Anthony Weiner honed his political craft working for New York Senator Charles Schumer, and it shows in his recent attack on Glenn Beck and his sponsor Goldline.
Weiner and his comrades’ views are well reflected when he says in his Goldline Report:
…during troubling economic times it seems there is always someone ready to take advantage of the situation and profit from people’s fears.
In the past there is always the “product” that is either the next big thing (the dot com boom) or the investment that will never go down in price (the housing market), and in the past much of the media has failed in its duty to conduct due diligence, but never before have they worked so hand in hand to cheat consumers. Commentators like Glenn Beck who are shilling for Goldline are either the worst financial advisors around or knowingly lying to their loyal viewers.
Goldline’s high pressure sales tactics and fear mongering about big government as well as their ability to hire sales staff and spokespeople who misrepresent their roles are case studies in why entities like the SEC and FTC are necessary.
Of course, it is the unscrupulous businessmen and their shills in the media who are preying on people’s fears to make a buck. Guess what Mr. Weiner? It is because people like you are running our nation that is precisely why people are turning to gold, and precisely why places like Goldline can charge a premium.
You see, the reverse is true when it comes to your argument that because of the sales representatives at Goldline who “misrepresent their roles,” the SEC and FTC are necessary entities. We need gold and thus gold salesmen because agencies like the SEC and FTC, along with you and your colleagues in Congress and over at the Fed help sanction and blow the very bubbles that you speak to and debase our currency, stealthily taxing us and leading us on a path to monetary and fiscal collapse. It is because of your “consumer protections,” that consumers are made unsafe. It is because of your regulations that we have distorted markets and the moral hazard that encourages imprudent risk-taking.
So can you blame people for clamoring to store their wealth in an asset that holds its value when you create such unrest, that cannot be printed and is not so easily subject to your will? When markets crash, causing you to blame the evil shortsellers (yet curiously you never blame those who push the markets up to unjustified levels) gold-buying is the natural reaction of speculators and investors who have discovered that the artificially high prices in stocks or houses are just that – artificial, thanks to folks in Washington who enable folks on Wall Street.
And by the way, I am curious as to why you have been so quiet on GE’s advertising of their green products on NBC’s networks after the typical global warming fear-mongering that goes on on their editorial and “news” programs.
And when we find out that:
In addition, Congressman Weiner is proposing legislation to protect consumers by requiring full disclosure of:
a. Hidden fees.
b. Purchase price/Melt value/Resale value.
c. How much the cost of gold will need to rise in the value for the customers’
investment to be profitable.
This is equally breathtaking. Even if you actually believed that enlightened bureaucrats cared about “protecting” the hapless consumer, on each point your argument is nonsensical.
How can the fees be hidden if you are announcing that there are hidden fees? Surely, others besides you and your staffers must be aware of them. Further, if there are these hidden fees, why wouldn’t Goldline’s customers shift to other dealers who sold gold with less onerous terms?
If the purchase price versus melt/resale value means that the company makes a big spread, are customers incapable of looking at such complex exchanges as Ebay to find comparable pricing? Should Goldline be punished for their large profit margin if customers are willing to pay such a price? Do you think that the average gold buyer does not consider price shopping? I certainly doubt that it is the simple subprime home borrower investing in gold coins.
And as for making a profitable investment, while certainly there are traders that buy and flip paper gold, generally gold coins are purchased as a store of value – as they rise in price in proportion to the debasement of a dollar, prompted again by the central planner’s in chief over at the “quasi-public” Federal Reserve. And do you really need to tell a buyer how much the price of gold needs to rise for his investment to be profitable? Do you need to tell a drinker how many beers he has to drink before he gets drunk? Do you need to tell a smoker how many cigarettes he needs to smoke before his lungs are full of tar? In your world I suppose you do, but in the real world people are actually able to think and do things for themselves, or at least they were before you and your “progressive” friends spent the last hundred years coddling people with purported goodies like housing, health and retirement to recuse them from taking responsibility for themselves.
When Weiner says that Goldline “grossly overcharges for their coins,” he misses the fundamental point that this is why you have competition in markets – competition forces companies to drive prices down. And frankly it doesn’t matter whether or not people are overpaying because the great thing about America is that you have the freedom to be stupid.
Here is a hypothetical for Rep. Weiner on market stupidity. If one supermarket is “price gouging” by selling milk at $10 a gallon, and another undercutting the competition by selling at $1, but people still continue to frequent each supermarket, would Weiner feel a need to call out the gouger and the undercutter to “protect” some consumers from overpaying, and other companies from being hurt by the “anti-competitive practices” of one of their competitors? Or is it only so with gold? Actually, perhaps that question is better left unanswered.
Either way, the beauty of markets that Weiner fails to acknowledge is that they allow individuals, not bureaucrats like him to control the game by voting with their feet, leading to the decentralized coordination of infinite human interactions, which means that the supermarkets would inevitably have to charge the same price for milk somewhere between $1 and $10. If they didn’t, the supermarket charging the cheaper price would drive the other one out of business, and the assets of the failed business would be purchased by more competent managers to the benefit of the whole economy.
Most importantly, consumers are individuals who in free markets remain sovereign, but this sovereignty is violated when politicians get in the way of consumers’ voluntary decisions. When you regulate people’s decision-making, you regulate their very being. You violate their freedom to think and to act in ways that they deem beneficial as individuals, which at the aggregate level benefits us all. Meanwhile, while Weiner and friends try to protect us from ourselves, they neglect to recognize our true enemies, failing at their single most important job which is to protect us from others.
Perhaps most scary is the following statement on the matter from Mr. Weiner in the New York Observer:
“The focus of my report was not primarily [Mr. Beck’s] show. I haven’t called for him to be shut down, I haven’t called for him to be sanctioned. He’s got to live with himself,” Mr. Weiner said.”
It is downright chilling that a politician would have the audacity to even consider the notion of shutting Beck down or having him sanctioned. That Anthony Weiner would insinuate this should give us great pause. Of course why ignore an opponent when you can threaten him by noting that the thought crossed your mind of censoring him, and in characteristic Alinsky fashion put him down with the potshot that Beck has to live with himself. Beck should respond: “How do you live with yourself Mr. Weiner?”
Weiner goes on in his report to quote a bunch of conservative commentators who have pushed gold, sponsored by Goldline, and one wonders – how thin-skinned is this man? Why is he so concerned about television commentators while Rome is burning? How egotistical can he be to go on a crusade against people actively trying to help their viewers, and even if they had unseemly reasons for doing so which I do not believe to be the case, why is it his job to crucify them? People can make decisions for themselves. When you take that decision-making mechanism away, you get stagnancy, dependency and serfdom. Exactly what Weiner and all of his progressive friends apparently want, not because they care about the people but because of their base lust to be the people’s masters.
Weiner’s smarminess, ad hominem attacks and lack of substance, so representative of today’s leftists continued on the O’Reilly Factor, the mind-numbingness of which can be found for your viewing displeasure below: