In a speech to the National Association for Business Economics, Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen admitted that she and her Fed colleagues don’t understand inflation or what causes it.
Her actual quote was:

“My colleagues and I may have misjudged the strength of the labor market, the degree to which longer-run inflation expectations are consistent with our inflation objective, or even the fundamental forces driving inflation..”

That’s quite an admission from the head of the Fed which has tasked itself with managing inflation by setting artificial benchmarks and manipulating the interest rates to reach them. So one of the country’s chief central planners admits she knows nothing about the central planning in which she’s engaging?
When it comes to the economy, most Americans are like Yellen (and her predecessors Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan) functionally illiterate and lost in a fog of frivolity and ignorance. How else to explain their continued advocacy for and support of policies detrimental to their economic interests?
Perhaps Yellen should read Personal Liberty^™. At least then she’d know a little something about inflation and history.
For instance: Conventional wisdom holds that the Federal Reserve is essential to sound monetary policy and that its activities ensure that inflation and unemployment are kept in check. Conventional wisdom also holds that the United States is in debt and you should pay your “fair share” of tax dollars — as determined by a group of collectivists — into the U.S. Treasury in order to keep government functioning and pay off that debt. Neither could be further from the truth.
Look at the dollars in your pocket. They are nowhere near the value of the dollars that you had as a child or that you may have stored under your mattress.
Most people think that a dollar is a dollar. Not so. Today’s dollars (nominal dollars) are quicksand money that destroys financially all who trust it.
We have had fiat paper money since 1913, and most of that time it was being debased (inflated). Now it’s at a 96 percent loss. A 1913 dollar is now worth only 4 cents. What cost $1 in 1913 now costs almost $25; an inflation rate of 2,380 percent. How did this happen?
It happened through inflation — which is not rising prices, as most have been lead to believe. Inflation is an increase in the supply of money, i.e., money printing by the Federal Reserve. The increase in the amount of money in circulation causes prices to rise as more money chases fewer goods.
We are only as rich or as poor as the purchasing power of our money. Have you ever wondered why banks and politicians love paper money? Because they profit from it!
Some of you longtime readers may remember we predicted that the money printers would pull us out of the 2008 financial collapse at least one more time. Well, the indicators put forth by government and the mainstream media propagandists tell us that they are doing it, but it comes at great cost to the value of your dollars and to the detriment of the middle class.
In this inflating economy we have the stock market hitting all-time highs, but in nominal dollars it is creating deceptive losses.
Nominal dollars are the everyday paper dollars that we think of and call money. These dollars change every day (depreciate). The value of these dollars goes down constantly as the money printers continue to debase our currency.
Now the point is that Americans don’t know the difference. They don’t know that depreciating or nominal dollars by debasement is destroying their savings, their retirement and systematically impoverishing them. If this is not all important, I don’t know what is!
Nominal dollars, or depreciating currency, is destroying America. America is a giant Ponzi scheme no different from the one pulled off by Bernie Madoff. Madoff’s scheme collapsed because he became locked into an economic death spiral of moving dollars from one pile to another. That is the case of the U.S. economy.
Nominal depreciating paper money dollars is default headed for the trash heap of all the unfunded paper money in history. The few who wake up to the real world begin exchanging their depreciating paper money for gold and silver.
Those unaware of the inflating debasing nature of nominal dollars live in a fickle and imaginary world. They believe that all is well and all is safe. They are further deceived by rising stock prices in nominal dollars. One can be up 100 percent in a stock portfolio but still be losing in real dollars. It’s very deceptive!
All modern money is nominal dollars. Look at the money in your pocket or your savings account or your retirement. You are being deceptively impoverished and the fact that you are unaware of it makes your eventual impoverishment certain.
As to whether Federal Reserve or a central bank is necessary, one need only look at the 100 years prior to the creation of the Fed in 1913 (a period that also included Civil War inflation and its destruction of the U.S. economy). An item that cost $1 in 1814 cost only 47 cents in 1913. That’s almost completely the reverse of the past 100 years. (For further explanation of the Fed and inflation, read “Educating the 95 percent,” “The Fed’s money-making machine,” and “40 miles deep.”)
Now to the ongoing “crisis” in the Washington, D.C., cesspool and the never-ending debate over government funding and the debt ceiling. First, understand this: The U.S. national debt will never be paid off. There is in fact no debt. It is all an illusion of political doublespeak.
How can there be a “debt” if there is money printing to infinity? Ask yourself another question: If you had a printing press that could print all the money you wanted, would you have any debt? Of course not, and neither does the U.S. government (but State and local governments do have debt).
So if there is no debt, why must you pay your “fair share” of taxes? The truth is there is no need, because your taxes do not go to pay U.S. debt. Taxes are merely a means of redistributing wealth and compiling an informational dossier on all Americans.
The key word to describe fiat non-substance is infinity. This imaginary money system can be created to infinity and indeed is on its way. The American people (and the world) believe that this non-substance is real money. This is an exercise in an unbelievable and unimaginable delusion that is accepted by the mind as real.
This is socialism at its most perfect creation and it is doing exactly socialism’s work of transferring the wealth and savings of the American people to the State without payment.
Debt implies that there are limits to money and spending. Debt is not a concept that can be applied to Federal government so-called accounting. This is one of the system’s deep dark secrets and proof the whole Federal System is a fiat paper Ponzi.
My friends, you may have title to your home, your savings and your accumulated wealth, but the State is the owner without compensation to you.
Why? Everything that you “own” is denominated in fiat U.S. dollars. As the Fed creates fiat to buy up America (euphemism for bailout), the nominal dollar ownership of your property diminishes. This system allows no escape from its fiat.
So what should you do? First, stop thinking conventional thoughts. They are not your own.
If you will digest completely what I write, you will be catapulted into the real world. You will not spend your life frivolously and off point.
Preserve your labor, your savings and retirement with gold and silver in your possession. You will know what to do with your precious metals when the time comes — and it will come.
Precious metals don’t pay interest, you say? This is conventional thinking backed by the paper money myth. Gold and silver are the only real money in existence. They are real money as well as intrinsic wealth. Moreover, gold and silver appreciate in purchasing power as paper money depreciates. That is your real interest. All understanding of hard money has been lost down the memory hole of the fiat paper world money regime.
I am proud to be an American, but I know that my government and my country have been stolen by the money creators.