Quote of the Day: "Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." -- Alan Greenspan, former Chair of the Federal Reserve speaking before the House Banking Committee in May 1999

Subject: The Counterfeiting Numbers

Counterfeiters create new money, illegally. The Federal Reserve (FED) does the same thing, legally.

The legal counterfeiting is worse than the illegal.

Money created by illegal counterfeiters tends to be small, easily discovered, and quickly removed from circulation.

FED counterfeiting is immense, seemingly hidden, and tends to remain in play. This “funny money” . . .

• attacks your standard of living
• rips away your savings
• jacks up your expenses

Just how much counterfeiting has the FED done? 

• The base money supply stands at roughly 1.6 trillion dollars
• But it was only half that as recently as April, 2007

Your money's value is roughly half what it was a mere two years ago!

Economic scam artists claim FED counterfeiting doesn't reduce your money's value, if the economy is also growing.

But without their counterfeiting, your money would buy more goods and services as the economy expanded, NOT just the same level of goods and services that it bought before, and certainly not LESS than it bought in the past.

The prime benefit of economic growth is gradually falling prices, because entrepreneurs create ways to do more with less.

More with less = gradually falling prices . . .

. . . if the money supply remains roughly constant.
 
FED counterfeiting robs YOU of this benefit.

Prices go up instead, and people think it's natural.

The economic scam artists also claim that gradually falling prices are actually bad for us. They say price declines cause an economy to freeze. They claim businesses won't borrow if they must repay their loans using appreciated dollars.

We have a harmful debt obsession! Borrowing isn't the best way to fuel business expansion. Investors can fund it.

With sound money, the cost of borrowing money would go down, just like it would for goods and services.

And historical evidence refutes the claim that gradually falling prices freeze the economy.

The U.S. had a fairly stable money supply, based on gold and silver, for most of the 19th century. The economy grew rapidly and prices fell gradually. Workers benefitted greatly from their productivity. 

The economic contractions that did occur in the 19th century were associated with government interference with the money supply. The song remains the same today . . .

Look at the FED's recent counterfeiting. Here are the average base money supply numbers by year, combined with the amount of increase over the previous year . . .

2000 -- $585 billion
2001 -- $618 billion -- up $32 billion
2002 -- $673 billion -- up $55 billion
2003 -- $716 billion -- up $43 billion
2004 -- $752 billion -- up $36 billion
2005 -- $782 billion -- up $30 billion
2006 -- $811 billion -- up $29 billion
2007 -- $827 billion -- up $16 billion

This caused the housing bubble. FED counterfeiting entered the economy through the banking system and impacted the very things banks deal with, especially housing!

And notice also that the decrease in the rate of counterfeiting, most notable in 2007, coincides with the bubble bursting.

Stable money doesn't cause business downturns, as the economic scam artists would have you believe. FED counterfeiting is the culprit! The scam artists want to blame the patient, and their remedy is doing more of what caused the sickness.

Look how much counterfeiting they're doing now . . . 

2008 -- $987 billion -- up $160 billion (the FED responds to the mess they made)
2009 -- $1.628 trillion (with a “T”) -- up $641 billion (in just the first three months of this year!)

What can we do about this? We can . . .

• End the FED, but that will be hard
• Audit the FED to better expose its activities -- we'll launch a campaign on this next week
• Break the FED's stranglehold on our economy by taking away its monopoly control of money

For us, this last idea is the path of least resistance. Please tell your representatives to co-sponsor Ron Paul's Honest Money bills. If you've used our Educate the Powerful System before, do the following . . .

• Go to the DownsizeDC.org home page http://www.downsizedc.org/
• Log-in using the log-in button at the right of the navigation bar near the top of the page
• Scroll down and click on the link for campaign number 8. End the Inflation Tax (We recommend you follow these steps, but in case you need it, here's the direct link) http://www.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/85
• Scroll down to the form at the bottom of the page and send your message

If you're sending your very FIRST message to Congress using our system, click on this link, scroll down to the form, fill it out, and send your message. 

Use your personal comments to share the money supply numbers from above. Point out how this is what caused the housing boom and the bust that followed. Cut and paste from this message, if you want.

Ask your friends to join you by forwarding them this message, and Digg this message on our blog so more people will see it.

Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC Army. We're just about to pass 25,000 members.

Perry Willis
Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.