I’ve been directing people toward Peter Schiff’s criticism of US monetary policy for a long time and many people have poo-pooed me for listening to a Chicken Little such as Schiff. Well, if you won’t believe me or Peter, maybe you’ll listen to a hot blonde.
Author Archive for joeglab
06
Jan
Peter Schiff Was Right
Seems that Obama’s Dream Team is coming apart at the seams even before his innauguration. Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson is backing out of the Commerce slot due to the heat he is catching in his home state. But what could that possibly have to do with the duties of Commerce Secretary as stated in the US Code?
The Secretary of Commerce shall have charge of the forecasting of weather, the issue of storm warnings, the display of weather and flood signals for the benefit of agriculture, commerce, and navigation, the gauging and reporting of rivers, the maintenance and operation of seacoast telegraph lines and the collection and transmission of marine intelligence for the benefit of commerce and navigation, the reporting of temperature and rain-fall conditions for the cotton interests, the display of frost and cold-wave signals, the distribution of meteorological information in the interests of agriculture and commerce, and the taking of such meteorological observations as may be necessary to establish and record the climatic conditions of the United States, or as are essential for the proper execution of the foregoing duties.
Snore. I can do that on my iPhone at any time day or night so my two cents says that we no longer need a Commerce Czar. Meanwhile, back to poor Bill. Is there a concern that he will use his vast power and budget to pick winners and losers? Not any worse than any of the past position holders such as Don Evans under Bush II.
At the direction of the President, Secretary Evans launched a government-wide Manufacturing Initiative. This is a major effort based on some 50 recommendations by industry to make manufacturers more competitive in world markets. Many of the recommendations are being put into effect, including: a new President’s Manufacturing Council; a new Commerce assistant secretary for manufacturing; a get-tough Unfair Trade Practices Task Force; a tax simplification study by the Treasury Department; and a comprehensive regulatory review by the President’s Office of Management and Budget.
Maintaining U.S. leadership in high-tech industries also is a focal point for Secretary Evans. He directed efforts to redefine government’s role in research in order to spur the development of more cutting-edge technologies; to promote the expansion of E-commerce and telecommunications with as little government intervention as possible; and to improve the Department’s economic data collection and distribution capabilities.
01
Jan
“Orderly” vs “Catastrophic”
I’m watching some great Peter Schiff bits from CNN, CNBS, Bloomberg, etc and they all seem to be 5 or 6 little heads on a screen ganging up on Pete’s little head in the corner. Every one to a person is trying to convince us that the only solution to a “catastrophic” hit to the economy is an “orderly” march toward Soviet-style statism. Sickening.
Spoiler Alert: The Soviet union was a dismal failure from start to finish.
… then again, a broken clock is right twice a day. Democrat Republican senator from Kentucky and Major League Hall of Famer Jim Bunning was recently uninvited to the Detroit sports card show after voting ‘no’ to an auto industry bailout.
The Gibraltar Trade Center has canceled an appearance by former Detroit Tigers pitcher Jim Bunning at a weekend sports card show after the Kentucky congressman voted against the loan package Thursday night to help Detroit’s auto companies.
Bunning is a former Hall of Famer who was a popular draw at the shows. He was set to sell autographs this weekend at the center on Eureka Road in Taylor….
Robert Koester said his father’s decision to drop Bunning came within 20 minutes of discovering how he voted on the bailout package.
My Christmas present from Cathy. Just add hot stuff and the Bill of Rights disappears!
Perhaps he’s both. I was just scanning through the latest entries at Audible.com and stumbled across this little gem, Empires of Trust by Thomas F Madden. Check the synopsis. I expected to see "Published by The Onion.com" after it.
By making friends of enemies and demonstrating a commitment to fairness, the two republics - both "reluctant" yet unquestioned super-powers - built empires based on trust. Madden also includes vital lessons from the Roman Republic’s 100-year struggle with "terrorism."
David Calderwood writes today at LewRockwell.com about “cargo cults” and how the concept relates to today’s mainstream economics. I thought that he didn’t quite make the corelation and that the true parallel is much more ominous.
Thanks for your fantastic article, Mr. Calderwood. I would just like to add a clarification that would make the parallels between the New Guineans and today’s economists more apparent.
Dr. Richard P. Feynman, Nobel winning physicist, unintentional libertarian and great skeptic of government, used the term “cargo cult” do denote the reversal of cause and effect among the New Guineans after the US pulled out after WWII. During the war in the Pacific, the islanders had seen men in towers wearing headphones and talking into microphones (the cause) preceding cargo drops by B-36s (the effect). The New Guineans had become the beneficiary of some of this cargo and were sad to see that the great, silver birds were not coming back. In an effort to get another cargo drop, they imitated the conditions they thought attracted the planes in the first place. They built bamboo “towers,” wore headphones made from coconuts and shouted gibberish into palm-frond microphones. Needless to say, this didn’t work.
Little did they realize that they were mimicking the policies of FDR immediately preceding WWII. Roosevelt saw high employment, high wages and high productivity (and inflation) as the precursors, not the result, of prosperity (and great government revenues). When the Great Correction, er, Depression finally came, he looked to recreate the conditions he thought led to the largess of the previous decade which included work programs, artificially high wages and price supports. FDR had no more success than the hapless New Guineans would have years later.
Flash forward to today and we see that the economists on the government payroll are telling us we need more cargo cult solutions. They want to relabel “cause” and “effect” in an effort to mystically appease the gods who visited this great sorrow upon us (after all, it was nothing we did, right?).
So there is the obvious parallel. It’s even more scary than your article states. I’m reminded of a quote by another great physicist, Albert Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
Take care, my friend.
Joe Pulcinella
libertyguys.org
Ok, enough with the post-election gushing. I personally know a lot of Obama supporters who had lost plenty of sleep over this election and now say that they are relieved as though McCain would have taken away their children. And now they flaunt “their” victory as though they had placed a huge bet on it. Alas, this is not a football pool. If only they had done a little more thinking about Obama’s platform and a little less blind following in a cult-like trance, they might have seen this.
Barack Obama will enable all Americans to serve:
Obama and Biden will expand AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps, engage retiring Americans, and set up an America’s Voice Initiative to send Americans who are fluent speakers of local languages to expand our public diplomacy.
Integrate service into learning:
Obama and Biden will set a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year, and will establish a new tax credit that is worth $4,000 a year in exchange for 100 hours of public service a year.
So, what we have to look forward to is a fascist-style service to the State (to serve its own ends, not yours) as a condition of citizenship. Please realize that the State does not offer a choice of whether to volunteer or not. Rest assured, Obama will use every ounce of compulsion that George W Bush was able to steal away in his eight years and then some. And for those of us who choose to serve ourselves and our families first, other citizens who exhibit a predisposition toward firearm use will be close by to suggest a more collectivist mindset. But what difference would this really make, anyway? Liberty is for losers … like Ron Paul, right?
In case you know someone who is a class warfare advocate or believes that somehow the rich are immune from market forces and simply get richer through osmosis, send them this (from Forbes):
The biggest loser [of the Forbes 400 list] this year was casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, whose fortune has fallen $13 billion in the past 12 months–$1.5 million per hour–as shares of his Las Vegas Sands (nyse: LVS - news - people ) have dropped 75% from their all-time highs last October.
Normally, to “lose” that much money that quickly, one would have to work for Halliburton.
Why Bother?
I watched Casino Royale (James Bond) on cable the other night and couldn’t help but wonder why everyone went through all that trouble and killed so many people to just take custody of a briefcase containing only $150 million. How can you watch the news of what’s going on with this criminal bailout and not think that’s nothing but chump change?