The "End The Fed" Rap Song By Sleuth (VIDEO)

Ever heard the phrase "the medium is the message"? In the case of the rap in "End The Fed," the anti-Federal Reserve music video below, the medium is actually, well, distracting. (Via Reason)

An artist named Sleuth has hit YouTube with a song that mixes classical economics theory, the politics of Ron Paul and even a reference to economist and housing expert Robert Shiller.

The song also ventures into the fringe with terms like "Nazi-Pelosi" (referring to Nancy Pelosi) and "Obama-umism." It also seems have more than a bit of vague antisemitism. (Check out the shot of George Soros as Presidential puppeteer)

More from the song:

"End the Fed, End the Fed
Coin gold and silver when the Fed is dead
A free market money that the founders meant
the best way to reign in the government"

Or take, for example, lines like these: "In the old days they had a bowl of dust, these days we have a belt of rust."

WATCH:

Get HuffPost Business On Facebook and Twitter!

Comments

[Yam716]

Best rapper alive!

http://www.fakejayz.com/

[Onandon]

Well that's the spirit!

We must however be very aware of the pitfalls of gold backed money, due to the fact that these same central banks have bought, stolen, and hoarded most of the worlds gold since the 30's.
There are a few good ideas for sound money that are out there, and they must be discussed openly and presented to the people. But regardless of which sound NON DEBT BASED system
we choose, the Federal reserve and fractional reserve banking MUST GO and thats it.
Those behind the Federal reserve must be arrested and tried for the countless crimes they have committed. All the derivatives held by the fed member banks must be wiped away into nothingness.

Ben Bernanke must be arrested
Tim Geithner must be arrested
Allan Greenspan must be arrested
Henry Paulson must be arrested
Chris Cox must be arrested
Robert Rubin must be arrested
Lawrence Summers must be arrested
Paul Volker must be arrested

These men must be arrested and tried and punished accordingly.

[joebhed]

Thanks for the opening.
I'd like to recommend The New Chicago Plan for Monetary Reform
It's the way out.

Just ask Dennis Kucinich.
http://www.tiny.cc/Kucinichvideo

The Money System Common

[Conk]

The Creature From Jekyl Island. Must reading for anyone wanting to understand the crime syndicate known as the Federal Reserve. Thugs, all of them. Any Congressman that supports the Fed is also guilty by association and silence on the issue.

Theft of unimaginable proportions. That's what inflation is folks. The Central Banks stealing off the top. Read the book!

[TheCommons]

I wonder if even 10% of those shouting "end the fed" have a clear idea of what they are advocating for or against? And for the record, I am not claiming to have any expertise in this area. I know what I have been reading, and that's all.

[joebhed]

That's all any of us know.

But this may help on the value of keeping the Fed.

http://www.bis.org/publ/work291.pdf

And we can thank Dennis Kucinich for knowing what comes next.
http://www.tiny.cc/Kucinichvideo

[BernankeMadoff]

The government has put the same punch bowl out that got us into the mess in the first place. More debt and consumption and don't worry about paying it back. (Berbnanke= Greenspan II)

Good articles: http://pie.im/af30

If this is change we can believe in, count me out in 2012. Obama should not have reappointed bernanke.

[Shammie2000]

Terrible rapper, Is 2pac in the house ?

[nomadicexpat]

this dude needs to up the dosage

[belly dancer]

Andrew Jackson?...

[breakingpoint]

When asked what his greatest accomplishment had been during his two terms as President, Andrew Jackson replied "I killed the Bank." He was talking about the "Second Bank of the United States", which was our country's second central bank.

[belly dancer]

No offense...but i have a lot of family and ancestors from his area and not everyone was a fan of his....

[breakingpoint]

End The Fed
http://jischinger.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/s-604-federal-reserve-sunshine-act-of-2009

HR1207 - S604

[Balzac]

This is an ironic rap song because the guy completely ignores the sense of liberation many non-white Americans feel after 43 white male presidents.

He also shows his subjectivity when citing Andrew Jackson as if he were exemplary of how a U.S. president ought to be. Never mind all the Native Americans he slaughtered.

Also, there's the hostility to George Soros, whose life work I celebrate. He keeps resisting totalitarianism. This musician acts like Soros is a bad guy for supporting then candidate Obama.

He also demeans President Obama as a puppet. Everybody is a portrayed as a cartoon stereotype. Jews are portrayed as manipulators and the president is a puppet.

This music video is a nice release for some "angstivists", but I'm hoping Ron Paul is going to shut them down because the global economy can't deal with their naiveté right now. We can look at restructuring things after the crisis is averted.

[jsarets]

Yes, everybody consistently ignores the extent to which Obama represents a sense or a symbol or a promise of something. Nobody ever writes about that stuff, and this is exactly the sort of thing that should be written about with breathless effusion.

Andrew Jackson is patron saint of Ron Paul, two men who are absolutely right about the problems and tragically wrong about the solutions.

By all means, listen to George Soros if you are an independently wealthy citizen of the world. But if you work for a living in America and wish to continue doing so, don't listen to George Soros, because if we invest in globally-diversified portfolios of financial media jargon, most of our jobs will continue moving elsewhere.

Of course our presidents are puppets. Several of our past presidents have essentially admitted that they were puppets, or at least that there were vast powers beyond their own.

[Sarahmay57]

Yes, it shows the hybridizing of the conservative and libertarian movements with conspiracists, and obviously this is just Ron Paul worship. And while I agree that the Fed is a problem,
the answer is not Ron Paul, who doesn't mind mixing government and religion and thinks abortion should be outlawed (by the states, of course).

[blimie]

What is controversial about it. It's a good idea. It's better than a good idea, it's great.

[mattyd123]

Wrong. The reason panics and crises occurred during times when gold or silver backed currencies was because bankers employed fractional reserve banking. When individuals came to recover their money from the bank it wasn't there. Enclosed is a Federal Reserve produced document entitled Modern Money Mechanics. Detailed reading but if consumed and understood you will understand why the Fed exacts the largest tax on Americans imaginable. If too long google fractional reserve banking.

http://www.rayservers.com/images/ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf

[jsarets]

The paradox of commodity-backed currency is that fractional reserve lending leads to the problem you describe, but full reserve lending leads to depression caused by a chronic shortage of money.

The supply of any commodity (or basket of commodities) grows at a rate that is more or less independent of economic growth, and therefore the supply of the commodity constrains growth by limiting the liquidity available to facilitate transactions.

The problem with our current monetary system isn't fiat currency. When loans are issued, only the principal is created as new money, and so the money needed to pay the interest must be borrowed at interest, causing an unsustainable debt spiral.

It helps to understand the modern monetary system, but I think it helps even more to understand the classic monetary system that Benjamin Franklin designed for the Pennsylvania Colony, as this provides the best model for a sustainable monetary system.

In this system, the government issued debt-free fiat currency for the purchase of public goods in the amount equal to the interest due on loans issued by private banks. This ratio of lending to spending based on market interest rates made it sustainable.

[mattyd123]

What about when the loan is deposited into another institution and then fractionalized? What about quantitative easing? The underlying contradictory assumption by central planners is that a static money supply would lead to a lack of growth. There would be a transitional stage but the boom and bust cycles of the past would be greatly dissipated. Just think what it would do as a natural means of population control, reducing carbon emissions. People would expand families more likely by economic assumptions based on the reality of there situation rather than whether they can refinance there house to send 5 children through college. Monetary reform is possible. http://www.themoneymasters.com/mra.htm

[jsarets]

Replying to mattyd123

As long as there is enough money in circulation to service debts (which there never is in the current system), there is no fundamental problem with recursive fractionalization.

The economy needs debt not only to "grow" in the usual conception of the word, but also to adapt, to transform itself to suit changing conditions. How are we going to rebuild an industrial economy that's unfit for the future with a sustainable economy if we don't have a way to create a wave of profitable investment?

I am NOT an advocate of central planning of any kind, whether by Washington bureaucrats or Wall Street bankers. I advocate local government and credit unions planning on behalf of the local communities and workplaces they democratically represent.

Boom-bust cycles are caused by the impossible contract of debt in a pure debt-money system. The impossibility of the contract manifests in clusters of bankruptcy. The counter-cyclical manipulation of short-term interest rates by central banks are misguided responses to these cycles rather than their causes.

The scarcity of resources (and jobs) will affect decision-making about reproduction and energy consumption. We don't need a scarcity of money to incite these behaviors, especially as that would also limit our ability to exchange labor, where there is no scarcity even in what you might call a "steady-state" economy.

[jsarets]

By the way, I've watched the 3-hour version of Money Masters several times. It's a very good starting point for those interested in monetary policy.

But I prefer Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt". You get a more well-rounded view of both the history of money and its implications for society. It's a modern Bible.

[HMDMSR]

There's a lot to be said for your position, but, ultimately, profitability crises would still occur. One consequence of doing banking the way you have in mind, is that growth would be slowed, and that should be a good thing.

It was already understood by the early 19th century that capitalism was a terrible system for people. For the next hundred years, proponents of capitalism fought a worldwide socialist movement.

Then came the Great Depression. Only by the FDR administration putting chains on capital, after public spending on the war saved the US economy, did this system survive. Had those measures by FDR not been taken, business owners would have hanging from trees across the US. Post-WWII, the same types of measures were used in Europe and Japan--measures to control the markets.

Today, a mercantilist movement in the Pacific is overtaking the West's more laissez faire style, which had staged a comeback via the great neoliberal counterattack that began with Reagan and Thatcher.

[HMDMSR]

I'm seeing a lot of these guys standing around large intersections holding up signs.

Many of the comments to the above article lead me to think that the following wrong impression has been left on some: because Ron Paul has had some success with his bill to audit the Fed, there is a chance Americans will become advocates of the Austrian School of economics. I doubt if that will happen.

[Mannock]

When you see and talk to the advocates of the Austrian school in any place, you can doubt that it will happen

[HMDMSR]

Let's get rid of all the bad banksters, so the good industrialists can run the show. What childish drivel.

Economic crises and financial speculation occurred when money was based on gold or silver. As far as the standard of living in the US is concerned, it has been higher and better during the era of the Fed than any other time, especially since the end of WWII.

The crises of capitalism have always been, and will always be, about the self-destructive nature of this particular economic system. Productivity increases undermine the value of their products. This diminished value drives profitability problems. Capitalists react to this phenomenon in various ways--all of them bad for working folks.

Work intensity will be increased, or the workday will be lengthened. Layoffs might be used. All of these measures, ironically, will be taken after the economy has increased its capacity to produce more at higher quality. Working people are punished for their productivity increases.

The Fed is part of a corrupt system, but ending will not solve the underlying problem. End the Fed? Yes, but not with the expectation of resolving our current predicament.

[Mannock]

in one hour and sixteen minutes you came up with two refreshing posts.

This video shines the light on the childish drivel. It is a 101 on surface factoids (remembering that the suffix "oid" means bearing similarity), shrill and unresearched. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

[beckpod1]

END THE FED....

[MetalCanuck]

THats right, I wish our liberal brother and sisters (remember we are non partisan) would join us on this ONE issue at least. This is the most important issue that affects all of us... lets finish these guys off and we can do it.

[belly dancer]

Ok i'll go along if you say so...but if for any reason it doesn't work out like you had hoped or been told...i will come after you like like a tea bagger in an Old Country Buffet...demand your nads...string them around my neck like jewelery then make you dress up like little bo peep and tell me you're a pretty girl...deal?

[WorkingClass]

I'm with you Canuck. And I'm a socialist. Everybody, left and right, that understands the origins and true purpose of the Fed, wants to end it.

[dennissinned]

It should rein in, not reign in.