Quote of the Day:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

-- Lord Acton

Subject: Greenspan's Final Betrayal

In 1967 Alan Greenspan wrote an essay titled "Gold and Economic Freedom."

If you read the essay you'll see in the intro that he once told a Senate committee he favored an end to the Federal Reserve and a return to gold money.

When Greenspan gained the power to run the Federal Reserve he changed his tune. He stopped singing the sound-money song, though when pressed in interviews he would still say that gold was the most stable money system.

If you accept what Greenspan said in interviews, then he still believed in sound-money and he still opposed centralized banking. But his actions betrayed his professed beliefs. He was now the Counterfeiter-in-Chief, and he played the role with gusto. He inflated and deflated the money supply, doing exactly what he had criticized before. As a result . . .

Alan Greenspan was one of the many contributors to the boom and bust cycle in general, and to the current boom and bust in particular. Greenspan clearly knew better, so what are we to conclude from his actions other than that . . .

Power corrupted Alan Greenspan.

The final betrayal came last week when Greenspan told a gleeful Congressional committee that the current economic mess effectively repudiated his previous ideology.

This last betrayal was the cruelest of all, given that it was really Greenspan's own violation of his supposed ideology, and not his adherence to it, that contributed to the mess. The free market philosophy was the victim of Greenspan's betrayals, and now, like a battering husband, Greenspan has blamed the victim for the consequences of what he did.

The politicians will use this final betrayal to further expand their power, reduce your freedom, and increase government meddling in the economy. They will be able to use the words of the "great free market guru," Alan Greenspan, to justify their actions.

We must counter Greenspan's betrayal.

Please use our Educate the Powerful system to send Congress a message in support of Ron Paul's "Honest Money" bills.

Use your personal comments to tell your elected representatives that Alan Greenspan's actions were a major contributor to the housing bubble, and that his policies argue for a return to sound money, and less economic meddling by government.

But before you act, take a moment to consider what Greenspan's betrayal teaches us. Greenspan knew what was right, but did the wrong thing anyway. If we think we can change the government by placing the "right people" in power we are very likely to be disappointed.

For every Ron Paul there are likely to be one hundred Alan Greenspans, for the simple reason that power tends to corrupt. The only counter to this is to create an outside force, a social power to counter and fight against government power. Here at DownsizeDC.org, we're trying to build that social power by recruiting a huge army of DC Downsizers. But please consider something else . . .

Whenever government policies create an economic mess, the result is not only that the politicians are able to exploit their failure to grab more power, but also that civil institutions working to counter that power, suffer. Donations to organizations like DownsizeDC.org tend to go down. And that is exactly what has happened to us over the past month.

We're about $6,000 away from making budget for October (our biggest shortfall in a long, long time), and we've lost a number of monthly pledgers because of supporters who have lost their jobs (just this morning I received another apologetic message from someone who can no longer afford to give). Your Downsize DC is in urgent need of the support of those who are still doing well to make-up for the loss.

Fortunately, it doesn't cost much to run DownsizeDC.org and to achieve our UNIQUE combination of education, recruitment, and action.

Monthly pledges of as little as $5 (less than 16 cents per day) would get us moving in the right direction again. And one-time contributions between $10 and $1,000 would help us close the gap for this month.

All financial supporters receive a copy of our 16-page booklet "The Downsize DC Vision."

We hope YOU can help.

Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC army.

Jim Babka

President

DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

P.S. DownsizeDC.org is a non-partisan organization and does not endorse or support candidates for public office.

D o w n s i z e r - D i s p a t c h

is the official email list of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. & Downsize DC Foundation

CONTRIBUTE to the Electronic Lobbyist project

http://www.DownsizeDC.org is sponsored by DownsizeDC.org, Inc. -- a non-profit educational organization promoting the ideas of individual liberty, personal responsibility, free markets, and small government.

You are encouraged to forward this message to friends and business associates, and permission is hereby granted to reproduce any items herein as long as attribution is provided for articles and the subscription instructions above are included.