* This is the first podcast I've been able to record since the death of my father, Irwin Schiff, who passed away on Friday
* If you're interested in learning more about him and the circumstances surrounding his death, I would encourage you to read my commentary, "The Death of a Patriot"
* There also links to many other articles written about him on my Facebook page
* You can also find on my YouTube channel, my father's debate for the 1996 Libertarian Nomination for President
* You can also find on the internet a video he created called, "The Secrets of a Tax Free Life"
* He died in jail because of his political beliefs and for standing up for his Constitutional rights
* While in prison, my father got insufficient medical care, he lost all his teeth, lost his eyesight and eventually died of cancer
* In my father's case, even if he were wrong, the penalty should have been a civil case
* My father was steadfast in his beliefs, and did not want to be released unless he won his appeals
* The Dow was up more than 300 points today
* The strength came from the ECB, as Draghi suggested that the ECB was considering expanding QE
* The ECB is trying to talk the euro down
* The ECB did not actually do anything, they just jaw-boned the markets with the idea of more QE
* This was a euro story - the dollar was only up against the euro
* The New Zealand dollar was up 1.3% against the U.S. dollar
* Gold was up 2% in terms of euros
* Silver was up .15 in dollars despite the big jump in the dollar index
* This lays more foundation for the Fed not to raise rates
* At some point, I think the Fed will another round of QE
* The reason Draghi suggested QE was over fears that inflation is too low
* It is running at .9%, but according the ECB, the holy grail is 1.9%
* Draghi was asked why he is spending so much money to raise inflation when he earlier said that low inflation is good for purchasing power
* How does the ECB think they can pinpoint inflation to exactly 1.9%?
* Draghi's answer was that low inflation makes debt harder to repay
* What Draghi is saying is that it doesn't reduce debt enough
* Why is it good to transfer wealth from creditors to debtors?
* He also said that with low inflation, real wages will rise
* Why is this a problem? Because the government artificially boosted wages in the first place expecting inflation to mitigate their true effect in the economy
* What's really too high is not so much wages as labor costs, due to government mandates
* We want workers to have higher wages in a free market based on their productivity
* All that is undermined in the ECB's quest to generate inflation
* Draghi also questions the accuracy of is numbers
* Central bankers are trying to prop up the stock market and the government
* The real debt the central banks want to wipe out is government debt
* This is not what central banks are supposed t do, they're supposed to be independent
* Another reason the U.S. market might have been strong is because of all the weak economic data that came out
* Housing was stronger than expected, but everything else was pretty weak
* The Chicago Fed National Activity Index, which was -.41 came in at -.37 - back to back bad months
* Also leading economic indicators experience their biggest drop in almost 3 years to -.2
* Last month was also revised down
* Also the Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index negative again
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