Bastiat is Frederic Bastiat, economist and political philosopher, said this about governments' economic crimes: "But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime." Bastiat is talking about the kind of theft that would land a private individual in jail, but that governments and the Federal Reserve commit regularly and with impunity.