Aircraft Engines Are Not That Complicated.

Here is Jamie Diamon, CEO of J.P. Morgan explaining why you don't need to know what bankers do. It's too complicated, like an aircraft engine. Just trust him, all the money J.P. Morgan is making is only fees for managing all this complexity.

This is a straight turbine engine.  It is really marvelously simple.

This is a turbo-fan.  It is a little more complicated, but not much.

When I was in the Air Force they were teaching this stuff to 17 and 18 year old kids who didn't even have high school diplomas.

Banking is not that difficult to understand either.

Banks pay interest on savings and charge interests on loans.

When banks need more savings they increase interest on savings.  Consequently, they must charge higher interest on loans to offset the higher rates they offer to attract savings.  When interest rates are high it is a signal to producers that people are spending now, not saving, so they concentrate on short term projects that quickly satisfy consumer demand.

When banks have a lot of money in savings they pay a lower interest rate.  Consequently, they can charge lower rates on loans.  When interest rates are low it is a signal to producers that people are saving for future consumption, not spending, so they concentrate on long term projects to meet future consumer demand.

It is a wonderful feedback mechanism that balances what the producers are producing with what the consumer is consuming.

It only gets screwed up when a central bank forces interest rates lower by artificial means.  It makes producers think people are saving for future consumption so they start long term projects.  Since the consumers are not saving they are not planning on future consumption, so when those long term project come to completion there are no deferred saving for people to spend on them.  The feedback mechanism is completely destroyed by false signals.

Crash.

I have a GED and community college degree in Arts and Sciences, mostly I concentrated on history, literature and the social sciences.  Basically a glorified high school diploma.  I am not a Harvard MBA, but I did listen to Ron Paul and read Murray Rothbard.

Jamie Dimon can eat a big bowl of dicks.

Review: The Four Horsemen

I just finished watching The Four Horsemen.

From an encouraging beginning, particularly the critique of fiat, fractional reserve, central banking, the desirability of hard currency and the acknowledgement of the merits of Classical Liberalism, I must say I was ultimately disappointed by this film. As with many other documentaries on social and economic issues it does a good job of pointing out the problems, but then offers solutions which are futile at best, destructive at worst. The filmmakers themselves pointed out that many would dismiss their solutions as socialism or even Marxism. Indeed, I think such an argument could be made, but I won't make it myself.

What they are actually proposing is a school of political economy known as Georgism or Geonomics.^* The basic idea, as the Wikipedia article I just linked states, is "people own what they create, but that things found in nature, most importantly land, belong equally to all." I would not argue that is Marxist. Indeed, according to the the referenced Wikipedia article, Marx himself dismissed it as little more than a patch on his conception of capitalism. I might say it is a form of soft socialism, but that is not really my critique.

Murray Rothbard addressed Georgism in For A New Liberty. To understand Rothbard's reasoning you have to begin with his argument for self-ownership, i.e., a person's property right in his own body.

The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to "own" his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference. Since each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation.

Consider, too, the consequences of denying each man the right to own his own person. There are then only two alternatives: either (1) a certain class of people, A, have the right to own another class, B; or (2) everyone has the right to own his own equal quotal share of everyone else. The first alternative implies that while Class A deserves the rights of being human, Class B is in reality subhuman and therefore deserves no such rights. But since they are indeed human beings, the first alternative contradicts itself in denying natural human rights to one set of humans. Moreover, as we shall see, allowing Class A to own Class B means that the former is allowed to exploit, and therefore to live parasitically, at the expense of the latter. But this parasitism itself violates the basic economic requirement for life: production and exchange.

The second alternative, what we might call "participatory communalism" or "communism," holds that every man should have the right to own his equal quotal share of everyone else. If there are two billion people in the world, then everyone has the right to own one two-billionth of every other person. In the first place, we can state that this ideal rests on an absurdity: proclaiming that every man is entitled to own a part of everyone else, yet is not entitled to own himself. Secondly, we can picture the viability of such a world: a world in which no man is free to take any action whatever without prior approval or indeed command by everyone else in society. It should be clear that in that sort of "communist" world, no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish. But if a world of zero self-ownership and one hundred percent other ownership spells death for the human race, then any steps in that direction also contravene the natural law of what is best for man and his life on earth.

Finally, however, the participatory communist world cannot be put into practice. For it is physically impossible for everyone to keep continual tabs on everyone else, and thereby to exercise his equal quotal share of partial ownership over every other man. In practice, then, the concept of universal and equal other-ownership is utopian and impossible, and supervision and therefore control and ownership of others necessarily devolves upon a specialized group of people, who thereby become a ruling class. Hence, in practice, any attempt at communist rule will automatically become class rule, and we would be back at our first alternative.¹

Starting from that argument, Rothbard then applies the same reasoning to property rights in land. Assuming the Georgist position that one is indeed entitled to retain the fruits of one's own labor

...if the gatherer has the right to own the acorns or berries he picks, or the farmer the right to own his crop of wheat or peaches, who has the right to own the land on which these things have grown? It is at this point that Henry George and his followers, who have gone all the way so far with the libertarians, leave the track and deny the individual's right to own the piece of land itself, the ground on which these activities have taken place. The Georgists argue that, while every man should own the goods which he produces or creates, since Nature or God created the land itself, no individual has the right to assume ownership of that land. Yet, if the land is to be used at all as a resource in any sort of efficient manner, it must be owned or controlled by someone or some group, and we are again faced with our three alternatives: either the land belongs to the first user, the man who first brings it into production; or it belongs to a group of others; or it belongs to the world as a whole, with every individual owning a quotal part of every acre of land. George's option for the last solution hardly solves his moral problem: If the land itself should belong to God or Nature, then why is it more moral for every acre in the world to be owned by the world as a whole, than to concede individual ownership? In practice, again, it is obviously impossible for every person in the world to exercise effective ownership of his four-billionth portion (if the world population is, say, four billion) of every piece of the world's land surface. In practice, of course, a small oligarchy would do the controlling and owning, and not the world as a whole.²

If, as The Four Horsemen purports, the real issue to be addressed is one of social order and social conflict due to scarce resources, it can be demonstrated, using Rothbard's reasoning, that the Georgist approach does not reduce conflict, it actually encourages it. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has made that very argument in The Idea of a Private Law Society. As with the above excerpts from Rothbard, some initial premises must be clarified before his argument can be presented. I have to begin with Hoppe's initial formulation of "the problem of social order" before presenting the reasoning he uses to arrive at a solution. In this case Hoppe begins with classic "Crusoe" economics while adding a little twist in that he assumes Crusoe's Island to be one one which there is no scarcity of material resources.

Suppose the island is the Garden of Eden; all external goods are available in superabundance. They are "free goods," just as the air that we breathe is normally a "free" good. Whatever Crusoe does with these goods, his actions have no repercussions--neither with respect to his own future supply of such goods nor regarding the present or future supply of the same goods for Friday (and vice versa). Hence, it is impossible for there ever to be a conflict between Crusoe and Friday concerning the use of such goods. A conflict is only possible if goods are scarce. Only then will the need arise to formulate rules that make orderly, conflict-free social cooperation possible.

In the Garden of Eden only two scarce goods exist: the physical body of a person and its standing room. Crusoe and Friday each have only one body and can stand only at one place at a time. Hence, even in the Garden of Eden conflicts between Crusoe and Friday can arise: Crusoe and Friday cannot occupy the same standing room simultaneously without coming into physical conflict with each other. Accordingly, even in the Garden of Eden rules of orderly social conduct must exist--rules regarding the proper location and movement of human bodies. Outside the Garden of Eden, in the realm of scarcity, there must be rules that regulate not only the use of personal bodies but also of everything scarce so that all possible conflicts can be ruled out. This is the problem of social order.³

Hoppe states that problem of social order in the special circumstance of Crusoe and Friday in Paradise can be addressed by a single rule: "everyone may place or move his own body wherever he pleases, provided only that no one else is already standing there and occupying the same space."⁴ For the real world of material scarcity he elaborates four rules. It is here that he expands on Rothbard's argument against collective ownership.

First, every person is the proper owner of his own physical body. Who else, if not Crusoe, should be the owner of Crusoe's body? Otherwise, would it not constitute a case of slavery, and is slavery not unjust as well as uneconomical?

Secondly, every person is the proper owner of all nature-given goods that he has perceived as scarce and put to use by means of his body, before any other person. Indeed, who else, if not the first user, should be their owner? The second or third one? Were this so, however, the first person would not perform his act of original appropriation, and so the second person would become the first, and so on and on. That is, no one would ever be permitted to perform an act of original appropriation and mankind would instantly die out. Alternatively, the first user together with all late-comers become part-owners of the goods in question. Then conflict will not be avoided, however, for what is one to do if the various part-owners have incompatible ideas about what to do with the goods in question? This solution would also be uneconomical because it would reduce the incentive to utilize goods perceived as scarce for the first time.

In the third place, every person who, with the help of his body and his originally appropriated goods, produces new products thereby becomes the proper owner of these products, provided only that in the process of production he does not physically damage the goods owned by another person.

Finally, once a good has been first appropriated or produced, ownership in it can be acquired only by means of a voluntary, contractual transfer of its property title from a previous to a later owner.⁵

Now, the Marxist, the socialist or the Georgist might argue that private property via original appropriation is just one of many different approaches to social organization, but Hoppe demonstrates that private property is not just a solution, but the only solution to the problem of conflict over scarce resources.

The institution of private property and in particular the establishment of private property by means of original appropriation are frequently referred to as "conventions." However, as should have become clear, this is false. A convention serves a purpose, and it is something to which an alternative exists. For instance, the Latin alphabet serves the purpose of written communication. There exists an alternative to it, the Cyrillic alphabet. That is why it is referred to as a convention. What, however, is the purpose of action-norms? The avoidance of possible conflict! Conflict-generating norms are contrary to the very purpose of norms. However, with regard to the purpose of conflict-avoidance, the two mentioned institutions [private property and original appropriation] are not, just conventional; no alternative to them exists. Only private property makes it possible for all otherwise unavoidable conflicts to be avoided; and only the principle of property acquisition by acts of original appropriation performed by specific individuals at a specific time and location makes it possible for conflicts to be avoided from the beginning of mankind on.⁶

The idea of collective ownership of natural resources espoused by the Georgists stipulates that no individual can own land, they must pay for the privilege of using it in the form of "ground rent." It may sound good in principle, but how would it work in practice? Who would collect the rent and who would distribute it? Obviously a miner or farmer cannot just send a check for each person's share to everyone in the world. As Rothbard pointed out it would devolve to a group of individuals to administer such a system, effectively putting them in control of the worlds resources--essentially that group would be the owners. The net result would be an oligarchy distributing wealth in the manner of their own choosing. In short, it would be no different than the predatory corporations the film is criticizing.

So, as I said above, the solution offered by The Four Horsemen, while it may appear to offer an equitable and just solution to the problem of social conflict over scarce resources, it would in fact exacerbate conflict by concentrating the control of world's resources. In fact, on close examination, it might be seen as arguing for an elite body with authority over the resources and people of the entire planet, i.e., a world government. Isn't that what the book of Revelation said the four horsemen would precede?

---

^{*^} There are other flaws in this film. Notably the references to government regulation of the economy championed by Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and worker ownership of the means of production. Each of these can and should be addressed, but I am concentrating on Georgism as it is the most egregious of the errors presented. It is also something with which people are least familiar.

^{1^} For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Nurray N. Rothbard, The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006, pp. 33-35.
^{2^} Ibid. pp. 40-41.
³^, ⁴^, ⁵^, ⁶^ The Idea of a Private Law Society, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Mises.org, 2006

---

Note: I'm pretty sure I've violated the rules of research writing in that the material I've quoted makes up a larger percentage of this essay than my own words, but I'm not writing this to establish myself a an original thinker building on the work of other who came before me. I'm simply trying to present the arguments of those with far greater qualification than I to address the topic at hand.

Violence in America

The cycle

How many times till we learn?

1) In an environment of relative freedom, entrepreneurship and trade produces wealth and prosperity.

2) Increased wealth and prosperity leads to increased tax revenue.

3) Increased tax revenue leads to a stronger state.

4) Increased state intervention and restriction cripples economic activity.

5) The state outgrows the economy and eventually collapses from overreach.

6) In an environment of relative freedom...

A Society of Mutual Benefactors

An excerpt from It's a Jetsons World.

By Jeffrey Tucker

Checking out at the grocery store the other day, I paid for my sack of rolls. The checkout person handed me my bag.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome," she replied.

I walked away with a sense that something was wrong. Do check- out people usually say, "You're welcome," and nothing else? Not usually.

Usually they say, "Thank you," same as the customer says. (Remember, we are talking about the American South, land of politeness, here.)

I was left with an inchoate sense of: "Hey, I did something for you too."

When do we say, "You're welcome"? We say that when we give a gift (a good or service) to a person without receiving anything in return. For example, I might hold a door for a person. That person says, "Thank you," and I say, "You're welcome." Another time might be at a birthday party when the recipient of a gift expresses thanks.

These are one-way examples of benefaction. We are giving but not necessarily getting anything tangible in return. What makes the case of the commercial exchange different? Why do both parties say, "Thank you"? It's because each side gives a gift to the other.

When I bought those rolls, this is precisely what happened. I saw rolls available and I decided that the rolls were worth more to me than the $2 I had in my pocket. From the store's point of view, the $2 was worth more than the rolls being given. Both parties walk away with a sense of being better off than they were before the exchange took place.

The checkout person is there to facilitate this exchange and speak as a proxy for the interests of the store. The store was receiving a gift of money (more highly valued than the rolls) and I was receiving the rolls (more highly valued from my point of view than the $2 I gave up to get them).

This is the essence of exchange and the core magic of what happens millions, billions, trillions of times every day all over the world. It happens in every single economic exchange that is undertaken by virtue of human choice. Both sides benefit.

Each side is a benefactor to the other side. This system of mutual benefaction, unrelenting and universal, leads to betterment all around. It increases the sense of personal welfare, which is to say, it increases social welfare when everyone is involved in the activity.

To be sure, a person might change his mind later. I might arrive home with my rolls and discover that I'm out of butter and that I would have been better off buying half as many rolls and using the rest of my money to buy butter. I might decide to drop bread from my diet. I might conclude that rolls are really not that tasty. All these things can happen.

Such is the nature of the universe that the future is uncertain and human beings are inclined to be fickle. But at least at the time of the exchange, I believed I was better off, else I would not have made the exchange in the first place. I walked away with a sense of gain. The store owners had the same sense of gain. We both expect to gain, which is enough to recommend the exchange system, since no social system can guarantee a happy outcome for every action.

Now, if all of this seems obvious and not even worth pointing out, consider that most philosophers in the history of the world have missed this point. Aristotle, for example, reflected at length in his Nicomachean Ethics on the issue of economic exchange, but he started with the assumption that exchange takes place when valuation is equal or commensurate. But what about cases in which it seems obviously incommensurate, such as when highly valued and rare physician services are traded for something widely available like corn? Aristotle believed that the existence of money serves to somehow equalize the exchange and make it happen, when it should be apparent that money itself is only a good introduced to make exchange more convenient.

The problem he faced was his initial premise that economic exchange is based on the equal value of items in the exchange. This is just wrong.

If two people value goods equally, an exchange would never take place, since no individual could be made better off than before. If exchange is based on equal value, people are merely wasting time engaging­ in it at all. Exchange in the real world is based on unequal valuations of goods and expectation of being made better off. It is a matter of two people who give each other gifts in their own self-interest.

The discovery of the correct theory of exchange had to wait until the late Middle Ages when the followers of St. Thomas Aquinas saw the logic for the first time. They saw that economic exchange was mutually beneficial, with each party to the exchange seeing an increase in personal welfare, subjectively perceived. Therefore the action of exchange on its own becomes a means of increasing the well-being of all people. Even if there is no new physical property available, no new innovations, no new productivity, wealth can be increased by the mere fact of exchange-based human associations.

As with many postulates of economics, this seems very obvious once you see it but it is evidently not obvious at all. In fact, I've observed that many people's underappreciation of the contribution of the market order is rooted in the perception that buying and selling stuff really amounts to nothing wonderful at all. It is just a swirl of churning and burning for the sake of nothing in particular. Society could easily do away with it and be no worse off.

I have a hard time figuring out what people who believe this are thinking. Let's say that I proposed abolishing gift giving. Wouldn't it be obvious that society would be worse off if I got my way? We would no longer enjoy the material manifestation of the appreciation of others, and we would all be denied the chance to show others our appreciation of them.

Well, if it is true, as I've argued, that an economic exchange is a two- way gift, an instance of mutual benefaction that is pervasive throughout society, it becomes clear that society would be completely sunk without as many opportunities as possible for economic exchange. Anyone who champions the well-being of society should especially celebrate commercial centers, stock markets, international trade, and every sector in which money changes hands in exchange for assets or goods. It means nothing more than that people are finding ways to help each other get by and thrive.

As sixteenth-century Spanish theologian Bartolomé de Albornoz, known mostly for his opposition to slavery, wrote,

Buying and selling is the nerve of human life that sustains the universe. By means of buying and selling the world is united, joining distant lands and nations, people of different languages, laws and ways of life. If it were not for these contracts, some would lack the goods that others have in abundance and they would not be able to share the goods that they have in excess with those countries where they are scarce.

However, if we do not quite see the underlying logic of exchange and how it works to help everyone, it is easy to underappreciate what market trading means to society. This is a tendency in the circles that discuss issues of social justice. The market is rarely given the credit it deserves for helping humanity improve its lot. In fact, the market is nothing but the cooperative interaction of humanity in improving the commonweal.

The fallacy of value equivalence in exchange has been refuted for some 500 years, and yet it keeps reappearing. Economics is one of those sciences that require careful thought. It can't be quickly intuited from a handful of moral postulates. It must be studied and understood with deductive tools and patient delineation of a wide range of concepts. It is because of this that economics as a science was so late in developing. But it is not too late for us to understand.

The understanding of economics leads to a direct appreciation of the contribution of free markets to the well-being of all. If you read something that seems to disparage the market economy, it is more than likely that a fallacy such as the above is at the root.

At some point today, you will undoubtedly engage in some economic exchange. Use the opportunity to reflect on what a glorious dynamic underlies it. You can say, "Thank you." The person who takes your money can say, "Thank you." Such opportunities account for most of the peace and prosperity we enjoy this side of heaven.

China and Gold

While Federal Reserve is pumping 40 to 60 billion fiat dollars into the economy and Ben Bernanke calls gold "tradition" and "an awful big waste of resources" to mine, the Chinese are loading up with the wasteful tradition.

There are two important reasons why any of this matters. First, the scale of China’s gold initiative is unprecedented in world history. This alone should make us take notice. Second, China is signaling that the currency wars of the past decade are changing. Soon, the battle will be influenced by gold. Here in the West, we cling to the notion that our experiment with floating exchange rates and unreserved currencies will somehow save the day. We forget that it was only 41 years ago, when the US suspended dollar-gold convertibility, that our current system was born. China suffers from no such delusion. It is voting with its wallet that the experiment has failed. It is preparing for the demise of the US dollar.

Read the rest here.

The most concise critique of the US Constitution I have ever read

From the mind of the man I consider to be the greatest living philosopher and economist.

"...the inflated price of protection and the perversion of the ancient law by the English king, both of which had led the American colonists to revolt, were the inevitable result of compulsory monopoly. Having successfully seceded and thrown out the British occupiers, it would only have been necessary for the American colonists to let the existing homegrown institutions of self-defense and private (voluntary and cooperative) protection and adjudication by specialized agents and agencies take care of law and order.

"This did not happen, however. The Americans not only did not let the inherited royal institutions of colonies and colonial governments wither away into oblivion; they reconstituted them within the old political borders in the form of independent states, each equipped with its own coercive (unilateral) taxing and legislative powers. While this would have been bad enough, the new Americans made matters worse by adopting the American Constitution and replacing a loose confederation of independent states with the central (federal) government of the United States.

"This Constitution provided for the substitution of a popularly elected parliament and president for an unelected king, but it changed nothing regarding their power to tax and legislate. To the contrary, while the English king's power to tax without consent had only been assumed rather than explicitly granted and was thus in dispute, the Constitution explicitly granted this very power to Congress. Furthermore, while kings — in theory, even absolute kings — had not been considered the makers but only the interpreters and executors of preexisting and immutable law, i.e., as judges rather than legislators, the Constitution explicitly vested Congress with the power of legislating, and the president and the Supreme Court with the powers of executing and interpreting such legislated law.

"In effect, what the American Constitution did was only this: Instead of a king who regarded colonial America as his private property and the colonists as his tenants, the Constitution put temporary and interchangeable caretakers in charge of the country's monopoly of justice and protection.

"These caretakers did not own the country, but as long as they were in office, they could make use of it and its residents to their own and their protégés' advantage. However, as elementary economic theory predicts, this institutional setup will not eliminate the self-interest-driven tendency of a monopolist of law and order toward increased exploitation. To the contrary, it only tends to make his exploitation less calculating, more shortsighted, and wasteful." ~Hans-Hermann Hoppe, On the Impossibility of Limited Government

Listen and Learn

What Has Government Done to Our Money?

By Murray Rothbard

Why I Want a Democratic Landslide

Why I Want a Democratic Landslide

I want to see the Democrats win all the way around; the Presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives. It is not for the reasons you might think. I have no illusions. I do not think they will do anything to address any of the issues I consider important. I think they will do all the wrong things and it will accomplish nothing but to make things worse. Not that I think the Republicans are any better. They would also accomplish nothing either.

I have no doubt that the United States are headed for a financial crisis that will make 2008 look life a picnic. None of the underlying issues that rose to the surface then have been addressed.¹ They have simply been papered over with lies and flimflammery. Sound and fury signifying nothing.

The problem is the media and the punditry have created a false narrative. Voters have been told that there is a clear choice. On one side is a Democratic party that believes government should take extraordinary measures to stimulate the economy and alleviate the effects of unregulated greed among the big Wall Street banks. On the other side is a Republican party offering radical free market policies that would cut government spending to the bone and take us back to gilded age of robber barons and sweatshops.

The portrayal of the Democrats is for the most part accurate. They really do believe that government should act despite the fact that every time such policies have been enacted they have failed. One only has to compare the responses to the depression of 1920 to those 1929. One resulted in a quick recovery, the other lead to fifteen years of stagnation was only relieved by the demobilization at the end of World War II and the explosion of prosperity in the 1950s brought about by the reduction of federal economic management.²

It is the image of the Republicans that bothers me. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are being portrayed as champions of free markets. Nothing could be further than the truth. Ryan's proposed budget has been criticized as drastic.³ The truth is even Fox News recognizes that Ryan's "budget plan doesn't actually slash the budget."⁴ In reality, the Republicans wouldn't know a real budget cutting plan if it were presented to them.⁵

However, the people who vote don't look at details, they listen to the sound bites and rhetoric that tell them what they want to hear. Herein is the source of my desire for a Democratic landslide. As I said, I believe the worst is yet to come. There will be a collapse worse than 2008 and if Romney is President what the majority of the people will believe is that the “free market” plan did not work. All they will know is Romney's “radical capitalism” caused a disaster and the very idea of genuine free market solutions will be set back for decades, if not generations. My hope is that if the Democrats are in charge when the collapse comes the idea of government as an economic savior will collapse as well and that maybe a real free market solution⁶ will have a chance.

Notes

1. Why The 2008 Financial Crisis Is A Warm Up For The Horrific Collapse Coming, by Sara O. Hill.
2. The Depression You’ve Never Heard Of: 1920-1921, by Robert Murphy. Why You've Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
3. Paul Ryan's 'Path To Prosperity' Hurts Americans In These 10 Ways, By James Sunshine and Harry Bradford.
4. Fact Check: Ryan budget plan doesn't actually slash the budget, Fox News, unattributed.
5. Ron Paul’s budget cuts put U.S. on right track, by Jacob Sullum.
6. State or Private-Law Society, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Money

Sometime I feel like a stick in the mud, but every time I see someone reference The Money Masters, The American Dream or Money as Debt, I feel obligated to point out that while all three do a excellent job of pointing out the problem, i.e., fractional reserve, fiat central banking, the solution they offer is no solution at all. All three are suggesting that the Treasury take over the issuance of currency. They talk about "spending money into existence" via the Treasury issuing "interest free" money that would essentially be backed by whatever it was spent on. I haven't grasped the exact detail of their plan and I might not be describing it exactly right because frankly I had already taken the economic red pill before I was exposed to them. I didn't waste a lot of time figuring out how something I knew would never work would work.

I'm always of two minds in referencing Gary North because his theology is terrifying. He is a follower of the late Rousas John Rushdoony. In fact he married Rushdoony's daughter. If you are not familiar with Rushdoony I would suggest you do a google search for "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionism." If they don't scare the bejeezus out of you, you either don't grasp what they are getting at or else you think they are good ideas, in which case you are dangerous. Forgive the digression, but I had to get that out.

North, however, is an outstanding economist and he has addressed the ideas in those documentaries far better than anyone. What they are talking about has a name: Greenbacking. Greenbacking is being pushed hard by a woman named Ellen Brown. Gary North has written a masterful series of rebuttals of Brown and the whole idea of greenbacking. I highly recommend anyone who is tempted by Bill Sill or Ellen Brown to read them.

More generally I recommend everyone who views this blog read What Has Government Done To Our Money? by Murray Rothbard. In my opinion, after Ludwig von Mises, Rothbard was the greatest economic and political thinker of the 20th Century. I actually think he is better in some way because his presentation is far more accessible to people without an extensive economics background. If anyone here has found my ramblings on economic and political issues to be of any value understand I am just presenting Rothbard's thinking as best I understand it. Other than a semester of basic economics I took in college many, many years ago, I have no specialized economics training. I have to credit Rothbard for enlightening me. If you have any respect for Ron Paul and his ideas know this: if it were not for Rothbard there would have been no Ron Paul. Rothbard was Ron Paul's mentor.

The bottom line is this: money is a purely a free market phenomenon. It has always emerged from market interactions and every time government has attempted to take it over it has always been a disaster. As I said above, The Money Masters and the other two films I mentioned are absolutely right on the problem and absolutely wrong on the answer.

Since I don't do ad hominem...

...I will say right up front that Ann Barnhardt is a fire breathing Catholic fundamentalist who is obsessed with islamofascism, but she was also a successful commodity futures trader. She knows the financial system from the inside. In this video she is talking about her area of expertise. By way of comparison, I would dismiss anything Bono has to say about politics, but if he were giving a lecture on the workings of the pop music business I would be a fool not to listen to what he was saying.

So, with that bit of background I offer this...

If you still have money in a 401-K or an IRA get out NOW!

I dumped my 401-K last year and bought precious metals. Every month I buy a modest amount of silver. I keep just enough money in my checking account to cover my bills each month. This is not a game. They, and by they I mean the federal government and the Wall Street banks, are going to take your money. It is inevitable. You have been warned. When it happens--and it will--you will have no one to blame but yourself.

Don't come asking me or all the others who have telling you about this for help unless you bring something of real value to trade.

The people who actually create wealth and produce value have been carrying the rest long enough. Grow a pair and do something while you still can.

The need for regulation.

Things I've Found August 7, 2012

End of the Global Warming Debate as We Know It?

Note: The referenced Senate testimony is here.

John Christy may just have ended the climate change/global warming argument as we know it.

Christy recently provided devastating testimony (see article excerpt above) to a Senate Environment & Public Works Committee hearing entitled "Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Adaptation."

Who is Christy? According to Wikipedia, he's a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) "whose chief interests are satellite remote sensing of global climate and global climate change." He is best known, jointly with Roy Spencer, for the first successful development of a satellite temperature record, Wikipedia tells us. And what he's done is compile a list of US temperatures going back decades. He's listed the highest recorded highs and lowest lows and then plotted these as data points to establish a trend.

This is a very simple way to establish whether temperatures are on their way up generally or on their way down. It is much simpler and more direct than trying to monitor ocean currents, sun spots or even whether certain glaciers are melting on the North or South Poles.

It is such a simple idea we wonder why it hasn't been thought of before. Of course, actually, we think we know. Global warming is a most questionable occurrence, but the powers-that-be have actively promoted it whenever possible. They have no interest in debunking it.

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Revenge Of The Zeros: The Battle Between Ayn Rand And Collectivism Reaches A Climax

Note: Rand is becoming more palatable to me every day.

With President Obama's line "You didn't build that," the battle between individualism and collectivism has reached a climax. Obama has openly denied individual achievement, spitting in the face of every individual who ever had a creative thought. Obama has ventured to say straight out what only the theoreticians of collectivism have scribbled before: there is no individual achievement. What appears to be your achievement is somehow the achievement of that mystical entity,the collective–especially its earthly embodiment: the government.

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Message To Obama: You Owe Us!

Note: W.A.R always struck me as a bit of neo-con in libertarian clothing, but he hits this one out of the park and into the next county.

President Obama has it completely backward. Business owners don't owe credit to government for their success. Government owes us credit for its existence. Government doesn't enable or empower business owners. We empower government.

Business owners would do just fine without government. But government, government employees and the "takers" of society (those who take checks from government) could not survive without us: the creators, producers and taxpayers. Simply put, we pay all the bills for government. We're the ones you ought to be thanking.

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Completely Surrounded By Psychopaths And Sociopaths As We Approach The Edge Of Societal Collapse

Note: This is a bit disturbing.

Do you remember when America was a place where you could attend a public gathering without having to worry if a sociopath was going to set off a bomb or start wildly shooting people? Do you remember when America was a place where you could walk down the street without having to worry that a vicious pack of teens might attack you for no reason whatsoever? Do you remember when America was a place where you could leave your car unlocked, your house unlocked and your garage open without having to worry about thieves? Well, only old timers are likely to remember a time when you could leave your front door unlocked, but it was once like that in America. Over the past 50 years America has fundamentally changed. Once upon a time you could trust just about everybody, but these days it is difficult to find anyone that you can truly trust. We are literally surrounded by psychopaths and sociopaths as we approach the edge of societal collapse. The truly frightening thing is that we are watching society break down rapidly even though economic conditions are still relatively good. If this is how bad things are right now, what are they going to look like after the economy collapses and people become really desperate?

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Things I've Found, August 6, 2012

Wausau WI Police Dep't. Calls Out Its MRAP Armored Military Vehicle After Drive By Shooting

Note: I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. (No, we all live in Wisconsin now.)

The signs of the police state now enveloping the people of the United States are all around us. From the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act to the NDAA s.1867 to endless Executive signing orders, the threat to our liberties has never been greater. And the source of most of these threats is not an external enemy, it's our own government...

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Japans remembers Hiroshima bombing

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Watch what happens when Guns are banned in Australia

Note: "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." ~Thomas Jefferson

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IT'S A MATTER OF TRUST - PART ONE

Note: How many times do we have to be told?

The fact that 86% of American adults have never heard of Jamie Dimon should suffice as proof regarding the all-encompassing level of ignorance in this country. As the world staggers under the unbearable weight of debt built up over decades, to fund a fantasyland dream of McMansions, luxury automobiles, iGadgets, 3D HDTVs, exotic vacations, bling, government provided pensions, free healthcare that makes us sicker, welfare for the needy and the greedy, free education that makes us dumber, and endless wars of choice, the realization that this debt financed Ponzi scheme was nothing but a handful of pixie dust sprinkled by corrupt politicians and criminal bankers across the globe is beginning to set in.

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Kevin Spacey amazing imitation

Note: I LOLed

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NY State: Standard Chartered Hid $250 Billion in Iran Deals

Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the state's department of financial services, said Standard Chartered Bank reaped hundreds of millions of dollars of fees by scheming with Iran's government to hide roughly 60,000 transactions over nearly a decade.

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Chemotherapy can backfire and boost cancer growth: study

Note: Isn't this what the "quacks" have been saying all along?

Cancer-busting chemotherapy can cause damage to healthy cells which triggers them to secrete a protein that sustains tumour growth and resistance to further treatment, a study said Sunday.

Researchers in the United States made the "completely unexpected" finding while seeking to explain why cancer cells are so resilient inside the human body when they are easy to kill in the lab....

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India Blackout & Knight Algo: US-India CYBER WAR Over Iranian Oil Purchases in GOLD

Note: At least as believable as the official story.

India is a leader in software engineering. This sector represents more than two millions direct jobs and 4 to 6 million indirect jobs. Bangalore, called Silicon City, is the Mecca of Indian IT. A $76 billions business in 2010, aiming $225 B in 2020. Indian companies engineered a great part of American Banks' trading programs.

Two days after a cyber-attack against the Indian nuclear power plants, one of the biggest players in Wall Street's electronic trading, Knight Capital Corp., saw its trading software create chaos in the ratings of 140 shares on NYSE. I bet your hot dog against my lamb curry, that Knight's software has been "made in India".

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Quote of the day August 6, 2012

And to this day we hear the same arguments.

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.” - Frédéric Bastiat

Things I've found, August 5, 2012

Ricky Gervais on Noah's Ark

Note: TIL God is not gay :)

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Seven-foot long minifig-scale Serenity model is a Lego masterpiece

Note: Shiney

Adrian Drake spent 475 hours over the course of 21 months to build this painstakingly accurate model of Firefly's Serenity entirely out of Lego bricks. The result is this 135-pound, seven-foot long, 70,000-brick beauty that looks especially shiny paired with its minifig crew.

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Economic Equality

Note: "If I can go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich. Authority may (and may not) make all men equally rich in purse; it certainly will make them equally poor in all that makes life best worth living."~Benjamin Tucker

Hat tip to my good friend Brandon Clayton

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Watch robbers run for the door after woman shoots at them

Note: Beautiful. Go Granny, go Granny, go Granny, go.

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Right and Wrong

Half of all U.S. wage-earners pay no income tax. Yet that half and their families receive free education K-12, Medicaid, rent supplements, food stamps, earned income tax credits, Pell grants, welfare payments, unemployment checks and other benefits.

Pat Buchanan get's it exactly right in this observation.  The thing is he is myopically focusing on Hispanics, not realizing he has identified the economic class, comprising every ethnic group, which stands between free people and the society they yearn for.  If he weren't so obsessed with his Hamiltonian dreams of national greatness...

http://lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan255.html

Where's My Flying Car?

They promised me a flying car...

Puck T. Smith shared Economic Freedom's photo.
Friday, June 8, 2012 at 4:44pm

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Todd ZombieHunter Boggia
Friday, June 8, 2012 at 5:50pm

Where is the flying car? Hasn't been much change in the last 2 pics if you think about it...

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Rocco Stanzione
Friday, June 8, 2012 at 6:09pm

If you take what the law says a car can be, and what it says an aerial vehicle can be, there's no intersection that conforms to any possible reality. The flying car has been invented a hundred times, it just isn't legal to sell or operate.

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Todd ZombieHunter Boggia
Friday, June 8, 2012 at 6:19pm

BAM!

Things I've found 5/12/2012

Noam Chomsky: The Anarcho-Statist Anti-Economist

If there were ever any doubt Noam Chomsky needs to shut up about economics, starting at about 4:20 he gets everything exactly backwards:

The man has no conception of market forces.

For example, Monstanto is out of the Bovine Growth Hormone business because

"Consumers have made it fairly clear they don't want milk from cows treated with the artificial hormone. At one point, more than 22 percent of U.S. cows were on the hormone. As of 2007, only 17 percent still were, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In recent years, major companies including Kraft Foods, Starbucks and Wal-Mart have announced decisions to sell only milk products from untreated cows. This 'will limit our future sales' admitted Monsanto." Scientific American

But Chomsky says corporations are more totalitarian than governments and people have no influence over them, but here are Monsanto, Kraft Foods, Starbucks and Wal-Mart caving to consumer pressure.

The Ecomomist
According to Gallop the majority of Americans were opposed to the War on Iraq since 2005, yet that war is being would down only because the Iraqi's would not grant legal immunity to US service personnel.

"For US military planners, legal immunity is a must for any American troops, not only those serving in Iraq as part of any training mission after 2011, but anywhere in the world. The Iraqi decision to revoke immunity puts the US in a position where it could withdraw all its troops out of Iraq, leaving no military support behind." Deutsche Welle

But Chomsky says if the state runs things people are able to influence them via voting and political action.

The man is smoking crack.

Not to mention he calls himself an anarchist, but he loves the state.