insulate oneself from blame? Be a victim.
  10. I documented similar war crimes committed by Japanese soldiers in another shocking article and Hirohito: the war criminal who got off scot-free.
  11. A Market Solution for the Falkland Islands (one of the many territories the British unrightfully took over).
  12. Night Never Ending and The Murderers of Katyn
  13. Operation Keelhaul; The Story of Forced Repatriation from 1944 to the Present by Julius Epstein
  14. Just as President Roosevelt allowed Japan to attack Pearl Harbor to make Americans eager for war, increasing evidence suggests that Bush either did the same, or just plain blew it: Report: Documents Disclose 9/11 Warnings
  15. This 1922 NY Times article on Hitler said his anti-Semitism wasn't "genuine"
  16. Shocking economics: A new theory derived from classical physics allows scientists to predict how economies worldwide respond to major disturbances such as the 2008 Great Recession or Trump tariffs
The views expressed on this page may or may not reflect my current opinions, nor do they necessarily represent my past ones. After reading a slice of what I wrote in my various websites and books, you may conclude that I am a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican. Wrong; there is a better alternative. Just as the primary benefit from debate classes results when students present and defend opinions contrary to their own, I use a similar strategy as a creative writing tool to expand my brainpower—and yours. Mystified? Stay tuned for an explanation. PS: The wheels in your head are already turning a bit faster, aren't they?

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reference: Imagining dialogue can boost critical thinking: Excerpt: “Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning …”

Comments (2)

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Comment #225 by Arty Woodbein
July 23 2012 10:54:44 PM

Reichsminister

Excellent article! I would have mentioned the contributions of the President of the Reichsbank; however, Hjalmar Schacht.

Comment #149 by Rinda Opp • Website: Cometranch.com
March 3 2011 05:28:19 PM

Way to go, Kevin!

This is a great article you wrote. It gave me a whole new outlook on our Fed and what to do next. Great post!

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