I do hope however, that if he doesn’t get the GOP nomination, then he’ll run as an independent. I think he’ll stand a chance against Hilary as the Dem’s choice and Rudy as the Rep’s choice.

If there are 20,000 Meetup groups, each with an average of five members, that’s 100,000 people volunteering their time. At $10 an hour, that’s $1,000,000. Not per group — per every time they meet. So if they meet once a week, that’s a million bucks a week. If they participate in activities inbetween meetings, that’s even more.

How much of Giuliani’s millions are coming from corporate donors and special interests who are hedging their bets? Even with the individual donors, how much money is coming from those who derive their wealth from government, and back the apparent winners just to be on the good side of whoever is in power?

All we know for sure is that the race isn’t over yet.

Guiliani is in the lead because everyone knows him as a long time Mayor of NY. I think he did a great job in NY. However, I would never trust him in a million years with my foreign policy. Good mayor does not mean good president.

Next is Fred Thompson. Again most people know for his many TV and film rolls. They have no clue of his political career. Yet they are willing to vote for him because they figure if you can play a political leader on TV, the real thing can’t be that much harder.

I am so scared…………. please join me America.

I smell a rat.

That’s like saying I polled ten of my drinking buddies and 100% like to drink beer.

If the sample doesn’t even at least try to be random, and representative of the group you’re trying to learn about as a whole, then it’s meaningless.

I polled 425 people and Ron Paul got 63% of those polled. Giuliani only got 3%. Go figure. You might want to reference this poll too. It makes as much sense as any other poll.

It matters not except the final poll which is when folks actually cast their ballot. The heartbeat of America is growing stronger for Ron Paul each and every day. It’s a long way until next November. Keep the faith!

“Economic theory does not relate interest rates to the money supply!”

Interest rates are just the price of money. The money supply is the supply of money. When the supply goes up, the price goes down. When the supply goes down, the price goes up. That’s the first rule of economic theory.

1. The way to measure the Fed’s success is to compare it with situations in which the Fed did not intervene. The best such situation is the history of the American economy prior to the creation of the Fed. Do you seriously want to argue that the 90 years prior to the creation of the Fed were times of economic stability? C’mon! The Fed was created to solve serious financial problems that had cost citizens many millions of dollars. The fact that the overall history of the last ninety years shows less instability than the previous ninety years is the proof of the value of the Fed.

2. Yes, price controls are bad — but the Fed doesn’t control the price of money in the economy. It sets the price of the money that it loans to banks in its system. That in turn influences the price of money set by those banks, and the effects ripple out through the economy. But the price of money is affected by many factors, and the Fed’s influence is secondary. They’re steering a raft through a white water river with a small paddle.

3. You’re welcome to define inflation by the phase of the moon for all I care — but that doesn’t make it so. Here, let me show you how it works: imagine an economy consisting of two apples and two dollars. The price of an apple is therefore one dollar. Now, add one dollar to the economy. The price of an apple is now $1.50 — that’s inflation. Now add one apple to the economy. The price of an apple is now $1.00. Now add another apple to the economy. The price of an apple is now $0.75 — that’s deflation.

4. Agreed. That’s why one of the missions of the Fed is to help stabilize the economy.

5. This is black-and-white thinking: either you’re slave or you’re free. The world is more accurately painted in shades of gray. Yes, the Fed makes the market slightly less free. It also provides greater security to the participants in the market. This is the classic tradeoff all societies must make between freedom and security. I don’t like the loss of freedom represented by having to stop at a red light, but the fact that everybody else stops at the red light makes it safe for me to cross.

6. Agreed. So let’s just leave Friedman out of this discussion and concentrate on the ideas, OK?

7. The problems of the American financial system in the late nineteenth century were not due to government intervention — there was very little government intervention. The problems were due to a number of factors arising from the absence of government intervention. Primary among these were the existence of insufficiently capitalized banks, the lack of public confidence in the banking system, and the injurious manipulation of the financial system by individuals.

8. More black-and-white thinking. The purpose of a central bank is not to achieve perfection but to reduce undesirable fluctuations in the financial system. The fact that the Fed does not achieve perfection is not an argument against its existence. The proper analysis is to compare it against its absence — and that comparison, when made on a historical basis, yields a very clear result.

dms00 continues to press the unconstitutionality argument, arguing that, since Congress doesn’t actually do the work itself, it doesn’t have the power to do the work. Congress still retains the power to do the work itself; it can always revoke the legislation authorizing the Fed. It can alter that legislation at any time. What’s the problem here?

Daniel, I agree with you completely. You apparently posted while I was writing my response. You made some great points that I didn’t even think of, so thanks for your input.

Read the Constitution: “The Congress shall have power…to coin money, regulate the value thereof…” Does the Congress have the power today to coin money and regulate its value? No, because of the Federal Reserve Act, Congress no longer has that power.

The fact that Congress itself created the Fed doesn’t matter. The Constitution does NOT allow Congress to take the power away from itself! The word “shall” in law means “must” or “obliged to” — it does not imply that something is optional; it means it’s mandatory. It’s mandatory that CONGRESS, and NOT an agency created by Congress, has that power.

Moving on…

The Fed sets the price of money, not the market, and that’s economic planning. Whenever you force a price upon a market, you’re planning it. They’re not planning the WHOLE economy, obviously, but they do manipulate an extremely important market.

Instead of saying “Uh, wow,” please explain why it makes sense for a central bank to set interest rates via manipulating the money supply.

Other Economists in addition to Friedman have called for overhauling or abolishing the Fed. I’m not going to pretend to be as smart as them, but I can see that the Fed is unconstitutional, secretive, manipulative, and concentrates power into the hands of a tiny group of people who are immune from being held accountable by the government or the American people.