Monthly Archives: April 2009

Russia backs [partial] return to Gold Standard to solve financial crisis

The best thing about a gold standard is that governments can’t print money, so the stupidity of almost everything they do will be more apparent, as it’d require an increase in taxes or debt.

Interestingly, there is a split in the Austrian School of Economics about the gold standard. I think both these ideas exist in the context of the bank-issued notes, instead of government currency. Murray Rothbard advocated a mandatory 100% gold standard, by which laws would require banks to carry gold for every note they issue. Ludwig Von Mises, while believing this was best, didn’t trust government to wield that power. He advocated “free banking,” which would allow banks to debase their notes, and customers to make decisions accordingly.

I’m partial to Mises’s free market approach, but followers of the Austrian School all agree on one thing: government control of the printing press is very, very bad.

“Russia has become the first major country to call for a partial restoration of the Gold Standard to uphold discipline in the world financial system.” (Read more from telegraph.co.uk)

Is Facebook just a big data miner?

From directorysubmissions.eu

For once, Gordon Brown had to sit and listen

From telegraph.co.uk:

By Daniel Hannan –

On Tuesday, I was one of those few. The Prime Minister was in the European Parliament, trying to persuade the rest of the EU to react to the financial crisis in the way that he has, viz by fire-hosing cash at it. I was one of the eight MEPs who got to respond, and was given three minutes to make my point.

According to convention, Mr Brown had to remain in his place while I spoke. Right, I thought, for once you’re going to have to listen to what people are saying. The country was in negative equity, I said; the weight of his debt would press down on our children yet unborn and unbegot, I said; surely he could see that his bail-outs and nationalisations had failed, I said; we should stop throwing good money after bad, I said.

No doubt you can imagine how Mr Brown reacted; you might have watched him do it week after week at Prime Minister’s Questions. He chatted ostentatiously to his neighbours; he pretended to doodle; he pulled his face into that grin that makes us think of the cold glint of moonlight on a silver coffin plate. Not for the first time, it struck me that the PM won’t listen to criticism.

US judge orders Iran to compensate family of IDF soldier captured by Hamas

“A US judge on Friday ordered Iran to pay $25 million plus interest to the family of IDF soldier Nachshon Wachsman, who was kidnapped and executed by Hamas in 1994.

Wachsman’s mother and six brothers filed the lawsuit in 2006 against Iran and its ministry of information and security, saying Tehran was responsible for the death because it provided training and support to Hamas. (AP)” (Read more from ynetnews.com)

Jurisdiction?

Monsanto’s Many Attempts to Destroy All Seeds but Their Own

“Some say that if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, they simply shouldn’t buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds. But it isn’t quite that simple. Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples, and then sues, saying they own the crop.

Meanwhile, Monsanto is taking many other steps to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of normal seeds:

1. They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest.

2. They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork that having normal seed becomes almost impossible.

3. Monsanto is pushing laws that ensure farmers and citizens can’t block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops.

4. There are Monsanto regulations buried in the FDA rules that make a farmer’s seed cleaning equipment illegal because it’s now considered a “source of seed contamination.”

Monsanto has sued more than 1,500 farmers whose fields had simply been contaminated by GM crops.” (Read more from articles.mercola.com)

Peter Schiff on Warren Buffett, Bill Maher bias, decoupling, and Obama’s lie of world-wide crisi

Doubting Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman offered his thoughts on the economic crisis last week in the University of Iowa’s McBride Hall.

My commentary:

When Paul Krugman furrowed his brow and stroked his chin and told the audience that the Obama administration’s plan to create 3.5 million jobs is . . . here he slowed his speech, demonstrating his thoughtfulness . . . “about the right size,” he neglected to elaborate on how government creates jobs.

If government has the power to create 3.5 million jobs, what is the moral justification for stopping at 3.5 million? Why not 4 million, or 10 million? Why not 150 million, so America’s entire labor force can feed from the government trough?

The fact is that government cannot create jobs. Government can only redirect them. Taxes must destroy private sector jobs which produce goods and services people want, so that government may pay for public sector jobs, which exist for political reasons.

The stimulus will make us poorer, and when it does so, Mr. Krugman will furrow his brow and stroke his chin and tell us very thoughtfully that it probably wasn’t big enough.

He cautioned against the “temptation to dwell on the causes of the bubble,” which seems completely nonsensical to me. More tempting is subscribing to his indictment of unregulated capitalism and greedy businessmen.

In implicating capitalism, he did not mention the government bailout in 1998 of a hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management. When government subsidizes irresponsibility, the case against unregulated capitalism falls to pieces. Had government not set the precedent of rescuing their friends on Wall Street in 1998, we wouldn’t have had these problems in 2008.

Those of us who succumb to the temptation of actually caring how we got here might also note the government subsidizing of bad home loans, and the artificially low interest rate created by the Federal Reserve which cause unsustainable booms.

The boom was not “irrational exuberance,” as Mr. Krugman so dismissively puts it. It resulted from rational business decisions made in an economy our government warped to favor expansion and irresponsibility, and the problem is not a lack of regulation, but too much of it.

***

The hall was packed, and I didn’t get a chance to ask a question. I would have said the following: “Thank you for coming here and speaking to us. Our empire, which has a military presence in 130 of the world’s 190 countries is very expensive. Our government, which employs a sixth of America’s labor force is very expensive. The stimulus is very expensive, and the bailouts are extremely expensive. Conspicuously absent from the discussion is the notion of living within our means. Do we need to live withing our means? Or have our great economists with their deft manipulations of interest rates rendered the notion quaint and obsolete?

***

Tax the Rich

State of the Revolution – the national movement for state sovereignty

“If there’s one thing worse than urban elites at the New York Times, LA Times or the Washington Post who sneer at the mere hint of grassroots conservatism or populism, it’s Midwestern and Southern ‘fly over country’ journalists who strive to emulate them. In a column entitled ‘New states’ rights fight emerges,’ Brian Hicks of Charleston, South Carolina’s the Post & Courier wrote:

For a bunch of guys obsessed with 19th century history, our esteemed state lawmakers sure haven’t learned much from it.

Because the last time they got all uppity and started mouthing off about states’ rights, we got our butts kicked.

Right now, the General Assembly is considering a resolution to warn the federal government not to overstep its bounds by imposing too many laws on the state. They quote the U.S. Constitution and their new favorite amendment, the 10th, to remind President Barack Obama that ‘powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’

Here we go again. Next thing you know, they’ll be shooting at the Park Service guys out at Fort Sumter.

Ah yes. How silly.

Pace Hicks, after our most recent Republican president took unprecedented liberties with the executive branch, and after the current Democratic president has promised something close to central planning, some state lawmakers have decided to take their stand. And their critics bray, ‘How dare any silly second or third-tier bureaucrats champion the Constitution!'” (from lewrockwell.com)