First Thursday in The Pearl (Yeah Baby)

Come, Drink,Eat,Enjoy and REPEAT

My Answer to the President by Ron Paul

Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary.

The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).

Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."

Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

Polish This - HA

Weekend round up for Portland Oregon, from our prospective, or as rest of people call it
Polish Festival
Saturday: Sept 27, 11am - 10pm
Sunday, Sept 28, noon - 6pm
3900 N. Interstate Ave., Portland, Oregon
Put some Polish into you self.....
ADMISSION FREE

Vine shendling

Team Splashi spent Saturday evening outside of the city in the Chehalem vineyards, south of Portland outside Newberg. Food, drink, and music was the order of the night as we mingled, sipped, and danced to our hearts' content! Cheers!

The Weekend In Rose City

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NOW HEAR THIS - NOW HEAR THIS

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Team Splashi will so be there =) so should you.

September 20^th @ Dante's located at 3rd & Burnside

doors open 7:30pm fashon show 9:00pm

tickets are $8.00

For more info. please visit Miss White Trash Pageant

4^th Annual DoveLewis Dogtoberfest^®

This Saturday Sept.20th from 11:00AM to 5:00PM join good folk at Lucky Lab @ 915 SE Hawthorne.
C`mon down or up and make sure to bring your furry family member for wash for just $5.00(that is donation for DowLewis.
Among other tasty beers at Lucky Labrador "Dogtoberfest Pale Ale" will be poured and as you all know there is some yummy pub grub at this location.
Ther will be live bends ( for all of you folk who like music ) : A Good Spankin,Back Porch Revival, Rosa's Buds.
Dont Forget to get your 2008 DoveLewis T-shirt`s @ this event.

This Week(end) Pacific NW

Do not miss this one:

Fremont Oktoberfest 2008
RUN DRINK PLAY

Admission

Type - Price - What admission includes

Advance Tickets $15 A mug and 4 tastes

Ticket at Event $20 A mug and 4 tastes

Twice the Tastes $25 A mug and 8 tastes

Additional Tokens $1.75 Per tasting token

Posters by Team Splashi

Hop Harvest @ Bridgeport

Festival`s

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SECOND ANNUAL SLABTOWN FESTIVAL

Saturday September 13^th

NW 23ave & Savier St.

12:00pm- 6:00pm

Serving water first, and beer (or root beer) second!

Join us for this fun event at BridgePort Brewing Company in Portland, Oregon, in support of Water 1st. Music, food, beverages, and a presentation about the world water crisis and Water 1st.

Saturday, September 13, 2008
6:00 p.m. – Free Brewery Tour, 7:00 p.m. – Event begins
TICKETS: $30/person (includes food and beverages)

Hop Harvest & 17th Annual Pearl Party

This upcoming 3day weekend join us @ The Bridgeport Brewery in the Pearl for the "HOP Harvest"

Friends, neighbors, and those who just like to visit the Pearl: join us this Friday from 5-9pm on NW 13th Street for the 17th Annual Pearl Party.

From the website:

As always, the Pearl's fine restaurants will be providing free samplings of food and we will have a free bar (donations encouraged) with beer and ale from local breweries and wineries.

This year the music willl feature the New Orleans-styled New Iberians.

The Party also features a raffle off donated gift items and services, with a total value of $7000, from Pearl District merchants.

The Pearl Party is put on by the Pearl District Neighborhood Association and is our only fund-raiser each year. The funds raised are returned directly to the community in the form of neighborhood improvement projects and causes.The purpose of the Pearl Party is simply to have a great time and meet your neighbors and co-workers. Everyone is invited.

FASHION SHOW AND BENEFIT

Jax Rooftop Bar

826 sw 2nd AVE.

Doors & Cocktails @ 6:30pm

Tickets: $20.00 in advance $25.00 show night

Get your tickets @ Sofada Boutique 2937 east burnside 503-445-2006

Tram Ride

Team Splashi @ the Portland Tram, you 2 could do the same =)

Cheers

things to do this week(end)

">Lupulin Fresh Hop Ale

Brewing a fresh hop ale to celebrate the hop harvest is an annual tradition at Full Sail.Every year, our brewers travel to area hop fields and gather all the fresh hops they can carry to brew this special beer. We invite you to experience the nature of this year’s Lupulin when we will tap the new batch at our Tasting Room and Pub in Hood River and at our Riverplace Brewery in Portland, on Wednesday, September 10th at 5:00PM. For more information contact the Full Sail Tasting Room and Pub at 541-386-2247 or John at Riverplace at 503-222-5343

Thursday, September 11
IRISH WHISKEY TASTING @ 700 N.W. Bond Street Bend, OR 97701

OLD ST. FRANCIS SCHOOL
7 p.m. | $40; reservations required | 21 & over

In honor of it nearly halfway ‘til St. Pat's Day in March, come to this Irish whiskey tasting where you'll try Black Bush, Jameson 12 Year, Tyrconnell and Tullamore Dew, paired with appetizers like bacon-wrapped scallops, hazelnut-crusted cheddar with apple port reduction, petite lamb chops with single malt demi-glace and more.

Full Sail Weekend

This was our visit to the Full Sail Brewing CO @ River Front in the Rose City