The Great Bob Higgs: The great depression and the current recession
This unbelievably illuminating lecture was delivered by Sir Robert Higgs at George Mason University as part of the Future of Freedom Foundation's Economic Liberty Lecture Series on October 5, 2009.
Simply amazing. Worth watching right through in a single hit. Incredible.
He does mention a trip to Turkey last year, at one point. Which is unsurprising, as the inspiration for this brilliant speech must have come from the conversation below earlier in the year, at a Turkish beach-side restaurant, with a certain gentleman from England:
Your Maturin Towers correspondent convinces Sir Robert to think about linking the great depression to the current recession, or was it linking the bar bill to the entertainment bill? Whatever the case, it was a great evening.
Jim Rogers: Bernanke is Part of the Problem, Not the Solution!
Check out this quote from the Lord of Singapore, at 2:10 of the following YouTube:
"The only good thing about Mr Bernanke being re-appointed is that at least he will be around when it gets worse, and then everybody will know the reason for the problem."
Watch the video, for a thorough defenestration of the US Congress in general and Ben Bernanke in particular:
Hitler responds to the iPad
(A few naughty words, but it's still worth finding out what Adolf's own take is on the iPad, from down in the Bunker.)
Another Reason Why Britain Hasn't Been Relevant in over a Century
Job advertisers mustn't discriminate against unreliable people
Well, it doesn't surprise me, but David Kramer found the following article in the Daily Mail:
=> Employer told not to post advert for 'reliable' workers because it discriminates against 'unreliable' applicants
Dear Lord.
Will the last one to leave, please turn off the banana.
Wibble.
Three more great hour-long shows, the first from The Duke, the second from the excellent Neeraj Chaudhary (with later input from Mr Schiff at 49:30), and the third from the man himself:
=> http://www.europac.net/media/PeterSchiff_01-13-2010.mp3
Bernanke survives
Rather predictably, enough republican senators were bought off to bring Bernanke home, with a 70-30 vote. But at least he is wounded, hopefully below the waterline, and visibly public, rather than being the mysterious Wizard of Oz behind the green curtain, slipped in with the unaminous backing of 100 senators.
Well done Ron Paul, for making Leviathan sweat.
Schiff: Obama's State of the Onion speech
Mr Schiff summarises the lowlights of Obama's 'State of the Onion' speech:
Gran'pa Jack is back
You know, I'm not sure I can face another series of 24, which has just started here in England.
No, it's not the horrible statism, the mythical universe of competent intelligent government officers who care, the rampant government waste continually on show that no-one questions, the routine abuses of basic human rights, the corruption, the rage, the usual power pyramid of white men with white women bosses, with black men bossing them about, and (no doubt) a black woman at the top to tell the black men what to do, plus the endless intricate sub-plots and annoying red herrings.
If you couldn't face all of that and more, then you couldn't have watched the first 357 series of 24.
No. I just don't think I can be bothered any more.
One gets the feeling that Jack can't really be bothered, either, no matter what his daughter said in the garage.
Fly to LA, Jack, for God's sake. Just forget about it. I would.
Oh well. At least we get to see Starbuck again, rather remarkably dressed in almost exactly the same clothes she wore several thousand years ago when she landed on the Earth, though she's had some nanos strip off her tattoos. She really must be a robot, after all.
And so say all of us.
(Though if someone from Fox can write in and tell me that Number Six might pop up at some point too, then I'll hang on.)
Starbuck calling in a fighter wing to tackle the Cylons, in Galactica's CIC
Starbuck about to go on a CTU mission, in New York City
Random picture of a stray Cylon
I've got to get me one of those
I ain't taking it to Nigeria, though. I'll reserve the crappy PC laptop for that.
What's the best form of 21st century money?
Paul asked me this interesting question, recently.
You might think the answer is the Swiss Franc, or the Euro, or the Yen. Alas, you would be wrong on all three counts.
Over the last ten years, the average annual depreciation of each of these paper fiat monies, against gold, was the following:
Swiss Franc:
The average annual depreciation figures over ten years for the dollar and the pound are as follows:
US Dollar:
British Pound:
So if you were saving pounds in a bank account for the whole of the 21st century so far, your bank would have needed to give you 14.69% in net interest every year for ten years (using a geometric progression rather than an arithmetic average progression), merely to hold the value of your paper money steady against gold.
To make that simpler, £100 pounds ten years ago had the same buying power against gold as £380 pounds has now, which is almost four times more valuable. This is how government's rob people through central bank money supply inflation, without their tax proles ever really noticing. If you're doing the same kind of job you were ten years ago, are you being paid 4x as much? Think about what kind of job you had back then, if you've been promoted or moved into a different line of business. Is someone in a similar position earning 4x as much as you did back then?
And remember, back in the glorious age of deflation, from 1815 through to 1914, most wages stayed the same over the whole period (in gold) but prices would go down almost each and every year, except in years when the state managed to induce wars to increase their power over the people. Now, as well as being paid less each year in terms of gold, prices continually go up.
We really have been sold the most enormous pup, by the Keynesians.
For more information, try here:
=> THE DECADE'S BEST NATIONAL CURRENCY
So what's the answer to the question, then? Well, for that we first need to define what money is:
mon·ey
n. pl. mon·eys or mon·ies
1. A medium that can be exchanged for goods and services and is used as a measure of their values on the market, including among its forms a commodity such as gold, an officially issued coin or note, or a deposit in a checking account or other readily liquefiable account.
According to the primary definition of money above, the best form of 21st century money, or that which holds its value the most over time, is gold. The second best form is silver.
The Austrians are coming, everyone. Can you hear them?
Oh, sorry. I'm actually wrong about that, aren't I. Because the credit-crunch recession is now over. Welcome to the recovery.
I Like Guns - Steve Lee
Dear God! Another must-see video! :-)
Remind me to book that immigration interview with the Australian Embassy.
Goldsmith: I changed my mind on legality of Iraq war
Fancy that.
"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem
This video just has to be seen to be believed.
Crazy! :-)
Did the British government kill David Kelly so they could have their illegal war in Iraq?
Recession over in Britain, apparently
According to British government figures, the recession in Britain is now officially 'over'. With spectacular growth of 0.1% in the last quarter, we are now back in the socialist wonderland of deep happiness all round.
What a joke.
Even Jeremy Paxman, of Newsnight fame, found it amusing. Check out his reaction at this link:
=> http://bbc.co.uk/i/qf65w/
If you do check out the link above, you'll find the reaction of the crowd at the start of the video even more enlightening.
Because of the way we proles have been manipulated for most of our lives, many of us are under the deeply damaging delusion that the worst is now over and that we can once again spend, spend, spend (fed by borrowing, borrowing, borrowing).
Indeed, if you listen to the Keynesian HSBC economist in the video linked to above, that's exactly what the banksters and gangsters want us to do.
However, it's going to fail to do any good. Because we haven't even started on this recession yet. And we won't start on it until the government stops goosing the money supply, the interest rates, and the borrowing markets.
Though fortunately, although many of us may be temporarily fooled, certainly until after the next election (which is as far as any politician can see) I think the majority of people in this country still know what the real deal is, despite all of this feeble propaganda from the Ministry of Truth. The British government takes in around £600 billion each year, in taxes, from an economy worth approximately £1,250 billion, though this year the government's taxation income fell to around £500 billion. (I'm sorry I have to be so approximate in these figures, but trawling through the heavily obfuscated Treasury web pages filled with this stuff is akin to swimming through a syrupy sea of Crème de menthe.)
To get that magnificent 0.1% 'growth' figure, the government has recently borrowed approximately £200 billion pounds and printed a further £200 billion on top of that. Yes folks, that's right. In an economy worth £1,250 billion, the government accounted for £700 billion of it, which is approximately 55%, or headed right in the direction of straightforward fascism/communism (take your pick).
If the annual economy figure falls to £1,100 billion, taxes fall to £450 billion, and government borrowing climbs to £300 billion, this would take that 55% figure to nearly 70%. We truly will have reached government nirvana, with Soviet levels of centrally-planned poverty, penury, and political control, as the debt markets collapse, the printing press runs out of control, and that £1,100 billion becomes the sum necessary to buy a loaf of bread.
Remember that all government spending is consumption spending, and the same organisation which runs the Post Office so well, and the war in Afghanistan, is spending £55 pounds for every £100 pounds generated in the productive economy. Which is a joke, with most of that money being wasted on fat salaries for useless Guardian readers and countless legions of other incompetent nasty little tax parasites.
This cant from Chancellor Alastair Darling that 'he' (and he alone) supports the economy, where it is the economy which supports him and the rest of his cronies, is the biggest joke of all. Government produces nothing. It simply steals resources from producers and then parcels them around to its friends, who are dependent upon their political clout and influence for their own share of the pelf and the spoils.
The government does nothing but consume.
But despite all of this borrowing and inflating, all Alastair can still manage is a pathetic 'nominal' growth figure of 0.1%.
Imagine a man losing his well-paid job in the luxury holiday sales market, which was fed on an illusion of cheap paper money. Let's imagine that to keep things going 'between jobs', he runs up all of his credit card bills to their limit and borrows every penny he can by re-mortgaging his property to the hilt. He could buy a few nice suits or a nice new car, or both. He could even renew his gym membership and take an exotic holiday in the sun.
He would still look good. He would still look competent. His monthly outgoings might even increase by 0.1%, despite his lack of work. But he would still be unemployed. And his debts would still be mounting. And his cash pile would still be decreasing.
And we haven't even built his furtive basement counterfeiting of paper money into the analogy, to add a further soupçon of economic delight to the pudding of his dénouement.
This is where we stand, with that man, looking straight down into the abyss. And the more the government props up unwanted industries with car scrappage schemes, and keeps interest rates falsely down, and keeps its spending habits up, the closer we will creep towards that unknowable edge, beyond which chaotic political madness lies.
It will not be until this mythical man stops printing money in his basement, starts paying off his credit card bills, cancels the golf club membership, sells on his time share villas, brings down the debt on his house, swaps his car for a cheaper model, cuts his consumption of luxury goods, and then starts looking for a job in a market which genuinely requires labour without the false stimulus of easy money, that his prospects will genuinely begin to look up.
Not that this can happen under current conditions, with government taxing successful businesses into the ground to prop up unsuccessful ones, and crowding out the entire investment borrowing market with its rapacious demands to feed its useless Guardian readers.
The Keynesians, of course, will call it a 'double-dip' recession, when the 'next' recession hits soon. Their complaint will then be that we put the brake on 'stimulus' spending too soon or cut the 'quantitative easing' too soon. Once again, as always, they will be wrong and the Austrians will be right. (Though the idiot Keynesians will not learn from this.)
For the truth, my friends, is that we in Britain have not left the recession behind. It is simply resting, while we try throwing paper money at it, which it is simply gobbling up and using as fuel for the next round. To borrow the words of one particular famous arch-statist:
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Sir Winston Churchill, 1942
Bernanke, Freddie & Fannie, tax cuts and student loans
Mr Schiff discusses the recent market volatility, especially that related to Ben Bernanke's much-discussed re-appointment woes. Schiff speculates that even if Bernanke isn't re-appointed, then the US government will appoint someone even worse.
He follows this with a short revisitation to the current state of Fannie and Freddie.
The Duke then rolls into Obama's proposed 'tax cuts' and asks a simple question: Where's He going to get the money? The 'Great One' certainly won't cut spending. So He's either going to destroy private sector jobs by taxing the private sector more, or He's going to crowd out private sector investment borrowing by borrowing more. Either way, Obama's 'tax-cutting' plans, without being fed by concomitant government spending cuts, will destroy even more of the US economy.
What about Obama's student loan plans, where students will pay a maximum each year, and only for a maximum number of years?
This increased moral hazard will incentivize students to borrow more money, because it won't matter - repayments will be limited to a fraction of what they borrow. There will therefore be much less pressure to scrimp and scrape by, and to keep living costs and course costs down, because if anyone is faced with a situation where they can borrow as much as the like, but only need to pay back a fixed maximum, they would almost be foolish not to push it to the absolute limit (assuming they can live with the immorality of this - I bet many will be able to!). The universities will also start charging more, because once again the students won't care what they're charged, as long as they get a place, because they won't be paying it back. Another unintended consequence is that students will borrow further while at college just to fund more lavish lifestyles. The final consequence, is that because a college degree will then be seen as being that much more attractive, with lavish lifestyles being lived at expensive colleges by one and all, with a maximum fixed upper payment ceiling, then many more will swap their productive lives for the consumptive lives of students, thus flooding the market with people with degrees, thus devaluing all degrees.
(From the British experience, what will then happen is that government will then start rationing places in higher education, based on political whim, reserving cherry-picked slots for its own favoured off-spring. There will also be many more students opting for degrees purely for their own whimsical intellectual interest rather than for their hard-nosed economic interest, treating degrees as three-year drinking, drugs, and sex holidays, all gratis on the taxpayer, rather than as personal investments of time, energy, and wealth. Heck, why not make it a four-year degree, for an extra year of fun? And then a masters degree? And then a PhD? All based upon Peruvian basket weaving in the fourteenth century and its eventual effects on global warming.)
New bank regulations, China, and the dollar
Mr Schiff talks about Obama's new banking regulations to 'separate' the banking system's elements into various government-defined segments. He details how Obama is wrong about what caused the current crisis, because the irresponsibility of the bankers was a symptom of the real cause, not the real cause itself, which was of course the government's intrusion into the free market via the machinations of the Federal Reserve and its artificially low interest rates. He claims that Obama is stoking up an even greater crisis with his 'solutions'.
The Duke also discusses the moral hazard of government insurance and why it stops bank account holders from caring about what banks do with their money (or indeed, why it forces banks to take risks in order to compete with the riskiest banks, which would otherwise win all consumer business - as the Icelandic banks did with many British consumers).
The moral hazards and interventions of government, via banking insurance, bailouts, and reckless interest rate suppression, are making things far worse and will lead to even greater bank failure in the future, especially as the American government has now turned many previously uninsured investment houses, such as Goldman Sachs, into commercial government-insured banks.
To finish off, Schiff discusses how changing economic conditions in China are going to eventually rebound with an even weaker dollar.
Our overlords burn down the economic house
There is a small corner of south-west Wales, mainly in southern Pembrokeshire, in which the Norman invaders of 1066 probably practised genocide. Although still shrouded in mystery, it appears these sadistically violent French-Norwegian mafiosi slaughtered or transported the indigenous Celts to provide a belt of genetic security around Pembroke castle, an important way-station on the road to the Norman invasion of Ireland (and what fun that has given us in the succeeding 1,000 years).
The chief butcher was Roger de Montgomerie, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, who set up Pembroke castle to subjugate the surrounding Welsh population, after cutting a bloody swathe through Wales from Norman-dominated England.
Roger's wife was the charmingly nick-named Mabilla van Bellême, The Poisoner, daughter of the Flemish noble, Willem II Talvas van Bellême.
Some say that when the Welsh were removed from around the immediate territory of Pembroke castle, they were replaced by tenants and relatives from The Poisoner's Flemish territories, along with Anglo-Saxon mercenaries from Roger's territories in England. As the Old English language was a sub-dialect of Dutch, as is Flemish, and as the two languages were only separated in time by a few centuries, the two Germanic populations quickly intermingled to produce Anglia Transwalliana, or what later became known as the Little England beyond Wales.
I mention all of this in passing, because it's fascinating to see how the dynamic between warlike criminal parasite socialist tax-eaters and peaceful freedom-loving independent market producers has provided us with such a bloody history in these islands which still resonates to this day (just try using an English accent in a northern Welsh pub if you want to try that theory out) but also because it points towards what England has now become; which is a sort of mini-America across the water.
Dan Mitchell, although not fully on the side of the Angels, notes this linkage too, in the following piece:
=> An Omen for America?
In this interesting article he wonders out loud about how a predatory and confiscatory state in Britain, in which you can never guess or anticipate any tax thefts from one year to the next, is driving wealth, employment, and business out of Britain and into friendlier, more stable, and more tax-predictive climes, such as Switzerland, as it lights a pyre under all forms of independent entrepreneurialism.
As Man-Of-The-People Brown, the Scottish instigator of all of these English escapes, claims to be the 'Great Friend' of the current Kenyan incumbent of the White House, one wonders if what is left of American business is similarly being pushed offshore by the similarly socialist policies of Man-Of-The-People Obama.
HT to Paul
Peter Schiff: Join The 300
Peter Schiff leads his brave 300 freedom-defending warriors into battle against Leviathan
His SchiffMeisterNess thanks the three hundred and seventy-seven who contributed to his recent money bomb campaign, but asks the thousands of other US subscribers to his YouTube channel to help him financially too, to propel him into the US Senate.
Don't watch this if you're a US-based Peter Schiff supporter, unless you're prepared to shell out about $100 dollars to his campaign. (Though Mr Schiff is happy if you only contribute $5!)
American Samoa: The real story 60 Minutes missed
Peter Schiff delivers one of the best refutations of the socialist minimum wage nostrums that I have ever seen, read, or heard. And all from 'off-the-cuff', after The Duke found himself watching an episode of 60 Minutes.
Roll over Frédéric Bastiat, your successor c'est arrivé!
Ah, Blighty, land of the free - unless the government don't like you, of course
Crikey, I better watch out for helicopters flying over Henley after reading the following:
=> Student arrested for protest at army base
Alas, Chinooks regularly fly over Maturin Towers, going between RAF Benson and the army bases around London, so I won't have much warning.
But really, eight armed units plus a helicopter to terrorise a student for daring to put up an anti-war poster really is starting to get a little worrying. Where do they think we are? East Germany? North Korea? America?
Political choices make you free, citizen
I love this blog post on Lew Rockwell:
Democrats: Political Party favoring welfare and warfare
Republicans: Political Party favoring welfare and warfare
Liberals: Political Party favoring welfare and warfare
Conservatives: Political Party favoring welfare and warfare
Fascists: Political Party favoring welfare and warfare
Socialists: Political Party favoring welfare and warfare
Communists: Political Party favoring welfare and warfare
Nazis: Political Party favoring welfare and warfare
BTW, if anyone can write in and tell me the real substantive differences between the British Labour party and the British Conservative party, then I'd be pleased to hear from you, particularly over the NHS, the war in Afghanistan, the war on drugs, membership of the EU, membership of the UN, the legality of the war in Iraq, the need for British nuclear weapons, the need for the state to 'share' any increases in wealth, the need for state provision of education, the need for state provision of welfare, the need for central banking, the need for government subsidy of favoured groups, the need for government sponsorship of the Arts, or indeed, any other matter which couldn't fit onto the head of the pin.
Conservative central office posters are particularly welcome, particularly anyone who remembers hearing Michael Portillo's 'Clear Blue Water' speech.
Quarantine Earth: Still alive, just
Having survived the main road out of Lagos back to the airport, and once again having re-witnessed the madness of Nigerian drivers, I'm afraid I've succumbed to whatever the African equivalent of Montezuma's revenge is (Obama's revenge?). Yes, thoughts of the Ebola virus and malaria did randomly cross my mind as my temperature started shooting up, but it was probably just the usual bubble of viruses that makes up the usual air recirculation soup on the typical jetliner, with me having forgotten to take my Vitamin D3 supplements along on the journey.
Still, I think I'm over the worst.
And it's amazing how 'civilised' Britain looks and feels, after a week in West Africa. No doubt, after a couple of weeks back I'll once again be able to detect the flaws in the substrate of our socialist wonder state, but for the moment, it is simply good to breathe the naturally cool breezes of the fresh January air of Blighty and even better than that, to trust the water I pour onto my rehydration crystals.
Such are the simple pleasures of life.
While spending some time in my current febrile state, however, I have been wondering about the following question.
However has multi-cellular life survived for several billion years in the face of all this relentless destructive parasitism from uni-cellular and sub-cellular life-forms, such as viruses and other micro-parasites, such as prions?
(Go on, you can guess where this is going.)
Is evolution, that great game, so similar to free market competition, that we can imagine that successful entrepreneurial businesses are like large multi-cellular organisms, which despite being plagued by parasites, still manage to survive, adapt, and thrive, no matter how bad the environmental circumstances?
To wit. Are socialists not merely infected by the virus of Marxism. Can we actually classify these macro-parasites as viruses?
One certainly thinks of the train containing Lenin that the Germans sent into Russia, to deliberately 'infect' the Tsarist armies with revolution, to allow the Germans to concentrate on the Western Front. Was this a sort of 'virulent inoculation' of an infective viroidal agent which went horribly wrong, to end up killing more innocent human beings than any other modern virus ever has?
Yes, I think I like the analogy. Viruses are the socialists of the microscopic world and Socialists are the viruses of the macroscopic world. Both parasitize and destroy. Both need to be defended against and grow in incredible numbers when they have successfully invaded a host (even the formerly libertarian United States). And both are blind killers which eventually die off because they usually kill all of the available hosts which have not successfully defended themselves or evaded infection.
There's got to be a Sci-Fi novel lurking in there somewhere, called 'Quarantine Earth'?
Unfortunately, I'm not yet in a fit enough state to figure out exactly where.
Back to the rehydration crystals.
(Or, if I haven't posted in a few days, then it was the Ebola virus.)
So what's downtown Lagos like then, Jack?
Hairy, my friend. Very hairy indeed.
As I write, I'm sitting in a very nice restaurant in a very nice hotel on Victoria Island, in downtown Lagos. But this hotel is behind armoured gates, and Lagos airport was QUITE an experience.
A drunken Nigerian man fell down the escalator, as I was directed into a queue where I stood an hour waiting for three different people to examine, sign, and stamp my passport.
Military, everywhere.
Getting my bag was fun, too. I realised why so many Nigerians getting onto the plane at Heathrow were carrying such enormous carry-on bags, to avoid the further 45 minutes waiting for the bags to appear.
I have never been so relieved to see my bag in my life.
Fortunately, a nice oil-industry man in the queue had told me that if the customs people harassed me about 'nothing to declare', that the best thing to do was joke and banter with them, rather than acting like the usual 'dead supplicant' when faced with the blackshirts of the appalling US border guard system.
An armed bereted officer approached me at a run:
"Is there anything in these bags worth declaring?"
I looked him in the eye and smiled.
"Absolutely nothing, sir, absolutely nothing worth declaring."
"Are you sure my friend? Are you sure there's absolutely NOTHING worth declaring in these bags? He fingered his gun suggestively. (Oh, the tease.)
"100% confident, officer. Absolutely nothing worth declaring."
I held his gaze the entire time. He then laughed, patted me on the arm and said:
"Welcome to Nigeria."
Jesus H. Christ. What a place! 29 degrees Celsius and 100% humidity and no air-conditioning, and that's the international airport, surrounded by men with machine guns, pointing them at a boiling crowd of 'taxi drivers' and other assorted legions of people wanting money.
Then into the less-restricted area to face about 100 men trying to charge me for things I didn't want doing (surely aspiring bureaucrats) and then absolute relief because my lady was there with her driver, after I'd managed to shake off another three or four men tagging me for cash.
Thank Smegger.
Oh, and the drive. What a drive. People eating their evening meals between six lanes of traffic, cars with no lights, fifty-year-old trucks ramming up into the mirrors, motorcyclists everywhere, women in the road selling water from the top of their heads. Hordes of people crossing the MOTORWAY at all points. Columns of cars defying physics, horns beeping, no road markings, and no point wearing a seat belt as the 60-ton trucks cutting us up wouldn't have worried about it if they had hit.
What a place.
At least I'm through the government interface, the government-managed roads, and back into secure private-property sanity.
As the customs man said.
Welcome to Nigeria.
Still, it's better than downtown Slough, in Berkshire, on a Friday night. Now that really is the end of the Earth.
Schiff Report: Sunday round-up
I've been busy recently preparing for a trip to Nigeria (oh yes), so I've been missing out on my usual Peter Schiff video blog fixes. Three at once is quite a rush:
Schiff For Senate Money Bomb Jan. 17th 2010
Posted January 10th
Peter Schiff's new Democratic opponent, Richard Blumenthal, will prove a tougher barnacle to dislodge than Chris Dodd merely because he hasn't been a crook in Washington yet. Here, the SchiffMeister examines Chris Dodd's record and puts forward his own credentials about why he should be elected instead of Blumenthal. (WARNING: British viewers' toes may curl when they hear the cheesy music. However, it seems all American political advertising must use the same Hollywood Blockbuster theme, and let's face it, just three seconds of Gordon Brown over here is enough to make you reach for your shotgun to blow your TV screen out, never mind make your toes curl - if the state, in its ultimate wisdom, has allowed a mere prole like you to actually have a shotgun, that is.):
(Look at those smiles on the faces of the parasites above. You wonder how long it is since any of them ever worried about where the next meal was coming from, or ever did anything someone else voluntarily paid for with their own honestly-earned money, with so many taxpayers to feast upon instead.)
Schiff for Senate & Jan 17th Money Bomb
The Duke speaks again about the money bomb due today (Sunday, the 17th of Jan). He also lets people know he has fixed his phone-banking software to let people make unlimited phone calls every day, to help his campaign. To finish off the piece, he wonders out loud about why the other Republican candidates in the contest are beginning to make pronouncements similar to his own line of thinking:
The Lunacy of Government
And my favourite, where the Duke gets back to declaring that the Emperors of the State are wearing no clothes. Best of the three:
The sheer pointlessness of George Osborne
Once again, last night on Newsnight, George Osborne of the Conservative Party proved what a jellyfish he is.
He acted 'tough' throughout the day, announcing that he would 'consider' Swedish-style reform if elected as Chancellor.
When pressed on Newsnight, however, about whether this meant he would actually, God Forbid, cut government spending by 12% (something even the Swedes managed), he blathered, and he obfuscated, and he made himself look an utter twerp.
The best he could manage was that he would 'ring-fence' spending on the NHS and on 'International Aid'. This is the power and draw of democracy. Increased NHS spending in recent years has been calamitous, with massive increases in spending followed by feeble increases in output. As to 'International Aid', if it was renamed 'International subsidies for dictators to amass arms and Swiss gold', it would be a fairer reflection of its purpose and use.
This 'ring-fencing' would also mean that government spending in other departments, such as education, would have to be more than the 12% suggested by Newsnight, to compensate for the bloated NHS and 'Aid for dictators' funds staying where they are.
But don't worry, if you are a parasite. Because George likes sounding tough to try to get people like me to knock on doors for him, but in reality the best he will manage will be spending cuts in the order of 1-2%, with the Bank of England taking up the brunt of government borrowing by printing more money to buy up government bonds, to crowd out all possible investment in productive endeavours.
He will also increase taxes (in the midst of a depression) to ensure that government-employed parasites (a.k.a. 50% of voters) will not have to suffer in the short-term, while what is left of British productive industry and entrepreneurialism migrates to more favorable climes.
In the long-term, of course, about 60 million government parasites will be trying to live off the back of the efforts of a single man with a shovel, but no government ever thinks beyond the next election so don't worry - something will turn up.
In the meantime, George, if you're reading this, take the Maturin Towers' advice:
1. The Labour Party want the Conservative Party to win this May 2010 election, to take the heat for all of feeble cost-cutting that even they know is necessary afterwards
2. Therefore do the opposite of what they want and don't try to win it
3. Say what you actually think, 'This country needs government spending cuts of 20% all round, to first rein in the borrowing to zero, and then to start paying off the principal sums involved. We also will not institute any tax rises, because we want to have a productive economy, and once the government is living within its means, we will keep cutting government spending, and keep privatising everything, and splitting the proceeds between paring down the debt and cutting more and more taxes to grow the economy and get the people of this country back on their own feet and non-reliant on the taxation of other people. The problem in this country is the size of government. It needs to be cut down to size. In our opinion, this is "The smaller, the better".'
4. Having lit the blue touch paper, then retire to a safe distance and watch the Labour Party win the poisoned chalice of this May 2010 election
5. Then watch about six months to a year of dithering, as British society begins to collapse under the strain of more wretched Gordon Brown policies
6. Then sweep to power, in a second 2010 election, with a clear mandate to do what you set out in point 3. above, instead of all this cowardly pussy-footing that you doing at the moment, to try to win the May election
Obviously none of the above will be tried, because the lure of those government limousines will be too much, and Dave and George would prefer the poisoned chalice rather than actually trying to save the country.
Idiots.
Shock news just in: British police caught using taxpayers' money to tell lies
Speaking of the British police, both of our loyal readers may remember this article we wrote before Christmas:
=> General Election due in the UK soon, shock
This detailed the rapidly growing expenditure of taxpayers' money on pre-election propaganda on behalf of the Labour Party, to prove that all of our money that it has wasted in the last 13 years on paying bloated legions of government criminal-class Mafia parasites to sit in offices surfing the Internet all day, for huge bloated salaries, has actually benefited the rest of us in some actual tangible way - beyond lightening our wallets to enable us to walk faster.
Specifically, this propaganda claimed that British police spend 80% of their time 'on the beat'.
Unfortunately, the British government have told so many lies in the last 13 years that absolutely nobody believed a word of it, so they wasted even more money spewing out this garbage from the Ministry of Truth's "Home Office" - the days have long gone when the gullible British public would believe someone just because he was a government employee.
Anyhow, I raised a challenge with the Henley police that it would take me at least three days to see a police office in the flesh, despite regularly walking around the centre of Henley. That was on December the 15th.
Well, yesterday, the 13th of January, nearly a whole month later, I finally saw one stepping gingerly through the snow. Yes, she was between a sandwich shop and the police station, so I'm guessing, quite randomly, that she was just getting lunch in.
But even without quibbling, that's still 29 days for a taxpayer to 'catch' a British police officer 'on the beat'. You wonder what they're doing with the other 20% of their time? It can't be much.
But Mister Maturin, I hear both of you retort, surely you cannot base an entire philosophy of antipathy towards the tax-wasting liars in the British police on something so apocryphal and so anecdotal?
Actually, The Sunday Times caught them out lying too:
=> Ministers ratchet up spending on 'good news'
Apparently, one Ministry of Truth employee admitted that it's not 80% of their time that British police spend 'on the beat', as they pledged in their advert below, but more like 13.6% of their time.
Again, let us not quibble about what constitutes being 'on the beat'. Most British people, if asked, would say that this means physically walking or perhaps cycling on the street. The British police will probably define it as 'not being inside a police station', so cooping yourself up in a warm cozy car listening to your iPod player or attending a 'diversity awareness seminar' probably counts towards the miserable 13.6%. But even so, to claim a figure of 80%, when by even your own feeble guideline definitions it is only 13.6%, is a whopper even Don Corleone would have been proud of.
Now if I were to tell a policeman a lie like this - "I was doing 13.6 miles per hour, officer, not the 80 miles per hour that you claim" - then I would be banged up in one of their filthy gaols.
What consequences will the British police face for being caught out telling such a bare-faced lie, at such expense, to the rest of us?
To ask the question is to know the answer.
Men with snow on their boots: Batten down the hatches
You know all that stuff we used to be taught in the 1970s and 1980s about being in a warm interglacial, with a one hundred thousand year Ice Age awaitin' around the corner to snag us?
Well, the Russians are still taught it. And some of them think that time is up for the 12,000 year interglacial party:
=> Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age
Yes folks, the men with snow on their boots think that it's time to get even bigger snow shovels in.
No doubt this is all part of some ghastly Russian plot to take over the world. Or is it just because they have failed to succumb to the green religion of the western liberals? After all, as people who have witnessed some of the worst excesses of socialism in the last one hundred years, perhaps they're better at detecting communoid nonsense than those of us in the West who still burn carbon-dioxide-producing candles for the memory of Karl Marx.
No doubt, time shall tell. In the meantime, I'm just wondering if the police in Henley have re-opened Greys Road - closed due to 'treacherous' snow yesterday - so that I can get to the shops to buy some more thermal clothing.
I must say, why doesn't this treacherous snow know that we're on an ever-accelerating upward curve into hot desert-like conditions here in England? Is the snow now part of the heretical unbeliever network? I think we should be told.
Traitors are getting everywhere.
Wootton Bassett protest group Islam4UK to be banned
I think Martin Niemöller's chilling poem needs an update, in response to the fascists in the British government today banning a political group for daring to argue against British government policy:
First they came for the Islamists, and I did not speak out—because I was not an Islamist;
Then they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out.
For much more eloquent thoughts on the subject than I can muster, it's worth reading the thoughts of Britain's leading libertarian, Dr Sean Gabb:
=> "BAN ON ISLAM4UK: A DEFEAT FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH," SAYS FREE MARKET AND CIVIL LIBERTIES THINK TANK
Change Update: Obama increases the number of US wars
Cheney and Bush only had two major wars between them, plus a score of more minor ones. Obama's ongoing idiotic 'Socialist Change' policy is now trying to up the count from two to five, plus doubling the number of other minor 'warlings' to include most of the non-western world. So to Afghanistan and Iraq, we can now count Yemen and Pakistan - the targets of deadly hellfire missile drones, special forces, and cruise missiles - and shortly the western taxpayer will be murdering people in Iran too.
Whoops, I don't want to go too far. I might get banned by the British government, for daring to have a non-fascist opinion.
I do hope all of you pinko Obama-lovers out there are loving his body-bag count of women and children. He should have Bush beaten by next Christmas.
For a decent detailed background, check out the latest think piece from Eric Margolis:
=> Osama: 10. The US: 0.
The Southern Avenger has a few thoughts on the subject, too:
Murray Rothbard Lecture Series: Introduction to Economics
Mises.org have created a new ITunes University channel, here:
=> http://itunesu.mises.org
After taking a perusal, I found an introductory course to economics, by Uncle Murray himself, recorded on a Toronto student's tape recorder back in 1983. I haven't even listened to it myself yet, but I'm sure it will be much more than excellent.
Well done that man (or woman), who unearthed these rare diamond gems:
Here's a link to the first lecture on Mises.org:
=> http://mises.org/media/4454
Here are links to the 7 MP3 lectures, in sequence:
=> http://mises.org/multimedia/mp3/rothbard/Seminar1983/Rothbard-1.mp3
Here's the RSS Feed page, where the technorati can feed their iPod with these lectures (along with many other Rothbard classics):
=> http://mises.org/Feeds/media.ashx?AuthorId=299
Peter Schiff: Bernanke - "It Weren't Me, Guv, Honest!"
The Duke discusses the markets, and the cluelessness of Ben Bernanke in stating that the Fed had nothing to do with the US housing bubble. Schiff recaps an article the Duke himself wrote several years ago (2004) about how the Fed's artificially low interest rates had stimulated the housing market and why this would lead to a bubble.
He castigates Bernanke for either being clueless in failing to understand this at the time, or for being a liar for failing to own up to the Fed's responsibility for this inevitable outcome. Alan Greenspan also comes in for some well-earned stick for his past remarks praising the use of adjustable rate mortgages.
And if the past 1% artificially low interest rates caused so much damage, Schiff wonders, how much damage is an interest rate of 0% currently doing to the US economy?
Here's another video blog discussing the immolation of Senator Chris Dodd and the current funding state of the Schiff campaign:
Peter Schiff: We need production, not phoney stimulus
The Maestro discusses the latest US jobs figures:
Ambrose wants to tear up his Keynesian textbooks
It would appear that Evans Ambrose-Pritchard has finally given up on Keynesianism. With a gloomy piece on America's economic condition, he ends with the rhetorical flourish of a man who knows the game is up:
Tear up the textbooks.
Obviously, I had to help Mr Ambrose out with this melancholy, so I penned him the missive below, via his comment pages:
You don't need to tear up the textbooks, Ambrose.
You simply need to reach up to the highest and dustiest shelf of your personal library and bring down the 1912 book that still explains it all.
You even know which book I mean, before I wipe off the dust to reveal its title and author:
=> The Theory of Money and Credit, by Ludwig von Mises
In case you gave it to your local Oxfam bookshop a few years ago, Ambrose, I even have a PDF address for you, to read the entire thing again for free, now that you finally know Keynesianism is busted. Enjoy the searchable and copyable text:
=> http://mises.org/books/tmc.pdf
Posted by Jack Maturin at 9:58 am 1 comment:
Ministry of Truth: Cooling Means Warming
Global Warming covers Britain in Deepest Snow since 1981
I must say you've got to admire the pluck of all of those BBC Newscasters in the last five days, with record snowfalls and cold temperatures abounding, to keep pushing out the global warming lies from the Oceanian Ministry of Truth.
At first it was literally frozen smiles all round, as the snow reports came in, then as those record cold temperatures came in too, it started getting really frosty in the newsrooms.
But, after a brief hiatus, they've got back to pumping 'The Truth' out again, with 'special' reports now about how in other parts of the world it is warmer than it is here (without yet mentioning the record snowfalls in North America) and how climate is different from weather.
Bless.
Yes, the same organisation that predicted a hot summer and a mild winter, the meteorological office, another division of the Ministry of Truth, which can't predict snow more than 7 days out, is still sticking to the line that 'the climate is definitely getting warmer', despite a wet summer and a freezing winter.
No doubt this superior acumen, and the ability to accurately predict the weather a hundred years out, despite being unable to predict the weather six months out, is why the chief parasite at the Ministry of Truth's meteorological office recently awarded himself a 25% pay rise, to over £200,000 pounds a year, which is more than the British Prime Minister gets.
Funny. I thought that after a brief peak in 1998, the global temperatures were now down to those matching approximately 1979. Which would explain why the current snowfalls are matching those of 1981?
Silly old me. I obviously have no conception of the greater overall climate patterns, as supplied to me by a computer model I wrote myself to make the weather get hotter.
The word 'extreme' is also getting a heavy usage. But one wonders how long they can keep using the phrase 'extreme cold weather', because it is gradually becoming 'normal cold weather'? Maturin Towers predicts that 'extreme' will soon be replaced by something even more hysterical, such as 'ecodestructive' or 'disbalancing'.
And what exactly is 'extreme' about weather matching that of 1981? Surely "a bit colder than it's been of late" would be sufficient?
One also wonders how cold exactly it has to get before the global warming nonsense finally goes away. It reached -18 degrees Celsius two nights ago, about five miles away from me, and it certainly felt like it the next morning.
And no doubt if it does get warmer next year (which is a 50% likelihood), this will be held as absolute 'proof' of the theory. Yet if it gets even colder (another 50% likelihood), this 'aberration' will once again be ignored. (Yes folks, the death of science is alive and well at the Ministry of Truth.)
Oh well, back to shovelling my 4x4 out of the snow. Thank goodness the government's taxes to try to force me into a 2-wheel drive car haven't hit my 10-year old car yet. All the people round my way, with new 2-wheel drive cars, are starting to get really worried about getting to the shops to get food in for the weekend.
Fortunately, I have no problems with my superior traction over snow, and no doubt I'll be getting in quite a few shopping runs for my neighbours. You see, having a heretic in the street can be useful sometimes, even if he is an 'unbeliever'.
And I hate to think how cold it would have been if evil capitalists hadn't been pumping out CO2 for the last 200 years, to keep the temperature up.
-28 Celcius, perhaps? In Oxfordshire?
Thank goodness though we have all these nice environmentalists at the BBC forcing us to stop burning gas to keep warm in the freezing cold induced by the global warming ...Errr...? Shurely Shome Mishtake? Does not comput.....
Yes, at the BBC Ministry of Truth, four plus four really does equal five.
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