Due Process
Due process means that you must have a judge and jury decide your case before the government can take your property.
The USA, originally being English colonies, trace due process back to the Magna Carta in 1215 AD.[1] Clause 39 translates,
“No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any other way ruined, nor will we go against him or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”
The 5th Amendment to the US’ Constitution reads,
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
Recently the Center for Disease Control (CDC) made evictions illegal in most cases from September 4th through December 31st because so many Americans are so poor from the lockdown that they can’t pay their mortgages and rents.[2]
One unintended consequence of the CDC order is that it denies landlords the use of their property while they are still liable to pay their property tax. This risks pricking the property and housing bubble as landlords may think that it better to sell the property instead of paying the taxes while someone else gets to use the property.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has been printing money so everyone can get stimulus cheques to pay their bills and to inflate property values. Unfortunately, printing money also takes away property without due process via an inflation tax. Inflation makes everything less affordable for most people, while those with the new money (the government) can buy what they want.[3]
“As to the assumed authority of any assembly in making paper money, or paper of any kind, a legal tender, or in other language, a compulsive payment, it is a most presumptuous attempt at arbitrary power. There can be no such power in a republican government: the people have no freedom - and property no security - where this practice can be acted.” -Thomas Paine, Dissertations on Government, the Affairs of the Bank, and Paper Money, 1786
Speaking on the television show 60 Minutes back in March, Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said that the Fed had been flooding the system with money.[4]
Scott Pelley: Can you characterize everything that the Fed has done this past week as essentially flooding the system with money?
Neel Kashkari: Yes. Exactly.
Scott Pelley: And there's no end to your ability to do that?
Neel Kashkari: There is no end to our ability to do that.
Indeed, the Federal Reserve loaned the US government nearly $2.5 trillion of the $3 trillion borrowed so far this year.[5]
According to a September 1st article from Zack Friedman at Forbes, there will be more inflation. He writes,[6]
“With Congress at an impasse over the next stimulus package, there are effectively multiple ‘offers’ on the table:
Senate Republicans: $1 trillion Heals Act
House Democrats: $3 trillion Heroes Act
President Donald Trump: $1.3 trillion bill”
People will want to protect their savings from being lost to the inflation tax. Since their savings can’t be protected by due process, some are turning away from the dollar and to gold.
At least one Ohio police pension fund and Warren Buffett have decided that gold is a hedge against the paper dollar losing value.[7][8] Even China is threatening to sell $1 trillion of their US Treasury Securities.[9]
With the precedent set of landlords losing their property without due process, the amount of inflation and stimulus needed to keep the property bubbles from popping will be historic.
Unmasked, the lockdown is about managing the collapse of the dollar- not the Coronavirus. Once people find out that the flood of money will not end because there is no normal in which to return, due process won’t save them from losing their savings.
“But then finally the masses wake up. They become suddenly aware of the fact that inflation is a deliberate policy and will go on endlessly. A breakdown occurs. The crack-up boom appears. Everybody is anxious to swap his money against ‘real’ goods, no matter whether he needs them or not, no matter how much money he has to pay for them. Within a very short time, within a few weeks or even days, the things which were used as money are no longer used as media of exchange. They become scrap paper. Nobody wants to give away anything against them.” -Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (1949), page 428.
Fun fact, Sept 3, 1929 was the stock market peak in America before the Great Depression. On that day, the economist Irving Fisher wrote in the New York Times,[10]
“Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
Sept 4 was the first day of the new normal. Like today, few knew it at the time.
[1]https://magnacarta.cmp.uea.ac.uk/read/magna_carta_1215/Clause_39
[2]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-eviction-declaration.html
[3]https://www.hamiltonmobley.com/blog/guztul12vkm6b2rsgt8m4p49sxgfol
[5]https://www.hamiltonmobley.com/blog/6hc77l5rzp81iawadkxb09difpcyuf
[10] https://time.com/3207128/stock-market-high-1929/%3famp=true