Gary North vs.

Ellen Brown: What he’s doing and why it matters

Gary North is busy refuting Ellen Brown’s historical and economic errors. Ellen Brown wrote Web of
Debt and has a column on Huffington Post. She’s a greenbacker, a believer in public issuance of fiat
currency. Gary North, who understands history and economics and written numerous books and articles
on the subject, is rebutting her errors and arguing in favor of sound money.

http://www.garynorth.com/public/department141.cfm

She responded point by point here http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/response-to-gary-north-2/ and

Gary North will refute each point, linking to the bottom of this page
http://www.garynorth.com/public/department141.cfm

One person commented http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/response-to-gary-north/comment-page-3/

Gary North’s style is familiar to me. It is an attack style that is designed to require the greatest
time and effort possible to defend. If he was interested in arguing issues, he would have put put
those issues front and centre knowing that Ellen is busy and would most likely respond to them
that way. As it is, he hopes she doesn’t get that far because then he can claim himself an easy
victory. If she does get that far, he has an arsenal of useless rebuttals propping up one or two
perhaps valid points that will prevent him ever having to accept defeat. You can never prove
scientific theory right, you can only fail to prove it wrong consistently. Constructive criticism will
help refine the theory, but obstructive criticism will only slow down its advance.

Unfortunately he’s wrong.

What Gary North is trying to do is show people that Ellen Brown's advice on what we should do can't be
trusted because she is a variety of socialist and doesn't understand economics. (The two go hand in
hand.)

"She made Greenbackism exciting and understandable: for ignorant people who think Hitler's National
Socialism was based on economics."

If we want to put our country's future prosperity on a sound basis we have to realize it is based on
sound money, not on public or private issuance of paper money. Gary North and all people who love
peace, liberty, and property must speak about any popular movement or person, no matter how well
meaning, who promotes public or private issuance of paper money.

Ellen Brown is making the classic mistake of many proponents of socialist thought. Assuming that
something done for private gain if done by the state will be for public gain. http://mises.org/daily/4686

Unfortunately bad actions done for private gain at the expense of the public will still be bad actions at
the expense of the public if done by the state for public gain. State issuance of fiat currency devalues the
fiat currency holdings of the entire public for the benefit of whoever gets their hot little hands on the
new currency. It divides society in to two opposing classes.

Hoppe and others have shown that the private undertakers of bad actions at the expense of the public
are often more responsible than state officials who undertake bad actions at the expense of the public
for the ostensible benefit of the public. A king and feudal lord has a long term interest in keeping up his
property, while the bankers have a vested interest in keeping up the value of the currency to
counterbalance their interest in inflating the currency to make more loans (Quigley's Tragedy and Hope
has a good discussion of this balancing act, which I think informs his history.)

Having read her responses to Gary North that he hasn't responded to yet, I see she doesn't really get
economics or many of his rebuttals.

Read her response to 29.  Foreign currency speculators caused Zimbabwe’s inflation. Gary North is here
http://www.garynorth.com/public/7011.cfm . She makes the statement "the hyperinflation was caused
by speculators who charged exorbitant rates for US dollars" and "We both have our sources.  Mine
disagree with yours on the cause; you haven’t shown that yours are more legitimate than mine."
Legitimate sources make economic sense. Her quote just goes to show that she doesn't understand
economics - if there's a huge supply of Zimbabwe's currency vs. US Dollars then of course the price of US
dollars will be high. She doesn't explain why speculators who notice the exorbitant rates don't undercut
the people selling US dollars and make a huge profit by selling at slightly less exorbitant price. That's
how things work in the real world - unless there's government interference - and even then one need
only look at the market for illegal drugs in the US to understand that people will supply product.