Archive for the 'economics' Category

25
Jul

Bill Bonner Throws Out A Shocking Bailout number

From Wednesday’s Daily Reckoning;

We learned that the feds have put up an amount equal to more than 150% to GDP to bailing out Wall Street: $23.7 trillion.

16
Jul

Setting Regular Republicans Straight About Liberty

Steven Greenhut, Orange County Register columnist and Friend of Liberty, wrote a column for Independence Day that was less than completely reverential toward our Gargantuan Imperial Military. Chip Hanlon, writing in Red County, took off after Greenhut, viciously smearing him, libertarians in general, and incredibly but oh-so-predictably Ron Paul.

Scores of commenters wrote back defending Greenhut, so my addition was probably piling on, but I really like it as a statement of Liberty;

Does Chip Even Read What He Writes?

What you write, repeatedly, is that libertarians (and by implication, incredibly, Ron Paul) are all kooks, because sometimes they make statements that are at odds with your well-entrenched beliefs. You even pull quotes out of context that seem to support your position, but you have made absolutely NO attempt to understand, much less attempt to honestly and intelligently refute them. Your debate techniques are the same ones used by all but one of the Republican candidates, including the eventual nominee.

You see where that has got us. Ron Paul told us all in the debates that if the Republican Party didn’t get serious about reversing the Bush welfare-warfare-torture- spying state, and cutting back on spending and empire, we were not only going down to defeat in November, but that the party would subsequently self-destruct. You don’t have to be crazy to see and understand that he was 100% right.

Look, I accept that not everyone is ready to keep peeling away at the onion of government. Over my political life’s journey, I have been at first shocked by many principled libertarian positions. Then, after mulling them over, I often come to see that in many instances (e.g., drug prohibition, gay marriage, pre-emptive war, central and fractional reserve banks, taxes, governmment spying), and putting aside my merely personal feelings, I have come to understand that the libertarian position logically and morally flows from the fundamental principle of freedom. The libertarian non-aggression axiom is the purest expression of the ideals, if not always the actions of the founders.

A standing military, particularly one as aggressive and imperial as ours, would absolutely shock and dismay many of them.  Steve Greenhut isn’t speaking a Republican heresy, he is simply stating his (in my view correct) opinion that the military establishment is out of political, strategic and financial control, and needs, not to be lauded for its unconstitutional size and scope, but rather reined in, hard. Any honest person, who takes a look at the trail of wreckage left behind by the US military over the past, well, century or two, has to see this.

What we need in this country is a return to the ideals of the founders, minus the bigotry. What we need is a DRASTICALLY smaller government.

What we need is Liberty.

12
Jul

Ban Smoking In The Military? Are You Kidding Me?

Apparently Torture Isn't The Only Thing Lynndie England Ruined For Everybody

Apparently Torture Isn't The Only Thing Lynndie England Ruined For Everybody

The missus relayed a CNN report that a study commissioned by the Pentagon has recommended the military ban the use of tobacco entirely.

As a never-smoker, who personally despises cigarette smoke and all of the things it does, I am nonetheless absolutely appalled that the military is even considering this breach of basic human liberty. Ok, scratch that, I’m still appalled, but on grounds of utility rather than principle. Are the quasi-conscripted enlisted to be spared nothing? Look for mass mutiny if this is ever enacted.

Of course, I am preemptively invoking Godwin’s Law by pointing out that both the motivation and the apparent receptivity of senior military brass for banning the vile weed from America’s sainted Imperial legions echo another old soldier’s logical enthusiasm for banning tobacco.

10
Jul

Friday Music Gets Economical!

Motley look, great band. Canada wins again!

Motley look, great band. Canada wins again!

The Dears Money Babies on YouTube

I don’t usually look to musicians for economic illumination

- (except maybe blues musicians - this IS a Depression, after all, and blues IS Depression Music) -

…but I just LOVE The Dears’ “Money Babies”;

Our money is elastic. Our money is elastic.

Gotta get milk for the baby and our money is elastic.

Decapitative laughter is keeping us alive.

Cavalcades of losers, losing their minds.

Hoping for disaster. Settin’ off alarms.

Amid all of the deranged. Amid all the charmed.

Do you remember that time when we thought we were gonna die?

Well, baby nothing much has changed.

And yet they haven’t been the same since at all.

Our money is elastic. Our money is elastic.

Gotta get milk for the baby. Gotta get milk for the baby.

(Honorable Mention - not economic, but also Canadian - Hey Rosetta - “Red Heart”)

Oh, and - Holy Shit! - The Hold Steady - “Constructive Summer” - (Joe and I can relate to this)

Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer / I think he might have been our only decent teacher / getting older makes it harder to remember / we are our only saviors

03
Jul

Obama O-verload

We have ridiculed taxpayer-paid campaign materials before, as have many others, so it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that such attempts are made as to try to make them less obvious. Here, on a stretch of I-295 where commuters were just over being tortured by a reconstruction product, is one of the first fruits of the “porkulus” - a sign announcing a new, unspecified, undoubtedly expensive impediment to use;

The Porkulus Comes To South Jersey

The Porkulus Comes To South Jersey

But look closely at logo at the lower left - it looks vaguely familiar;

Look Familiar?

Look Familiar?

30
Jun

Wake Up Call - The Movie

I blame Bob Murphy for this. Ignore the simple, inadequate theories of the mechanics (but NOT the politics) of the WTC collapses, and pay attention to the rest - cuts from “Zeitgeist”, “Loose Change”, “Freedom To Fascism”, and more, intercut with Alex Jones, John Taylor Gatto, and David Icke explaining in detail how we are constantly being manipulated to do the bidding of the elites. It’s fascinating, powerful, and, despite the odds, it works.  Check out Joh Nada’s “Wake Up Call”.

15
May

CIA Agent: The Bad Man Made Us Torture

Lynndie England and unnamed victim. Not pictured: contractor who made her do it

Lynndie England and unnamed victim. Not pictured: contractor who made her do it

Listening to NPR, National Propaganda Radio in the mornings like I do, I hear some pretty amazing apologies for the state on an almost daily basis, but this is a new one on me;

“on Wednesday, a former FBI interrogator testified that CIA contractors were the people on the ground who pushed hardest for abusive interrogations in 2002.

Former interrogator Ali Soufan helped question Abu Zubaydah — the first high-value detainee in American custody.

“The interrogation team was a combination between FBI and CIA, and all of us had the same opinion that contradicted with the contractor,” said Soufan. “The contractors had to keep requesting authorization to use harsher and harsher methods.”

Soufan’s written testimony said contractors used nudity, sleep deprivation, loud noise and temperature manipulation against Zubaydah, even before the Justice Department provided legal permission in writing.

Soufan said the contractors did not have any experience in interrogations. They reportedly came from a school where the Army trained American personnel to resist torture.”

This is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard -  that the CIA, with its 60-year history of murder, assassination, violent subversion, torture, and rendition, is now trying to pin responsibility for torturing people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere on…contractors that worked for them.

14
May

The Beginning Of The End Of The Dollar

As we go up, we go down

As we go up, we go down

Lew Rockwell pointed out that in this article for Forbes, NYU professor Tom Cooley inadvertently telegraphs the probable trajectory of the final collapse of the Fed, which, by the way, he is blaming in advance on Ron Paul;

“…since September 2008 it has expanded its balance sheet dramatically from roughly $900 billion to over $2 trillion, as of May 6…The current plan is to continue to expand the balance sheet with… securities backed by credit card debt, auto loans, student loans, small-business loans and real estate loans…The presence of these assets on the balance sheet in such quantities creates another problem for the Fed that exposes it to intervention. First, these huge unborrowed reserves make some observers nervous about inflation, even though there is no evidence of it right now.”

No evidence? Look at gold, oil, and the stock market. Look at foreclosure figures, Or, better, look at the items in your grocery basket - prices are holding, but portions are shrinking and sales are tougher to come by.

“But if the Fed has to reduce the assets on its balance sheet to forestall an inflation threat it could be very disruptive to credit markets. Their complicated positions could be hard to unwind. If the assets they bought were liquid, the Fed wouldn’t have been buying them in the first place. This means it may be difficult to get the cash out of the economy before it is too late.”

It’s ALREADY too late. But extinguishing those excess reserves was never in the plan anyway. Frank Shostak had an interesting technical analysis that bolsters my case;

“It is tempting to suggest that perhaps this visible rebound since February could be the beginning of a new bull market. An important factor behind this strong bounce is massive monetary pumping by the Fed that has contributed to a large increase in monetary liquidity. We suggest that, while the Fed can create plenty of monetary liquidity, it cannot make the underlying real fundamentals better. If anything, the Fed’s policies can only make the fundamentals much worse.”

19
Mar

Sufjan Stevens Is Saving The World From Bad Christian Music

800px-sufjan_stevens_playing_banjo_edit2

I was at Incarnation Church the other day, a growing Catholic congregation in Mantua NJ, and I noticed a few things that are different, and very welcome from most other churches I have attended over the past 40-odd years.

One, rather than the typical older female parishioner behind a Hammond or Wurlitzer banging out traditional arrangements of traditional (((yawn))) hymns in the American vernacular, as I and my family made our way to the cry room, a gaggle of teenagers very politely brushed past me dollying a drum kit, amplifiers, guitars, bass, etc., gear I tend to associate more with southern baptist, AME, and Pentecostal churches than the Church of Rome.

Second, when they began playing the processional, one could not fail to notice that the band and choir were creating a most excellent racket. It blew away entirely all of the bad, folk-based guitar music that I had so often heard at church in the past, and found at best tolerable, and at worst, cringeworthy.

Third, the music, whoever arranged it, drew from such diverse sources as alt-country / Americana, 70’s stage-band music, and the best parts of the music from “Godspell“. Put together, the playing and singing really clicked. It was earnest, artistic, and yet reverent and profoundly spiritual and uplifting.

And I wouldn’t have had any other frame of reference for this, except that during the previous week, I had been absolutely knocked out by a song that I heard on SIRIUS XMU, “Sold! To The Nice Rich Man” by The Welcome Wagon.

The band, comprised principally of the Reverend Vito Aiuto and his wife Monique, with a generous amount of playing and arranging contributed by Asthmatic Kitty Records labelmate Sufjan Stevens, makes music that is faithful without being corny or pious, presses all the right buttons, and kicks righteous ass.

Hearing the new direction that the liturgical music at my new church was taking, I immediately discerned that Stevens, the Aiutos, and doubtless others are having a dramatically positive artistic effect on church music, at least in my parish, and “Christian” music in general. This can only be a good thing.

Anyone who has attended an evangelical college, or has had a friend try to get you to listen to an “awesome” Christian pop record, or has sat through enough commercials for Christian rock compilation CDs on TV knows how much of explicitly Christian pop music is self-consciously pious, metaphorically mixed, liturgically bowdlerized, blunt, and / or just plain artless.

Stevens, a devout Christian, explores spiritual and scriptural themes in his music, but deliberately avoids explicit proselytizing in his songs. “I don’t think music media is the real forum for theological discussions,” he has said, indicating an awareness of the artistic pitfalls that snare so many Christian musicians.

And it works. His big, full compositions, copious instrumentation, full and interesting arrangements are joyful and uplifting, while his quiet, acoustic songs are often painfully beautiful, even occasionally disturbing (”Casimir Pulaski Day” is a heartbreaking song of personal tragedy, “John Wayne Gacy” from “Illinoise” is the farthest thing from a religious song, and unbelievably disturbing, entirely because of its beauty). As a result, his music is a strong presence on “alternative”, college, and “indie”-oriented radio stations like SIRIUS XMU, and has largely escaped restrictive categorization. Hallelujah!

And because the music has so much musical integrity, it works the other way too. The Aiutos take James Montgomery’s paraphrase of Psalm 72, a common theme for religious music for centuries, and with an original melody craft it into the transcendent  “Hail To The Lord’s Anointed” , a fiercely incandescent hymn. It’s simply stunning.

It has been a long, slow artistic descent from Michaelangelo’s Sistine ceiling and Handel’s “Messiah” to engineered steel warehouse churches and Stryper.

One can only hope Stevens, the Aiutos and friends are turning that around, if not for us, then for future generations.

(photo from wikipedia)

16
Feb

The Importance Of Failure

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

A friend writes;

There’s this preacher in my town in Colorado here who was Mr. Always Spirited and Mr. Always Trying to Do Something Positive and he was the kind of guy who could always talk someone down from a ledge or who would always finish roofing the Habitat for Humanity House or whatever, and this weekend he blew his brains out.? If the smileys all snuff themselves, what does that mean for the grumps?

It’s sad, but anecdotally it does seem like many people who spend a lot of time and effort trying heroically to be  helpful end up with a terminal case of the blues.

I don’t know this person, and thankfully no one I have known well has suffered this malady, but it seems to me like at least some of these very helpful people are in part indulging in self-therapy, running apparently cheerily ahead of the reaper, until something trips them up.

This is by no means always fatal, but the consequences would seem to be serious enough to indulge in a bit of prophylactic melancholy, so that when one of the inevitable slings and arrows of outrageous fortune hits, it isn’t a mortal wound. In some ways, failure can act as a kind of inoculation, the old cliche being ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.

Though I can’t recommend ‘vaccinating’ oneself by deliberately bringing misfortune down taking considered risks early in life almost guarantees a few serviceable failures. It isn’t the failures that work the magic, but what coping with failure teaches you. In incremental, but important ways, the skills you learn have survival value.

My own survival lessons include; flunking out of pre-med, losing at love, making a career move and finding myself alone and nearly broke in a strange city, asshole managers, brushes with the law, unbelievable working conditions, a couple of major disasters, marathon commutes, and myriad other indignities great and small, punctuated by bad relationships, boredom, and loneliness.

(Lest you think my life has been nothing but doom and gloom, I have spent less than 0.1% of my life even thinking about my personal failures, including this article. I’m deleriously happy now.)

In fact, the freedom to fail, and the imperative for letting failures occur could not be more timely than in the case of the financial and economic calamity we are facing right now. Failure in the cases at hand needs to happen, it should happen, it is not being permitted to happen, but in the end, after lots of painful, harmful, and completely necessary prolongation by government, I am convinced, it will happen anyway.

Dealing with each of these things taught me things about the corrective value of failure, the importance of family, and the support of good friends. I could easily have avoided failure by avoiding the risks. I could have accepted the failures as some divine judgement on my character, indicating to me that maybe I ought to tightly circumscribe my career and personal ambitions. Instead, I learned, I adapted, I sought out new directions, and I have prospered. Taking those risks has also taken me amazing places, shown me astonishing things, introduced me to incredible people, and enrichened my world beyond description.

And I’m still a realist. The world could go completely egg-shaped for me again one day. But I’ll be ready.