Tag Archives: Money/Economy/Taxes

Five Predictions for 2010

1. War: President Obama’s popularity will plummet precipitously, causing him to declare partial victory and begin the rhetoric of troop withdrawal. (Yes, the decision will be made for political reasons.) If I’m wrong about 2010, then it’ll certainly happen before the presidential election of 2012.

2. Healthcare: Nullification movements in various states will fail, though they’ll strengthen the organization of the liberty movement in general and embolden widespread discontent.

Now that our overlords have put themselves in charge of our health, politicians will begin to play with their newly created political footballs: should we pay for abortions? should we pay for prayer therapy? lets get those smokers/elderly/fat people.

There will be fiascoes and scandals, similar to what followed the bank bailouts, as the many crooks involved compete for government privilege.

3. Politics: Despite intense propaganda in the media and fund raising by establishment organizations, at least one hardcore fiscal conservative (Schiff and/or Paul) will be elected to the Senate. Many Republicans will jump on the liberty bandwagon causing them to gain ground in both houses of Congress, winning back one of them.

4. Economy: I’ve been surprised by our economy’s resilience thus far. Perhaps 2008/2009 will be remembered like 1930/1931, as recovery years. By the end of 2010, the wheels will begin to fall off this tortured bus. Freedom will be blamed and more government will be proposed.

5. State’s rights: States in the U.S. as well as in Europe will grow increasingly disenchanted with their government’s incompetence and fiscal irresponsibility. Look for issues of union, cession, sovereignty, nullification to gain increased significance.

(6. This blog will begin a YouTube Channel. :) )

See Also:

Five Predictions for 2009
Five Predictions for 2008

Obama wants to “spend our way out of this recession.”

President Barack Obama called for a major new burst of federal spending Tuesday, perhaps $150 billion or more, aiming to jolt the wobbly economy into a stronger recovery and reduce painfully persistent double-digit unemployment.

Despite Republican criticism concerning record federal deficits, Obama said the U.S. has had to “spend our way out of this recession.” (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

Government now involved in venture capital

The DOE hopes to lend or give out more than $40 billion to businesses working on “clean technology,” everything from electric cars and novel batteries to wind turbines and solar panels. In the first nine months of 2009, the DOE doled out $13 billion in loans and grants to such firms. By contrast, venture-capital firms — which have long been the chief funders of fledgling tech firms, taking equity stakes in the start-ups that will pay off if they go public — poured just $2.68 billion into the sector in that time, according to data tracker Cleantech Group.

Thus, while much attention has been focused on the federal government’s involvement in banking, Washington also is gaining sway in another swath of the economy. By financing clean-tech ventures on a large scale, the government has become a kingmaker in one of technology’s hottest sectors. (Read more from online.wsj.com)

A travesty.

Requiem for Samuelson by Dr. Yuri Maltsev

Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009), first American Nobel Prize laureate (1970) has died, at the age of 94.

I was lucky to meet him at the M.I.T on the glorious day of November 9, 1989, the day of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the day that symbolized the end of the world system of the communist slavery.

We are all advised against speaking ill of the dead. I shall not. Paul Samuelson was a witty, humorous and very friendly and pleasant man. He was the only one I knew that rivaled Murray Rothbard in the elegance of wearing bow ties.

When I was learning economics in the USSR in the 1970s Samuelson was the only Western economist whose textbook was translated into Russian. I remember his famous graph depicting dynamics of per capita GNP in the Soviet Union and the United States according to which the USSR would surpass the US in the standard of living by 1990. He frankly admitted to me that that was mistake. “Who could know that it was all fake?”

His “Economics” was the most widely used college textbooks in the history of the world. First published in 1948, it was translated into 22 languages, and was selling over 50,000 copies a year making his author the richest economist after Ricardo.

. . . .

Robert M. Solow, a fellow Nobel laureate and colleague of Samuelson’s at M.I.T. pointed out that when economists “sit down with a piece of paper to calculate or analyze something, you would have to say that no one was more important in providing the tools they use and the ideas that they employ than Paul Samuelson”.

Samuelson was fully aware of his world-wide influence. He declared that “I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws — or crafts its advanced treatises — if I can write its economics textbooks”.

In his textbook he praised central planning and predicted the future higher standard of living in the communist world. Murray Rothbard reviewed the book in the following words:

“Samuelson’s Economics differs from its rivals largely in being bigger, more indigestible, and filled with the flip and unsupported wisecracks with which Samuelson is wont to dismiss deviant economic views.”

Paul Samuelson’s legacy is overwhelming – he will not write any more textbooks, but he will still command thoughts and deeds of academics and government officials. As Paul Krugman, his best and brightest student and admirer wrote: “It’s hard to convey the full extent of Samuelson’s greatness. Most economists would love to have written even one seminal paper — a paper that fundamentally changes the way people think about some issue. Samuelson wrote dozens: from international trade to finance to growth theory to speculation to well, just about everything, underlying much of what we know is a key Samuelson paper that set the agenda for generations of scholars. . . .” (Read more from blog.mises.org)

HR 1207 made it out of committee!

Campaign for Liberty email:

Dear Friend of Liberty,

Thanks to your quick action in contacting Congress, the House Financial Services Committee earlier today rejected Representative Mel Watt’s attempt to hijack Audit the Fed by voting 43-26 to pass Ron Paul’s amendment to the financial regulatory reform bill.

Dr. Paul called me right after the vote to personally express his thanks to C4L members for all of your efforts!

It is an incredible testament to the growing power of the liberty movement that we were able to get such an audit passed by a major House committee, but this is by no means the end of our fight. . . .

See Also: Ron Paul wins a key battle in war to open Fed’s books