"Despite what you might have heard about the US government making money from the bailout, the TARP investments are currently down about $148 billion..."
Clusterstock.com cites Matt Taibbi: "This is sort of like calculating the returns on a mutual fund by only counting the stocks in the fund that have gone up. Forgetting for a moment that TARP is only slightly relevant in the entire bailout scheme — more on that in a moment — the TARP calculations are a joke, apparently leaving out huge future losses from AIG and Citigroup and others in the red. Since only a small portion of the debt has been put down by the best borrowers, and since the borrowers in the worst shape haven’t retired their obligations yet, it’s crazy to make any conclusions about TARP, pure sophistry. Moreover, a think tank set up to analyze TARP, Ethisphere, calculated in June that TARP was still $148 billion down overall, a debt of over $1200 per American. To start talking about what a success TARP is now is beyond meaningless."
"In light of all this, the Fed’s decision to brag publicly about a few loans that are actually performing is sort of scary — it speaks to a level of intellectual desperation and magical-thinking unusual even for a banker in the subprime/MBS era," Taibbi writes.
HEADLINING THE FINANCIAL NEWS THIS MORNING, REPORTS SUCH AS THIS:
"The Federal Reserve has made $14 billion in profits on loans made in the last two years..."
Charles wants to know: Does the media flim-flam us on purpose, or do its editors, reporters, and writers not know better?
Let's go to MarketTicker.org, where Karl Denninger has reacted to a New York Times story of this sort:
The problem is that this "accounting" is terribly misleading. It ignores the more than $100 billion passed through AIG to Goldman Sachs and others, for example - money that is almost certain to never be recovered.
The government still faces potentially huge long-term losses from its bailouts of the insurance giant American International Group, the mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the automakers General Motors and Chrysler. The Treasury Department could also take a hit from its guarantees on billions of dollars of toxic mortgages.
No really? Fannie and Freddie are a potential five trillion dollar bomb that the government has refused to take on its balance sheet for fear it may detonate on the US credit rating (yes, the rating of the NATION, not of a company.) This fear is not unfounded; with some 13% of all mortgages currently "non-performing" (either in default or foreclosure), a record, and a "cure rate" down from the 40% range to 6% for prime mortgages, there is every reason to believe that many of these losses will become realized.
“The taxpayers want their money back and they want the government out of our banking system,” Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican and a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel examining the relief program, said in an interview.
The taxpayers aren't going to get their money back, and the government has done exactly nothing to force the disclosure of losses that are currently being hidden by accounting games and even outright fraud. Indeed, if anything, the government has encouraged and made possible even more games.
... This sort of misleading "reporting" is an outrage. It is one thing to be hopeful, but it is entirely different to publish things that you either know or should have known are absolutely false in an attempt to burnish the patina of a fraud-laced pair of Administrations in Washington DC along with the agencies that are their handmaidens.
Posted by Lew Rockwell on August 29, 2009 03:33 PM
Writes t3h sauce:
Just thought you might find this a little funny. This online video game, consisting of hundreds of thousands of players who control every aspect of the game universe, just suffered an enormous economic calamity due to player-controlled bankers engaging in Fractional Reserve Banking. When players got wind of the fraudulent practice, it prompted a bank run. Minus central banking, Fractional Reserve Banking can’t even survive in a video game!
FOR THE ECONOMY (ALTHOUGH IF YOU GOT A CHECK AT THEEXPENSE OF THE NATIONAL DEBT, YOU MIGHT HAVE A DIFFERENT OPINION)
The long run inflationary consequences of the bailouts of our financial system has sent us on a path of national ruin, famed economist Peter Boettke argues.
Despite the short term gains in the stock market and what looks like the start of an economic recovery, the cycle of debt, deficits and government expansion will be economically crippling, he says. - Clusterstock.com
I do not recall this in my lifetime. A majority in the House of Representatives has co-signed H.R. 1207, a bill introduced by Ron Paul to have the Federal Reserve System audited by an independent government agency, the Comptroller General's office... It would be easy for Congressman Frank to hold hearings on the bill. This would allow Dr. Paul to bring in expert witnesses on the FED to make the case for an independent audit. It would get a lot of YouTube play. It would be the first time since the replacement of eccentric Congressman Wright Patman in 1975 as the chairman of the House Banking Committee that the FED has been exposed to anything like serious criticism in Congress. (Patman, an inflationist and a greenbacker, hated the FED. He was chairman of the House Banking Committee, 1965–75.) Congressman Frank has yet to announce hearings.
There was a posting on the DailyPaul site that Frank will hold hearings soon. Someone heard it on the radio. I will believe it when I see the YouTube videos...
Now Ron Paul's book, End the Fed, is about to be published. It is expected to become a best-seller. Think about this. There have been books attacking the Federal Reserve System for over ninety years, but they have been written by obscure people who no one in the general public has heard of. They have not sold well. They have not been written by someone who persuaded over half of the House of Representatives to support a bill to audit the FED. They have not been written by someone who once raised over $30 million in a run for President.
This is unprecedented. For the first time in the history of the Federal Reserve System, there are literally millions of people who have heard of the FED and who would like to see it shut down...
CONCLUSION
The FED has never had to play defense. It has had a free ride. The free ride is over.
The general public has still not heard of the FED. The FED still has the advantage of invisibility. But it is losing that invisibility. This is not going to change.
The FED is a legitimate target for people who think the government botches the economy. It is the classic example of the much-praised government-business alliance. It is the consummate model of that alliance. When it fails to achieve its twin official goals of low unemployment and low price inflation, millions of its economic victims will figure out who the culprit is.
These people (Congress) are relentless and dangerous. They want to control every aspect of our lives, and it seems they will succeed in doing so.
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license. Read the rest...
IF YOU GET TIRED OF THE USUAL SUSPECTS AND THEIR SHAMELESS PARTISANSHIP AND DUPLICITY, YOU'LL LIKE THIS ONE:
28 August 2009 Editor, The New York Times 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018
To the Editor:
Noting that "it's important to have some perspective," Paul Krugman argues that while Uncle Sam's budget deficit is now large, "we also have a huge economy, which means that things aren't as scary as you might think" ("Till Debt Does Its Part," August 28). Whew! No cause for much concern, for the size of America's GDP swamps the size of the budget deficit.
During the Bush years, however, Mr. Krugman preached a different gospel. For example, in his February 11, 2005 column - devoted to condemning tax cuts - he insisted that "the deficit is indeed a major problem."
So let's take Mr. Krugman's advice and get some perspective. In 2005, when Mr. Krugman insisted that government's budget deficit was "indeed a major problem," that deficit was 2.5 percent of GDP. Today, when Mr. Krugman no longer is very concerned about the budget deficit, that deficit will be about 11 percent of GDP.
Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Chairman, Department of Economics George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030
Declan McCullagh, LewRockwell.com: One of the problems with any proposed law that's over 1,000 pages long and constantly changing is that much deviltry can lie in the details. Take the Democrats' proposal to rewrite health care policy, better known as H.R. 3200 or by opponents as "Obamacare."
Section 431(a) of the bill says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted gross income, the number of dependents, and "other information as is prescribed by" regulation. That information will be provided to the new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs and used to determine who qualifies for "affordability credits."
Section 245(b)(2)(A) says the IRS must divulge tax return details – there's no specified limit on what's available or unavailable – to the Health Choices Commissioner. The purpose, again, is to verify "affordability credits."
Section 1801(a) says that the Social Security Administration can obtain tax return data on anyone who may be eligible for a "low-income prescription drug subsidy" but has not applied for it.
Over at the Institute for Policy Innovation (a free-market think tank and presumably no fan of Obamacare), Tom Giovanetti argues that: "How many thousands of federal employees will have access to your records? The privacy of your health records will be only as good as the most nosy, most dishonest and most malcontented federal employee.... So say good-bye to privacy from the federal government. It was fun while it lasted for 233 years."
NEOCON WARMONGER TONY BLANKLEY COMPARES LBJ'S VIETNAM FOLLY TO OBAMA IN AFGHANISTAN!
It's worth the read...
... President Obama has a hard decision to make. Because things are going worse than expected in Afghanistan, it will take longer and require more sacrifice of American blood and treasure to succeed (if we can succeed even then) than was believed to be the case last year. Moreover, political support for the president is likely to be uneven at best.
So in this already politically difficult summer of 2009, President Obama must bring a higher level of intellectual integrity and moral courage to his go/no-go war decision than Lyndon Johnson was capable of 45 years ago. Notwithstanding his prior and current commitment to prosecute the war in Afghanistan -- and notwithstanding the ambiguous political effect of his decision -- he owes it to both himself and the many young service members who soon may be shipping out to make a new, cold calculation of whether he believes that he has a reasonable chance of successfully leading us in this new stage of the war. I don't envy him his job at the moment.
Mish highlights an article by by Paul Farrell of MarketWatch and reminds us of his Fed Uncertainty Principle:
Uncertainty Principle Corollary Number Two
The government/quasi-government body most responsible for creating this mess (the Fed), will attempt a big power grab, purportedly to fix whatever problems it creates. The bigger the mess it creates, the more power it will attempt to grab. Over time this leads to dangerously concentrated power into the hands of those who have already proven they do not know what they are doing.
To his shock, surgeons from the same team told him that not only was his appendix still inside him, but it had ruptured - a potentially fatal complication.
In a second operation it was finally removed, leaving Mr Wattson fearing another organ might have been taken out during the first procedure.
The blunder has left Mr Wattson jobless, as bosses at the shop where he worked did not believe his story and sacked him.
Mr Wattson told of the moment he realised there had been a serious mistake.
'I was lying on a stretcher in terrible pain and a doctor came up to me and said that my appendix had burst,' he said.
'I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I told these people I had my appendix out just four weeks earlier but there it was on the scanner screen for all to see.
'I thought, "What the hell did they slice me open for in the first place?"
IF WE JUST PUT THE GOV IN CHARGE OF HEALTH CARE...
EVERY MORNING OUR FRONT YARDS WILL BE COVERED WITH CHOCOLATE MERINGUE PIE.
From the Daily Mail in the UK (which has, what's the term?- oh yeah, single payer health care):
Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.
The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets - even a caravan - went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.
Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full.
Latest figures show that over the past two years there were at least:
63 births in ambulances and 608 in transit to hospitals;
117 births in A&E departments, four in minor injury units and two in medical assessment areas;
115 births on other hospital wards and 36 in other unspecified areas including corridors;
399 in parts of maternity units other than labour beds, including postnatal and antenatal wards and reception areas.
Additionally, overstretched maternity units shut their doors to any more women in labour on 553 occasions last year.
Babies were born in offices, lifts, toilets and a caravan, according to the Freedom of Information data for 2007 and 2008 from 117 out of 147 trusts which provide maternity services.
Should be a blessing and the major subject of medical inquiry - instead it's a major threat to Big Pharma! Wired:It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.
The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis. The stakes could hardly be higher. In today's economy, the fate of a long-established company can hang on the outcome of a handful of tests.
Why are inert pills suddenly overwhelming promising new drugs and established medicines alike?
... Ironically, Big Pharma's attempt to dominate the central nervous system has ended up revealing how powerful the brain really is. The placebo response doesn't care if the catalyst for healing is a triumph of pharmacology, a compassionate therapist, or a syringe of salt water. All it requires is a reasonable expectation of getting better. That's potent medicine.
"The truth doesn't need to be completely suppressed. It just needs to be delayed until it no longer matters."
- Napoleon
AFTER SIX LONG YEARS...
Bradblog.com: Just over two weeks ago, FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds was finally allowed to speak about much of what the Bush Administration spent years trying to keep her from discussing publicly on the record. Twice gagged by the Bush Dept. of Justice's invocation of the so-called "State Secrets Privilege," Edmonds has been attempting to tell her story, about the crimes she became aware of while working for the FBI, for years.
... her remarkable allegations of blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, and criminal conspiracy by current and former members of the U.S. Congress, high-ranking State and Defense Department officials, and agents of the government of Turkey are seen and heard here, in full, for the first time, in her under-oath deposition.
... Edmonds' on-the-record disclosures also include bombshell details concerning outed covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's front company, Brewster Jennings. Edmonds alleges the front company had actually been shut down in August of 2001 --- three years prior to Bob Novak's public disclosure of the covert operative's identity --- following a tip-off to a wire-tap target about the true nature of the CIA front company. The cover was blown, Edmonds alleges, by Marc Grossman, who was, at the time, the third highest-ranking official in the U.S. State Department. Prior to that, Grossman served as ambassador to Turkey. He now works "for a Turkish company called Ihals Holding," according to Edmonds' testimony.
AS A HUGE JOKE, UTTERS NOT A WORD ABOUT CONGRESSIONAL PROFLIGACY!
The economy could spiral into hyperinflation not seen since the early 1980s if the Federal Reserve does not tighten its monetary policy soon, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) warned Tuesday.
Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said that inflation as a result from government spending on bailouts could result in inflation rivaling rates in 1980, when it hit a peak of 13.5 percent.
"The Fed has the ability to put money out, it's got the ability to take money back in, and if they don't do that, we will have hyperinflation worse than we had in 1980 and '81," Grassley said. "And I hope he demonstrates that ability."
Grassley argued that while it would be a year until lawmakers will know whether Bernanke has been successful at bringing inflation under control, it would probably be best to keep the chairman on board for a second term as head of the Federal Reserve.
BERNANKE'S REAPPOINTMENT CAMPAIGN HAS BEEN A SUCCESS!
Mish: Few think a W or L shaped recession is possible. The S&P PE is an insane 145. Yes, that is backward looking. But what forward earnings does everyone expect given consumer attitudes towards consumption have changed for good and boomers heading into retirement are scared to death?
Whatever those earnings expectations are, disappointments are likely. Either earnings will miss targets, or the stock market will sink anyway because the earnings and then some have long been priced in. However, that is tomorrow's business. Today's business is about buying into the rally hook line and sinker, just as the charlatan wizards have hoped.
REPORTS: OBAMA TO NOMINATE BERNANKE FOR A SECOND TERM!
LET'S SEE NOW...
As Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors in October 2005, he told Congress that he wasn't worried about a housing bubble. A half-year later, in March 2006, as the mortgage meltdown began to pick up speed, he testified a Fed chairman that problems in the subprime market were "contained."
Of course, Bernanke was on board with Greenspan or at the helm himself as the Fed frothed up the real estate and mortgage bubbles to begin with.
He demonstrates an utter confusion about the nature of inflation, uttering fatuous tautologies such as, "A rough stabilizaton of commodity prices, even at high levels, would result in a relative moderation of inflation."
And he's going to be re-appointed? It almost reminds one of Bush who persistently promoted people who had failed to positions of ever more responsibility.
Editor, Washington Post 1150 15th St., NW Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
E.J. Dionne alleges that Uncle Sam's massive deficit spending during the past year helped save the economy from a "cataclysmic" failure ("Why We Didn't Crash," August 24). This claim is fishy.
If economies are buoyed by massive deficit spending, then it's difficult to explain why the economy tanked in the first place. When George W. Bush became President in 2001, Uncle Sam's budget was in surplus by $128 billion. Starting in 2002, however, and continuing until today, Uncle Sam has been on a budget-busting spending spree. From 2002 through 2007 (the year before the economy started to crash), Washington's cumulative budget deficits amounted to $1.68 TRILLION dollars. (The deficit for 2008 added another $458.6 billion to this fat figure.) Moreover, total spending by the federal government was, in inflation-adjusted dollars, 25 percent higher in 2007 than it was in 2001.
One can always argue that these deficits were ill-timed or too small. But an argument at least equally compelling is that deficit spending in fact does not keep economies humming along smoothly.
Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Chairman, Department of Economics George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030
Posted by Lew Rockwell on August 23, 2009 01:51 PM
Do your part to give Ben Bernanke and the rest of the gang a nightmare, by preordering Ron’s historic new book, so it can debut at #1 on Amazon.com on its publication date.
Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife’s Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?
This morning I’ll be escorting my wife to the hospital, where the doctors will perform a caesarean section to remove our first child. She didn’t want to do it this way – neither of us did – but sometimes the Fates decide otherwise. The Fates or, in our case, government employees....
AMERICANS LEARN NOTHING FROM WORLD WAR II OR FROM CURRENT ECONOMIC TURMOIL!
As the Barack Obama administration struggles to devise a strategy for dealing with Iran's intransigence on the uranium-enrichment issue, it appears to be gravitating toward the imposition of an international embargo on gasoline sales to that country.
... frightening scenarios could unfold if the US and its closest allies seek to enforce an embargo by establishing a naval blockade in waters off Iran and stopping ships thought to be violating the ban. Given the high likelihood of cheating, such a blockade would probably be necessary for the embargo to prove effective. But such a move could be considered an act of war, and might well invite retaliation by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps - which sports its own small-ship navy.
An eerie preview of such a scenario occurred in January 2008, when five Iranian speedboats approached several American warships in the Strait of Hormuz and, according to some reports, threatened to blow them up. One US ship, the USS Hopper, was on the brink of opening fire on the Iranian boats when they veered off, ending the engagement.
It is easy to imagine similar scenes - with less benign outcomes - repeating themselves, in the event that American warships attempt to blockade Iranian territory. Once shots are fired, under whatever circumstances, it could prove difficult to avoid escalation to more robust military means, leading to the war scenario the embargo was intended to avert.
... an oil embargo appears especially risky, both because it would strengthen the hand of conservative clerics in Tehran and it could entail a naval blockade, setting off a chain reaction of violent moves. Administration officials should, therefore, scrutinize this option very rigorously before it becomes the preferred response to an Iranian rebuff in September.
“Next week we will discuss the master’s work.” So stated Dr. Hans Sennholz to close his graduate seminar during my junior year at Grove City College. I had owned a copy of Human Action since my freshman year, but the book was too daunting for me to really study it. I preferred to read Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson or Ludwig von Mises’s Planning for Freedom, or Sennholz’s own The Age of Inflation. But I had read those works thoroughly. And by this time I had already taken a year-long history-of-thought course at Grove City, in which I read classics such as Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, J. B. Say’s Treatise in Political Economy, and John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. I also had read Mises’s Socialism and F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.
Because I was a serious student of free-market economics, Sennholz invited me to join his “graduate seminar,” which met on Wednesday nights and read the classics. That year we read Carl Menger’s Principles and Investigations and Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s Capital and Interest. So on Sennholz’s orders I picked up my copy of Human Action and went to the library every night until I had read the book cover to cover. Thanks to my undergraduate mind and the speed with which I tried to absorb the material, I missed much more than I comprehended.
But what I did comprehend changed my life.
It was that experience more than any other that made me realize I wanted to be an economist–not just an advocate for the free market. A year later I applied, and was accepted, to law school, but decided to defer that and attend graduate school in economics instead. Studying economics in the way Mises described the discipline in Human Action seemed the appropriate path.
Over the next year I worked to clear up my misunderstandings of Mises by reading Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State and Percy Greaves’s Mises Made Easier. Then in the second semester of my senior year I reread Human Action for a senior project for Sennholz on the methodenstreit (the Austrians’ battle with the German Historical school over the legitimacy of economic theory) and the relationship between Mises and Max Weber.
A year later, when I started graduate school at George Mason University, Professor Don Lavoie impressed me when, in an undergraduate course, he held up Human Action and said to the students, “This is the greatest book ever written in economics. I love this book.” I understand what Lavoie meant. For the past 20 years I have had the good fortune to be able to use Human Action in at least one Ph.D. course every year.
No Substitute
To the American student of economics, Rothbard’s presentation in Man, Economy and State might be more straightforward than Human Action, and Israel Kirzner’s discussion in Competition and Entrepreneurship picks up more naturally than Human Action from where intermediate price theory leaves off. But to the serious student of Austrian economics, there is no substitute for a thorough reading of Human Action. Even Hayek’s Individualism and Economic Order is best read as a complement to Mises’s great work, certainly not as a substitute if you hope to understand not only Hayek’s thought and argument, but also how markets actually work and why government cannot effectively regulate, let alone plan, a modern economy.
Since it was first published, Mises’s great work has been misunderstood. It is not primarily a work in methodology; it simply lays out the methodological foundations at the beginning. It is not primarily a work about the failures of government and the superiority of the market economy, though that is a logical conclusion to draw from the work’s analysis of interventionism and socialism. It is not primarily a work in market theory and the price system, though it does place a priority on entrepreneurship and the quest for profit and the discipline of loss. It is not primarily a work dealing with money, capital, and interest, but it does devote considerable time to the coordination of economic activities through time and devotes considerable space to the nature of money and capital and the role played by interest. Finally, Human Action is not focused on the wages of workers or the pattern of international trade, but it does lay out the economic theory of factor pricing, the principle of comparative advantage in the allocation of labor, and the international division of labor and the gains from specialization and exchange.
Human Action is not exclusively any one of these things precisely because it is all of these and more. Mises wrote economics not as a series of specialized topics, but as an integrated whole grounded in the consistent and persistent study of the logic of purposive human action.
In my view there have been two great defining characteristics of economics since its birth as a discipline in the eighteenth century: the market economy’s self-regulating capacity (the invisible hand) and self-interest (rational choice). Self-regulation was the great discovery of the Schoolmen of Salamanca, the French Physiocrats, and the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers. The Austrian school of economics represents the modern refinement of this classical theory of spontaneous order. Mises inherited it from Smith, Say, Menger, and Böhm-Bawerk and developed the argument further. The unhampered market economy corrects itself through price adjustments; losses, which weed out imprudent decision makers; and profits for prudent decision makers. In the process the market directs scarce resources into wealth-creating activi ties and general prosperity. Through relative prices and profit-and-loss accounting, individuals’ exchanges and innovations align technology and resource availability with consumer preferences.
Coordination of Consumption and Production
One sign of Mises’s genius is that his demonstration of this harmonization was more thorough than any before him. He showed how purposive action within the institution of private property coordinates consumption desires and production plans according to the least-cost methods of production. The private-property market economy mobilizes individual initiative and enables people to rationally calculate the alternative uses of scarce resources. Consumers, buying and abstaining from buying, create profits and losses that guide business decisions and coordinate economic plans through time.
Mises’s work on rational economic calculation provided the decisive argument against socialism, but it also explains the foundation of the market order. The free market enables calculation, socialism makes it impossible, and interventionism distorts it. Without private property, freedom of contract, monetary stability, and fiscal responsibility, the process of rational economic calculation is thwarted.
Adam Smith articulated the idea of the invisible hand, but it was Mises who explained how the market economy actually works. Human Action is Mises’s fullest and finest statement of that explanation.
To put it bluntly, Human Action is the greatest work in economics in the twentieth century. It is the treatise in economics.
...Not surprisingly, government bureaucrats and Communist Party officials, as early as 1921 (three years after Lenin's socialization of medicine), realized that the egalitarian system of healthcare was good only for their personal interest as providers, managers, and rationers — but not as private users of the system.
So, as in all countries with socialized medicine, a two-tier system was created: one for the "gray masses" and the other, with a completely different level of service, for the bureaucrats and their intellectual servants. In the USSR, it was often the case that while workers and peasants were dying in the state hospitals, the medicine and equipment that could save their lives was sitting unused in the nomenklatura system.
At the end of the socialist experiment, the official infant-mortality rate in Russia was more than 2.5 times as high as in the United States and more than five times that of Japan. The rate of 24.5 deaths per 1,000 live births was questioned recently by several deputies to the Russian Parliament, who claim that it is seven times higher than in the United States. This would make the Russian death rate 55 compared to the US rate of 8.1 per 1,000 live births.
Having said that, I should make it clear that the United States has one of the highest rates of the industrialized world only because it counts all dead infants, including premature babies, which is where most of the fatalities occur.
Most countries do not count premature-infant deaths. Some don't count any deaths that occur in the first 72 hours. Some countries don't even count any deaths from the first two weeks of life. In Cuba, which boasts a very low infant-mortality rate, infants are only registered when they are several months old, thereby leaving out of the official statistics all infant deaths that take place within the first several months of life...
Real "savings" in a socialized healthcare system could be achieved only by squeezing providers and denying care — there is no other way to save. The same arguments were used to defend the cotton farming in the South prior to the Civil War. Slavery certainly "reduced costs" of labor, "eliminated the waste" of bargaining for wages, and avoided "unnecessary duplication and parallelism."
In supporting the call for socialized medicine, American healthcare professionals are like sheep demanding the wolf: they do not understand that the high cost of medical care in the United States is partially based on the fact that American healthcare professionals have the highest level of remuneration in the world. Another source of the high cost of our healthcare is existing government regulations on the industry, regulations that prevent competition from lowering the cost. Existing rules such as "certificates of need," licensing, and other restrictions on the availability of healthcare services prevent competition and, therefore, result in higher prices and fewer services.
Socialized medical systems have not served to raise general health or living standards anywhere. In fact, both analytical reasoning and empirical evidence point to the opposite conclusion. But the dismal failure of socialized medicine to raise people's health and longevity has not affected its appeal for politicians, administrators, and their intellectual servants in search of absolute power and total control... Read the rest... Yuri Maltsev
"Charles Goyette makes a strong case for a coming dollar collapse, and provides a sensible plan to protect your wealth. Don't wait for the dollar to melt down---protect your assets before they melt down with it."
— Peter D. Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, Inc. and author of Crash Proof 2.0
Obama to raise 10-year deficit to $9 trillion!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to approximately $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.
New Freeman Celebrating Human Action's 60th Anniversary
Steve Horwitz
Under Sheldon Richman's excellent editorship, The Freeman's September issue celebrates the 60th anniversary of Mises's Human Action with articles by Boettke, Leeson, Kirzner, and Greaves among others. Sheldon's introduction along with links to the various articles is HERE. (The issue also includes an "It Just Ain't So" piece by yours truly on the claim that we are "saving too much.")
Two brief comments on the Mises appreciations.
1. Kirzner's is a recapitulation of the main theme of his FEE lecture that I posted the other day and was the subject of some critical back and forth. I suggest folks read this piece alongside his talk to get the full picture.
2. For those who think the two Petes are somehow anti-Misesian, a read of both of their contributions will clear up that fallacy. And Pete L nicely links one of the core insights of Human Action to his own research program in the endogenous evolution of rules and social cooperation. Both Petes also note how that book is the core of the courses in Austrian economics that they teach.
Thanks to Sheldon and FEE for the celebratory issue. I also happen to know that FEE filmed a whole series of short video interviews with Austrian economists reflecting on the meaning Human Action had for them. I'll let you know when those are up. Read the rest...
Posted by David Kramer on August 21, 2009 05:28 AM
White House Backs Right to Arms Outside Obama Events
Armed men seen mixing with protesters outside recent events held by President Obama acted within the law, the White House said Tuesday, attempting to allay fears of a security threat.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said people are entitled to carry weapons outside such events if local laws allow it. “There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally,” he said. “Those laws don’t change when the president comes to your state or locality.”
Now if the President would just read and obey the Constitution—which he swore to uphold.
The "Prince of Darkness" -- aka Robert Novak -- who died this week of a brain tumor was the Hunter Thompson of the right, albeit with predictable differences. Thompson, like Rimbaud, espoused a total disordering of all the senses -- with materials as varied as ayahuasca, LSD , cocaine and tequila whereas Novak stuck to booze. Thompson blew his brains out, whereas Novak fell prey to the Enemy Within - not Communism against which he inveighed for decades in the Cold War, but a brain tumor. Thompson was a gent from Louisville; Novak was a middle-class Lithuanian Jew from Illinois who joined the Catholic Church in the 1990s out of what he described as spiritual hunger, as surprising an admission from this brawler as discovering Mother Teresa shooting craps in Las Vegas. Thompson burned out long before his ashes were fired out of a gun in Aspen. Novak went on slugging, decade after decade until the tumor took him down. Just like the Right overall, Novak went the distance, whereas the Counter-Culture hung up the Out of Business sign sometime in the Nineties, finished off by identity politics and general self-satisfaction. But what both Thompson and Novak understood was that journalism is drama, with themselves playing a leading role...
I saw Novak in action on the campaign trail in the mid to late 1970s when he was an ardent partisan of Reagan against Gerald Ford and then Bush. It was when he picked up the nickname, The Prince of Darkness polishing up his persona as saturnine misanthrope, sailing towards stardom as a roughouser of the right on CNN. He would snarl out his questions, voice vibrant with incredulity at the evasive responses.
But Novak was not Pure Yahoo like talk radio’s Rush Limbaugh and his epigones. Limbaugh has always been a standard-issue, utterly cynical opportunist. Novak had a strong libertarian streak and once the war on Communism was won, became isolationist in instinct, opposing the Iraq war and supporting Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas. CounterPunch.org
Philip Giraldi, AntiWar.com If the seemingly unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ever do come to a close and a new war with Iran, Somalia, or Sudan can somehow be avoided, the most serious long term damage from the conflicts will be to the fundamental freedoms that Americans have cherished for more than two hundred years.
The erosion of America’s liberties has been driven by fear of terrorism but it is enabled by leaps in technology coupled with new legislation and a police state mentality that have made every citizen a target. Hate crimes and laws targeting the internet provide a framework that relies on advanced monitoring technology to criminalize behavior that would have been considered off limits for privacy reasons ten years ago.
... So welcome to the new world order. In five years, all internet will likely be monitored and regulated, following the German model. Hate crime legislation will make it illegal to criticize any group or country if it can plausibly or even implausibly be construed that such criticism reflects bias, permitting judges to silence anyone who opposes the status quo. Together, the technology and the new laws will quite possibly put the websites that readers of Antiwar.com peruse daily out of business.
Crude futures eclipse $74 a barrel, the highest level this year!
(MarketWatch) - Crude-oil futures rose above $74 a barrel Friday to their highest level in 2009 buoyed by weakness in the dollar and by positive U.S. and European economic data.
In contrast, natural-gas futures fell sharply to end at a fresh seven-year low, pressured by a glut in supplies.
Crude oil for October delivery rose 98 cents to end at $73.89 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The October contract surged 6.1% this week.
Earlier Friday, October crude futures rose to an intraday high of $74.72 a barrel in electronic trading on Globex. That's the highest level for a front-month contract since late 2008, according to FactSet Research data.
"Crude oil is trading to the upside today due to the strength we are seeing in the equity markets and weakness in the dollar," said Tariq Zahir, managing member at Tyche Capital Advisors LLC.
HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR WAS PUSHED TO RAISE TERROR ALERTS TO AID BUSH REELECTION!
RawStory.com: A remarkable detail to be published in former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's soon-to-be-released book asserts that the Bush Administration attempted to wield the color-coded terror alert system for political gain -- a charge often leveled by Democrats but not previously confirmed by a high-ranking Bush Administration official.
TEXAS JUDGE ASKED TO SUPPRESS BOOK ON EMINENT DOMAIN ABUSE!
Land Grabbing Developer Doesn't Like Author's Opinions!
George Will, WashingtonPost.com: H. Walker Royall, a Dallas developer, already had designs on some property that for more than a decade has belonged to the Gore family shrimping business in coastal Freeport. In 2003, Royall signed an agreement with that city's government to build a yacht marina, hotel and condominiums using property the city would seize by eminent domain.
The day after the Supreme Court made its Kelo mistake, Freeport intensified its pressure against the Gores, whose stout resistance caught the gimlet eye of Carla Main. An experienced journalist (former associate editor of the National Law Journal, she has written for the Wall Street Journal, National Review and numerous other publications), Main has recounted the case in her book "Bulldozed: 'Kelo,' Eminent Domain and the American Lust for Land." Her thesis is that many "takings" of property for economic development are taking a terrible toll on the rights of everyday Americans.
In October 2008, Royall sued Main and her publisher (Encounter Books), seeking monetary damages and a ban on further production and distribution of the book. He also sued the Galveston newspaper that reviewed the book and the reviewer. A judge dismissed, on jurisdictional grounds, Royall's suit against Richard Epstein, professor of law at the University of Chicago and New York University, whose offense was a dust-jacket endorsement of the book as a report on an "unholy alliance" between government and a private interest....
Indeed, so slapdash are Royall's accusations against Main that his suit seems to reflect nothing more substantial than his dislike of her opinions and those of people she accurately quotes. It seems intended to chill commentary on eminent domain abuse by exposing commentators to the steep costs of deflecting even frivolous litigation.
The stories of Glenn Beck boycotts have been picking up steam. Companies boycotting Beck – for his anti-Obama remarks – are CVS, Travelocity, Best Buy, GEICO, ConAgra, Radio Shack, Men’s Wearhouse, State Farm, Proctor & Gamble, Sargento, Wal-Mart, and the bailed-out GMAC Financial Services. Wal-Mart, following its support of government-run health care for the purpose of hurting its competitors, is now firmly in the regime camp. There’s some amazing stuff on the DailyDish regarding this boycott. Conor Clarke says:
As you probably know, Fox host Glenn Beck has been losing lots of advertisers — about 20 so far, including Wal-Mart, CVS and GEICO — for calling Barack Obama a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” I clicked around to see what people on the right were saying about the donnybrook, and found this page from RedState.org, which appears to be organizing a counter boycott, or is at least offering the sinister warning that “there will be repercussions from our side if [these companies] are so willing to become pawns of the left.”
…And yet I cannot help but think there is a crucial difference between GEICO’s decision to drop Glenn Beck and RedState’s decision to drop GEICO. The difference is this: Wal-Mart has a good reason to boycott Beck, because Beck actually did something idiotic and indefensible. It simply is not true that Obama is a racist. And what’s this business about “the white culture,” anyway? Tell us a bit more about that, Glenn.
RedState does not have a similarly reasonable claim — or a substantive argument at all — unless they are seriously interested in defending what Beck said on the merits. (Are they? Is anyone? Let’s have that argument, pretty please.) The argument for boycotting the boycotters should be more than “free speech is awesome,” since the right to free speech doesn’t guarantee you the right to massive corporate underwriting.
Hey Conor, free speech is sure awesome when, on the left, any resistance to oppressive and unwanted socialist government programs is deemed, without proof, question, or logic, to be “racism” on the part of a bunch of white (and black) people who are said to be resisting because they despise the fact that a black man is president. Any and all resistance to the federal government’s horde of new policies, programs, and attempts at socialization are all said to be based in “racist attitudes” from white folks in white hoods. (These are many of the same people that voted for the president.)
As this story reports, a black political organization, Color of Change (”changing the color of democracy”), is behind the boycott. What is so special about this organization? The American Spectatorspells it out. Over time, Beck has taken several jabs at Van Jones, Obama’s (black) Green Czar, just as he has at all of the regime’s Czars, as well as the whole concept of the government’s unelected, unaccountable Czars. Jones is an avowed Communist, by the way, which makes him a special target for Beck. The Spectator reports:
Jones is a founding board member of Color of Change, but Color of Change doesn’t want you to know that. Maybe having an avowed America-hating radical on the group’s board is bad public relations.
The group deleted references to Jones on its “about” page. That page used to say, “James Rucker and Van Jones came together in the wake of [Hurricane] Katrina to use the organizing power of the Internet to give Black Americans and our allies a renewed and strengthened political voice.”
That is Ken Rogoff, reflecting on the 1 year anniversary of the onset of the financial crisis.
Hat-tip to Greg Mankiw.
Why is it, though, that while we agree on what the consequences are, we disagree on how: (a) the current situation arose; (b) the current situation could have avoided them; and (c) the consequences of the financial crisis can be minimized rather than exacerbated?
Rogoff, however, did point out that: "The fact is global imbalances in debt and asset prices had been building up to a crescendo for years, and had reached the point where there was no easy way out." But Rogoff doesn't suggest that this situation is the inevitable consequence of an orgy of government activism. Businessmen neither were "drunk with profit" nor collectively stupid with respect to the business activity they were engaged in. There has to be a reason why businessmen were so highly leveraged, why they took the risk positions they did, and why they put themselves in such a vulnerable position. The real trick as far as economic explanation is concerned is to explain the "cluster of errors" in the investment sector that rational actors were led into by the manipulation of money and credit.
That was the task pre-Keynesian economists set for themselves, and once we finally end the Keynesian era in macroeconomic thinking and public policy, it will be the task of the economist again. Boettke's blog
Is it possible that Bush was actually the worst president ever? I’d say he’s a strong contender.
He started out with a gigantic lie – that he would cut the size of government, reduce taxes, and stay out of foreign wars – and things got much worse from there. Let’s look at just some of the highpoints in the catalog of disasters the Bush regime created.
No Child Left Behind. Forget about abolishing the Department of Education. Bush made the federal government a much more intrusive and costly part of local schools.
Project Safe Neighborhoods. A draconian law that further guts the 2nd Amendment, like 20,000 other unconstitutional gun laws before it.
Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. This the largest expansion of the welfare state since LBJ and will cost the already bankrupt Medicare system trillions more.
Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Possibly the most expensive and restrictive change to the securities laws since the ’30s. A major reason why companies will either stay private or go public outside the US.
Katrina. A total disaster of bureaucratic mismanagement, featuring martial law.
Ownership Society. The immediate root of the current financial crisis lies in Bush’s encouragement of easy credit to everybody and inflating the housing market.
Nationalizations and Bailouts. In response to the crisis he created, he nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and passed by far the largest bailouts in US history (until OBAMA!).
Free-Speech Zones. Originally a device for keeping war protesters away when Bush appeared on camera, they’re now used to herd.
The Patriot Act. This 132-page bill, presented for passage only 45 days after 9/11 (how is it possible to write something of that size and complexity in only 45 days?) basically allows the government to do whatever it wishes with its subjects. Warrantless searches. All kinds of communications monitoring. Greatly expanded asset forfeiture provisions.
The War on Terror. The scope of the War on Drugs (which Bush also expanded) is exceeded only by the war on nobody in particular but on a tactic. It’s become a cause of mass hysteria and an excuse for the government doing anything.
Invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush started two completely pointless, counterproductive, and immensely expensive wars, neither of which has any prospect of ending anytime soon.
Dept. of Homeland Security. This is the largest and most dangerous of all agencies, now with its own gigantic campus in Washington, DC. It will never go away and centralizes the functions of a police state.
Guantanamo. Hundreds of individuals, most of them (like the Uighurs recently in the news) guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, are incarcerated for years. A precedent is set for anyone who is accused of being an “enemy combatant” to be completely deprived of any rights at all.
Abu Ghraib and Torture. After imprisoning scores of thousands of foreign nationals, Bush made it a US policy to use torture to extract information, based on a suspicion or nothing but a guard’s whim. This is certainly one of the most damaging things to the reputation of the US ever. It says to the world, “We stand for nothing.”
The No-Fly List. His administration has placed the names of over a million people on this list, and it’s still growing at about 20,000 a month. I promise it will be used for other purposes in the future…
The TSA. Somehow the Bush cabal found 50,000 middle-aged people who were willing to go through their fellow citizens’ dirty laundry and take themselves quite seriously. God forbid you’re not polite to them…
Farm Subsidies. Farm subsidies are the antithesis of the free market. Rather than trying to abolish or cut them back, Bush signed a record $190 billion farm bill.
Legislative Free Ride. And he vetoed less of what Congress did than any other president in history.
WARREN BUFFETT: IT HAS BEEN A "GUSHER OF FEDERAL MONEY"
LET US BE CLEAR WHAT THAT MEANS: It has been a "gusher" a new federal debt!
Karl Denninger, Market-Ticker.org: This is similar to someone presenting in the emergency room with a severed femoral artery. By continually injecting huge amounts of blood you can prevent circulatory collapse and the death of the patient.
However, your ability to continue this path of "treatment" is limited by your supply of blood. If you do not repair the severed femoral artery before you run out of blood supply the patient will die.
We have done nothing about the severed femoral artery.
The government is trying to spark business and consumer spending through a $787 billion stimulus plan spanning tax cuts and infrastructure projects, while the Treasury and the Fed have spent billions more on separate programs to rescue financial institutions and resuscitate the banking system. The U.S. budget deficit is forecast to reach a record $1.841 trillion in the year that ends Sept. 30.
There's the draining of the blood bank. How much longer can we continue to draw on what our policy-makers seem to think is an unending credit supply of accumulated reserves in China and Japan?
... AND REMEMBERS AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE PRICE OF DARKNESS
AP: "Political columnist Robert Novak, a diehard conservative and pugilistic debater who became a household face on TV, has died after a battle with brain cancer.
His wife of 47 years, Geraldine Novak, told The Associated Press that he died at his home in Washington, D.C. early Tuesday. He was 78."
On September 11, 2003, I was introduced to Robert Novak, who was the featured speaker, at a Goldwater Institute luncheon at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Phoenix.
I had been discussing Novak's Valerie Plame column in which he had described her as a "CIA operative," on The Charles Goyette Show since its first appearance in July. I felt that the implications of Novak's column were serious - that it had the fingerprints of the Bush adminstration attempting to discredit Joe Wilson, a critic of the Iraq war - and that it was not getting the kind of media attention it deserved -- not unlike the Downing Street memos.
Since the story was being so badly neglected, I pressed Novak quite vigorously, both before and after his luncheon talk, for more details about his sources and for his thoughts about the gravity of the column.
He was clearly uncomfortable with the topic and would say little.
Finally after the event wound down, we found ourselves side by side out in front of the hotel as we waited for the parking valet to bring our cars around. Again I pursued the question of his sources on the story, to which Novak gave me this very specific reply: "I'll tell you one thing. It wasn't Karl Rove."
"It sure sounds like Karl Rove", I said.
"Well, it wasn't Rove. And that's all I'm going to tell you", said Novak.
I described the conversation with Novak on my show later that day, and have told the story on the air a time or two since. As far as I know, I was the only person who had gotten anything specific from Novak on his sources for the Wilson/Plame story until much later.
Incidentally, a couple of weeks after I spoke with Novak, Rove came to town for a fundraiser for one of Arizona's Republican congressmen. I gritted my teeth and attended the Camelback Inn luncheon, hoping to press Rove on the topic since nobody in Washington (is everybody there brain dead?) was doing much about it. But he was whisked in and out so fast it was impossible to get anything from him.
Novak's denial notwithstanding, I still thought Rove was one of the "two senior administration officials" that Novak had cited in his Plame/Wilson column.
Three years later, in July 2006, Novak confirmed that Rove was indeed one of those officials, which he had adamantly denied to me in 2003.
ALL THESE MONETARY SCHEMES... THEY'VE BEEN TRIED BEFORE!
John Law's 300 year old Mississippi Bubble debacle eerily similar to Fed policies.
Economist.com: The finances of the French government were in a terrible mess. Louis XIV had spent much of his long reign fighting expensive wars. Tax collection was in the hands of various agents, who were more concerned with enriching themselves than the state. Not only was the monarchy struggling to pay the interest on its debt, there was also a credit crunch in the form of a shortage of the gold and silver coins needed to fund economic activity.
Law’s insight was that economic activity could be boosted by the use of paper money that was not backed by gold and silver. He was well ahead of his time.
Establishing confidence in a new monetary system was the trickiest part. Law had the benefit of working for an absolute monarchy which could decree that taxes should be paid in the form of notes issued by his new bank, Banque Générale. He also believed, having observed the success of the Dutch in exploiting the spice trade in the East Indies, that France could use paper money to develop its colonial possessions. Hence the Mississippi scheme, under which Law created the Compagnie d’Occident to exploit trade opportunities in what is now the United States. The money raised from these share issues was used to repay the government’s debts; on occasion, Law’s bank lent investors the money to buy shares.
Turn this into modern economic jargon and Law could be described as creating a stimulus package for French economic activity.
To paraphrase Mark Twain: Be careful about passing healthcare legislation. You may die of a misprint.
Not having direct knowledge of the details within a proposed Bill does not apparently concern many in Congress, who are either Illiterate, Seditious, or both. They must also avoid reading the Constitution. It just sounds too much like another Indictment.
At every turn ObamaCare’s advocates are damning themselves with transparent rhetoric that constantly reveals their shallowness and their constitutional illiteracy – along with their nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance in office.
It was wicked when assorted neoconservative organs and tools presented antiwar activists such as Cindy Sheehan as something other than what they were. And it is still execrable now that the left-liberal news filters are tarring anti-Obamacare town hall protesters as something other than what they are.
Sheehan’s cause was just. She spoke stirringly against Bush’s crimes in Iraq. Yet again and again she was dismissed by the neoconservatives as a George-Soros sponsored stooge (the details of that particular conspiracy evade me).
The outcry against state takeover of medicine is in the best of traditions too. Yet the malpracticing media are discounting the fractious town-hall participants as proxies for corporate and political interests. And worse.
The job of the press is to report events, not blanket the facts with conjecture and interpretations that end up being absorbed into the narrative and serve to fuse fact with fancy. Moreover, it matters not with which organizations groups of demonstrators, left or right, seek solidarity. What matters is the case they present. The rest is ad hominem, which is where discourse in the US stands. Cronkite died the other day; news coverage croaked a long time ago. Read the rest... Illana Mercer at TakiMag.com
CHENEY MAKING IT CLEAR: Will Take Bush Down with Him!
C.I.A. VETERAN RAY McGOVERN DESCRIBES CHENEY'S NEW GAMBIT:
What Cheney is "urgently focused" on right now is staying out of prison. As he sits writing his memoir in his own Eagle’s Nest over his garage in a fancy Virginia suburb, Cheney is pulling out all the stops to ensure that he does not have to face the music for war crimes.
For Cheney, there apparently will be no trips to Paris. No, that’s where Rumsfeld almost got arrested two years ago. After a war-crimes complaint was lodged, he had to go out the back door of the embassy and dart to the airport for the first flight back to the U.S., before the Paris magistrate decided whether or not to detain him.
Angry at Bush, But Why?
I do think that Hayes, the pundits for Time, and Gellman have it right when they say that Cheney is angry with George W. Bush, but they are disingenuous about the reason why. They must have figured out that when Cheney vents his anger at Bush’s failure to pardon Libby, the ex-Vice President is really livid that Bush did not issue a blanket pardon for Cheney and other co-conspirators.
Cheney had every reason to expect the pardon (excusing crimes such as torture and launching an aggressive war by deceiving Congress), given that he seems to have engaged in those crimes with his boss’ full knowledge and encouragement.
Can these journalists be so dense that they miss this motive for Cheney’s anger? They paint a picture of a man intensely loyal to a favored subordinate; and that is no doubt true, since one’s power is diminished to the extent you are not seen as able to rescue someone in your employ.
But when Cheney accuses Bush of abandoning "an innocent man" who had served the President loyally; when Cheney excoriates anyone who would "sacrifice the guy who was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder" — he appears to be talking about himself as much as Libby.
It is such an obvious allegory, a classic example of self-pity masquerading as altruism; and the pundits don’t get it — or, more likely, pretend not to.
Since when is it conservative to embrace new, overpriced, corrupt systems, like the health-destroying and ruinously expensive protocols of much of modern medicine?
"Conservative" has several meanings, but two central ones are "favoring traditional views and values," and "avoiding excess."
I hold that nothing could be more wild, unconstrained, and downright liberal than the path medicine has taken in just the last 20 years -- an unprecedented bacchanalia of excess and contempt for traditional American values.
Pharmaceuticals, once just one of many therapeutic modalities, are now synonymous with medical care; more than half of all insured Americans are taking prescription medicines for chronic health problems. Medical journals, formerly bastions of objectivity, are today often ghostwritten shills for moneyed interests. And physicians, once free to make healing their only goal, must now obey the dictates of lawyers and stockholders by ordering endless tests and dangerous, dubious surgeries for even minor conditions.
While billions of dollars are shunted into very few pockets via such abuses, insurance premiums skyrocket, leaving 47 million Americans with no coverage. The result of medicine's libertine spree? The relief agency Remote Area Medical, established to bring health care to rural parts of third-world nations, now sends 60 percent of its missions to U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, California and Knoxville, Tennessee.
"... whatever Obama decides, we shall pay a hellish price for the hubris of the nation-builders."
Pat Buchanan, Antiwar.com: Had we gone into Afghanistan in 2001, knocked over the Taliban, driven out al-Qaeda and departed, we would not be facing what we do today.
But we were seduced by the prospect of converting a backward tribal nation of 25 million, which has resisted every empire to set foot on its inhospitable soil, into a shining new democracy that would be a model for the Islamic world.
“Then you will see the rise of the double standard—the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money—the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of DISARMED victims—then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion— when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes marked: ‘Account overdrawn.’
“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded." Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged
… After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannise, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes and stupefies a people, ‘til each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government is the shepherd.
Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America (1837)
Suspicion must always fall on those who attempt to silence their opponents.
~Ian Buckley
"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker."
H. L. Mencken
We will not recognize it as it rises. It will wear no black shirts here. It will probably have no marching songs. It will rise out of a congealing of a group of elements that exist here and that are the essential components of Fascism....
It will be at first decorous, humane, glowing with homely American sentiment. But a dictatorship cannot remain benevolent. To continue, it must become ruthless. When this stage is reached we shall see that appeal by radio, movies, and government-controlled newspapers to all the worst instincts and emotions of our people. The rough, the violent, the lawless men will come to the surface and into power. This is the terrifying prospect as we move along our present course.
John T. Flynn, American Mercury, February 1941
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. – Plato
The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.
~Ron Paul
'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
~Friedrich August von Hayek
"Sending in good people to reform the state is like sending in virgins to reform the whorehouse." --
Albert Jay Nock
In a letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson asked how, "one generation of men has a right to bind another." He concluded by saying, "No generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence."
But contracting debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence is precisely what Americans are doing. In fact, they are contracting debts that increase over the course of their own lifetimes.
Why, the Government is merely...a temporary servant...Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
Posted by David Kramer on August 12, 2009 10:05 PM
In Krugman’s racist diatribe that appears in his latest New York Times essay he writes;
“…the peddlers of anti-progressive lies are managing to convince a certain kind of American — white, socially conservative, etc. [emphasis mine] — that the hate-mongers are people like them; and, even more important, that progressives are Those People, people not like them…Obama’s skin color makes this easy…”
This must be shocking news to “white, socially conservative” Black people such as Wilton Altson, Robert Wicks, Walter Williams, and Thomas Sowell. (And I’ll bet you all of the stimulus money that Obama supports that they aren’t the only Black people who are shocked by Krugman’s racist statement either.)
Krugman, being a racist, obviously believes in his racist mind that only white people are against Obamacare; only white people do not agree with Obama’s expanding Bush’s Fascist policies (though in the case of health care, it’s a Socialist policy); there are no Black anti-progressives out there. (By the way, folks, for those of you who don’t have selective memory like Krugman, do you remember when Stalin’s Soviet Union was referred to by people of Krugman’s ilk as being “progressive”?)
Well, LRC blog readers, in what looks like a case of life imitating art, we have here our very own real version of the classic Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes. In our real version, if you do not agree with every policy that our Black Emperor believes in his imagination is “progressive,” you are considered a racist.
This being the case, I want to be the first LRC blog writer to go on record to state that I am a racist. That’s right: I, David Kramer, am a racist. You see, I don’t like Black politicians—Black politicians, that is, who promote economic policies that will hurt Black people (and all other people, for that matter).
[Of course, I don't like any politicians (Black, White, or otherwise) who promote policies that harm people—but stating that upfront wouldn't have been as fun and provocative as writing the previous paragraph.]
On a separate issue, here’s the opening paragraph from the same Krugman essay:
“Obama is a Kenyan-born Nazi Muslim planning to euthanize seniors while putting them in concentration camps. The Clintons were drug-runners who murdered Vince Foster. Why do people believe this stuff?”
Here and here are why people believe this stuff, Krugman—at least the stuff about the Clintons being drug-runners.
Posted by Walter Block on August 13, 2009 11:48 AM
Today, Charles Murray attacks the withholding tax system, without mentioning that this is a legacy of the supposed libertarian, Milton Friedman:
Mr. Murray also sees taxes as “an essential ingredient in the civic glue that binds us together,” rather than as a compulsory levy. Is there no tyranny of the majority?
Charles also says “America is supposed to be a democracy in which we’re all in it together. Part of that ethos, which has been so essential to the country in times of crisis, is a common understanding that we all pay a share of the costs …. (through) taxes”
I am a BIG fan of these books written by Charles Murray: The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Losing Ground: American Social Policy from 1950 to 1980, and much of his other writing. I even consider him as a friend. I wouldn’t mind it, so much, if today’s article on taxes “binding us together” were written by an ordinary conservative. But he is the author of What It Means To Be A Libertarian, and is thus widely seen as a libertarian spokesman. I view Charles Murray as the most libertarian of the conservatives now active. But, he is no libertarian. The label “libertarian” is an honorific, and should not be used to describe conservatives such as Charles Murray, who, obviously, has some libertarian sympathies.
I see libertarians as equidistant from both conservatives on the right, and liberals on the left. The former are slightly better on economics, and the latter on civil rights, civil liberties. Both are just about equally horrid on foreign policy, the third leg of political economic philosophy. In my view, libertarianism is neither of the right nor of the left. Rather, we offer a unique philosophy, which (slightly) overlaps with both.
As for Milton Friedman, don’t get me started on him. I’ve published quite a few articles attempting to call into question his so called libertarian credentials. Let me just now briefly mention the following: Support for educational vouchers (instead of full private schools), the fed and flexible exchange rates (instead of gold as free market money), anti trust law, the withholding tax (to be fair to him, he later apologized for this), the negative income tax (a supposedly more efficient welfare system); eminent domain, government roads and highways, “public goods” such as education, libraries, museums, based on his neighborhood effects argument. He too was a conservative with strong libertarian tendencies. But “Mr. Libertarian?” No.
DESTROY OR CRIPPLE THE PRODUCTIVE... THAT'S THE TICKET
Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured
If the US wasn't already insolvent, I'd say that Obama was bankrupting the country, and sending the health care we have to hell in a handcart, for the ostensible benefit of less than ten percent of the population. But the US is already in the red, courtesy of the current president and his predecessor.
According to the Census Bureau report, "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007″ (p. 20), in 2007, the number of children under 18 years old without health insurance was 8.1 million. Uninsured, non-Hispanic Whites stood at 20.5 million. At 7.4 million, the number of uninsured Blacks was not statistically different from 2006. The number of uninsured Hispanics came to 14.8 million.
The reported numbers ─ between 46 and 50 million ─ are inflated. If CBS news says so, you can believe it. The figures factor in illegal aliens and many who already avail themselves of programs for the poor. Children, for instance. Obama has only just expanded the entitlement plan known as the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP.
For the correct number of uninsured subtract the SCHIP-covered kids and another 20 million illegal aliens still in the country. (Although fewer Mexicans are entering the US, illegal aliens are not repatriating to Mexico, despite the economic depression, reports the Washington Independent.) Large-scale destruction in the purported service of the few ─ does that sound familiar?
Last year, a bumbling Bush bailed out and nationalized large sections of the financial sector because of a few million bad mortgages. For the benefit of these bad debtors, B.O. has since beefed-up Bush's initial offering with a $75 billion foreclosure relief plan. Although sources cited by Foxbusiness estimate "that up to 6 million homes could be lost to foreclosure in the current economic crisis," so far approximately four million loans have gone under, out of a total of 44.4 million mortgages countrywide. Illana Mercer
The Internet is abuzz with news about the construction of internment camps all across America. Of course, "mainstream" media outlets refuse to touch the subject; or if they do, they pooh-pooh the story; they do what Glenn Beck recently did: try to debunk the story as fallacious and impugn people who speak of it as "conspiracy nuts." The fact that the Becks, Hannitys, Limbaughs, and O'Reillys of the media circus refuse to deal with the construction of large numbers of internment camps does not make them disappear, however.
For starters, all anyone need do to begin a serious investigation of the subject of internment camps is Google the phrase "FEMA Camps." There is more than enough evidence in that search engine alone to keep one busy with some in-depth private investigation of the subject for quite a while.
As people read my columns all across America, I have had numerous readers contact me, saying that they have personally witnessed the transportation of construction materials used for internment camps, have actually worked in and around them, or have personally seen such camps. These eyewitness testimonies have come from very credible people, including law enforcement and military personnel, as well as airline pilots and construction workers. Chuck Baldwin LRC
Writing in The State and Revolution in 1917, Vladimir Lenin summed up the economic aim of socialism as follows: "To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service...."
Incredible, isn't it? After centuries of treatises and miles of paper and tubs of ink, this is the great historical turning point: government employees carrying sacks of paper mail from house to house, and operating at an economic loss.
It's fascinating how it all comes down to the post office, again and again in the history of public policy. And so it is in our time, with Obama's admission/gaffe/slip concerning the post office and its analogy to what he wants to do with health care.
Here is a transcript of his spontaneous talk at a high school. A student raised a question about the government's provision of health services and its impact on private services.
"How can a private company compete against the government? My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining, meaning that taxpayers aren't subsidizing it, but it has to run on charging premiums and providing good services, and a good network of doctors, just like private insurers do, then I think private insurers should be able to compete.
"They do it all the time. If you think about it, UPS and Fed-Ex are doing just fine. It's the Post Office that's always having problems.... there is nothing inevitable about this somehow destroying the private marketplace. As long as it is not set up where the government is being subsidized by the taxpayers so that even if they are providing a good deal, we keep having to pony up more and more money."
Note that the post office is not being shut down for this mess. On the contrary, it is being subsidized not only with tax dollars but, most importantly, with laws. Title 18 (I.83.1696) says that "Whoever establishes any private express for the conveyance of letters or packets" can be fined and jailed. Moreover, the law (39.I.6.606) says that any letter delivered by unlawful means can be seized and stolen by the government. It is immune from antitrust action and criminal liability. You can read the whole Post Office Gosplan here.
If the Post Office were really a market institution, it would go belly-up in about half an hour. So, no, there is no competition here. Only the government is permitted to deliver first-class letters. How do UPS and Fed-Ex get away with it? They slip through a hole in the law by delivering packages, not mail. And it wasn't easy to survive even then. Just as in the 19th century when the federal government waged war on Lysander Spooner's American Letter Mail Company and on Wells Fargo (and Benjamin Tucker defended "private enterprise in the letter-carrying business"), the government has been hounding private services in our time, whether through wicked labor union bullying or by restricting their services as much as possible. Lew Rockwell LRC
"And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness." (Exodus 5:1)
Today I was sent an e-mail that asked me to click through and examine H.R. 3200, the health care legislation pending in Congress.
But if I read every word of it and write as many words about it as are contained in that bill, what good will that do? None at all, because I will be playing by the Pharaoh’s voting and political rules. Why should I play in a card game with marked cards and a dealer whose hands are quicker than the eye?
I have a different idea, and it will take less than one page to outline.
It is to follow the example of Moses. Exodus from health care laws.
(1) Form a "people," and this people shall have one objective, which is to be let go by the Pharaoh from any and all legislation relating to health care.
This people shall form by electronically signing a statement to that effect on a web site for that purpose and only that purpose.
This people shall remain where they live. This is their promised land already. Only it has been infected by bad laws and needs cleansing. They need to cleanse their lives of bad health care laws.
(2) Find a Moses who will personally convey the message of this people to the reigning Pharaoh in Washington and be a public spokesperson for letting this people go.
(3) Moses and this people shall NOT attempt to change the course of history by voting on H.R. 3200 or any other such unlawful laws. They shall NOT confirm the procedure by doing that. They shall NOT argue against such laws so as to affect votes in Congress.
There is no need whatsoever to be involved in any legislative process. It is a very great error to go in that direction solely with no other avenue of action.
(4) Instead, appeal publically and directly to the Pharaoh, in the name of God. Place the Pharaoh directly under God's sanctions for any disobedience of his to the consent of this people who are asking for nothing more than their freedom.
(5) Do not waver in any way from this appeal. It is all or nothing. If God hardens the Pharaoh’s heart against this people for the time being, so be it.
God may bring sanctions against Pharaoh for his unwillingness to let this people go, and if he does, a Moses may have to ask again and again and again and again as did Moses in Exodus.
An American president is launching the most ambitious, the most expensive, and certainly the most dangerous military campaign since the Vietnam War – and the antiwar movement, such as it is, is missing in action. After a long and bloody campaign in Iraq and the election of a U.S. president pledged to get us out, our government is once again revving up its war machine and taking aim at yet another "terrorist" stronghold, this time in Afghanistan. Yet the antiwar movement’s motor seems stuck in the wrong gear, making no motions toward mounting anything like an effective protest. What gives?
We shouldn’t doubt the scope of the present war effort. Make no mistake: the Obama administration is radically ramping up the stakes in the "war on terrorism," which, though renamed, has not been revised downward, as the Washington Postreports:
"As the Obama administration expands U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, military experts are warning that the United States is taking on security and political commitments that will last at least a decade and a cost that will probably eclipse that of the Iraq war."
There are always "warnings" in the beginning, aren’t there? For some reason, however, they are never heeded. Instead, we just barrel ahead, undaunted, into the tall grass where ambush awaits us. War opponents predicted the Iraq invasion would prove unsustainable – and we were right. We said that, far from greeting us with cheers and showers of roses, the Iraqis would soon be shooting at us and demanding our ouster – and we were right. We said the rationale for war was based on a series of carefully manufactured and marketed lies – and that was the truth, now wasn’t it? Yet it seems we are caught in an endlessly repetitive nightmare, where the same prophetic voices are being drowned out by a chorus of "responsible" voices – to be followed by an all-too-familiar disaster. Read the rest... Raimondo Antiwar.com
Virtually all LRC readers know of the heroic efforts of the Mises Institute in making hundreds of rare and important books, and thousands of scholarly articles, available on-line. Generations of eager new students and readers will have this marvelous collection of the wisdom of the past and present available for study. But many of you may not be aware of another incredible website that has provided a phenomenal resource data bank at your fingertips. It is called Liberty Park, USA Foundation. Created by the amazing Michael L. Chadwick, the work of the Foundation is divided into various Institutes which concentrate upon a specific area of study...
There are thousands of articles dealing with globalization, the economic meltdown, the Wall Street bailouts, the American Empire, NAFTA and managed trade, CIA covert operations, Federalism and State Sovereignty, Global Governance, the Fed, the World Bank, the BIS, the IMF, the history of the oil industry, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Aspen Institute, etc., with authors ranging from Peter Schiff to Noam Chomsky...
Government is an exercise in pure, wasteful consumption. The only things that government can actually “make” are criminals out of innocent people, and corpses out of living human beings.
Statists often insist that at least some of government’s purely consumptive activity is indispensable, such as law enforcement. But this argument ignores the fact that the first and most important function of police is to collect revenue for the state, and that rather than deterring crimes police often manufacture them.
For example: police departments nation-wide use “bait cars” — automobiles abandoned by the side of the road with the keys still in the ignition and surveillance equipment concealed at various points — to pique the curiosity of well-intentioned people. Any contact with the vehicle, or close inspection of the same, is then treated as an attempt to burglarize or steal the car — even if the intent were only to learn the identity of the owner.
Austin’s “Finest” parked a green Honda Accord near Ledford’s home. Curious, Ledford consulted with his neighbors in the hope of identifying an owner; then he reported the vehicle to the police. A pair of officers paid a brief visit to the neighborhood and spoke briefly with Ledford.
“I told them, `Isn’t it strange that someone parked their car there with the windows down and the keys in it?’” he recalled. The police replied that there was no problem, since the car was parked legally, and then left.
Puzzled by the apparent indifference of the police and worried that the car might be a crime scene, Ledford and his girlfriend decided to examine the vehicle in the hope of learning the identity of its owner. They noticed odd things, such as broken glass, a pair of men’s work boots, a length of rope, and a bikini top in the back seat; this made them wonder if the car belonged to a serial killer.
Practically the instant that the couple approached the abandoned vehicle, a police cruiser sped to the scene and Ledford and Ward were arrested. At the station they waived their right to counsel and tried to explain their concerns to the on-scene investigator, who released them immediately.
However, a few days later the couple was served with an arrest warrant signed by the same investigator, who accused them of burglary.
The county prosecutor offered the couple a deferred prosecution if they signed a confession; to their credit, Ledford and Ward — who face a year in jail and a $4,000 fine for committing no crime — gave the prosecutor anatomically detailed instructions regarding the proper disposal of that offer.
According to the police agency that afflicts the City of Austin, the “bait car” scheme produced 70 warrants or arrests in 2008 and 13 so far this year. The department refused to specify how many convictions resulted, and refused to provide a break-down of the charges.
As noted above, “bait car” traps have been laid by police all over the country. Police also use variants of this idea: A few years ago the NYPD, apparently having nothing better to do, enjoyed considerable success in a similar snare involving a “lost” wallet.
Transcript of a speech by Charles Goyette at the Ron Paul Revolution March, Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., July 12, 2008
"We gather together as the vanguard of a movement to reclaim our Liberty, Peace, and Prosperity. And we come here to Washington to be seen in a place the world watches."Click Here
What the example of Hong Kong communicates is that authoritarian, illiberal, undemocratic regimes need not feel threatened by semi-independent city states with working "liberal" market institutions. It says to rulers that their countries can get rich without granting their subjects real freedom.
Which leads me to wonder: what is this "real freedom" of which you speak?
Consider the following definition of freedom: the absence of monopoly.
The absence of monopoly means that you can exercise exit, even if you cannot exercise voice. The presence of monopoly means that, at most, you can exercise voice.
Neither my local supermarket nor any of its suppliers has a way for me to exercise voice. They don't hold elections. They don't have town-hall meetings where they explain their plans for what will be in the store. By democratic standards, I am powerless in the supermarket.
And yet, I feel much freer in the supermarket than I do with respect to my county, state, or federal government. For each item in the supermarket, I can choose whether to put it into my cart and pay for it or leave it on the shelf. I can walk out of the supermarket at any time and go to a competing grocery.
The exercise of voice, including the right to vote, is not the ultimate expression of freedom. Rather, it is the last refuge of those who suffer under a monopoly. If we take it as given that the political jurisdiction where I reside is a monopoly, then perhaps I will have more influence over that monopoly if I have a right to vote and a right to organize opposition than if I do not. However, as my forthcoming Unchecked and Unbalanced argues, the reality is that the amount of influence I have is shrinking while the scope of the monopolist is growing.
The idea of charter cities (or seasteading) will be a success to the extent that it creates a viable exit option vis-a-vis government. Suppose that the Chinese government loses its monopoly power, because it becomes easy for people residing in China to choose to live under alternative governments. In that hypothetical case, I would argue that those residents are free, even if those who choose the Chinese government are not allowed to vote in contested elections or to freely criticize their government. If you lived in North Korea, which would you rather have--the right to vote or the right to leave?
In fact, if we had real competitive government, then we would be no more interested in elections and speaking out to government officials than we are in holding elections and town-hall meetings at the supermarket. I repeat: real freedom is the absence of monopoly.
Chris Brunner sends along this sobering report (via Karl Denninger via ZeroHedge). Chris Martenson did some sleuthing with CUSIPs and (apparently) discovered that the Fed just bought 47% of the fresh Treasury debt that was issued the week before!
Good grief! Just last week, when the auction results were announced it was trumpeted to great fanfare that there was "more than sufficient" bid-to-cover, "strong demand" and all the rest.
And now it turns out that 47% (!) of the bonds that were taken by the primary dealers in that auction have been quietly bought by the Fed and permanently secreted to its balance sheet.
They didn't even wait a full week! A more honest and open approach would have been for the Fed to simply buy them outright at the auction but this way, using "primary dealers" and "POMOs" and all these other extra steps the basic fact that the Fed is openly monetizing US government debt is effectively hidden from a not-too-terribly inquisitive US press and public.
The speed of the shell game is accelerating.
This immediate repurchase of newly auction bonds by the Fed tells us that demand for these bonds is not nearly as high as advertised, and that things are not quite as strong as represented.
And guess what? This week the Treasury plans on selling almost $100 billion in new debt. I bet they'll find some takers...
By its candid, “speaking truth to power” presentation, Triumphant Plutocracy: The Story Of American Public Life From 1870 To 1920, is unlike any other political memoir by a former United States Senator.
But then author Richard F. Pettigrew was in a class by himself when it came to forthright honesty, integrity and dedication to principle in his fifty years of public service to the nation. The book was later published as Imperial Washington, on-line at Google Books.
Here is what Pettigrew states in his opening paragraph:
“The American people should know the truth about American public life. They have been lied to so much and hoodwinked so often that it would seem only fair for them to have at least one straight-from-the-shoulder statement concerning this government ‘of the people, by the people and for the people,’ about whose inner workings the people know almost nothing.”
He goes on to say:
“It is fifty years since I began to take an interest in public affairs. During those years I have been participating, more or less actively, in public life — first as a government surveyor, then as a member of the Legislature of Dakota; as a member of the House of Representatives and, finally as a member of the United States Senate. Since 1880 I have known the important men in both the Republican and Democratic parties; I have known the members of the diplomatic corps; I have known personally the last ten presidents of the United States, and I have known personally the leading business men who backed the political parties and who made and unmade the presidents. For half a century I have known public men and have been on the inside of business and politics. Through all of that time I have lived and worked with the rulers of America.”
Plutocracy means rule by the rich, those wealthy criminals who have used and manipulated the political mechanism of government to plunder and exploit the rest of us.
The book’s title, Triumphant Plutocracy, is a grim, ironic play upon Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie’s earlier banal book, Triumphant Democracy.
Triumphant Plutocracy is a seering indictment of the criminal elites which composed the governing class of America during this period.
Like Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope, this is an insider revealing the shocking truth of how the world really works in the corridors of power.
And because it is a first-person account, there is much in this book that is found nowhere else.
At least something good has come out of the economic crisis; it blew off the purple robes that clothed economists and exposed their naked flanks. Still, they don’t deserve the beating they’re getting in the press – with snide remarks and sarcastic comments; they deserve better. A beating with sticks!
Even Alan Greenspan admitted he had “found a flaw” in his own thinking. We will have to imagine the giggles from the back of the room – if anyone had been awake. If was as if Stalin had confessed to being rude to his mother or Bernie Madoff copped a plea for shoplifting. The mea was fine, but the culpa didn’t seem to measure up to the facts. He, more than any living human being, was responsible for the biggest financial debacle in history; you’d hope he’d be a gentleman about it and hang himself.
Meanwhile, the queen of England visited the London School of Economics and had a question: why weren’t economists on top of this thing?
They replied to this question last month. In a three-page letter, they avoided the simple truth – that their trade was no more reliable than fortune telling and marriage counseling. The letter claimed that a “psychology of denial” prevented government and financial eyes from seeing the catastrophe in front of them. It was “a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people,” they said.
In fact, it was the exact opposite – imagination run wild. Economists imagined a world without yesterday or tomorrow…a world in which you could run up debts forever and never have to pay them back.
Last week, Timothy Geithner promised the Chinese that the US economy would recover thanks to demand from the private sector. That was his way of reassuring America’s biggest creditor that the public sector wouldn’t continue to run huge deficits – practically an outright lie. But it’s one thing to stiff the Chinese; it’s another to stiff time.. More Bill Bonner LRC
In the American end times, our government will take one of two forms. One possibility is that federalism will give way to an all-powerful central government. (In yesterday's global-warming thought experiment, this was the climate strongman scenario.) The other option is decentralization—in the absence of a unifying national interest, the United States of America will fragment and be supplanted by regional governance.
America was designed to avoid these two extremes—to keep the states and the national government in balance. The United States will end when the equilibrium mandated by the Constitution no longer holds. Tomorrow, I'll look at how the country might transition from democracy to totalitarianism. Today, I'll focus on America's disintegration.
Predictions of modern America's collapse usually say more about the speaker than about the country's condition. Igor Panarin, the Russian political scientist who believes the United States will break into six pieces in 2010, seems to be extrapolating from what happened to the Soviet Union. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who paid lip service to secession at a tax-day rally earlier this year, was less predicting America's downfall than feeding chum to a riled-up, "Secede!"-chanting crowd. "[I]f Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people," Perry said, "you know, who knows what might come out of that." Read the rest... Josh Levin in Slate Magazine
“The Sheriff at the Gates: A Farce in Three Acts’’
Act One
(A street in Cambridgeham. Most Exalted University Professor HENRY LOUIS GATES, freshly returned from the Land of the Asian Khan, is rattling the door of his keep. Enter a WENCH.)
WENCH: Alarum! Alarum! A thief is about!
GATES: Peace, ye fat guts!
(Enter SHERIFF CROWLEY)
CROWLEY: Stay, now! Who disturbs our peaceful shire?
GATES: I disturb no man. My key unlocketh not.
CROWLEY: Forsooth, thou breakest and enterest.
GATES (entering his castle): I break not for witless constables. Begone!
CROWLEY: Back speaks no man to the Sheriff; I arrest thee!
Thomas DiLorenzo: Socialized Healthcare vs. the Laws of Economics
"The hoped-for end result is one big government monopoly which, like all government monopolies, will operate with all the efficiency of the post office and all the charm and compassion of the IRS."
Most Americans know nothing at all about the National Endowment for Democracy...
It's time you found out! Philip Giraldi, Antiwar.com: ... "US administrations have prized it because it is able to go and do things in places where the government would prefer not to be directly involved. In other words, NED is a faux NGO that does things that the US government would rather not be caught doing. "
"TRAVEL BACK WITH ME TO YESTERDAY..." Lew Rockwell on the lapdog media's reporting on the economy now versus an earlier era:
The sociology of this intrigues me to no end. Unemployment is one of the human elements that journalists are supposed to glom onto. Oh, look at poor Bob and Jane and how they lost their jobs and have nowhere to go, etc., etc. Talk about human interest! Where are the weepy stories about the plight of people wandering around with no work? Instead, we get happy clappy stories about how things are not nearly as bad as they might be had the great and powerful Obama of Oz not appeared to save the day. There is also the remarkable spin that things are getting worse, yes, but at a slower pace than before – an observation that might be most commonly heard in Hell.
Obama himself has other lines.
"In the last few months, the economy has done measurably better than expected."
Well, that depends on your expectations, doesn't it? It is irrefutable. But the press is glad to be the echo chamber. "Figures released last week showed that the economy contracted more slowly in the second quarter than many economists had expected."
... We can fully expect the mainline press not to understand economics. I can deal with that. But not even to draw attention to the awful reality of the current economic situation, simply because many members of the mainstream press are sympathetic to the idea that the government should be stealing ever more money from us for the state? Here is where ideology leads to blindness, which leads to the worst form of propaganda.
Company: Army National Guard Location: Multiple locations Job Status: Part TimeEmployee Job Category: Security/Protective Services Career Level: Student (High School) Experience: Less than 1 Year Occupations: Correctional OfficerMilitary CombatGeneral/Other: Security/Protective Services
Job Description
As an Internment/Resettlement Specialist for the Army National Guard, you will ensure the smooth running of military confinement/correctional facility or detention/internment facility, similar to those duties conducted by civilian Corrections Officers. This will require you to know proper procedures and military law; and have the ability to think quickly in high-stress situations. Specific duties may include assisting with supervision and management operations; providing facility security; providing custody, control, supervision, and escort; and counseling individual prisoners in rehabilitative programs.
By joining this specialty, you will develop the skills that will prepare you for a rewarding career with law enforcement agencies or in the private security field.
How about the retail sector? Nope. people are cutting back. The consumer is retrenching.
Restaurants? Nope. In decline for 22 consecutive months, and still counting.
Housing? Nope. Still headed down.
Commercial Real Estate? Nope. We have only begun to see the carnage.
Manufacturing? Nope. Factory orders are down. Exactly what do we make in the U.S. anymore?
Automobiles? Nope. We're headed toward the worst domestic sales since 1967.
New jobs? Nope. Real unemployment is over 20% and headed higher. Mass layoffs continue.
Worldwide trade? Nope. The Baltic Dry Index is crashing again. It's a leading indicator.
State and local government? Nope. They don't create real jobs, anyway. The private sector does. California is only the first state to crash. In Arizona, they're even talking about SELLING their Senate and House buildings. Tax revenues are down in all but a couple of states.
Murray Rothbard begins this outstanding book by calling attention to a paradox. The Federal Reserve System enjoys virtual immunity from congressional investigation. The few who propose to subject the Fed to even minimal scrutiny, such as Henry Gonzales of Texas, at once find a consensus arrayed against them (pp. 1ff.). They threaten the stability of the market, since – it is alleged – only the Fed's independence blocks the onset of uncontrollable inflation.
Here lies the paradox. Inflation results from the infusion of new money into the economy, and it is the Fed that is responsible for its creation. "The culprit solely responsible for inflation, the Federal Reserve, is continually engaged in raising a hue-and-cry about 'inflation' for which virtually everyone else in society seems to be responsible" (p. 11). How did this odd situation come about?
As one would expect from a top-flight economist, Rothbard responds by tracing the problem to its roots. He briefly and clearly explains how money originated in a barter economy. Some commodities are much easier to market than others, and "[o]nce any particular commodity starts to be used as a medium, this very process has a spiraling or snowballing effect" (p. 13). Read the rest... David Gordon Mises.org
"THOUSANDS of the worst families in England are to be put in “sin bins” in a bid to change their bad behaviour, Ed Balls announced yesterday.
The Children’s Secretary set out £400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes.
They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.
Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction..." The UK Daily Express
HOW THE FED CHAIRMAN EXPLODED THE MONETARY BASE TO DRIVE THE STOCK MARKET
...the revered professor Bernanke figured out a way to circumvent Congress and dump more than a trillion dollars into the stock market by laundering the money through the big banks and other failing financial institutions.... Bernanke knew the liquidity would pop up in the equities market, thus, building the equity position of the banks so they wouldn't have to grovel to Congress for another TARP-like bailout. Bernanke's actions demonstrate his contempt for the democratic process. The Fed sees itself as a government-unto-itself....
To keep this game going, Bernanke will have to keep juicing the market while the banks use the $850 billion in reserves (which the Fed has provided in the last year) to keep purchasing US sovereign debt.
Is anyone in Congress watching or is this shell game going to go on forever?
"I just can't understand why we would set up a program that says, 'We're going to give you $4,500,' and then give the bill to your children," Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said.
Senator, have you just noticed? Congress has been doing this for decades. And you have voted for it.
BriefingRoom.TheHill.com: The U.S. will resemble a "banana republic" in 10 years if its fiscal situation stays on the same track, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) warned Tuesday.
Gregg, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, asserted that programs like "cash for clunkers" would pile up to as much as 80 percent of the total U.S. economic output because of federal spending.
"We're going to be like a banana republic in 10 years!" Gregg said during a panel discussion on CNBC. "Sure, Americans want the program. But if you stop and think about it, is it right to do for our children?"
Gregg complained that the Congress was "spending the money twice" to extend the rebate program for new, fuel-efficient cars by having taken the money out of Department of Energy loans allotted for automakers, but then obligating those funds to be replenished.
Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian? Every college student, indeed every literate person, is expected to choose up sides and pin a label on himself in the Great Debate. Most people today consider themselves as Jeffersonians. Groups as diverse as the States' Rights (or Dixiecrat) movement and the Communists consider themselves heirs to the Jeffersonian mantle. At one and the same time, conservative southerners refer to themselves as "Jeffersonian Democrats," while the leading revolutionary Marxist school in the country is called the "Jefferson School of Social Science." Amidst this welter of confusion, to find the true picture of Jefferson the man and political philosopher is an extraordinarily difficult task.
A Bewildering Mosaic
Analysis of Jefferson is made far more difficult by the complex nature of Jefferson's personality and career. A man of brilliant intellect; keenly interested in the whole range of human thought, from economics to architecture to scientific farming; active, dynamic, and spirited in an amazing multitude of enterprises, and moreover a political leader the greater part of his life, necessarily presents to posterity a bewildering mosaic. Politics itself is a day-to-day affair, imposing by its very nature on the politician a series of shifts and compromises. Thus, Jefferson combined within himself the qualities of a soaring intellectual spirit, searching for political principle, busy man of affairs, and political boss. When it is further remembered that Jefferson dominated the stage during the most vital years of the Republic (Revolution, Independence, Constitution, Growth, War, etc.), it becomes more understandable that so many contrasting groups can pick out of his immense record of writings and actions support for their own ideologies...
The battle between Jefferson and Hamilton, however, is of very great significance, and precisely because it represented a clash between two fundamentally contrasting systems of political principle. Jefferson's political philosophy is summed up in the phrase: ''That government is best which governs least." It received its finest expression in our own Declaration of Independence: man is endowed by God with certain natural rights; "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," and when government becomes destructive of that end, the people have the right to change the form of government accordingly. Thus Jefferson, as John Locke had done a century before, drastically shifted the moral emphasis from the State to the individual. In the absolutist and feudal era from which the world was beginning to emerge, divine right settled only on the kings, the nobility; in short, the State and its rulers. To Jefferson, the divine rights were conferred on each and every individual, not on rulers of government. Read the rest... Rothbard Mises.org
(Reuters) - Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005... researchers reported on Monday.
About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.
"Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
"Not only are more U.S. residents being treated with antidepressants, but also those who are being treated are receiving more antidepressant prescriptions," they added.
More than 164 million prescriptions were written in 2008 for antidepressants, totaling $9.6 billion in U.S. sales, according to IMS Health.
MONUMENTALLY TRAGIC DISAPPOINTMENT ON THE HORIZON!
"The air is so full of black swans that the white swan now seems like the exceptional thing."
James Howard Kunstler, Whiskey and Gunpowder: The more information comes to us about How Things Are, especially from TV, the more confused or wrong the conventional view gets it.
A broad consensus has formed in the news media and among government mouthpieces and even some “bearish” investors on the street that “the worst is behind us” in this tortured economy. This view is completely crazy. It will only lead to massive disappointment a few weeks or months from now, and that disappointment might easily transmute to political trouble. One even might call the situation tragic, except a closer look at the sordid spectacle of what American culture has become — a non-stop circus of the seven deadly sins — suggests that we deserve to be punished by history.
Why does a society not have sound media of exchange (monies) via its monetary system? What arrangements will provide sound money? What must the society change in order to get to sound money or monies?
In answering these questions, we discover that inflation is always and everywhere a political phenomenon. A monetary authority produces inflation, and its authority is political. What it does regarding money is political. With one political arrangement, money may be stable. With another, deflation may be produced. With yet another, inflation may be the consequence. A society’s inflation and deflation cannot be understood or addressed without understanding its political forces.
Friedman and Schwartz were not the first to focus on the monetary authority. Henry Hazlitt said the same at an earlier date, December 22, 1947: "The basic cause of inflation, always and everywhere, lies in the field of money and credit." Many observers and economists throughout history have noticed the link between inflation and money. They are correct. However, it is still necessary to dig deeper to understand the nature of the monetary authority and how it is behaving. In doing that, we encounter many and varied political forces that can produce many and varied results. A limited government with a limited power to issue money can produce a stable money. A government with little or no revenues that issues its own notes that it makes legal tender may produce inflation. A government that has an independent central bank mandated to produce stable prices might get stable prices, whereas a government that has a central bank mandated to subsidize socialist enterprises may get inflation. There are innumerable possible arrangements, each with its own set of incentives, and each producing different inflation results. And if we ask why we observe these different arrangements and incentives, we come back to politics.
MIKE WHITNEY SAYS THE DEPRESSION IS JUST BEGINNING!
Information Clearing House: ... the consumer is down-for-the-count. His credit lines have been cut, his home equity eviscerated, and his checking account swimming in red ink. That spells trouble for an economy that's 70% dependent on consumer spending for growth....which brings us to another interesting point. The uptick in GDP last quarter was almost entirely the result of the surge in government spending; ie "fiscal and monetary stimulus". How long can that go on? How long will China keep slurping up US Treasuries rather than let their currency rise? Here's a clip from the Wall Street Journal on Friday:
"Shaky auctions of Treasury notes this week reignited concerns about whether the government can attract buyers from China and elsewhere to soak up trillions in new debt.
A fuse was lit this week when traders noted China's apparent absence from direct participation in two Treasury bond auctions. While China may have bought Treasurys just before the auctions, market participants read the country's actions as a worrying sign that China and other foreign investors may be ratcheting back purchases at a time when the U.S. is seeking to fund a $1.8 trillion budget deficit.
This week alone, the U.S. deluged the bond market with more than $200 billion in record-size sales. The U.S. has had little trouble finding buyers in recent months. But that demand is fading, and the Treasury market has become volatile."
He Doesn't Get Bottom-Up, Decentralized Collaboration and Self-Organizing Systems - So He'll End Up Making a Mess of Everything!
The headlines blare that President Obama will "restructure the financial services industry" and "fix the health care crisis." A 31-yearold with no experience in the business world, but a lot of experience in politics, has been put in charge of dismantling General Motors.
Members of Congress lecture car manufacturers and mortgage lenders on how to do their jobs. Politicians keep taking on more and more responsibility for the U.S. economy, as each industry appears to be getting its own "czar." Unfortunately, more czars will not produce better cars, or health care, or mortgages, or much of anything else.
The belief that one person or group, no matter how smart, can know how best to allocate resources is a classic example of what the Nobel Laureate economist F. A. Hayek called "the fatal conceit."
In Hayek's view, what enables businesspeople to make good decisions about the allocation of resources is not that they are smarter than other people. Instead, two other factors are key.
First, businesspeople have very detailed knowledge of their particular corners of the world. They know where resources are, where their customers are and what they want, and have the experience of knowing how to deliver it. This is not about being "smarter," but about having local and contextual knowledge that others don't have.
Second, entrepreneurs develop this knowledge by making use of the signals provided by prices, profits, and losses. Prices guide entrepreneurial decision-making by enabling them to formulate budgets and estimate the profitability of the various choices they might make.
Profits and losses provide information after the fact about how well they chose. Profits signal them to continue, while losses tell them that resources need to be reallocated. By acting on the basis of that information, each entrepreneur contributes to the overall improved allocation of resources.
Clusterstock.com: Sophisticated people have a hard time understanding popular outrage about the banking bailout. Indeed, the TARP watchdog Neil Barofsky's complaints that most TARP dollars were used to increase capital cushions and pay bonuses rather than increase lending strikes many as a silly complaint. Of course banks needed to recapitalize themselves before they could start lending, the sophisticates say.
In fact, some people insist on claiming that the purpose was always a recapitalization of the banks.
That might be true. But it certainly was not what the American people were told over and over again. They were told, unequivocally, that the bailout would increase lending.
When he first explained that the TARP would be used for capital injections, then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said the purpose of the program was to get banks to “deploy, not hoard, their capital.”
When Tim Geithner went before the Senate for his confirmation hearings, he said: "If confirmed, I will carry out the reforms that President Obama and I believe are needed in this program. This program must promote the stability of the financial system and increase lending."
In response to this the defenders of the bailout tend to make a few very slippery replies. The first response is often to claim that the bailout has increased lending above what it would have been without the bailout. This is a surprising counter-factual and question begging argument for which there is no evidence. The only real reply is: oh yeah, buddy? How do you know what lending levels would have been without the bailout? You cannot simply assume that lending has increased in order to prove that the bailout increased lending.
The second response, recently raised by Derek Thompson at the Atlantic, is that banks would be lending more but the economy isn't really demanding more lending because we're in a recession. This has the ring of truth, but it's only the ring of a half truth. If we didn't need more bank lending, then why did we bail out the banks for the purpose of increasing bank lending? This response actually undermines the entire public rationale for the bailout.
The reason the public rationale focused on lending was that the policy makers wanted to be able to claims they were attemtping to the economy rather saving banks. That is, they wanted to pretend they were not simply recapitalizing firms that should have been shut down.
Well, we can relax, because the bad old days of the Bush administration, when government agencies routinely spied on the antiwar movement and other dissidents, are over — right?
Wrong – very wrong.
The indispensable Amy Goodman has the scoop: The Seattle Port Militarization Resistance (SPMR) group in Washington state thought their listserv coordinator, who went by the name "John Jacob," was one of them: a dedicated antiwar activist and self-described anarchist. They trusted him, they put him in a key position, they befriended him – and then they found out that he was a government informant. His real name: John Towery (here’s his myspace page, and here is a photo). He claimed to be a civilian employee at Washington state’s Ft. Lewis: in reality, he was and is a functionary of the force protection unit, i.e. military personnel. His job: spying on the antiwar movement.
Towery was "outed" when one of SPMR’s members filed a public records request in the city of Olympia for any documents, including emails, in the city’s possession that referenced communications between the city police and the military regarding "anything on anarchists, anarchy, anarchism, Students for a Democratic Society or the Industrial Workers of the World," as local antiwar activist Brendan Maslauskas Dunn described it to Amy Goodman on her "Democracy Now" program. The results were startling: "I got back hundreds of documents from the city."...
The next logical stage in our carefully-stoked national hysteria is to cast the "anti-terrorist" net wider – to include antiwar organizations like SPMR, and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which Towery took a particular interest in. The antiwar movement is not a collection of "terrorist cells," and yet that is precisely how the US government is dealing with them: infiltrating and spying on our organizations, planning "raids" on activist gathering places and homes, and no doubt engaging in further disruptive activities yet to be revealed. How is this possible in the land of the free? Read the rest... Raimondo Antiwar.com
Have a Chrysler or GM car? Do you know what you have?
Buying a Chrysler or GM car? Do you know what you're getting?
Cary Lockwood, YourAutoNetwork.com: There are approximately 31,000,000 Chrysler vehicles on the road today and, as noted by Judge Gonzalez, those vehicles have no product liability coverage with the new or old Chrysler because of this reorganization! If your vehicle has a defect and you are in an accident, you may not be able to sue either the old or new Chrysler. ou will be able to file a claim with your insurance company, but depending on your coverage and the extent of the damages and injuries to you and your passengers (as well as other vehicles that may have been involved), you might find that your coverage is not nearly enough to cover your claim. This is what I understand happened in the case when Ms. Young was injured when her Jeep rolled over several times and is now paralyzed from the neck down, is in need of 24-hour-a-day-care and has no money to pay for it. - Read more
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There is no need whatsoever to be involved in any legislative process. It is a very great error to go in that direction solely with no other avenue of action.
