1. We don't carry firearms so we can ignore other basics of personal safety. Every permit holder that I know realizes that almost all dangerous situations can be avoided by vigilance, alertness, and by simply making wise choices about where one goes and what one does. We don't walk down dark alleys. We lock our cars. We don't get intoxicated in public or hang around people who do. We park our cars in well-lit spots and don't hang out in bad parts of town where we have no business. A gun is our last resort, not our first.
2. We don't think we are cops, spies, or superheroes. We aren't hoping that somebody tries to rob the convenience store while we are there so we shoot a criminal. We don't take it upon ourselves to get involved in situations that are better handled by a 911 call or by simply standing by and being a good witness. We don’t believe our guns give us any authority over our fellow citizens. We also aren’t here to be your unpaid volunteer bodyguard. We’ll be glad to tell you where we were trained and point you to some good gun shops if you feel you want to take on this of responsibility for your personal safety. Except for extraordinary circumstances your business is your business, don’t expect us to help you out of situations you could have avoided.
3. We are less likely, not more likely, to become involved in fights or “rage” incidents than the general public. We recognize, better than many unarmed citizens, that we are responsible for our actions. We take that responsibility of carrying a firearm very seriously. We know that loss of temper, getting into fights, or angrily confronting someone after a traffic incident could easily escalate into a dangerous situation. We are more likely to go out of our way to avoid these situations. We don’t pull our guns to settle arguments or to threaten people into doing what we want.
4. We are responsible gun owners. We secure our firearms so that children and other unauthorized people cannot access them. Most of us have invested in safes, cases, and lock boxes as well as other security measures to keep our firearms secure. Many of us belong to various organizations that promote firearm safety and ownership.
5. Guns are not unsafe or unpredictable. Modern firearms are well made precision instruments. Pieces do not simply break off causing them to fire. A hot day will not set them off. Most modern firearms will not discharge even if dropped. There is no reason to be afraid of a gun simply lying on a table or in a holster. It is not going to jump out of my pocket, waistband or holster and discharge on its own.
6. We do not believe in the concept of “accidental discharges.” There are no accidental discharges only negligent discharges or intentional discharges. We take responsibility for our actions and have learned how to safely handle firearms. Any case you have heard about a gun “going off” was the result of negligence on somebody’s part. Our recognition of our responsibility and familiarity with firearms makes us among the safest firearms owners in America.
7. Permit holders do their best to keep our concealed weapons exactly that: concealed. I carry most of the time, and I do NOT want to flip out soccer moms or squeamish citizens. However there are times when an observant fellow citizen may spot our firearm or the print of it under our clothes. We are very cognizant that concerns about terrorism and crime are in the forefront of the minds of most citizens. We also realize our society does much to condition our citizens to have irrational fears about firearms. we would encourage citizens who do happen to spot someone carrying a firearm to use good judgment and clear thinking if they feel the need to take action. Please recognize that it is very uncommon for a criminal to use a holster. However if you feel the need to report having spotted a firearm we would ask that you please be specific and detailed in your call to the police or in your report to a store manager or a private security. Please don’t generalize or sensationalize what you observed. Comments like “there’s a guy running around the store with a gun” or even simply “I saw a man with a gun in the store” could possibly cause a misunderstanding as to the true nature of the incident.
8. The fact that criminals know that some of the population may be armed at any given time helps to deter violence against all citizens. Permit holders don’t believe that every person should necessarily by armed. We recognize that some people may not be temperamentally suited to carry a firearm or simply may wish not to for personal reasons. We do encourage you to respect our right to arm ourselves. Even if you choose not to carry a firearm yourself please oppose measures to limit the ability of law-abiding citizens to be armed. As mentioned before: criminal do not observe “gun free zones” and the world will NOT be a safer place because you feel better about it. Help by not supporting laws that require citizens to be unarmed victims.
9. The fact that we carry a firearm into any given place does not mean that we believe that place to be inherently unsafe. If we believe a place to be unsafe, most of us would avoid that place altogether if possible. We recognize that trouble could occur at any place at any time. Criminals don’t observe “no guns allowed” signs. If trouble does come, we don’t want the only armed persons to be the perpetrators; therefore, we don’t usually make a determination about whether or not to carry at any given time based on “how safe” we think a location is.
10. Concealed weapons permit holders are an asset to the public in times of trouble.The fact that most permit holders have the good judgment to stay out of situations better handled by a 911 call or by simply being a careful and vigilant witness does not mean we would fail to act in situations where the use of deadly force is appropriate to save lives. Review of high profile public shooting incidents shows that when killers are confronted by armed resistance they tend to either break off the attack and flee, or choose to end their own life. Lives are saved when resistance engages a violent criminal. Lives are lost when the criminal can do as he pleases.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Hayek on the modern state.....
Wars expand the power of the modern state because the national planning to fight the war continues even during times of peace. This perennial government planning then expands the social-welfare state over time, with harmful results. Most importantly, economic activity is impeded by the growing state as people and resources become less productive. In other words, because the government does not create consumable goods and services, it is an economic burden to the productive sector of the economy.
Then as the government grows, interest groups become increasingly numerous and powerful, leading to political corruption. More wars or even foreign policy tensions and economic crises can propel demagogues and dictatorial leaders to expand further state powers, to the detriment of each and every one of us
Sound familiar?
Then as the government grows, interest groups become increasingly numerous and powerful, leading to political corruption. More wars or even foreign policy tensions and economic crises can propel demagogues and dictatorial leaders to expand further state powers, to the detriment of each and every one of us
Sound familiar?
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Do you actually KNOW anything about the bible... besides your opinion of it?
It has been said that one of the unique characteristics of Americans is that our devotion for the Bible is matched only by our ignorance of it. I would argue that there is NO OTHER BOOK like it, and that we would all be better off with a knowledge of it. I have used for years a daily reading pattern put together by a dead Scot named Bobby MCheyne.
Here is a link to it.
If you have never systematically read through that book, I can only say this. You are ignorant. Sorry, no other way to put it. Any person claiming to be quasi-literate should read it through AT LEAST once even if when you get through, you put it aside, reject the premises, and deny what it claims (it claims to be absolute truth communicated by the Creator and detailing the master plan of the Universe).
I myself have found myself alternately offended, inspired, enraged, motivated, shamed, encouraged, discouraged, puzzled, joyful, humiliated, fearful, loved, staggered at my smallness, and a subject to a whole range of emotions as I read it. It deals with profundities that will sink the deepest intellect and presents them in language a child can grasp. I opened it for the first time as a hostile but curious kid at age 17, hating the fundamentalist culture that banged on it, but enchanted by it when I actually read it (I found out the fundies were mostly WRONG about what it taught, btw). I have since read it through hundreds of times and it is a new and relevant today as the first time I opened it.
Maybe this year would be a good time to know what it says, rather than just what other people say about it?
Here is a link to it.
If you have never systematically read through that book, I can only say this. You are ignorant. Sorry, no other way to put it. Any person claiming to be quasi-literate should read it through AT LEAST once even if when you get through, you put it aside, reject the premises, and deny what it claims (it claims to be absolute truth communicated by the Creator and detailing the master plan of the Universe).
I myself have found myself alternately offended, inspired, enraged, motivated, shamed, encouraged, discouraged, puzzled, joyful, humiliated, fearful, loved, staggered at my smallness, and a subject to a whole range of emotions as I read it. It deals with profundities that will sink the deepest intellect and presents them in language a child can grasp. I opened it for the first time as a hostile but curious kid at age 17, hating the fundamentalist culture that banged on it, but enchanted by it when I actually read it (I found out the fundies were mostly WRONG about what it taught, btw). I have since read it through hundreds of times and it is a new and relevant today as the first time I opened it.
Maybe this year would be a good time to know what it says, rather than just what other people say about it?
Top 10 predictions for 2010 (National Inflation Association)
For what these are worth:
1) We will learn the 2009 holiday shopping season was a bust.
The Commerce Department reported seasonally adjusted November retail sales up 1.3% from October. However, if you apply the average seasonal adjustments that were used during the years 2006 and 2007, which account for a normal spike in November sales due to the holiday shopping season, retail sales were actually down 1.3% in November.
NIA believes any year-over-year increase in 2009 holiday season retail sales will be bottom bouncing from 2008 and not an indication of an economic recovery. Most likely, adjusted for inflation, retail sales will be flat over a year ago. We expect to see a sharp sell off in many retail stocks, as a full economic recovery appears to be already priced into their share prices.
2) We will see a major decline in the Dow/Gold ratio.
The Dow/Gold ratio is currently 9.3, having bounced from the low of 7 it saw in early 2009. We are likely to see a decline in the Dow/Gold ratio to below 7 in 2010.
Many people who have bought U.S. stocks on the bet of an economic recovery, will soon realize the economy is not recovering and stocks have been rallying only due to inflation. Although some people selling stocks may once again mistakenly move to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven, we believe an increasing amount of people will avoid the U.S. dollar and buy gold as a safe haven.
3) We will see a sharp decline in the Gold/Silver ratio.
The Gold/Silver ratio is currently 64, above the average of the past 100 years of 50. Between the years 1,000 and 1,873 when silver was used as real money, the Gold/Silver ratio traded between 10 and 16. In recent history, the Gold/Silver ratio dipped below 20 on two occasions, once in 1968 and once again in 1980.
NIA believes silver prices will continue to outperform gold in 2010, as the world once again begins looking at silver as money, instead of just an industrial metal. The Gold/Silver ratio could decline to below 50 in 2010.
4) The U.S. Dollar Index will see short-term bounce, then huge crash.
We are at a point where there are more people who are bearish on the U.S. dollar than ever before, which means from a technical standpoint it is overdue for a short-term bounce. However, we would not consider going long the dollar even as a trade. A huge crash in the U.S. dollar could occur at any time.
The world has become flooded with U.S. dollars. Foreigners currently hold over $10 trillion in dollar-denominated assets that can be dumped at any time. With the Federal Reserve continuing to expand its monetary base to record highs, as soon as banks begin lending their excess reserves we could see a spike in consumer prices and a rush to get out of U.S. dollars.
5) Oil will rise back above $100 per barrel.
We expect oil's next rise above $100 per barrel to be fueled almost entirely by inflation. This time around, it won't matter if there's another substantial decline in oil demand from the U.S. We expect oil prices to rise regardless of if Americans can afford it or not.
NIA believes any decrease in demand from the U.S. will be more than made up for by increasing demand from China and India. There hasn't been any major new oil discoveries made in decades and the Federal Reserve's printing of money will surely outpace the discovery of new oil fields.
6) There will be a move towards a Libertarian third-party.
Americans are waking up to the charade that has been taking place in Washington. Power has been going back and forth between two political parties who do nothing but multiply each other's mistakes. Both the Democrats and Republicans are equally responsible for the economic mess our country is in today.
In the last Presidential election, Americans had a choice between two candidates who both supported the government's destructive stimulus plans and bailouts. In the next Presidential election, we believe a third-party candidate will have a serious chance of being elected for the first time in history. We anticipate seeing a new leader emerge and a Libertarian movement begin in 2010.
7) Peter Schiff and Rand Paul will both win Republican primaries and be elected to U.S. Senate.
We are huge supporters of Peter Schiff and Rand Paul who are seeking the Republican nominations for U.S. Senate in the states of Connecticut and Kentucky respectively. They are both Libertarians at heart but realize their best chance to be elected is to run under the title of a Republican.
We need Peter Schiff and Rand Paul to join Ron Paul in Washington so that we at least have three elected representatives that understand the truth about our economy and the need to reverse the hyperinflationary course our country is currently on. Although they may be underdogs because they don't have the support of special interest groups, Peter Schiff and Rand Paul will have huge grassroots support from educated Americans who will travel from all states to volunteer for their campaigns.
8) Large 'End the Fed' Protests.
In 2009, hundreds of people gathered for several 'End the Fed' protests in front of Federal Reserve buildings nationwide. However, the turnout for these events paled in comparison to the millions of Americans who participated in health care protests and town hall meetings.
In 2010, more Americans will realize that it is the Federal Reserve that is the cause of most of our nation's economic problems. While the health care debate divided our nation 50/50, we believe 100% of all Americans will want to end the Federal Reserve as prices of food and other goods needed to live start rising through the roof.
9) Major Food Shortages.
For the past several decades, most Americans went to college to get a non-productive job on Wall Street and nobody went to school to become a farmer. There is currently a major lack of farmers in the U.S. and to make matters worse, the Real Estate bubble destroyed immeasurable amounts of farmland to build houses we didn't need and couldn't afford.
Inventories of agricultural products are the lowest they have been in decades yet the prices of many agricultural commodities are down 70% to 80% from their all time highs adjusted for real inflation. Catastrophic food shortages are possible in 2010, not just in the U.S. but all around the world.
10) Paul Volcker Resigns.
This may be a long shot but Paul Volcker, Chairman of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, could become frustrated with the Obama administration and resign in 2010. Paul Volcker, as former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, was responsible for getting our economy out of the inflationary crisis of the 1970s by raising the federal funds rate up to a peak of 20%.
With interest rates currently being held by the Federal Reserve at an artificially low level of 0%, we believe Paul Volcker must know that a currency crisis is coming that will make the inflation of the 1970s look miniscule. If Paul Volcker wants to preserve his reputation and legacy, he must leave the Obama administration, which is unlikely to seriously consider any of his advice.
Why I hate television
Maybe it is just because I am a cranky old curmudgeon. I dunno. I have found my life MUCH richer, though, since getting rid of my TV. I am not less informed. I would argue that I am MORE informed than most of my contemporaries, although I cannot name the latest lover of Tiger Woods, nor who that British star was who just died.
I was scouting around and found this reference.
In his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), Jerry Mander (after reviewing totalitarian critics such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Jacques Ellul, and Ivan Illich) compiled a list of the "Eight Ideal Conditions for the Flowering of Autocracy."
Television helps create all eight conditions for breaking a population. Television, he explained, (1) occupies people so that they don't know themselves -- and what a human being is; (2) separates people from one another; (3) creates sensory deprivation; (4) occupies the mind and fills the brain with prearranged experience and thought; (5) encourages drug use to dampen dissatisfaction (while TV itself produces a drug-like effect, this was compounded in 1997 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration relaxing the rules of prescription-drug advertising); (6) centralizes knowledge and information; (7) eliminates or "museumize" other cultures to eliminate comparisons; and (8) redefines happiness and the meaning of life.
I was scouting around and found this reference.
In his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), Jerry Mander (after reviewing totalitarian critics such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Jacques Ellul, and Ivan Illich) compiled a list of the "Eight Ideal Conditions for the Flowering of Autocracy."
Television helps create all eight conditions for breaking a population. Television, he explained, (1) occupies people so that they don't know themselves -- and what a human being is; (2) separates people from one another; (3) creates sensory deprivation; (4) occupies the mind and fills the brain with prearranged experience and thought; (5) encourages drug use to dampen dissatisfaction (while TV itself produces a drug-like effect, this was compounded in 1997 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration relaxing the rules of prescription-drug advertising); (6) centralizes knowledge and information; (7) eliminates or "museumize" other cultures to eliminate comparisons; and (8) redefines happiness and the meaning of life.
The Gold that ain't there
There are increasing signs that the gold being traded on exchanges is simply not there. This has been a charge of the folks at GATA for some time, but has been ignored by the regulators and central banks..... unsurprisingly, as the central banks and big investment houses are behind the manipulation.
What is interesting is how many large entities are demanding physical delivery of gold. This clearly has the markets worried. There was a panic at the end of September at the London Metals Exchange (the world's largest gold market) when several large participants refused generous cash settlements and instead demanded physical delivery of bullion. There was simply not enough gold to deliver and the exchange had to deliver bullion they "borrowed" from the central banks.
If you have investments in GLD or SLV, or other so called "paper" gold market instruments, be aware that all you may really have is paper. The situation in silver is, if possible, worse than gold.
Here is a nice link describing the above
What is interesting is how many large entities are demanding physical delivery of gold. This clearly has the markets worried. There was a panic at the end of September at the London Metals Exchange (the world's largest gold market) when several large participants refused generous cash settlements and instead demanded physical delivery of bullion. There was simply not enough gold to deliver and the exchange had to deliver bullion they "borrowed" from the central banks.
If you have investments in GLD or SLV, or other so called "paper" gold market instruments, be aware that all you may really have is paper. The situation in silver is, if possible, worse than gold.
Here is a nice link describing the above
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Faked Climate Data? NO!
Megan McCardle quotes Richard Feyman in "The Atlantic" on how the scientific world could be WRONG about their observations re: climate data. The quote is outstanding. I have reproduced it below. Here is the link
We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.
Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that.
We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease. But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves--of having utter scientific integrity--is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.
Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that.
We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease. But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves--of having utter scientific integrity--is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Shamelessly stolen (mostly) from Bill Bonner
Slow Motion Depression
Early this week, the world's largest central bank, the Federal Reserve, announced plans to exit its monetary stimulus efforts. It unveiled a new tool - reverse repos - to help speed the work.
The private sector debt crisis of 2008-2009 will almost certainly lead to a public sector debt crisis sometime between now and eternity, if not sooner. In the standard narrative, governments must stimulate their economies out of the slump. Leading economists propose it, then defend it...and then, when it doesn't work, they call for more of it.
Now those economists are claiming victory and many are calling on the Fed to withdraw its monetary stimulus before it shows up as consumer price inflation. They're hoping the Fed can head it off by sopping up the surplus liquidity before it is too late.
Optimists expect mild inflation in a decent recovery. Pessimists fear the feds may have waited too long; they think they see higher rates of inflation coming. Here on the back page we see no recovery...nor any inflation. At least, not yet. Instead, we are blind. We see nothing. But as for what is coming...a slow motion depression wouldn't surprise us. Neither would the collapse of the public debt market
There is always a wide gap between the feds' reach into the economy and their grasp of what they are really doing. When the Fed increased reserves in the banking system, the idea was simple enough. More reserves would allow the banks to lend more. In turn, more credit would allow consumers to spend more. Ergo, the recession would soon be over.
But the more reserves the Fed pumped into the banking system, the more reserves the bankers didn't lend out. In 24 months, excess reserves (beyond what was needed for loans) expanded 500 times from the level they had been for the previous 30 years. If the banks chose to lend these reserves they could multiply them into another $10 trillion to add to the money supply. Instead, in the third quarter, the US suffered a record contraction of bank lending, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Lending to households and business is in a steep decline. Nothing like it has happened since WWII. Total credit outstanding is falling too. The banks are barely even lending to the US government from which they got the money in the first place.
"Banks, in aggregate, just absorbed the additional reserves by allowing their ratio of reserves to deposits to balloon," reports Charles Goodhart in The Financial Times, "...so the multiplier collapsed to zero... Why?"
Quantitative easing had "unintended consequences." Bankers competed for yield with the deepest pockets in the monetary universe - the central bank itself. When the feds bought Treasury bills they drove yields down to such skimpy levels that the incentive for risky private loans was nearly lost all together. Better to leave the money on deposit at the Fed.
No loans, no multiplier. No multiplier, no recovery. Instead, the feds take a dollar's worth of supposedly "idle" resources out of the private economy (actually, savings that people hoped to spend or invest later); squander it on bribes, bailouts or boondoggles; and get 90 cents worth of 'recovery.' Then, when a real recovery doesn't come, they spend two dollars.
Where this will end up? With the multiplier out of action, consumer price inflation - and a recovery - seem far away. And the feds are helpless. What? What about more government spending? Or dropping hundred-dollar bills from airplanes? But those tools have self- mutilating effects too. They jeopardize governments' access to deficit financing.
"Britain risks becoming the first country in the G10 bloc of major economies to risk capital flight and a full-blown debt crisis over coming months," said an article in Tuesday's Daily Telegraph.
Sooner or later, lenders will worry about inflation and the risk of default. They'll demand higher interest rates. Treasury bond yields will rise, in real terms, even in a deflationary world. These higher rates affect public finances like a cold draft on a pneumonia patient. As governments pay more to borrow, their condition deteriorates. The odds of default increase. Some, like Dubai World, will be forced to postpone payments. Others just shake and shiver. The slow motion depression continues. If we are lucky...and nothing goes wrong.
Early this week, the world's largest central bank, the Federal Reserve, announced plans to exit its monetary stimulus efforts. It unveiled a new tool - reverse repos - to help speed the work.
The private sector debt crisis of 2008-2009 will almost certainly lead to a public sector debt crisis sometime between now and eternity, if not sooner. In the standard narrative, governments must stimulate their economies out of the slump. Leading economists propose it, then defend it...and then, when it doesn't work, they call for more of it.
Now those economists are claiming victory and many are calling on the Fed to withdraw its monetary stimulus before it shows up as consumer price inflation. They're hoping the Fed can head it off by sopping up the surplus liquidity before it is too late.
Optimists expect mild inflation in a decent recovery. Pessimists fear the feds may have waited too long; they think they see higher rates of inflation coming. Here on the back page we see no recovery...nor any inflation. At least, not yet. Instead, we are blind. We see nothing. But as for what is coming...a slow motion depression wouldn't surprise us. Neither would the collapse of the public debt market
There is always a wide gap between the feds' reach into the economy and their grasp of what they are really doing. When the Fed increased reserves in the banking system, the idea was simple enough. More reserves would allow the banks to lend more. In turn, more credit would allow consumers to spend more. Ergo, the recession would soon be over.
But the more reserves the Fed pumped into the banking system, the more reserves the bankers didn't lend out. In 24 months, excess reserves (beyond what was needed for loans) expanded 500 times from the level they had been for the previous 30 years. If the banks chose to lend these reserves they could multiply them into another $10 trillion to add to the money supply. Instead, in the third quarter, the US suffered a record contraction of bank lending, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Lending to households and business is in a steep decline. Nothing like it has happened since WWII. Total credit outstanding is falling too. The banks are barely even lending to the US government from which they got the money in the first place.
"Banks, in aggregate, just absorbed the additional reserves by allowing their ratio of reserves to deposits to balloon," reports Charles Goodhart in The Financial Times, "...so the multiplier collapsed to zero... Why?"
Quantitative easing had "unintended consequences." Bankers competed for yield with the deepest pockets in the monetary universe - the central bank itself. When the feds bought Treasury bills they drove yields down to such skimpy levels that the incentive for risky private loans was nearly lost all together. Better to leave the money on deposit at the Fed.
No loans, no multiplier. No multiplier, no recovery. Instead, the feds take a dollar's worth of supposedly "idle" resources out of the private economy (actually, savings that people hoped to spend or invest later); squander it on bribes, bailouts or boondoggles; and get 90 cents worth of 'recovery.' Then, when a real recovery doesn't come, they spend two dollars.
Where this will end up? With the multiplier out of action, consumer price inflation - and a recovery - seem far away. And the feds are helpless. What? What about more government spending? Or dropping hundred-dollar bills from airplanes? But those tools have self- mutilating effects too. They jeopardize governments' access to deficit financing.
"Britain risks becoming the first country in the G10 bloc of major economies to risk capital flight and a full-blown debt crisis over coming months," said an article in Tuesday's Daily Telegraph.
Sooner or later, lenders will worry about inflation and the risk of default. They'll demand higher interest rates. Treasury bond yields will rise, in real terms, even in a deflationary world. These higher rates affect public finances like a cold draft on a pneumonia patient. As governments pay more to borrow, their condition deteriorates. The odds of default increase. Some, like Dubai World, will be forced to postpone payments. Others just shake and shiver. The slow motion depression continues. If we are lucky...and nothing goes wrong.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Thoughts on Preparedness
I just met this weekend with a group of " preparedness folk." They are on a farm about 30 miles from here. I have become interested in the subject after reading "One Second After" (NYT best seller, highly recommended!) and some James Wesley Rawles stuff. I was surprised at who they were and the mindset I encountered. A couple of observations:
1) The root idea is that whether or not some disaster hits, we are WAY WAY WAY too dependent on a very fragile and tenuous energy and distribution grid. Raising your own chickens, goats, vegetables, rabbits, turkeys, pigs and cows is preferable (and more nutritious and tasty!) to standing around in a Kroger (think "post Katrina") looking at the empty aisles.
2) They were "green" but green in a good way, and not the fashionable mindless silliness coming out of the "environmentally conscious" crowd. (sorry if my contempt shows here)
I am talking about using a local stream to turn a box of old alternators from junked cars to produce current to charge batteries, building a steam fired boiler to run a generator, and lots of other cool ideas that are scavenged from junkyards...., including using a scrapped walk in cooler from a convenience store for a chicken coop (no insulation needed, and no heat source needed during cold weather).
3) The mark of an "advanced" society is division of labor, with the dependency on each other coming from specialization of labor being more efficient and less costly. However, we have evolved into a society of urban dwellers which produce NOTHING necessary for root survival needs. Cities are extremely dependent on everything being trucked in, and the ones who make the most money are the ones most efficient in distribution rather than production (think "Wal Mart"). If that distribution system is disrupted, due to a failure of the electrical grid or a fuel supply disruption, we would be helpless. These folks recognize that.
4) I did not meet any tin foil hat folks, which surprised me. There were realtors, veterinarians, an auto parts distributor, a programmer, a cop, and a contract security guy (a "Blackwater" type, although he never worked for Xe). They were just normal folks living their lives, but concerned about the potential for future instability of a calamitous nature.
5) I was surprised at the political make-up of the group. I expected to see a bunch of rabid Republicans, fearful of antichrist Obama and the New World Order, blah blah blah. Rather, they were amazingly cynical of any politics, and were just as critical of Reagan (for different reasons) as Obama. Their attitude was more that of folks just trying to live their lives while being confident that their best shot at any change would come from being fiercely independent and doing what they could to remain so.
6) I was probably the biggest Bible banger out there. No religious zealotry at all. In my life, I have encountered a BUNCH of religious wack jobs. I expected this crowd to be a magnet for them. It wasn't
7) I was also surprised about their attitude about guns. I expected to find a bunch of hyperventilating folks screaming out MOLON LABE as a password or something to enter the farm. Instead, I encountered a crowd of mostly ex-military guys who understood that guns are TOOLS. They all hunt (mostly deer, but also squirrel, turkey, dove, and some varmints), and they all believe that they have a duty and a right to protect their families themselves and their freedoms and rights against all who would challenge them. Their attitude was that you would no more expect to defend rights and freedoms without guns than try to change a tire without a jack. Especially enlightening to me were the remarks of the contract security guy who worked security in Kosovo. Rather than sitting on his pile of weapons fervently wishing for social collapse so he could play "Rambo" or something, he just emphatically declared that if you ever lived in a society where the social order even partially breaks down, you will want to prepare for it here, but no one in his right mind would wish it.
7) The final funny observation is how close these guys are with all the ex-hippie counterculture who have moved south from Chapel Hill as the area has become completely yuppified. In fact, one of the guys there at the group was a total stoner who had essentially moved down to smoke his own hydroponic, live cheaply, eat his own "organic" produce, and shoot, prepare, and jerk his own venison. The two types of "fringe" groups have a sort of affinity for each other, even if many other ideas are polarized apart.
These folks were not living on the farm. There are only three families there. However, they are all affiliated with it and looking to it as a kind of resource/preparedness area in the event of
1) a major earthquake (we sit on a HUGE faultline in NC.... I never knew that)
2) a failure of the oil distribution system
3) a major currency collapse (my bets are on this one as having the best odds)
4) a major terrorist attack on the US.
5) ..... you fill in the blank.
Carole and I are not moving down there (smile), but we are interested in some people whose ideas about simplicity and "back to nature" mirror what we would like to see ourselves. I think "survival" is an improper goal for a Christian. We are supposed to be "dead" already, having surrendered all this stuff anyway. I do think that "working with your hands so that you may have something to share with those in need" is a proper goal for myself, though.
We will see what transpires.
1) The root idea is that whether or not some disaster hits, we are WAY WAY WAY too dependent on a very fragile and tenuous energy and distribution grid. Raising your own chickens, goats, vegetables, rabbits, turkeys, pigs and cows is preferable (and more nutritious and tasty!) to standing around in a Kroger (think "post Katrina") looking at the empty aisles.
2) They were "green" but green in a good way, and not the fashionable mindless silliness coming out of the "environmentally conscious" crowd. (sorry if my contempt shows here)
I am talking about using a local stream to turn a box of old alternators from junked cars to produce current to charge batteries, building a steam fired boiler to run a generator, and lots of other cool ideas that are scavenged from junkyards...., including using a scrapped walk in cooler from a convenience store for a chicken coop (no insulation needed, and no heat source needed during cold weather).
3) The mark of an "advanced" society is division of labor, with the dependency on each other coming from specialization of labor being more efficient and less costly. However, we have evolved into a society of urban dwellers which produce NOTHING necessary for root survival needs. Cities are extremely dependent on everything being trucked in, and the ones who make the most money are the ones most efficient in distribution rather than production (think "Wal Mart"). If that distribution system is disrupted, due to a failure of the electrical grid or a fuel supply disruption, we would be helpless. These folks recognize that.
4) I did not meet any tin foil hat folks, which surprised me. There were realtors, veterinarians, an auto parts distributor, a programmer, a cop, and a contract security guy (a "Blackwater" type, although he never worked for Xe). They were just normal folks living their lives, but concerned about the potential for future instability of a calamitous nature.
5) I was surprised at the political make-up of the group. I expected to see a bunch of rabid Republicans, fearful of antichrist Obama and the New World Order, blah blah blah. Rather, they were amazingly cynical of any politics, and were just as critical of Reagan (for different reasons) as Obama. Their attitude was more that of folks just trying to live their lives while being confident that their best shot at any change would come from being fiercely independent and doing what they could to remain so.
6) I was probably the biggest Bible banger out there. No religious zealotry at all. In my life, I have encountered a BUNCH of religious wack jobs. I expected this crowd to be a magnet for them. It wasn't
7) I was also surprised about their attitude about guns. I expected to find a bunch of hyperventilating folks screaming out MOLON LABE as a password or something to enter the farm. Instead, I encountered a crowd of mostly ex-military guys who understood that guns are TOOLS. They all hunt (mostly deer, but also squirrel, turkey, dove, and some varmints), and they all believe that they have a duty and a right to protect their families themselves and their freedoms and rights against all who would challenge them. Their attitude was that you would no more expect to defend rights and freedoms without guns than try to change a tire without a jack. Especially enlightening to me were the remarks of the contract security guy who worked security in Kosovo. Rather than sitting on his pile of weapons fervently wishing for social collapse so he could play "Rambo" or something, he just emphatically declared that if you ever lived in a society where the social order even partially breaks down, you will want to prepare for it here, but no one in his right mind would wish it.
7) The final funny observation is how close these guys are with all the ex-hippie counterculture who have moved south from Chapel Hill as the area has become completely yuppified. In fact, one of the guys there at the group was a total stoner who had essentially moved down to smoke his own hydroponic, live cheaply, eat his own "organic" produce, and shoot, prepare, and jerk his own venison. The two types of "fringe" groups have a sort of affinity for each other, even if many other ideas are polarized apart.
These folks were not living on the farm. There are only three families there. However, they are all affiliated with it and looking to it as a kind of resource/preparedness area in the event of
1) a major earthquake (we sit on a HUGE faultline in NC.... I never knew that)
2) a failure of the oil distribution system
3) a major currency collapse (my bets are on this one as having the best odds)
4) a major terrorist attack on the US.
5) ..... you fill in the blank.
Carole and I are not moving down there (smile), but we are interested in some people whose ideas about simplicity and "back to nature" mirror what we would like to see ourselves. I think "survival" is an improper goal for a Christian. We are supposed to be "dead" already, having surrendered all this stuff anyway. I do think that "working with your hands so that you may have something to share with those in need" is a proper goal for myself, though.
We will see what transpires.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Hope for the kiddies?
This was forwarded to me from my 26 year old daughter from one of her friends.
I thought it so very very goood that I wanted a venue to post it.
One of the most amusing trends in the last few weeks is the tacky hipster cottage industry that has grown up around Barack Obama's coming inauguration. Music videos, movies, children's books and even Spider Man comics are being devoted to a middle aged guy who likes aregula, or however you spell it. This is the sort of faddish, teenage behavior usually reserved for American Idol stars or the protagonists in vampire films, not a guy whose main job will include speeches at General Mills about how the nation needs more fiber in its diet, and receiving briefings on monetary policy. If these are considered "cool" nowadays, then cool has really changed since I graduated high school, when just the RUMOR that you could read the Periodic Table was a guaranteed pounding – I bet Obama could get all the way to Nitrogen. But sure enough, artists, college kids and rappers – the very bedrock of society – swear by Obama's anti-authority, nonconformity, and novelty. Which shows how easy it will always be to fool people so young that to them, 10th helpings looks like fresh produce.
First lets tackle anti-authority. I often get lectures from Chapel Hill's finest minds about the dreadful effect of Christianity/talk radio/Fox News on the free-thinking of its adherents, listeners and viewers. The idea behind these articulations often seems to boil down to the notion that people who like government growth are go against the flow, nuanced, and original, but that people who disdain government growth are sheepish, chaw-spitting followers who probably haven't even seen Supersize Me. Basically, anyone standing in the way of Obama's desire to ratify more spending on one of several programs that already get 500 billion dollars must be a boring corporate fascist. This is really funny stuff, because there are few things more authoritarian than the ideas which construct the worldview of supporters of government growth.
First, the idea that vocally supporting the growth of the largest, most well-armed, surveillance-capable, bureaucratic entity in literally the history of time is somehow fighting the man is so wrong that new words would be needed to properly explain how wrong it is. It's zagongic, or even crumptilian. People who think they're being edgy or somehow fighting corporations by enabling (one might say embiggening) the growth and empowering of an entity that's much larger than any industry (let alone corporation) in the nation isn't radical – it's radically ignorant. Fueled by visions of mom and dad making them dress up to go to the Olive Garden, people my age have this bizarre idea that corporations and economists and the free market hold them in a stall, and that only the blessed and noble touch of government, a.k.a. coercion and force, can fight back against their wicked overlords. Wrong wrong wrong. The biggest corporation in America can't lift a finger against me if I refuse to buy its goods, or even if I start a campaign calling them fascists, murderers, or worse. How far do you think a citizen would get if they said those things about a high-ranking government official (particularly if they lived in Chicago)? Government can use force, government can take your wealth away, government is the man – not Walmart (unless the government bails it out), which sells you delicious pez by the bucketload. See that thing called a standing army? See that IRS? See those smoking and fireworks bans? If supporting the growth of these things makes you a revolutionary, then the 1960's are officially dead, and I will personally give a wedgie to the next teenager who campaigns in my doorway. He'll probably cry all over his Che shirt. Growing the government is authoritarian, growing the responsibility of citizens is anti-authority. Obama is not anti-authority.
Some of my favorite morons were the people telling me in 2004 how Bush and Cheney would take over and never give up power, aided by their evil…guns and tax cuts. That's brilliant; Bush and Cheney are fascists who are going to take over with…their shrunken government and armed populace? If you want to run an authoritarian state, you need huge bureaucracies, high taxes, and a monopoly on guns – the very opposite of what Bush promised (ironically, many people still think Bush, who grew government faster than anyone except LBJ, is a shining model of a conservative/libertarian – these are people who DO know how to spell aregula, but tend not to know what the Z in the Nazi acronym stands for). Obama appears to be one of these people.
A second amusing tidbit is the idea that Obama is promoting nonconformity. Let's say that you asked a bunch of Tobacco scientists whether smoking was deadly and they denied it. Would you take them at face value? No, because their pay depends on them agreeing with Philip Morris and toeing the line. Now, say you take a bunch of free citizens who supposedly value freedom and independent-mindedness, and make them dependent on the government for public education, social…er, universal health care, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, housing subsidies, bailouts, license plates, zoning documents, and restaurant sanitation scores. These are our paragons of freedom and rebelliousness? You take 300 million individuals with their own dreams and goals and hopes and you give them all the same state-run monopolies to solve problems, and that's diverse and nonconformist? Intriguing. Far from promoting individuality, the government tends to promote dependence on a uniform, one-size-fits-all mentality. Taken too far, the government is a pusher and people who want it to grow are its loyal junkies, who need its product daily to function. "Steal this Book" should be reprinted in a new edition as "Filing Form 1240A while Saving a Bundle." Anti-corporation types love to accuse the rich of being under the sway of private sector money, but seem oblivious to the fact that once the government controls your medicine, your guns, and your income, you're a bought and paid for man or woman – you'll follow orders, or you'll pay. Just ask the Cubans.
Once you depend on the government (i.e. your neighbors) for your most important provisions, you have practically zero scope to talk about being hip and deviant – essentially, you're in an early nursing home, but with fewer transfats to choose from. This is what makes our university's abundance of "free-thinking" big-government supporting youngsters so gleefully amusing – by demanding that everyone in the U.S. get the same medicine, more similar salaries, the same education, they're supporting the ultimate conformity. C'mon guys, let's listen to our college professors and all deviate – the same exact way. At least our parents wrote some good music when they went through their "phase". Could this be the first time in history that parents (who nowadays actually are worried about getting enough fiber in their diets) are cooler than their kids? Obama seems to be counting on it. Sounding hip on The Daily Show doesn't make you a rebel, letting people choose their lives like adults and tolerating them when they choose poorly makes you a rebel, at least in this day and age.
The most incredible positive trait linked to Obama is that he is a novel agent in politics, a notion based, as best I can tell, on the fact that he is young and has a change-themed campaign slogan which he purloined from someone else (I'll be generous here and assume that no one voted for him because of his new skin color, which would be properly described as "racism"). I assume the above, because his policy proposals, which in their simplest form become, "the man in charge takes your things by force and uses them to maintain political power" are as old as the first tribal chieftain. Autocrats, both kind and wicked, petty and powerful, have been using taxes and the power over people they can buy to hold power since there were people, sometimes by trading in soldiers and sometimes by trading in universal health care. But the result is the same – you can get enough of the people to support you by fear or by reliance to keep yourself and your buddies in charge. In its most grisly incarnations, we call this tyranny. But even in its kinder form, which we call democracy, it is leadership based on force and taking. A man who grabs in 4 year intervals grabs just as surely as one who does it for life. Obama is just one in a great lineage of grabbers; there is nothing new here.
The real tragedy of democracy as practiced by men like Obama is that because the threats and the force come from 51% of the people, they are obscured as such. Even if Obama and his pals (who probably by and large drink their own soup, and mean well) benefit greatly from reallocations, this will be obscured in the good that comes of the trillions of dollars that will be taken from some and given to others. But the fact that it DID get taken from some, the fact that each dollar taken destroyed more than a dollar somewhere else (because it had to go through the government bureaucracies), means that in the aggregate, damage and not good was done. Some poor were helped, more were hurt. And the help was paid for with blood money of sorts, taken involuntarily from funds that might have gone to retirement, or college tuitions for kids…no amount of description can adequately deride the shell and ball game that is government redistribution, which can be new only in form, not content.
So Obama isn't all he's cracked up to be, despite Marvel Comics' attempt to cash in on his inauguration. Should we cry about it? No, because it's actually great news. The minute one realizes that the government can't really help you (or if it does only in an erratic, corrupt, and dependency-inducing fashion), then you revert to being a private citizen instead of a zombie. All the things the government claims it can do for you or for the poor people you care about, you can do better.
Because you live in a (mostly) free market, you are free to do the one thing that has ever helped the poor without making people poor somewhere else: create jobs. Not by government fiat, but via some new idea – a novel semiconductor, a new food, a new book, a new social networking site. By figuring out a way to do more with less, you increase what is called productivity – you make the pie itself larger, rather than simply changing the relative size of the slices. These things, not Obama's policies, are what is fresh and new in America, except these things are always fresh and new. We don't need an election for the free market to function – it's simply a codephrase for free people, and they're always making life better for us behind the scenes, regardless of what your professor told you.
You can do charity better than the government too, because you can decide who gets it and who doesn't, who needs it truly and who is simply gaming the system. You will do microfinance, you will do faith-based recovery programs, you will do secular dressed-for-success programs, you will give no charity because you're too busy working 80 hour weeks as an inventor and advancing technology, which has done more to help the material state of the needy than all the good intentions and charitable organizations the stout-hearted ever dreamed up – and that's no insult, because functionally you want both to exist. By solving problems that government zombies said couldn't be done without force and threats from above, you will be showing yourself to be a greater nonconformer than Obama and his gaggle of dunderheads ever will, and you didn't even have to spend half your life getting elected to do it.
The greatest finger into the eye of authority in our time is found almost entirely outside of politics – it is the life of the citizen who is content to enjoy the blessings of freedom while being unenvious of the rich, unsupportive of entitlement yet gracious in private givings, steadfast in private principles and religion yet tolerant of deviation, and free to enjoy God, family, and countless constructive pursuits. Reliance on government is the great corrosive to this way of thriving, and pity, not anger, is due to those not yet amongst its detractors
I thought it so very very goood that I wanted a venue to post it.
One of the most amusing trends in the last few weeks is the tacky hipster cottage industry that has grown up around Barack Obama's coming inauguration. Music videos, movies, children's books and even Spider Man comics are being devoted to a middle aged guy who likes aregula, or however you spell it. This is the sort of faddish, teenage behavior usually reserved for American Idol stars or the protagonists in vampire films, not a guy whose main job will include speeches at General Mills about how the nation needs more fiber in its diet, and receiving briefings on monetary policy. If these are considered "cool" nowadays, then cool has really changed since I graduated high school, when just the RUMOR that you could read the Periodic Table was a guaranteed pounding – I bet Obama could get all the way to Nitrogen. But sure enough, artists, college kids and rappers – the very bedrock of society – swear by Obama's anti-authority, nonconformity, and novelty. Which shows how easy it will always be to fool people so young that to them, 10th helpings looks like fresh produce.
First lets tackle anti-authority. I often get lectures from Chapel Hill's finest minds about the dreadful effect of Christianity/talk radio/Fox News on the free-thinking of its adherents, listeners and viewers. The idea behind these articulations often seems to boil down to the notion that people who like government growth are go against the flow, nuanced, and original, but that people who disdain government growth are sheepish, chaw-spitting followers who probably haven't even seen Supersize Me. Basically, anyone standing in the way of Obama's desire to ratify more spending on one of several programs that already get 500 billion dollars must be a boring corporate fascist. This is really funny stuff, because there are few things more authoritarian than the ideas which construct the worldview of supporters of government growth.
First, the idea that vocally supporting the growth of the largest, most well-armed, surveillance-capable, bureaucratic entity in literally the history of time is somehow fighting the man is so wrong that new words would be needed to properly explain how wrong it is. It's zagongic, or even crumptilian. People who think they're being edgy or somehow fighting corporations by enabling (one might say embiggening) the growth and empowering of an entity that's much larger than any industry (let alone corporation) in the nation isn't radical – it's radically ignorant. Fueled by visions of mom and dad making them dress up to go to the Olive Garden, people my age have this bizarre idea that corporations and economists and the free market hold them in a stall, and that only the blessed and noble touch of government, a.k.a. coercion and force, can fight back against their wicked overlords. Wrong wrong wrong. The biggest corporation in America can't lift a finger against me if I refuse to buy its goods, or even if I start a campaign calling them fascists, murderers, or worse. How far do you think a citizen would get if they said those things about a high-ranking government official (particularly if they lived in Chicago)? Government can use force, government can take your wealth away, government is the man – not Walmart (unless the government bails it out), which sells you delicious pez by the bucketload. See that thing called a standing army? See that IRS? See those smoking and fireworks bans? If supporting the growth of these things makes you a revolutionary, then the 1960's are officially dead, and I will personally give a wedgie to the next teenager who campaigns in my doorway. He'll probably cry all over his Che shirt. Growing the government is authoritarian, growing the responsibility of citizens is anti-authority. Obama is not anti-authority.
Some of my favorite morons were the people telling me in 2004 how Bush and Cheney would take over and never give up power, aided by their evil…guns and tax cuts. That's brilliant; Bush and Cheney are fascists who are going to take over with…their shrunken government and armed populace? If you want to run an authoritarian state, you need huge bureaucracies, high taxes, and a monopoly on guns – the very opposite of what Bush promised (ironically, many people still think Bush, who grew government faster than anyone except LBJ, is a shining model of a conservative/libertarian – these are people who DO know how to spell aregula, but tend not to know what the Z in the Nazi acronym stands for). Obama appears to be one of these people.
A second amusing tidbit is the idea that Obama is promoting nonconformity. Let's say that you asked a bunch of Tobacco scientists whether smoking was deadly and they denied it. Would you take them at face value? No, because their pay depends on them agreeing with Philip Morris and toeing the line. Now, say you take a bunch of free citizens who supposedly value freedom and independent-mindedness, and make them dependent on the government for public education, social…er, universal health care, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, housing subsidies, bailouts, license plates, zoning documents, and restaurant sanitation scores. These are our paragons of freedom and rebelliousness? You take 300 million individuals with their own dreams and goals and hopes and you give them all the same state-run monopolies to solve problems, and that's diverse and nonconformist? Intriguing. Far from promoting individuality, the government tends to promote dependence on a uniform, one-size-fits-all mentality. Taken too far, the government is a pusher and people who want it to grow are its loyal junkies, who need its product daily to function. "Steal this Book" should be reprinted in a new edition as "Filing Form 1240A while Saving a Bundle." Anti-corporation types love to accuse the rich of being under the sway of private sector money, but seem oblivious to the fact that once the government controls your medicine, your guns, and your income, you're a bought and paid for man or woman – you'll follow orders, or you'll pay. Just ask the Cubans.
Once you depend on the government (i.e. your neighbors) for your most important provisions, you have practically zero scope to talk about being hip and deviant – essentially, you're in an early nursing home, but with fewer transfats to choose from. This is what makes our university's abundance of "free-thinking" big-government supporting youngsters so gleefully amusing – by demanding that everyone in the U.S. get the same medicine, more similar salaries, the same education, they're supporting the ultimate conformity. C'mon guys, let's listen to our college professors and all deviate – the same exact way. At least our parents wrote some good music when they went through their "phase". Could this be the first time in history that parents (who nowadays actually are worried about getting enough fiber in their diets) are cooler than their kids? Obama seems to be counting on it. Sounding hip on The Daily Show doesn't make you a rebel, letting people choose their lives like adults and tolerating them when they choose poorly makes you a rebel, at least in this day and age.
The most incredible positive trait linked to Obama is that he is a novel agent in politics, a notion based, as best I can tell, on the fact that he is young and has a change-themed campaign slogan which he purloined from someone else (I'll be generous here and assume that no one voted for him because of his new skin color, which would be properly described as "racism"). I assume the above, because his policy proposals, which in their simplest form become, "the man in charge takes your things by force and uses them to maintain political power" are as old as the first tribal chieftain. Autocrats, both kind and wicked, petty and powerful, have been using taxes and the power over people they can buy to hold power since there were people, sometimes by trading in soldiers and sometimes by trading in universal health care. But the result is the same – you can get enough of the people to support you by fear or by reliance to keep yourself and your buddies in charge. In its most grisly incarnations, we call this tyranny. But even in its kinder form, which we call democracy, it is leadership based on force and taking. A man who grabs in 4 year intervals grabs just as surely as one who does it for life. Obama is just one in a great lineage of grabbers; there is nothing new here.
The real tragedy of democracy as practiced by men like Obama is that because the threats and the force come from 51% of the people, they are obscured as such. Even if Obama and his pals (who probably by and large drink their own soup, and mean well) benefit greatly from reallocations, this will be obscured in the good that comes of the trillions of dollars that will be taken from some and given to others. But the fact that it DID get taken from some, the fact that each dollar taken destroyed more than a dollar somewhere else (because it had to go through the government bureaucracies), means that in the aggregate, damage and not good was done. Some poor were helped, more were hurt. And the help was paid for with blood money of sorts, taken involuntarily from funds that might have gone to retirement, or college tuitions for kids…no amount of description can adequately deride the shell and ball game that is government redistribution, which can be new only in form, not content.
So Obama isn't all he's cracked up to be, despite Marvel Comics' attempt to cash in on his inauguration. Should we cry about it? No, because it's actually great news. The minute one realizes that the government can't really help you (or if it does only in an erratic, corrupt, and dependency-inducing fashion), then you revert to being a private citizen instead of a zombie. All the things the government claims it can do for you or for the poor people you care about, you can do better.
Because you live in a (mostly) free market, you are free to do the one thing that has ever helped the poor without making people poor somewhere else: create jobs. Not by government fiat, but via some new idea – a novel semiconductor, a new food, a new book, a new social networking site. By figuring out a way to do more with less, you increase what is called productivity – you make the pie itself larger, rather than simply changing the relative size of the slices. These things, not Obama's policies, are what is fresh and new in America, except these things are always fresh and new. We don't need an election for the free market to function – it's simply a codephrase for free people, and they're always making life better for us behind the scenes, regardless of what your professor told you.
You can do charity better than the government too, because you can decide who gets it and who doesn't, who needs it truly and who is simply gaming the system. You will do microfinance, you will do faith-based recovery programs, you will do secular dressed-for-success programs, you will give no charity because you're too busy working 80 hour weeks as an inventor and advancing technology, which has done more to help the material state of the needy than all the good intentions and charitable organizations the stout-hearted ever dreamed up – and that's no insult, because functionally you want both to exist. By solving problems that government zombies said couldn't be done without force and threats from above, you will be showing yourself to be a greater nonconformer than Obama and his gaggle of dunderheads ever will, and you didn't even have to spend half your life getting elected to do it.
The greatest finger into the eye of authority in our time is found almost entirely outside of politics – it is the life of the citizen who is content to enjoy the blessings of freedom while being unenvious of the rich, unsupportive of entitlement yet gracious in private givings, steadfast in private principles and religion yet tolerant of deviation, and free to enjoy God, family, and countless constructive pursuits. Reliance on government is the great corrosive to this way of thriving, and pity, not anger, is due to those not yet amongst its detractors
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Bonus Question?
Who said the following?
"We are SOCIALISTS. We are enemies, deadly enemies, of today’s capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, its unfair wage system, its immoral way of judging the worth of human beings in terms of their wealth and their money.”
HINT: His same-party rival began his political career by listening to a speech entitled
“How and by What Means Is Capitalism to Be Eliminated?” The two developed a political platform demanded guaranteed jobs, the “abolition of incomes unearned by work,” the nationalization of all large corporations and trusts, profit-sharing in all major industries, expanded old-age insurance, a government takeover of big department stores, the prohibition of child labor, and countless other “progressive” reforms.
You get double credit for getting both right!
"We are SOCIALISTS. We are enemies, deadly enemies, of today’s capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, its unfair wage system, its immoral way of judging the worth of human beings in terms of their wealth and their money.”
HINT: His same-party rival began his political career by listening to a speech entitled
“How and by What Means Is Capitalism to Be Eliminated?” The two developed a political platform demanded guaranteed jobs, the “abolition of incomes unearned by work,” the nationalization of all large corporations and trusts, profit-sharing in all major industries, expanded old-age insurance, a government takeover of big department stores, the prohibition of child labor, and countless other “progressive” reforms.
You get double credit for getting both right!
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Great quote
“Be assured that I neither fear to die nor refuse to live. If it is to die, all that has been is but a slight intimation of what is to be. If it is to live, there is much I hope to do in the interim.”
John Neuhaus, died 1/9/09
John Neuhaus, died 1/9/09
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Common Sense that is DEAD WRONG
Many financial wags -- the ones I read at 2 in the a.m. when the rest of you are peacefully sleeping-- claim that recession and inflation are incompatible. These are the people who are looking for easy interest rates to eventually overcome the problems in a soft economy. They are betting that the cost of living simply DOES NOT GO UP if the economy is shedding jobs and growing at a slow rate, or actually contracting. This is going to be a costly delusion, in my opinion.
Historical measures show inflation has risen dramatically for the last half century EVERY SINGLE TIME WE HAVE HAD A RECESSION. In the wonderful Carter years, consumer prices went up by a half, while the economy contracted. Then, interestingly enough, when the recession of 1980 hit (interest rates were so high they were choking out all economic activity) consumer prices continued to rise even as the economy tanked. We simply had to wash all the "bad money" out of the system, and even stagnant growth doesn't magically erase that.
Most gurus (who know far far more than I do) make their predictions based on an idea that sounds right, but simply does not match the facts. The data simply does not support the idea that inflation is correlated with the health of the economy. Rather, the data shows that inflation tracks almost perfectly with money supply. If what I am saying is true, the DOW can continue to sell off and the housing market can tank and we will STILL have very uncomfortable price rises in the foreseeable future.
The US no longer publishes the most reliable index of money supply, the M3. Best guesses, though, is that our supply of money is growing at an eye-popping FIFTEEN PER CENT a year. If you want to do the dumb man's estimate of coming inflation, subtract our rate of GDP growth (estimates are maybe 2-3 per cent) from the rate of money supply and you will get "Eddie's Index" or my prediction of the real rate of inflation for the upcoming year, which is about 13 per cent. (I should note that no representatives from Stockholm have contacted me about a potential Nobel prize for this staggering breakthrough in economic theory..... yet).
The only good news is that most of the rest of the world is doing the same thing...., if you wanna call that "good."
China has been inflating their currency at rates approaching 18 per cent. Of course, an economy that is growing at 13 per cent a year can swallow most of this, but not all. Food staples are on a rocket ride upwards there.
India has a 20 per cent rise in money supply annually
England has an 10 per cent plus rise in the number of pounds circulating
Europe prints new Euros at a rate of 11 per cent more per year.
Australia and New Zealand have money supply increases of 12 per cent and up.
Yet the fiscal gurus of the world seem slack jawed and confused by the recent explosion in the price of gold and silver, wheat and copper (yeah, copper is back), corn and lumber. These markets are GREAT prescients of inflation, yet all you hear about is our fedsec droning on about how the printing press is the final solution to recession. This is madness.
One of the advantages of being 52 years old is that I can see clearly that leaders are not wise by virtue of their positions of leadership. In fact, they are often utter fools, and lead those following them into ruin.
My advice, for anyone listening, is do NOT count on the bromide that "the interest rates will right the economy and we have inflation under control." Easy money MAY provide an adrenalin shock which will revive our comatose economy. My bet is that it will simply delay the recovery which would have occurred anyway. Of course, if you get politicians in there jacking around with home interest rates and demanding "justice" for poor people who never should have been floated loans in the first place, maybe the housing sector will NEVER recover. Politicians can screw up a steel ball with a rubber hammer. However, best case anticipated, and the economy does right itself, we are STILL going to have a real mess with rising prices, and that is going to wreak havoc with the economy trying to right itself in the first place.
My own portfolio consists of Hecla(HL), Couer D'Alene(CDE), Yamana(AUY), Stillwater Mining (SWC), North American Palladium (PAL), XTO Energy (XTO), and some other smaller stocks. These are all mining stocks except for XTO, and I expect all of these to be my "core," except for PAL and SWC, which I have only had for about 4 weeks, and are short term plays on the current South African Platinum crisis. The financial "gurus" will tell you that these are "too volatile" to be core holdings. That is true, if you have a model of our economy predicated on a sound dollar and steady growth. I disagree. I believe we are entering a period of time where the wisest course is to protect yourself from, and seek to exploit, the devaluation of our currency. Investing in "hard" assets is the only way to do this.
Historical measures show inflation has risen dramatically for the last half century EVERY SINGLE TIME WE HAVE HAD A RECESSION. In the wonderful Carter years, consumer prices went up by a half, while the economy contracted. Then, interestingly enough, when the recession of 1980 hit (interest rates were so high they were choking out all economic activity) consumer prices continued to rise even as the economy tanked. We simply had to wash all the "bad money" out of the system, and even stagnant growth doesn't magically erase that.
Most gurus (who know far far more than I do) make their predictions based on an idea that sounds right, but simply does not match the facts. The data simply does not support the idea that inflation is correlated with the health of the economy. Rather, the data shows that inflation tracks almost perfectly with money supply. If what I am saying is true, the DOW can continue to sell off and the housing market can tank and we will STILL have very uncomfortable price rises in the foreseeable future.
The US no longer publishes the most reliable index of money supply, the M3. Best guesses, though, is that our supply of money is growing at an eye-popping FIFTEEN PER CENT a year. If you want to do the dumb man's estimate of coming inflation, subtract our rate of GDP growth (estimates are maybe 2-3 per cent) from the rate of money supply and you will get "Eddie's Index" or my prediction of the real rate of inflation for the upcoming year, which is about 13 per cent. (I should note that no representatives from Stockholm have contacted me about a potential Nobel prize for this staggering breakthrough in economic theory..... yet).
The only good news is that most of the rest of the world is doing the same thing...., if you wanna call that "good."
China has been inflating their currency at rates approaching 18 per cent. Of course, an economy that is growing at 13 per cent a year can swallow most of this, but not all. Food staples are on a rocket ride upwards there.
India has a 20 per cent rise in money supply annually
England has an 10 per cent plus rise in the number of pounds circulating
Europe prints new Euros at a rate of 11 per cent more per year.
Australia and New Zealand have money supply increases of 12 per cent and up.
Yet the fiscal gurus of the world seem slack jawed and confused by the recent explosion in the price of gold and silver, wheat and copper (yeah, copper is back), corn and lumber. These markets are GREAT prescients of inflation, yet all you hear about is our fedsec droning on about how the printing press is the final solution to recession. This is madness.
One of the advantages of being 52 years old is that I can see clearly that leaders are not wise by virtue of their positions of leadership. In fact, they are often utter fools, and lead those following them into ruin.
My advice, for anyone listening, is do NOT count on the bromide that "the interest rates will right the economy and we have inflation under control." Easy money MAY provide an adrenalin shock which will revive our comatose economy. My bet is that it will simply delay the recovery which would have occurred anyway. Of course, if you get politicians in there jacking around with home interest rates and demanding "justice" for poor people who never should have been floated loans in the first place, maybe the housing sector will NEVER recover. Politicians can screw up a steel ball with a rubber hammer. However, best case anticipated, and the economy does right itself, we are STILL going to have a real mess with rising prices, and that is going to wreak havoc with the economy trying to right itself in the first place.
My own portfolio consists of Hecla(HL), Couer D'Alene(CDE), Yamana(AUY), Stillwater Mining (SWC), North American Palladium (PAL), XTO Energy (XTO), and some other smaller stocks. These are all mining stocks except for XTO, and I expect all of these to be my "core," except for PAL and SWC, which I have only had for about 4 weeks, and are short term plays on the current South African Platinum crisis. The financial "gurus" will tell you that these are "too volatile" to be core holdings. That is true, if you have a model of our economy predicated on a sound dollar and steady growth. I disagree. I believe we are entering a period of time where the wisest course is to protect yourself from, and seek to exploit, the devaluation of our currency. Investing in "hard" assets is the only way to do this.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Quoteable Quotes....
I am an inveterate reader, and I run across a ton of good quotes. The first is from the oldest source of wisdom I know of. the others I pick up here and there.
The plans of the diligent lead to profit,
as sure as haste leads to poverty - Proverbs
The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent - Lord Keynes
I would argue that the greatest threat to our nation is not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but our own fiscal irresponsibility. - David Walker, US Comptroller
general.
In his state of the Union Message last night, Bush did not mention the word "debt" once, even thought our national IOU just crossed the 9 TRILLION dollar threshold. - Addison Wiggin
You can’t really make people wealthy by resorting to "Zimbabwe economics." A society grows rich by producing things... and saving money. There is no other way. Cheaper credit won’t do it. More consumption won’t help. Printing money -- and dumping it from helicopters -- is a losing proposition. - Bill Bonner
The US is currently in the position of General Motors in about 1970, splendid in its possession of a majority share of the US automobile market, and apparently invulnerable to competitive threat, yet in reality burdened with impossible welfare programs that a foolish management had negotiated during the good years. For General Motors, the future after 1970 was one of steadily slipping market share, from 60% of the US market to about 25%, of a steadily aging workforce, and of a retiree health benefit obligation that if valued appropriately is today worth far more than the value of the company itself. - Mark Hutchinson
The practical reality today is that "we the people" are all traversing leftward together ..... toward an authoritarian socialist state. Christians who cannot see the light and who continue to support establishment candidates in-waiting become the unwitting enablers of this perpetual shift. -- David Cross
It is lunacy to place international socialists known as communists on the left and national socialists known as Nazis on the right, or to put moderate socialists in the virtuous middle. The whole spectrum is socialist. Simple logic requires that we put all authoritarian socialists on the left. The opposite of TOTAL government on the left, is NO government, or anarchy, on the right. Traditional Christians do not belong on the right, since we are neither moral nor political anarchists. Rather, we stand within the vertical mainstream as true centrists in the American tradition, not only of the true faith as we believe it to be, but also of the Constitution and the rule of law. Christian preachers and parishioners alike played a vital role for liberty in the first American Crisis, and various signers of our founding documents were ministers. -- David Cross
“At some point, you have to choose between trusting the natural stability of Gold, and the honesty and intelligence of members of the government. With due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, to vote for Gold,” George Bernard Shaw
"The companies representing the Standard & Poor’s 500 index now derive 49% of revenue from foreign markets" - unknown
The plans of the diligent lead to profit,
as sure as haste leads to poverty - Proverbs
The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent - Lord Keynes
I would argue that the greatest threat to our nation is not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but our own fiscal irresponsibility. - David Walker, US Comptroller
general.
In his state of the Union Message last night, Bush did not mention the word "debt" once, even thought our national IOU just crossed the 9 TRILLION dollar threshold. - Addison Wiggin
You can’t really make people wealthy by resorting to "Zimbabwe economics." A society grows rich by producing things... and saving money. There is no other way. Cheaper credit won’t do it. More consumption won’t help. Printing money -- and dumping it from helicopters -- is a losing proposition. - Bill Bonner
The US is currently in the position of General Motors in about 1970, splendid in its possession of a majority share of the US automobile market, and apparently invulnerable to competitive threat, yet in reality burdened with impossible welfare programs that a foolish management had negotiated during the good years. For General Motors, the future after 1970 was one of steadily slipping market share, from 60% of the US market to about 25%, of a steadily aging workforce, and of a retiree health benefit obligation that if valued appropriately is today worth far more than the value of the company itself. - Mark Hutchinson
The practical reality today is that "we the people" are all traversing leftward together ..... toward an authoritarian socialist state. Christians who cannot see the light and who continue to support establishment candidates in-waiting become the unwitting enablers of this perpetual shift. -- David Cross
It is lunacy to place international socialists known as communists on the left and national socialists known as Nazis on the right, or to put moderate socialists in the virtuous middle. The whole spectrum is socialist. Simple logic requires that we put all authoritarian socialists on the left. The opposite of TOTAL government on the left, is NO government, or anarchy, on the right. Traditional Christians do not belong on the right, since we are neither moral nor political anarchists. Rather, we stand within the vertical mainstream as true centrists in the American tradition, not only of the true faith as we believe it to be, but also of the Constitution and the rule of law. Christian preachers and parishioners alike played a vital role for liberty in the first American Crisis, and various signers of our founding documents were ministers. -- David Cross
“At some point, you have to choose between trusting the natural stability of Gold, and the honesty and intelligence of members of the government. With due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, to vote for Gold,” George Bernard Shaw
"The companies representing the Standard & Poor’s 500 index now derive 49% of revenue from foreign markets" - unknown
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Bubbles - Tech, Housing, and now Gold????
Money has to go somewhere. A simple observation. It runs where people perceive the most opportunity/security. The fed flooded the markets with money in 98-99 in anticipation of the much-balleyhooed "Y2K" crisis, and the money went to stocks, mostly tech stocks.
That bubble eventually popped, and we were beginning to work through the excesses of flushing so much cash into the system when 9/11 hit. Several of the world's largest reinsurance facilities (the entities which provide insurance to insurance companies..... yes, there are such things) technically went bust. The different regulatory agencies allowed them to continue to operate out of a fear of what it would do to the world economy if they went under. The world, and ESPECIALLY the federal reserve in the USA, flooded the markets with money yet again -- they call it "liquidity" -- in that they printed a bunch of paper and shoved it out there at extremely low interest rates.
However, with people having just been burned in a big way by the tech stock bubble collapse, they were reluctant to shove this money back in the stock markets. Memories of Enron and MCI scandals were too clear. Plus there were plenty of stock collapses with no scandal at all. Look at a 10 year chart of JDSU, one of the darlings of the techies. It went from over 200 dollars a share to under one dollar. Who wanted that kind of risk?
People invested their money in something "hard" and that would endure, and could generate rental income. Real estate was secure, solid, and unplagued by the excesses of valuing something at 50 times future PROJECTED values and other such foolishness. Thus a real estate boomlet began.
That series of events coincided with an interesting cultural phenomenon. For years, a little known radical leftist group which advocates for "social justice" had been screaming that minorities are discriminated against for housing loans. ACORN convinced a large mortgage lending facility to --in the words of its CEO-- "bend the rules" so that lower income people who would not normally qualify for loans could get them. The company was called Countrywide, and it was just saved from complete bankruptcy by being bought out by Bank of America. However, in 92, things were different. They bragged about "bending the rules." When no one slapped their hands (they were actually praised by the head of the Boston Federal Reserve), everyone else jumped on board. All kinds of hinky loan packages were contrived. Everyone was buying, and with the flood of money goosing the system, housing prices were rising like YAHOO of the 90s, so no one was getting hurt. Everyone was getting rich. I had two of my own customers speculating in real estate rentals who literally could not pay their cell phone bills monthly. Yes, it was another bubble, and it was bound to pop.... and so it did.
The fed is responding to the present "crisis" in the same way it always does......, by inflating the currency (aka "providing liquidity"). So where are we now? People don't want the risk of equities, and even if they wanted to speculate in real estate, there aren't any mortgage companies left to lend them the money to speculate. The ones that have survived are looking for stability, security and solid future numbers......, and those are in short supply until the present meltdown in housing prices finishes out.
The fresh flush of money is finding its way into the last, "safest" refuge in this world, that of hard "real" stuff. Gold, silver, platinum, wheat, steel. corn, lumber, etc. All are going up at a dizzying pace. It is a return of the 1970s, with an inflationary recession. The noteable thing about the volume of money we have that is starting to chase commodities is how thin these markets are and how easily distortable they are. When you compare the vastness of equities, or currencies, or real estate with the paltry amounts of money traded in say, silver, you are witnessing the potential for a price explosion that makes the Hunt Brothers attempted corner in 1980 (silver went to 50 dollars an oz) look like a small blip. There are limited amounts of these items, and if things continue, there will simply be price explosions, not "rising markets"
It is going to be a wild ride.
That bubble eventually popped, and we were beginning to work through the excesses of flushing so much cash into the system when 9/11 hit. Several of the world's largest reinsurance facilities (the entities which provide insurance to insurance companies..... yes, there are such things) technically went bust. The different regulatory agencies allowed them to continue to operate out of a fear of what it would do to the world economy if they went under. The world, and ESPECIALLY the federal reserve in the USA, flooded the markets with money yet again -- they call it "liquidity" -- in that they printed a bunch of paper and shoved it out there at extremely low interest rates.
However, with people having just been burned in a big way by the tech stock bubble collapse, they were reluctant to shove this money back in the stock markets. Memories of Enron and MCI scandals were too clear. Plus there were plenty of stock collapses with no scandal at all. Look at a 10 year chart of JDSU, one of the darlings of the techies. It went from over 200 dollars a share to under one dollar. Who wanted that kind of risk?
People invested their money in something "hard" and that would endure, and could generate rental income. Real estate was secure, solid, and unplagued by the excesses of valuing something at 50 times future PROJECTED values and other such foolishness. Thus a real estate boomlet began.
That series of events coincided with an interesting cultural phenomenon. For years, a little known radical leftist group which advocates for "social justice" had been screaming that minorities are discriminated against for housing loans. ACORN convinced a large mortgage lending facility to --in the words of its CEO-- "bend the rules" so that lower income people who would not normally qualify for loans could get them. The company was called Countrywide, and it was just saved from complete bankruptcy by being bought out by Bank of America. However, in 92, things were different. They bragged about "bending the rules." When no one slapped their hands (they were actually praised by the head of the Boston Federal Reserve), everyone else jumped on board. All kinds of hinky loan packages were contrived. Everyone was buying, and with the flood of money goosing the system, housing prices were rising like YAHOO of the 90s, so no one was getting hurt. Everyone was getting rich. I had two of my own customers speculating in real estate rentals who literally could not pay their cell phone bills monthly. Yes, it was another bubble, and it was bound to pop.... and so it did.
The fed is responding to the present "crisis" in the same way it always does......, by inflating the currency (aka "providing liquidity"). So where are we now? People don't want the risk of equities, and even if they wanted to speculate in real estate, there aren't any mortgage companies left to lend them the money to speculate. The ones that have survived are looking for stability, security and solid future numbers......, and those are in short supply until the present meltdown in housing prices finishes out.
The fresh flush of money is finding its way into the last, "safest" refuge in this world, that of hard "real" stuff. Gold, silver, platinum, wheat, steel. corn, lumber, etc. All are going up at a dizzying pace. It is a return of the 1970s, with an inflationary recession. The noteable thing about the volume of money we have that is starting to chase commodities is how thin these markets are and how easily distortable they are. When you compare the vastness of equities, or currencies, or real estate with the paltry amounts of money traded in say, silver, you are witnessing the potential for a price explosion that makes the Hunt Brothers attempted corner in 1980 (silver went to 50 dollars an oz) look like a small blip. There are limited amounts of these items, and if things continue, there will simply be price explosions, not "rising markets"
It is going to be a wild ride.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Relevant then, relevant now
I was "cleaning up" the drafts in the blog and ran across this from 11/13/04:
Dunno why I never posted it.
Makes sense now, and I thought it made sense then.
George Will NAILS it on why I am against the war in Iraq, in some hypothetical questions for Condoleeza Rice in her upcoming Senate Hearings. I quote:
" The president says it is ``cultural condescension'' to question ``whether this country, or that people, or this group, are 'ready' for democracy." Condescending, perhaps, but is it realistic? Tony Blair says it is a ``myth" that ``our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture." Are there cultural prerequisites for free polities? Does Iraq have them? Do the Palestinian people, after a decade of saturation propaganda inciting terrorism and anti-Semitism? Does the United States know how to transplant those prerequisites? "
Those questions (or, those questions) encapsulates what I believe to be the fatal flaw in the idea of extending democracy to the middle east by way of military power. That vision is the core of the so called "neocon" plan for the middle east.
Bush haters will tell you that Iraq is just a cynical grab for power, and that Bush and company are simply imbeciles, evil plutocrats after oil, or both. I don't think so. While I am cynical enough to question almost anyone's motives, I think the impetus for our intrusion into another sovereign country really does lie in seeking security. Our leaders really do believe that a "friendly arab democracy" will be a hedge against radical islamic attacks.
George Bush and Tony Blare are both a professing Christians. They have stated that they believe that the desire for freedom is resident no less in the hearts of Iraqi's than in the hearts of westerners. That is a non-religious way of stating a Christian doctrine --or part of the doctrine--that all men share the imprint of their Creator. Christians call this the "image of God." This is an example of how I believe well meaning people can take a fact, combine it with good intentions, and misapply it.
Is it a noble thing to fight for the rights of peoples to enjoy freedom? Sure. And they want freedom because they share the same desire for freeom that their Creator instilled in them, right? What is so wrong with using our massive military might to accomplish it?
Again, George Will gets it. Stated simply, there are cultural prerequisites for the responsible exercise of freedom. Attempt to transplant democracy into a culture which is not ready for it, and you wind up in a colossal exercise of futility. Jeffersonian Democracy was formed in the crucible of a world which had been profoundly influenced by Calvinistic Protestantism. Despite the attempts to rewrite history, Chrisitanity nurtured and shaped the views of western Europe, and the rights of the individual at the core of western democracy sprang from it. That belief is totally lacking in the mideast. Our secular society studiously ignores its own roots when it can, and mocks when it cannot, but we are coasting on a heritage we just can't pick up and transplant at will.
The middle east of today shares no such culture or history. Afghanistan and Iraq are experiments in whether western style democracy can take root and grow in Muslim countries. I hope they work. I really, really do. But I doubt it.
I think this foolish in the extreme. The very last warning by Washington in his farewell address was against foreign entanglements. Our attitude should be that of cheerful, well wishing indifference to other countries.
Eighteenth and nineteenth century Christian England viewed its imperialism as a beneficence to its subjects. The problem was that they were blind to some critical truths. Men in power are blind to their own stupidity when exercising that power.
Dunno why I never posted it.
Makes sense now, and I thought it made sense then.
George Will NAILS it on why I am against the war in Iraq, in some hypothetical questions for Condoleeza Rice in her upcoming Senate Hearings. I quote:
" The president says it is ``cultural condescension'' to question ``whether this country, or that people, or this group, are 'ready' for democracy." Condescending, perhaps, but is it realistic? Tony Blair says it is a ``myth" that ``our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture." Are there cultural prerequisites for free polities? Does Iraq have them? Do the Palestinian people, after a decade of saturation propaganda inciting terrorism and anti-Semitism? Does the United States know how to transplant those prerequisites? "
Those questions (or, those questions) encapsulates what I believe to be the fatal flaw in the idea of extending democracy to the middle east by way of military power. That vision is the core of the so called "neocon" plan for the middle east.
Bush haters will tell you that Iraq is just a cynical grab for power, and that Bush and company are simply imbeciles, evil plutocrats after oil, or both. I don't think so. While I am cynical enough to question almost anyone's motives, I think the impetus for our intrusion into another sovereign country really does lie in seeking security. Our leaders really do believe that a "friendly arab democracy" will be a hedge against radical islamic attacks.
George Bush and Tony Blare are both a professing Christians. They have stated that they believe that the desire for freedom is resident no less in the hearts of Iraqi's than in the hearts of westerners. That is a non-religious way of stating a Christian doctrine --or part of the doctrine--that all men share the imprint of their Creator. Christians call this the "image of God." This is an example of how I believe well meaning people can take a fact, combine it with good intentions, and misapply it.
Is it a noble thing to fight for the rights of peoples to enjoy freedom? Sure. And they want freedom because they share the same desire for freeom that their Creator instilled in them, right? What is so wrong with using our massive military might to accomplish it?
Again, George Will gets it. Stated simply, there are cultural prerequisites for the responsible exercise of freedom. Attempt to transplant democracy into a culture which is not ready for it, and you wind up in a colossal exercise of futility. Jeffersonian Democracy was formed in the crucible of a world which had been profoundly influenced by Calvinistic Protestantism. Despite the attempts to rewrite history, Chrisitanity nurtured and shaped the views of western Europe, and the rights of the individual at the core of western democracy sprang from it. That belief is totally lacking in the mideast. Our secular society studiously ignores its own roots when it can, and mocks when it cannot, but we are coasting on a heritage we just can't pick up and transplant at will.
The middle east of today shares no such culture or history. Afghanistan and Iraq are experiments in whether western style democracy can take root and grow in Muslim countries. I hope they work. I really, really do. But I doubt it.
I think this foolish in the extreme. The very last warning by Washington in his farewell address was against foreign entanglements. Our attitude should be that of cheerful, well wishing indifference to other countries.
Eighteenth and nineteenth century Christian England viewed its imperialism as a beneficence to its subjects. The problem was that they were blind to some critical truths. Men in power are blind to their own stupidity when exercising that power.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Why are we where we are?
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”
- Ludwig von Mises
Read it and weep.
Von Mises was saying that there is no escape. There is no magic elixir...no panacea...no free lunch. When you borrow money, you have to pay it back. You either pay it back with "responsible money" and endure the pain of an economic contraction, or you pay it back with "fiat money" and destroy the money itself. End of story. Wanna take a guess which one we have chosen?
The borrowing phase – a credit expansion – is pleasant enough. You feel rich...and smart. You have money to spend. Your assets go up in price. Your stock rises. You even think you’ve discovered some miracle formula – some way to get rich without working or saving. It’s as simple as buying a house. Then, it goes up in price. So buy another one...or two or three of them.
And then, alas, along comes the day when you have to pay back the money you’ve borrowed – the credit contraction. Now, you don’t feel so smart. Because, when everyone is trying to pay down debt, no one has money to bid up asset prices. Your house actually falls in price ...and you desperately try to get rid of those extra houses, hoping to get back what you have in them.
Yesterday, the Dow fell, again. (I orignially did the draft of this post two weeks ago.... I could post it most any day now and it would be accurate). It is a bear market, dear reader. That’s what stock markets do in a credit contraction. Assets, generally, become cheaper.
“Home sales dive” in South California, comes another report. Sales are off 42% from a year ago. Prices are down more than 10%. And it won’t end there...
Even the slicks on Wall Street are having trouble. The expansion stage of the credit cycle was pure molasses to them. But the contraction stage is bitter medicine. The International Herald Tribune tells us that Citigroup has turned to the moneybags in Singapore for a $22 billion bailout. Over at Merrill Lynch, they already hit up the Singaporeans for $6.2 billion in December. They’re writing down some $8.4 billion in subprime debt, creating the biggest loss in the firm’s 93-year history. This month, they turned to Korea and Japan to fill a $6.6 billion hole.
Why go to Asia to raise money? Because that’s where the money is.
“Asians have trillions in dollar reserves,” Lord Rees Mogg explains. “They probably think they have enough of our money. Over the next few years, it looks as though the Western currencies...and Western economies...are going to be in trouble.”
Finally, the retail sector is also showing signs of slower consumer buying. Even the luxury outlets – such as Tiffany and Ralph Lauren – have seen their stocks cut 20% to 50%.
What can be done about it?
As von Mises describes, above, the only alternatives are to stop the process of credit creation voluntarily...or to continue to a “final and total catastrophe of the currency system.”
In the late ’70s, the Fed chose to abandon further credit creation. It was obvious that more money and credit was making consumer prices rise without causing genuine economic growth.
Now, three decades later, consumer inflation rates are still tolerable. It’s the threat of recession that seems insupportable. And so, between sooner or later, the choice is clearly – later. Better to try to fight the little devil in front of us, they say; let someone else worry about that big devil Beelzebub.
Well, we know how the fed has chosen. They panicked and cut rates by a whopping 0.75%, and in less than a week cut them another.50%. I has slowed the current correction (the dow popped about 600 points, but we have given back about half of it. Either way, I would be short most equities and long precious metals. Buy gold and silver on the dips. You don't worry about "catching a falling knife" in a bull market.
The feds can control only the quantity of paper money or the quality of it. If they lean down hard on the quantity side, pushing trillions of dollars worth of new cash and credit into the system in order to try to avoid a serious recession, the quality of the money will suffer. The Asians will be more eager than ever to dump the dollar; the greenback will fall...and gold will soar .
If, in the unlikely event that they were to voluntarily give up on credit expansion, reducing the quantity of dollars in order to protect the quality, they may be able to stop gold’s rise. In that case, a sharp recession would mean falling share prices. This is the trick that Paul Volcker pulled off in the early ’80s. The price of gold collapsed...and stocks took off. But not before he had pushed up short-term lending rates to 20%...and drove the economy into its worst recession since the ’30s...and knocked down stocks so low you could buy the entire Dow for the price of one ounce of gold.
No matter what happens, we’ve got a long way to go before we reach that kind of turnaround point. And most likely – given the situation – it won’t come at all until we’ve been through Von Mises’ “crack-up” – the final and total catastrophe of the currency system.
Whee! Ain't life fun?????!!!!!
- Ludwig von Mises
Read it and weep.
Von Mises was saying that there is no escape. There is no magic elixir...no panacea...no free lunch. When you borrow money, you have to pay it back. You either pay it back with "responsible money" and endure the pain of an economic contraction, or you pay it back with "fiat money" and destroy the money itself. End of story. Wanna take a guess which one we have chosen?
The borrowing phase – a credit expansion – is pleasant enough. You feel rich...and smart. You have money to spend. Your assets go up in price. Your stock rises. You even think you’ve discovered some miracle formula – some way to get rich without working or saving. It’s as simple as buying a house. Then, it goes up in price. So buy another one...or two or three of them.
And then, alas, along comes the day when you have to pay back the money you’ve borrowed – the credit contraction. Now, you don’t feel so smart. Because, when everyone is trying to pay down debt, no one has money to bid up asset prices. Your house actually falls in price ...and you desperately try to get rid of those extra houses, hoping to get back what you have in them.
Yesterday, the Dow fell, again. (I orignially did the draft of this post two weeks ago.... I could post it most any day now and it would be accurate). It is a bear market, dear reader. That’s what stock markets do in a credit contraction. Assets, generally, become cheaper.
“Home sales dive” in South California, comes another report. Sales are off 42% from a year ago. Prices are down more than 10%. And it won’t end there...
Even the slicks on Wall Street are having trouble. The expansion stage of the credit cycle was pure molasses to them. But the contraction stage is bitter medicine. The International Herald Tribune tells us that Citigroup has turned to the moneybags in Singapore for a $22 billion bailout. Over at Merrill Lynch, they already hit up the Singaporeans for $6.2 billion in December. They’re writing down some $8.4 billion in subprime debt, creating the biggest loss in the firm’s 93-year history. This month, they turned to Korea and Japan to fill a $6.6 billion hole.
Why go to Asia to raise money? Because that’s where the money is.
“Asians have trillions in dollar reserves,” Lord Rees Mogg explains. “They probably think they have enough of our money. Over the next few years, it looks as though the Western currencies...and Western economies...are going to be in trouble.”
Finally, the retail sector is also showing signs of slower consumer buying. Even the luxury outlets – such as Tiffany and Ralph Lauren – have seen their stocks cut 20% to 50%.
What can be done about it?
As von Mises describes, above, the only alternatives are to stop the process of credit creation voluntarily...or to continue to a “final and total catastrophe of the currency system.”
In the late ’70s, the Fed chose to abandon further credit creation. It was obvious that more money and credit was making consumer prices rise without causing genuine economic growth.
Now, three decades later, consumer inflation rates are still tolerable. It’s the threat of recession that seems insupportable. And so, between sooner or later, the choice is clearly – later. Better to try to fight the little devil in front of us, they say; let someone else worry about that big devil Beelzebub.
Well, we know how the fed has chosen. They panicked and cut rates by a whopping 0.75%, and in less than a week cut them another.50%. I has slowed the current correction (the dow popped about 600 points, but we have given back about half of it. Either way, I would be short most equities and long precious metals. Buy gold and silver on the dips. You don't worry about "catching a falling knife" in a bull market.
The feds can control only the quantity of paper money or the quality of it. If they lean down hard on the quantity side, pushing trillions of dollars worth of new cash and credit into the system in order to try to avoid a serious recession, the quality of the money will suffer. The Asians will be more eager than ever to dump the dollar; the greenback will fall...and gold will soar .
If, in the unlikely event that they were to voluntarily give up on credit expansion, reducing the quantity of dollars in order to protect the quality, they may be able to stop gold’s rise. In that case, a sharp recession would mean falling share prices. This is the trick that Paul Volcker pulled off in the early ’80s. The price of gold collapsed...and stocks took off. But not before he had pushed up short-term lending rates to 20%...and drove the economy into its worst recession since the ’30s...and knocked down stocks so low you could buy the entire Dow for the price of one ounce of gold.
No matter what happens, we’ve got a long way to go before we reach that kind of turnaround point. And most likely – given the situation – it won’t come at all until we’ve been through Von Mises’ “crack-up” – the final and total catastrophe of the currency system.
Whee! Ain't life fun?????!!!!!
Friday, February 01, 2008
The meltup???
So, the market is up over 600 points since my dire predictions of imminent fiscal collapse. I am reminded of one of my "quotable quotes" by John Maynard Keynes, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
However, in the long run, being short this market is good, as is being long gold/silver. (Gold is up over 13 dollars this a.m. as I write this, and silver is up another 33 cents). I am convinced that this is a dead cat bounce and that the DOW has yet a long way to fall.
Never bet the farm on a short term play.
However, in the long run, being short this market is good, as is being long gold/silver. (Gold is up over 13 dollars this a.m. as I write this, and silver is up another 33 cents). I am convinced that this is a dead cat bounce and that the DOW has yet a long way to fall.
Never bet the farm on a short term play.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
The meltdown........
As you watch the financial markets melt down...... Hope you are long gold and long puts. Puts for the short term and gold for the long.
The markets are simply telling us that we have borrowed long enough and allowed the fed to inject money into the system to save us too many times. I don't know if this is "the big one" any more than any one else does. However, if you are living on the San Andreas fault, you don't laugh when you feel a serious shake. Eventually, the whopper is coming, whether you know "when," or not.
What we do know is that the fools we have put in positions of power have no answers. Our esteemed head of the federal reserve admitted last week he had "run out of answers" for the presentcredit crisis, which has caused almost a 2,000 point selloff in the Dow over the last six months.
One thing you can be sure of, though, is that we will NOT be willing to undergo the pain of getting our economy back on a stable footing. The grit and resolve needed to do that belongs to past generations. If we were so minded, we would be willing to weather a downturn and a recession, as the fluff is gradually absorbed by a market which returns to sanity and begins pricing investment instruments with principles of sound money. If the present generation of clowns we call "leaders" tells you anything, it tells you that people willingly believe in easy lies rather than hard truths, whether it applies to sexual license, dissolution of marriage, hard work, parenting, our ability to influence and/or rule other countries to our advantage, or easy credit. Once we have chosen to believe these lies, we seek leaders who will reinforce them and tell us that our foolishness is not only true, but that living lives based on lies is a "right." All the hoopla in the markets today is just another example of the effects of people unwilling to accept unpleasant truths, only this time it is in respect to money.
The fed WILL attempt to rig the markets. If we see a serious enough inversion in equity prices, we already know what our government will do. Witness this quote by Bernacke:
"As I have stressed already, prevention of deflation remains preferable to having to cure it. If we do fall into deflation, however, we can take comfort that the logic of the printing press example must assert itself, and sufficient injections of money will ultimately always reverse a deflation."
Rest assured, folks. This is helicopter Ben (Bernacke)'s assurance to you that he will continue to destroy the value of the dollar on international markets rather than allow the markets to contract. If you doubt this at all, consider that Bush has a "crisis team" to "deal with" serious market turbulence. That always means only one thing....., printing money to prop up prices, or refusing to let people sell when they want to (shutting down the markets), or a combination of both.
UPDATE: They have just cut the fed funds rate 75 points. This is panic, people, not a considered well thought out strategy. Bank of America just joined the group of banks announcing huge losses.
Dump equities. Buy gold, oil, mining stocks. You might want to buy bullion. The worst is a long way from over.
The markets are simply telling us that we have borrowed long enough and allowed the fed to inject money into the system to save us too many times. I don't know if this is "the big one" any more than any one else does. However, if you are living on the San Andreas fault, you don't laugh when you feel a serious shake. Eventually, the whopper is coming, whether you know "when," or not.
What we do know is that the fools we have put in positions of power have no answers. Our esteemed head of the federal reserve admitted last week he had "run out of answers" for the presentcredit crisis, which has caused almost a 2,000 point selloff in the Dow over the last six months.
One thing you can be sure of, though, is that we will NOT be willing to undergo the pain of getting our economy back on a stable footing. The grit and resolve needed to do that belongs to past generations. If we were so minded, we would be willing to weather a downturn and a recession, as the fluff is gradually absorbed by a market which returns to sanity and begins pricing investment instruments with principles of sound money. If the present generation of clowns we call "leaders" tells you anything, it tells you that people willingly believe in easy lies rather than hard truths, whether it applies to sexual license, dissolution of marriage, hard work, parenting, our ability to influence and/or rule other countries to our advantage, or easy credit. Once we have chosen to believe these lies, we seek leaders who will reinforce them and tell us that our foolishness is not only true, but that living lives based on lies is a "right." All the hoopla in the markets today is just another example of the effects of people unwilling to accept unpleasant truths, only this time it is in respect to money.
The fed WILL attempt to rig the markets. If we see a serious enough inversion in equity prices, we already know what our government will do. Witness this quote by Bernacke:
"As I have stressed already, prevention of deflation remains preferable to having to cure it. If we do fall into deflation, however, we can take comfort that the logic of the printing press example must assert itself, and sufficient injections of money will ultimately always reverse a deflation."
Rest assured, folks. This is helicopter Ben (Bernacke)'s assurance to you that he will continue to destroy the value of the dollar on international markets rather than allow the markets to contract. If you doubt this at all, consider that Bush has a "crisis team" to "deal with" serious market turbulence. That always means only one thing....., printing money to prop up prices, or refusing to let people sell when they want to (shutting down the markets), or a combination of both.
UPDATE: They have just cut the fed funds rate 75 points. This is panic, people, not a considered well thought out strategy. Bank of America just joined the group of banks announcing huge losses.
Dump equities. Buy gold, oil, mining stocks. You might want to buy bullion. The worst is a long way from over.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
US to lose its AAA credit rating
This is unthinkable, yet is projected by Moody's, the formost credit rating institution in the world. For years,the definition of AAA rating, the most secure rating that can be had, has been measured by US government bonds. Now, according to Moody’s, unless the U.S. can curb booming health care and Social Security spending, it could lose its AAA credit rating by 2017. If the government were to lose the ranking -- which it has held since 1917 -- confidence in the U.S.’s ability to pay back debts will be seriously damaged, and the U.S. economy could face a disaster which has been heretofore unthinkable.
Current holders of U.S. government debt include foreign central banks, huge pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. They have traditionally looked to the USA as a "safe haven" for money. If funds (domestic and international) which ONLY invest in AAA rated securities have to eschew the US treasury market, we will be in the interesting position of having no one left to loan us money on the international market...., or at least we will have to pay significantly more for what we borrow.
But enough about that. Let's move on the to the REAL important stuff! Have you seen the latests Brittney Spears video? Isn't she just hot??? Oh My God. She is just soooooo slutty!! And have you seen the Golden Globe awards? And doesn't Hillary just look OLD in her pictures? Isn't the internet wonderful? We can just chat away about all the stuff happening every day in our culture. I might buy a new car if I can get a new credit card with a limit high enough to make the down payment with it.
Current holders of U.S. government debt include foreign central banks, huge pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. They have traditionally looked to the USA as a "safe haven" for money. If funds (domestic and international) which ONLY invest in AAA rated securities have to eschew the US treasury market, we will be in the interesting position of having no one left to loan us money on the international market...., or at least we will have to pay significantly more for what we borrow.
But enough about that. Let's move on the to the REAL important stuff! Have you seen the latests Brittney Spears video? Isn't she just hot??? Oh My God. She is just soooooo slutty!! And have you seen the Golden Globe awards? And doesn't Hillary just look OLD in her pictures? Isn't the internet wonderful? We can just chat away about all the stuff happening every day in our culture. I might buy a new car if I can get a new credit card with a limit high enough to make the down payment with it.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Save me, Ben Bernacke!!!
Legend has it that on Jan 24, 1936, Alan Foster, the first black prisoner to be executed by gas in North Carolina, cried out on his way to the chamber "Save me, Joe Louis!!" The event made its way into a speech by Martin Luther King, and since has been researched, debunked, and then resurrected as a historical....., "maybe." Who knows if it really happened.
I first heard it as a powerful illustration in a talk about how men look to false hopes for their security and well being.
The same principle holds true here with the financial big boys and their attitude towards easy money (aka "lower interest rates"). The fact is, that we have a dedicated Keynsian as head of the fed, with a "religious" faith that easy money is the way to stimulate the economy. (In essence, this means simply print more money when we need it) He has seen Japan for the last 20 years and he has a terror of deflationary recession. Thus his famous line about "we will be throwing money out of helicopters if that is what it takes."
Saint Ben
The book of Jeremiah (that is the Bible,folks) talks about the people putting their trust in broken cisterns, which hold no water. Men put their trust and hope in that which cannot rescue them. Thus is the trust of fools who believe that violating the basic rules of fiscal discipline can "save" an economy. The principles are as timeless as Proverbs: Hard work and thrift brings prosperity. Your property is YOURS (more technically correct, it belongs to God, but you maintain a delegated sovereign right to control over it). Wealth gained by deception is an illusion and will not last. Men (including leaders) are corruptible, weak, and untrustwothy. The borrower becomes the lender's slave.
One of the most recurring themes in those timeless principles is that God hates "deceptive weights." In the old days, men "measured" the gold/silver you paid for an item, and corrupt merchants would keep two sets of counterbalances. This allowed them to lie to you about how much your money was worth. Inflating a nation's currency is simply a more technological method of the government progressively changing the weights, thus progressively stealing wealth from its citizenry, and making our currency "worth less." (yes, the double entendre is intended)
The one reliable indicator of how much money there actually is in the economy is the M3. Interestingly enough, the gov't has decided about a year ago that they no longer need to publish it. There are other more abstract indicators out there, but the government chooses to rely on the "consumer price index" to measure the effects of inflation, rather than the source. The problem with the CPI is that it is a crock of manure. No one who fills up with gas or goes to the grocery store believes that our inflation is rising at less than 4% a year. This may be a difficult thing for the "party of the evangelicals" to grasp, but your government is lying to you. They are ruining our economy and the wealth of future generations because of one simple reason: they won't stop spending, regulating, and doing what bureaucrats love to do, accumulating power.
Printing money will NOT stop the slowdown. It won't save the economy, but it will ruin the dollar. If you are too young to remember those happy times of the 1970's (I was in grad school), then you don't know what it is like to have the economy slow (very few jobs, and lots of folks losing theirs) combined with inflation (every month prices are going up, up, up). The problem is that now, inflation is thought of as a cure, rather than a disease, as it will "get the economy going again."
The ultimate evil of inflation is twofold. One, it hits the poor the hardest. Two, it benefits the rich AT THE EXPENSE of the poor. The middle class, although they cannot "keep up," at least have salaries which will index for inflation. The poor do not, nor do the elderly. They don't know why, but they fall further and further behind. However, the flip side is that inflation benefits the very wealthy elite, because they "see" the money first, before it loses its spending power. Nowhere is this more true than the big money managers and bankers on Wall Street. This is an economic evil of tremendous proportions, stealing from the powerless to give to the rich. It is not just unwise. It is evil. Advocates of "social justice" who are perpetually arguing for more government intervention are encouraging you to dive right into the broken cistern. Likewise, those who wave the flag of "terrorism" as a justification for maintaining an empire of over 800 military bases around the world are, in fact, destroying your future security in the name of upholding it.
We have to stop spending, both on the Republican vision of "empire" and the Democrat nanny state. Both are liars who are selling you water from a broken cistern. You can only get away with it for so long. Our time is coming rapidly.
I first heard it as a powerful illustration in a talk about how men look to false hopes for their security and well being.
The same principle holds true here with the financial big boys and their attitude towards easy money (aka "lower interest rates"). The fact is, that we have a dedicated Keynsian as head of the fed, with a "religious" faith that easy money is the way to stimulate the economy. (In essence, this means simply print more money when we need it) He has seen Japan for the last 20 years and he has a terror of deflationary recession. Thus his famous line about "we will be throwing money out of helicopters if that is what it takes."
The book of Jeremiah (that is the Bible,folks) talks about the people putting their trust in broken cisterns, which hold no water. Men put their trust and hope in that which cannot rescue them. Thus is the trust of fools who believe that violating the basic rules of fiscal discipline can "save" an economy. The principles are as timeless as Proverbs: Hard work and thrift brings prosperity. Your property is YOURS (more technically correct, it belongs to God, but you maintain a delegated sovereign right to control over it). Wealth gained by deception is an illusion and will not last. Men (including leaders) are corruptible, weak, and untrustwothy. The borrower becomes the lender's slave.
One of the most recurring themes in those timeless principles is that God hates "deceptive weights." In the old days, men "measured" the gold/silver you paid for an item, and corrupt merchants would keep two sets of counterbalances. This allowed them to lie to you about how much your money was worth. Inflating a nation's currency is simply a more technological method of the government progressively changing the weights, thus progressively stealing wealth from its citizenry, and making our currency "worth less." (yes, the double entendre is intended)
The one reliable indicator of how much money there actually is in the economy is the M3. Interestingly enough, the gov't has decided about a year ago that they no longer need to publish it. There are other more abstract indicators out there, but the government chooses to rely on the "consumer price index" to measure the effects of inflation, rather than the source. The problem with the CPI is that it is a crock of manure. No one who fills up with gas or goes to the grocery store believes that our inflation is rising at less than 4% a year. This may be a difficult thing for the "party of the evangelicals" to grasp, but your government is lying to you. They are ruining our economy and the wealth of future generations because of one simple reason: they won't stop spending, regulating, and doing what bureaucrats love to do, accumulating power.
Printing money will NOT stop the slowdown. It won't save the economy, but it will ruin the dollar. If you are too young to remember those happy times of the 1970's (I was in grad school), then you don't know what it is like to have the economy slow (very few jobs, and lots of folks losing theirs) combined with inflation (every month prices are going up, up, up). The problem is that now, inflation is thought of as a cure, rather than a disease, as it will "get the economy going again."
The ultimate evil of inflation is twofold. One, it hits the poor the hardest. Two, it benefits the rich AT THE EXPENSE of the poor. The middle class, although they cannot "keep up," at least have salaries which will index for inflation. The poor do not, nor do the elderly. They don't know why, but they fall further and further behind. However, the flip side is that inflation benefits the very wealthy elite, because they "see" the money first, before it loses its spending power. Nowhere is this more true than the big money managers and bankers on Wall Street. This is an economic evil of tremendous proportions, stealing from the powerless to give to the rich. It is not just unwise. It is evil. Advocates of "social justice" who are perpetually arguing for more government intervention are encouraging you to dive right into the broken cistern. Likewise, those who wave the flag of "terrorism" as a justification for maintaining an empire of over 800 military bases around the world are, in fact, destroying your future security in the name of upholding it.
We have to stop spending, both on the Republican vision of "empire" and the Democrat nanny state. Both are liars who are selling you water from a broken cistern. You can only get away with it for so long. Our time is coming rapidly.
Have you begun to feel the pain?
If you follow the stock market at all, you might sense that something is beginning to go wrong. Or, if you make weekly trips to the grocery store...., or if you are trying to sell your house, or are involved in any number of normal activities.
The Dow is off a thousand points from August, and things are NOT picking up. Just off the top of our heads, we can think of a couple other issues that will continue to make for a weaker economy in 2008:
The current credit contraction is bad, and getting worse.
The collapse of the financial sector (Merrill Lynch just wrote off 15 BILLION in bad debt this a.m)
Two "market corrections" in the last six months
The dollar has declined to an all-time low against international currencies
Oil is at $100 or thereabouts ($94.59 as I post this)
Gasoline is over $3
Unemployment at 5% and rising
Food prices are at all-time highs, and rising
The national debt is over $9 trillion, It rises One Million dollars every 47 seconds, and that rate is accelerating
We have as a nation over $47 trillion more in unfunded entitlement programs
Social Security (what a name!!) will be busted at current spending levels in less than 15 years
....... Just for starters.
Our "conservative" president has gone back to the supply siders' basic argument, which is that the "Laffer curve" has no limits to which it can be pushed. He wants to cut taxes. From his last speech: "....it seems like Congress ought to be sending a message that we're not going to raise your taxes in the next three years by making the tax cuts permanent."
The idea behind tax cuts is a good one. Idiots have screeched that the tax cuts are for the "rich." My question is, who else can you cut taxes FOR? The poor in this country pay no appreciable income taxes. Arguing against a tax cut because it discriminates against the poor is a fool's argument. That is not the problem. It is the "rich" who start businesses, create jobs, and create wealth for the "oppressed poor." The trouble with the tax cuts in the USA nowadays is that they are NEVER offset by spending cuts, not that they put more money in the hands of the "rich." Ideally, tax cuts should be linked to the choking the REAL problem, which is the growth of government. Unfortunately, we have married tax cuts to the idea of deficit spending ("deficits don't matter" --Dick Cheney).
We have used the fiscal stupidity of collectivists to cut our own throat. Leftists, blinded by class hatred, argued that cutting tax rates reduces government revenue. This is nonsense. The "Laffer curve" is the theory that reductions in marginal tax rates (the higher rates the rich pay) produces GROWTH in federal revenue and not reduction. This is a good argument for reducing the tax rates of the rich. We actually get MORE of their money by taking a lower percentage of it. Leftists don't like it because they view taxes as a mechanism for punishing the rich and making sure they don't keep "too much" money (whatever that is). If we view taxes as a mechanism to raise revenue, rather than some halfwitted tool for social engineering, then cutting the tax rates for the "rich" makes perfect sense. Yeah, ok. Hooray for Rush Limbaugh and all that.
However,. the present bunch of leaders have taken the benefits of tax cuts (money in the hands of the people), which in fact produces more revenue, and failed to even take a passing glance at the necessary flip side of fiscal responsibility, which is restraint in government spending.
The congressional budget office released their report Monday, and the one thing you can be sure of is happening. Federal spending keeps rising by the billions. Our debt is also rising at the rate (checked yesterday a.m.) of approximately one million dollars every 47 seconds, and this rate is rising.
$Loading... = the
National Debt
This is just plain immoral. It is selling out our children for the feelgood present. My generation, the baby boomers, has to be the most selfish, self-absorbed generation in our nation's history.
The effects of our orgy of spending on our failing "empire" and the incredibly stupid attempts to address social programs/policy from a federal level will finally come home to roost (we are seeing the beginnings of it now), Ironically, it will be as the boomers (my generation) are entering the period of greatest need coupled with our time of least power. Do not be surprised if the youngsters decide we just aren't worth the trouble and refuse to shoulder the lion's share of the debt, which is the 47 TRILLION dollars in unfunded Social Security obligations we have racked up.
"Sorry pop, I hate it about that heart valve. I am flat broke. Billy needs surgery to correct his _______ and you know, he has a FUTURE. Yeah, I know you really need it but, ya know.... YOU SPENT IT ALL!"
Wouldn't that be cosmic irony?
The Dow is off a thousand points from August, and things are NOT picking up. Just off the top of our heads, we can think of a couple other issues that will continue to make for a weaker economy in 2008:
The current credit contraction is bad, and getting worse.
The collapse of the financial sector (Merrill Lynch just wrote off 15 BILLION in bad debt this a.m)
Two "market corrections" in the last six months
The dollar has declined to an all-time low against international currencies
Oil is at $100 or thereabouts ($94.59 as I post this)
Gasoline is over $3
Unemployment at 5% and rising
Food prices are at all-time highs, and rising
The national debt is over $9 trillion, It rises One Million dollars every 47 seconds, and that rate is accelerating
We have as a nation over $47 trillion more in unfunded entitlement programs
Social Security (what a name!!) will be busted at current spending levels in less than 15 years
....... Just for starters.
Our "conservative" president has gone back to the supply siders' basic argument, which is that the "Laffer curve" has no limits to which it can be pushed. He wants to cut taxes. From his last speech: "....it seems like Congress ought to be sending a message that we're not going to raise your taxes in the next three years by making the tax cuts permanent."
The idea behind tax cuts is a good one. Idiots have screeched that the tax cuts are for the "rich." My question is, who else can you cut taxes FOR? The poor in this country pay no appreciable income taxes. Arguing against a tax cut because it discriminates against the poor is a fool's argument. That is not the problem. It is the "rich" who start businesses, create jobs, and create wealth for the "oppressed poor." The trouble with the tax cuts in the USA nowadays is that they are NEVER offset by spending cuts, not that they put more money in the hands of the "rich." Ideally, tax cuts should be linked to the choking the REAL problem, which is the growth of government. Unfortunately, we have married tax cuts to the idea of deficit spending ("deficits don't matter" --Dick Cheney).
We have used the fiscal stupidity of collectivists to cut our own throat. Leftists, blinded by class hatred, argued that cutting tax rates reduces government revenue. This is nonsense. The "Laffer curve" is the theory that reductions in marginal tax rates (the higher rates the rich pay) produces GROWTH in federal revenue and not reduction. This is a good argument for reducing the tax rates of the rich. We actually get MORE of their money by taking a lower percentage of it. Leftists don't like it because they view taxes as a mechanism for punishing the rich and making sure they don't keep "too much" money (whatever that is). If we view taxes as a mechanism to raise revenue, rather than some halfwitted tool for social engineering, then cutting the tax rates for the "rich" makes perfect sense. Yeah, ok. Hooray for Rush Limbaugh and all that.
However,. the present bunch of leaders have taken the benefits of tax cuts (money in the hands of the people), which in fact produces more revenue, and failed to even take a passing glance at the necessary flip side of fiscal responsibility, which is restraint in government spending.
The congressional budget office released their report Monday, and the one thing you can be sure of is happening. Federal spending keeps rising by the billions. Our debt is also rising at the rate (checked yesterday a.m.) of approximately one million dollars every 47 seconds, and this rate is rising.
$Loading... = the
National Debt
This is just plain immoral. It is selling out our children for the feelgood present. My generation, the baby boomers, has to be the most selfish, self-absorbed generation in our nation's history.
The effects of our orgy of spending on our failing "empire" and the incredibly stupid attempts to address social programs/policy from a federal level will finally come home to roost (we are seeing the beginnings of it now), Ironically, it will be as the boomers (my generation) are entering the period of greatest need coupled with our time of least power. Do not be surprised if the youngsters decide we just aren't worth the trouble and refuse to shoulder the lion's share of the debt, which is the 47 TRILLION dollars in unfunded Social Security obligations we have racked up.
"Sorry pop, I hate it about that heart valve. I am flat broke. Billy needs surgery to correct his _______ and you know, he has a FUTURE. Yeah, I know you really need it but, ya know.... YOU SPENT IT ALL!"
Wouldn't that be cosmic irony?
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Gustavo Azocar
Gustavo Azocar is a real journalistic hero. He was slapped repeatedly and hit with his microphone while on the air by one of Hugo Chavez's minions. He is a vocal critic of Chavez and has faced arrest for trumped up charges of "fraud" for being critical of Chavez. Story is here.
Friday, November 09, 2007
The Emperor HAS CLOTHES, I am telling you!
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said yesterday the dollar remains the world's reserve currency and while its decline is raising oil prices and a threat of inflation, he doesn't expect it to seriously crimp the economy or consumer spending power.
"I don't see any significant change in the broad holdings of dollars around the world. Dollars remain the dominant reserve asset, and I expect that to continue to be the case," Mr. Bernanke said, pointedly disputing an assertion by Chinese officials on Wednesday that the U.S. currency is losing status as the world currency. "It remains a standard of value around the world."
His testimony before the Joint Economic Committee failed to cheer global markets, however, as the dollar fell further and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped as much as 180 points to 1,000 points below its record high on renewed worries about credit, oil and the dollar.
So Ben, why is it that THE most accurate measure of how much money is actually circulating out there, the M3, is no longer even being published by the Fed?
Our currency is in an awful spot. The last time we had an inflationary squeeze, it was in the 70's, when the effects of spending for a war (Vietnam) and social programs (the beginning of the "Great Society" joined with worldwide political events to squeeze the price of oil. The difference between then and now is that we had a chairman of the fed who publicly acknowledged that the fastest way to destroy a nation's wealth is to inflate the currency. Paul Volker was willing to raise interest rates to ridiculous levels to choke it out, which caused the "mini depression" of 1979 -1981. It did kill inflation, though, and led to a scenario for the most vibrant ramp up in our economy since the 1800s. Bernake has no such testicular fortitude. He has publicly stated (and still states) that inflationary monetary policy is THE way to fight economic downturns. Other countries are not fools, though. They are dumping the dollar in favor of gold or other currencies as fast as they can sell them. China is leading the way. It looks really, really bad.
article is here
"I don't see any significant change in the broad holdings of dollars around the world. Dollars remain the dominant reserve asset, and I expect that to continue to be the case," Mr. Bernanke said, pointedly disputing an assertion by Chinese officials on Wednesday that the U.S. currency is losing status as the world currency. "It remains a standard of value around the world."
His testimony before the Joint Economic Committee failed to cheer global markets, however, as the dollar fell further and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped as much as 180 points to 1,000 points below its record high on renewed worries about credit, oil and the dollar.
So Ben, why is it that THE most accurate measure of how much money is actually circulating out there, the M3, is no longer even being published by the Fed?
Our currency is in an awful spot. The last time we had an inflationary squeeze, it was in the 70's, when the effects of spending for a war (Vietnam) and social programs (the beginning of the "Great Society" joined with worldwide political events to squeeze the price of oil. The difference between then and now is that we had a chairman of the fed who publicly acknowledged that the fastest way to destroy a nation's wealth is to inflate the currency. Paul Volker was willing to raise interest rates to ridiculous levels to choke it out, which caused the "mini depression" of 1979 -1981. It did kill inflation, though, and led to a scenario for the most vibrant ramp up in our economy since the 1800s. Bernake has no such testicular fortitude. He has publicly stated (and still states) that inflationary monetary policy is THE way to fight economic downturns. Other countries are not fools, though. They are dumping the dollar in favor of gold or other currencies as fast as they can sell them. China is leading the way. It looks really, really bad.
article is here
Thursday, November 08, 2007
It is (past) time for a change......
It is interesting that the vast majority of the "zealot" Ron Paul fans are the 20 somethings.
Most of the boomers (my age group) are statists. They either believe in the state to fix our social problems and so are Democratic, or they believe in whatever bogeyman du jour is out there in a foreign power (or foreign religion) and support interminable war and the abdication of civil liberties to "protect" us (Republican). Further, few are concerned that we have ceded the most fundamental engine of economic liberty -the ability to print money- to a private, unregulated, unaccountable institution called the Federal Reserve. This miasma of bad ideas (social "programs," military adventurism, increasing state encroachment on liberty, and a perpetual goosing of the money supply with the printing presses of the Federal reserve) has left us with debt obligations that approach $175,000 per person in the USA, endless nation building exercises in an empire which consists of military bases in over 100 of the nations of the world, collapsing liberties, and a collapsing dollar which is being repudiated in the financial markets as fast as traders can pull the trigger.
My generation won't fix this, perhaps because it is the most self-obsessed generation in the history of America. We are so used to being "on top" of things that many of my crowd not only refuse to accept that this is happening, they actively resist the concept of this happening, and refuse to entertain the idea that it is true. They are living in a state of willful ignorance that is only making it more difficult to live daily. However, what is even more evil and foolish is that my crowd (the boomers) don’t acknowledge that this willful ignorance is going to have a substantial impact on the lives of our children.
This is wny I am hopeful for the 20 somethings. They look around, and they KNOW that they have inherited a failing education system, a failing social security system, and a failing dollar. Despite that they are faced with an almost guaranteed an increase on income tax and the "other" income tax, Social Security, an increase in the amount of war that plagues this nation, and an increase in the curtailing of civil liberties at home.
This blog entry highlights only one of these areas: that of Civil Liberty.
We have seen a steady succession of bills and Presidential findings which allow for the suppression of speech and the suspension of liberties. The "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," passed by the House of Representatives as "H.R. 1955," (October 2007) is the latest of these.
This bill seeks to prevent homegrown terrorism. Great. The problem is that "terror and radicalization" are described in language so vague that just about anything fits the description. The bill is a full frontal assault on liberty, freedom of thought, and privacy.
1. HOMEGROWN TERRORISM – The term "homegrown terrorism" means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
2. RADICALIZATION – The term "radicalization" means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically-based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.
3. IDEOLOGICALLY-BASED VIOLENCE – The term "ideologically-based violence" means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs.
By these standards, The Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Washington and Franklin would have been hauled off to jail as the very first act by the government they created! Not only that, the present Congress and Executive branch are in violation of the statute!
If the occupation of Iraq is not "facilitating ideologically-based violence to advance political, religious, or social change," then tell me what is! Part of the defined mission was to bring democracy to Iraq. This is an ideological persuasion (many muslims find "democracy" repugnant, and associate it with the libertine morality of the West), and can NEVER be enforced at the end of a gun. What a ludicrous idea in the first place. Enforcing "freedom" by killing you if you don't accept it?
In this legal morass, almost any voice of opposition will certainly be construed as "extremist." Do you dare vocalize publicly that you are opposed to a unilateral nuclear first strike against Iran? How about if you just don't believe we should attack Iran (even if they are seeking nukes)? Well you are CLEARLY in violation of the statute..... LOOK AT IT! No free speech for you!
Do you think "global warming" is junk science and that Al Gore's book is idiocy?
Are you pro-life? The statute is loose enough to simply point to Paul Hill and claim that shrill anti abortion rhetoric creates a "climate of violence." (I have a special interest in this one, in that I actually went to grad school with Paul Hill AND I have been involved with several vocal protest against abortion).
Almost any question of authority can be seen as promoting an extremist ideological view that seeks to undermine the state under HR 1955. Especially activity related to the internet. Note the following "The Internet has aided in facilitating ideologically-based violence and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens." Now, communication is privileged, protected under the 4th amendment, and when ATT divulges your communications to the NSA without a court order, it is still theoretically illegal. With this piece of legislation, all activity will certainly be logged, and every letter typed will be scrutinized by the state. The idea that you have a constitutional right to be "secure in your person, houses, papers, and effects" will be a quaint anachronism.
My generation responds to this with a yawn, because they are convinced that the "other" guys are the villians and if we could just get the "right people" into power, then they can be trusted with such Orwellian powers. They point to the INTENT of the legislation, yet there are already laws on the books which make conspiracy to commit a crime both a civil and criminal violation. This legislation does nothing but federalize one more area of law, creating more centralized power, and in the process, mowing down civil liberties against an encroaching state.
In my generation, the left rails against "Bushitler" and the right waves the spectre of Hillary about, and both of them are mirror images of each other...., they just want the omnipotent state to DO DIFFERENT THINGS.
That is why the kids are excited about Ron Paul. They recognize that "conservative" or "liberal" tyranny is just tyranny with a different set of liars promising a different set of lies. Dr. Paul has repeatedly stated that the excitement for liberty, freedom, and rolling back government is most pronounced in his younger base. He has stated publicly that one of his first acts will be a focused attempt to repeal legislation like this, and to repeal presidential findings which unilaterally grant the executive branch almost unlimited power in the event of "national emergencies." (google "unitary executive theory").
The 60s crowd was incessant in its demand that society should "listen to the youth."
Maybe it is time we did.
Most of the boomers (my age group) are statists. They either believe in the state to fix our social problems and so are Democratic, or they believe in whatever bogeyman du jour is out there in a foreign power (or foreign religion) and support interminable war and the abdication of civil liberties to "protect" us (Republican). Further, few are concerned that we have ceded the most fundamental engine of economic liberty -the ability to print money- to a private, unregulated, unaccountable institution called the Federal Reserve. This miasma of bad ideas (social "programs," military adventurism, increasing state encroachment on liberty, and a perpetual goosing of the money supply with the printing presses of the Federal reserve) has left us with debt obligations that approach $175,000 per person in the USA, endless nation building exercises in an empire which consists of military bases in over 100 of the nations of the world, collapsing liberties, and a collapsing dollar which is being repudiated in the financial markets as fast as traders can pull the trigger.
My generation won't fix this, perhaps because it is the most self-obsessed generation in the history of America. We are so used to being "on top" of things that many of my crowd not only refuse to accept that this is happening, they actively resist the concept of this happening, and refuse to entertain the idea that it is true. They are living in a state of willful ignorance that is only making it more difficult to live daily. However, what is even more evil and foolish is that my crowd (the boomers) don’t acknowledge that this willful ignorance is going to have a substantial impact on the lives of our children.
This is wny I am hopeful for the 20 somethings. They look around, and they KNOW that they have inherited a failing education system, a failing social security system, and a failing dollar. Despite that they are faced with an almost guaranteed an increase on income tax and the "other" income tax, Social Security, an increase in the amount of war that plagues this nation, and an increase in the curtailing of civil liberties at home.
This blog entry highlights only one of these areas: that of Civil Liberty.
We have seen a steady succession of bills and Presidential findings which allow for the suppression of speech and the suspension of liberties. The "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," passed by the House of Representatives as "H.R. 1955," (October 2007) is the latest of these.
This bill seeks to prevent homegrown terrorism. Great. The problem is that "terror and radicalization" are described in language so vague that just about anything fits the description. The bill is a full frontal assault on liberty, freedom of thought, and privacy.
1. HOMEGROWN TERRORISM – The term "homegrown terrorism" means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
2. RADICALIZATION – The term "radicalization" means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically-based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.
3. IDEOLOGICALLY-BASED VIOLENCE – The term "ideologically-based violence" means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs.
By these standards, The Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Washington and Franklin would have been hauled off to jail as the very first act by the government they created! Not only that, the present Congress and Executive branch are in violation of the statute!
If the occupation of Iraq is not "facilitating ideologically-based violence to advance political, religious, or social change," then tell me what is! Part of the defined mission was to bring democracy to Iraq. This is an ideological persuasion (many muslims find "democracy" repugnant, and associate it with the libertine morality of the West), and can NEVER be enforced at the end of a gun. What a ludicrous idea in the first place. Enforcing "freedom" by killing you if you don't accept it?
In this legal morass, almost any voice of opposition will certainly be construed as "extremist." Do you dare vocalize publicly that you are opposed to a unilateral nuclear first strike against Iran? How about if you just don't believe we should attack Iran (even if they are seeking nukes)? Well you are CLEARLY in violation of the statute..... LOOK AT IT! No free speech for you!
Do you think "global warming" is junk science and that Al Gore's book is idiocy?
Are you pro-life? The statute is loose enough to simply point to Paul Hill and claim that shrill anti abortion rhetoric creates a "climate of violence." (I have a special interest in this one, in that I actually went to grad school with Paul Hill AND I have been involved with several vocal protest against abortion).
Almost any question of authority can be seen as promoting an extremist ideological view that seeks to undermine the state under HR 1955. Especially activity related to the internet. Note the following "The Internet has aided in facilitating ideologically-based violence and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens." Now, communication is privileged, protected under the 4th amendment, and when ATT divulges your communications to the NSA without a court order, it is still theoretically illegal. With this piece of legislation, all activity will certainly be logged, and every letter typed will be scrutinized by the state. The idea that you have a constitutional right to be "secure in your person, houses, papers, and effects" will be a quaint anachronism.
My generation responds to this with a yawn, because they are convinced that the "other" guys are the villians and if we could just get the "right people" into power, then they can be trusted with such Orwellian powers. They point to the INTENT of the legislation, yet there are already laws on the books which make conspiracy to commit a crime both a civil and criminal violation. This legislation does nothing but federalize one more area of law, creating more centralized power, and in the process, mowing down civil liberties against an encroaching state.
In my generation, the left rails against "Bushitler" and the right waves the spectre of Hillary about, and both of them are mirror images of each other...., they just want the omnipotent state to DO DIFFERENT THINGS.
That is why the kids are excited about Ron Paul. They recognize that "conservative" or "liberal" tyranny is just tyranny with a different set of liars promising a different set of lies. Dr. Paul has repeatedly stated that the excitement for liberty, freedom, and rolling back government is most pronounced in his younger base. He has stated publicly that one of his first acts will be a focused attempt to repeal legislation like this, and to repeal presidential findings which unilaterally grant the executive branch almost unlimited power in the event of "national emergencies." (google "unitary executive theory").
The 60s crowd was incessant in its demand that society should "listen to the youth."
Maybe it is time we did.
Monday, February 26, 2007
The most POWERFUL video I have seen in a while!
You HAVE to watch this. Please pass along the link. It blows away the hype surrounding gang membership and show it to be the WORST job in America. Please watch it! Steven Levitt, is an econ prof at the University of Chicago who had access to the economics and money flow of gangs. You have to watch this vid!
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Pachelbel like you never heard it
I have known about this guy for a while, but I decided to post the embed here on the blog to see how the link works. His name is "Jerry C" and he is from Taiwan. This is really a phenomenal piece. Don't let the horned salute at the beginning spook you.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
William Arkin
THIS article by William Arkin in the Blog section of yesterday's Washington Post has to win an award for one of the most poisonous, vicious, hateful things I have seen in a while. I am truly amazed that the post would allow it to print. I am not, nor have I been, a fan of the Iraq war. However, the soldiers we have over there are some of the finest, most self-sacrificing and honorable people we have. Arkin mocks them as murderous thugs, addicted to continual torture, rape and ravaging of the innocent, and then talks about their "obscene comforts"(???) before he calls them "mercenaries." Arky says that the military is just a tool for the imperialists in our government who will eventually/soon overthrow all those not in love with war for the sake of war.... and has produced a torrent of vituperation, profanity, and revulsion spewed towards him.
I find myself overcome with real grief. Arkin himself is a small, contemptible little shriveled ball of hate. God forbid that we who disagree with him become like him.
I find myself overcome with real grief. Arkin himself is a small, contemptible little shriveled ball of hate. God forbid that we who disagree with him become like him.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Habeas Corpus is dead
On September 27, 2006, Congress voted in HR 6166 into law as the Military
Commissions Act of 2006. With it, Habeas Corpus is under a death sentence. It is not presently dead simply because the fed has no desire at present to bury it. However, do not deceive yourself. This bedrock of jurisprudence is legally dismantled.
The salient portion of the Act runs:
"No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider
an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an
alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United
States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting
such determination."
What the act does is give the executive branch the power to declare not just aliens (I don't have a problem with that, they are not citizens and thus not afforded the rights of citizens) but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."
Anyone who donates money to a charity on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely now.
Any citizen could be convicted on the basis of coerced testimony and hearsay by a military tribunal, and NOT afforded the judicial protectections afforded him under the Constitution. Theoretically, without a smattering of judicial review (I don't consider military judicial review the same as civil review), a citizen could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant," held without trial for unlimited period of time, tried in a military court, and even be put to death.
And no one could challenge this in court.
Habeas corpus is a fundamental right that the state does not have the power to lock you up forever arbitrarily and without review of a court. The constitution provided for both the court structure and the consequent legal structures built into our judicial systems.
I usually don't have time or patience for the howling chicken littles who proclaim "fascism" at every turn and see the collapse of the constitution on a daily basis. This one really scares me, though.
Commissions Act of 2006. With it, Habeas Corpus is under a death sentence. It is not presently dead simply because the fed has no desire at present to bury it. However, do not deceive yourself. This bedrock of jurisprudence is legally dismantled.
The salient portion of the Act runs:
"No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider
an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an
alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United
States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting
such determination."
What the act does is give the executive branch the power to declare not just aliens (I don't have a problem with that, they are not citizens and thus not afforded the rights of citizens) but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."
Anyone who donates money to a charity on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely now.
Any citizen could be convicted on the basis of coerced testimony and hearsay by a military tribunal, and NOT afforded the judicial protectections afforded him under the Constitution. Theoretically, without a smattering of judicial review (I don't consider military judicial review the same as civil review), a citizen could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant," held without trial for unlimited period of time, tried in a military court, and even be put to death.
And no one could challenge this in court.
Habeas corpus is a fundamental right that the state does not have the power to lock you up forever arbitrarily and without review of a court. The constitution provided for both the court structure and the consequent legal structures built into our judicial systems.
I usually don't have time or patience for the howling chicken littles who proclaim "fascism" at every turn and see the collapse of the constitution on a daily basis. This one really scares me, though.
Do Greedy Spinach Merchants Want To Kill You?
Lew Rockwell has a great post on the difference between the market correcting its own mistakes and the government getting involved.
Rational basis for banning gay marriage?
Ann Althouse (one of the better commentators on the law today) surmises that "rational basis scrutiny is the appropriate level of review" for this issue.
My problem with this approach is that "rational" has ceased to mean "using reason" and has devolved into Rationalism in its more refined form of using human thought apart from revelation at all to derive truth.
My comment: It depends really on what you believe the basis for rationality itself is. It is not enough just to declare that arguing against order presupposes it (it does).
The problem with many good and insightful thinkers is that they are standing with both feet planted firmly in the air. That is, you presuppose an ordered, moral universe and ignore the metaethical questions that such a worldview demands. In doing so, you slip in a utilitarian assumption with the deftness worthy of a card sharp (I don't think you see it yourselves, frankly).
Rationality itself demands presuppositions which land you in "Moralsville," where you MUST let those damned fundamentalists have a place a the table. Of course, that changes the whole nature of the debate.
My problem with this approach is that "rational" has ceased to mean "using reason" and has devolved into Rationalism in its more refined form of using human thought apart from revelation at all to derive truth.
My comment: It depends really on what you believe the basis for rationality itself is. It is not enough just to declare that arguing against order presupposes it (it does).
The problem with many good and insightful thinkers is that they are standing with both feet planted firmly in the air. That is, you presuppose an ordered, moral universe and ignore the metaethical questions that such a worldview demands. In doing so, you slip in a utilitarian assumption with the deftness worthy of a card sharp (I don't think you see it yourselves, frankly).
Rationality itself demands presuppositions which land you in "Moralsville," where you MUST let those damned fundamentalists have a place a the table. Of course, that changes the whole nature of the debate.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
You HAVE to check out this video
It is a shot of an Iranian mullah who got a little worked up. It has evidently been on the web for some time, but I just found it. Someone posted it with the music score from a European techno band named 42 O Zone. The song is "Balla la di." I could not stop laughing. I especially got a kick out of the guy draped in a green shawl on the left.
God help us if these loons ever get nukes.
I hope you enjoy.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
For those who did not hear last week or so...
Syd Barrett has died. A gifted genius, he was the guitarist and driving force behind Pink Floyd, until he was replaced by David Gilmour. He completely ruined his mind with drugs, and spent the last 30 years or so of his life in and out of mental institutions, living in solitude with his mother......, (if you are wondering where some of the allusions to "Mother" come from in The Wall). He was miserable, insane, in poor health (diabetes) and mentally ruined. "To kill, steal and destroy" are the operative terms for those who read the old book.
I pray the grace and peace this poor guy missed on earth are found in eternity.
I pray the grace and peace this poor guy missed on earth are found in eternity.
Health Care, Government, Efficiency and the Consumer
I read a really fine article by Milton Friedman (one of my heroes) on the state of Medical Care in the USA.
It was so good that I thought I would quote it below:
We have a socialist-communist system of distributing medical care. Instead of letting people hire their own physicians and pay them, no one pays his or her own medical bills. Instead, there's a third party payment system. It is a communist system and it has a communist result. Despite this, we've had numerous miracles in medical science. From the discovery of penicillin, to new surgical techniques, to MRIs and CAT scans, the last 30 or 40 years have been a period of miraculous change in medical science. On the other hand, we've seen costs skyrocket. Nobody is happy: physicians don't like it, patients don't like it. Why? Because none of them are responsible for themselves. You no longer have a situation in which a patient chooses a physician, receives a service, gets charged, and pays for it. There is no direct relation between the patient and the physician. The physician is an employee of an insurance company or an employee of the government. Today, a third party pays the bills. As a result, no one who visits the doctor asks what the charge is going to be—somebody else is going to take care of that. The end result is third party payment and, worst of all, third party treatment.
Here is a link to the article.
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