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Gary Edwards

Private Currency Competition Is The Monetary Answer - Forbes - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...etition-is-the-monetary-answer

GOLD Currency-basket Private-Currencies

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Sep 12
     
    "The push for monetary reform is on, and intellectuals seeking to reform the monetary system in accordance with free market principles are seriously debating two alternative solutions. One is a return to the gold standard in some fashion. The other is a free market in currency, i.e., private currency competition. Toward the latter end, Rep. Ron Paul has sponsored a bill repealing legal tender law. Their primary concern is the establishment of perfect money, which they define as money which changes in value the least. A much stronger case can be made for private currency competition than for a national gold standard in achieving this goal. Broadly speaking, private currency competition can provide the means to both a better concept of money (i.e., the development of an ideal monetary standard), and a better practical implementation of a monetary system." The argument that gold is the intrinsically right standard, so people do not need any choice in the matter because the government would only be making them do what is best for them anyway, is a philosophical can of worms that ultimately undermines the moral case for free markets. This is probably why the Ayn Rand Institute, that flagship of right moral political philosophy, migrated its support from the gold standard to a system of free banking with private currencies. Even if one remains unconvinced of the superiority of private currency competition and believes that a fiat gold standard would work, one should always argue for liberty, not try to work within the bounds of statism to ameliorate its effects. The advocates of freedom, individual rights, limited government, and capitalism should not waste any effort trying to revive a statist concept. They should adopt the boldest possible vision of a free market and then pursue it relentlessly. This is your clarion call. Some believe that because a denationalization of money is the ideal state of affairs, a monetary Holy Grail, its achievement must be far off in th
Gary Edwards

Obama To Americans: You Don't Deserve To Be Free - Forbes - 1 views

www.forbes.com/...ns-you-dont-deserve-to-be-free

Obammunism Statism Ayn-Rand-Libertarian

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • President Obama’s Kansas speech is a remarkable document. In calling for more government controls, more taxation, more collectivism, he has two paragraphs that give the show away. Take a look at them. there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty. Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.
  • Though not in Washington, I’m in that “certain crowd” that has been saying for decades that the market will take care of everything. It’s not really a crowd, it’s a tiny group of radicals–radicals for capitalism, in Ayn Rand’s well-turned phrase. The only thing that the market doesn’t take care of is anti-market acts: acts that initiate physical force. That’s why we need government: to wield retaliatory force to defend individual rights. Radicals for capitalism would, as the Declaration of Independence says, use government only “to secure these rights”–the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. (Yes, I added “property” in there–property rights are inseparable from the other three.) That’s the political philosophy on which Obama is trying to hang the blame for the recent financial crisis and every other social ill. But ask yourself, are we few radical capitalists in charge? Have radical capitalists been in charge at any time in the last, oh, say 100 years?
  • I pick 100 years deliberately, because it was exactly 100 years ago that a gigantic anti-capitalist measure was put into effect: the Federal Reserve System. For 100 years, government, not the free market, has controlled money and banking. How’s that worked out? How’s the value of the dollar held up since 1913? Is it worth one-fiftieth of its value then or only one-one-hundredth? You be the judge. How did the dollar hold up over the 100 years before this government take-over of money and banking? It actually gained slightly in value.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Laissez-faire hasn’t existed since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. That was the first of a plethora of government crimes against the free market.
  • The typical Republican would never, ever say “the market will take care of everything.” He’d say, “the market will take care of most things, and for the other things, we need the regulatory-welfare state.” They are for individualism–except when they are against it. They are against free markets and individualism not only when they agree with the Left that we must have antitrust laws and the Federal Reserve, but also when they demand immigration controls, government schools, regulatory agencies, Medicare, laws prohibiting abortion, Social Security, “public works” projects, the “social safety net,” laws against insider trading, banking regulation, and the whole system of fiat money.
  • Even you, dear reader, are probably wondering how on earth anyone could challenge things like Social Security, government schools, and the FDA. But that’s not the point. The point is: these statist, anti-capitalist programs exist and have existed for about a century. The point is: Obama is pretending that the Progressive PGR -2.02% Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society were repealed, so that he can blame the financial crisis on capitalism. He’s pretending that George Bush was George Washington.
  • What Obama is indeed responsible for is the injustice of robbing some to (allegedly) benefit others. To the extent that cronyism, not the free market, sets income, that is an injustice to be laid at the statists’ door.
  • There is no such problem as “unemployment” under capitalism. Prices fall to clear the market. Twice the work force could be employed if average wages dropped in half. But that’s nominal wages; with a constant money supply, prices would also fall in half–or slightly more than that. This isn’t just theory. America’s workforce has grown steadily decade after decade, yet the standard of living has risen at the same time. I grant you that the rise has slowed as statist intervention has grown. Think of the phenomenal progress between, say 1900 and 1920 as compared to the minor progress from 1993 to 2013. Most of the progress in the last 20 years has come in the freest area of the economy: electronics and computing.
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Jan 14
     
    Harry Binswanger defends laissez-faire capitalism, using Ayn Rand Objectivism.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Jan 14
     
    The major problem with Ayn Rand Objectivism is that it's an "ism." The Utopian ideal it is based on has never existed in reality and likely never will; its principles have never been tested. Moreover, I will argue that Binswanger is incorrect in arguing that the anti-capitalist phenomenon in America began with creation of the Federal Reserve; it dates much farther back. The economic basis for the Revolutionary War was largely the Crown-granted monopolies granted to the first great British "companies" (corporations), which had the effect of forcing North American colonists to pay monopoly rents for common goods and kept American ship owners from importing those goods from elsewhere to sell at a lower price. The Founding Fathers were strongly against privately-owned corporations and government-granted monopolies, with only two exceptions, copyrights for literary works and patents for inventions. The Constitution's prohibition against government-granted monopolies is implicit in its allowance for only two narrowly-defined types. The Founding Fathers' writings explicitly discussed the difference between "natural" monopolies and those created by government or anti-competitive conduct. During the early years of the nation corporations were permitted by the States, but only for public purposes, usually for public works such as bridges or roads for which there was a need to amass capital. These early American corporations were usually chartered only for the time required to complete the public work and to recover the invesment and a small profit, e.g., from tolls for using a bridge or road. Many of the early state constitutions explicitly limited the lifetime of corporations. However, such early opposition to corporations gradually eroded; corporate purposes were expanded, corporations were granted perpetual life, and the corporate form of doing business became much more widespread. Here, it is important to recognize that corporations are market artificialities c
Gary Edwards

The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever - and the VESTS Solution - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...l-Ever--and-the-VESTS-Solution

Banksters matt-taibbi LiBOR

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Apr 13
     
    excerpt: Uber financial investigative journalist Matt Taibbi has discovered what we too realized when we began to scrutinize the financial industry. In his latest article, he writes, "Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever." The article's cut line is, "The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix." Taibbi's incredulity is evident throughout the article, as well it should be. The interest-rate swap market is part of the larger derivatives market that totals over one billion TRILLION dollars............................... "Given the endless financial scandals that keep sweeping across the industry, it is fairly obvious that this regulatory system needs a good deal of improvement. In fact, I think that it may be no coincidence that so much is being revealed now. The idea is surely to create the conditions for another international regulatory effort that will end up further controlling what is left of free-market capital raising. It is a global game for globalists. The game is to regulate everything and then to position oneself above the regulations and above the governments that wield them. This gives you tremendous power over everyone else. One of the tools being used to whip up sentiment for a larger regulatory revisiting is scandal and more scandal. There have been revelations of so-called crooked practices in a number of areas lately, mostly in the area of industry pricing. It turns out that many standard prices are set via indications of interest rather than outright competition. We can see the same system at work in the gold market, where a small group of wise men set the price for physical gold every day. And now, as Taibbi and others have revealed, the dysfunctional system also affects interest rate swaps. This has incensed Taibbi, who opens his article as follows: Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the
Paul Merrell

Banks pushing for repeal of credit unions' federal tax exemption - Los Angeles Times - 0 views

articles.latimes.com/...fi-credit-union-taxes-20130706

banksters credit-unions Congress Obama lobbying Competition

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Credit unions have been snatching customers from banks amid consumer frustration over rising fees and outrage over Wall Street's role in the financial crisis.Now banks are fighting back by trying to take away something vital to credit unions — their federal tax exemption.With fast-growing credit unions posing more formidable competition to banks, industry trade groups are pressing the White House and Congress to end a tax break that dates to the Great Depression. "Many tax-exempt credit unions have morphed from serving 'people of small means' to become full-service, financially sophisticated institutions," Frank Keating, president of the American Bankers Assn., wrote to President Obama last month."The time has come to abolish this exemption," Keating said in the letter, which was part of a blitz that included print and radio ads in the nation's capital.
  • Bankers long have complained the tax break is an unfair advantage for large credit unions. Now they see an opportunity to get rid of it as lawmakers begin work on a major overhaul of the tax code that is aimed at eliminating many corporate exemptions and lowering the overall tax rate.The exemption cost $1.6 billion this year in taxes avoided and would rise to $2.2 billion annually in 2018, according to Obama's proposed 2014 budget.In a 2010 report on tax reform, the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board said eliminating the exemption would raise $19 billion over 10 years and remove the credit unions' "competitive advantage relative to other financial institutions" in the tax code.Credit unions said the effort to take away their tax exemption was simply an attempt to stifle competition and remove one of the only checks on bank fees for consumers.And it comes as some in Congress are pushing to loosen regulations on credit unions so they can expand their business further, including legislation that would lift a cap on the amount of money they can lend to businesses.The tax exemption is crucial to credit unions, which by law can't raise capital through public stock offerings the way that banks can, said Fred R. Becker Jr., president of the National Assn. of Federal Credit Unions, a trade group with about 3,800 federally chartered members."They'll have to convert to banks, which is what the banks want," he said. "Then they'd have, for lack of a better term, a monopoly."
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13
     
    So instead of competing on quality and service, banksters aim to eliminate the competition grown by disgruntled bankster customers. Unfortunately, corporate lobbying of government officials is exempt from the anti-trust laws, a consequence of (in my opinion, ill-considered) judicial recognition of a corporate First Amendment right of petition. So once again, we have legal fictions acquiring human rights. Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 636 (1819) (Marshall, C. J.). ("A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it"). May a corporate charter permissibly bestow the rights of citizenship on an imaginary being? According to latter-day justices of the Supreme Court, corporations have First Amendment rights even if it doesn't say so in the corporate charter. See for example, Citizens United v. Federal Election Com'n, 130 S. Ct. 876 (2010) (chilling effect on "people" used to justify finding a First Amendment right of wholly imaginary corporations). 
Gary Edwards

The Purchase Of Our Republic | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...purchase-our-republic

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government. Today I am publishing a comprehensive and important guest essay, The Purchase of Our Republic, by longtime correspondent Y. Falkson.
  • Americans know that something is wrong, deeply wrong. They see signs of the problem everywhere: income inequality, growing concentration and power of mega corporations, political donations/corruption, the absence of jobs with decent salaries, the explosion of the US prison population, healthcare costs, student loan debt, homelessness, etc. etc.  However, the true causes and benefactors behind these problems are purposely hidden from view. What Americans see is Kabuki Theater of a functioning form of capitalism and democracy, but beyond this veneer our country has devolved into the exact opposite. Those who benefit from this crony capitalist state go to extreme lengths to paper over the reality and convince Americans that the system works, the American Dream is still a reality and that American democracy is in fact democratic. Below I hope to begin to outline some of the underlying dynamics and trends that have evolved in recent decades and led us so far from what we once were. As fun as it would be, the answer is not some evil conspiracy by the Illuminati, but rather the unfortunate result of three long term and mutually reinforcing components that have been attacking the fundamental roots of the structure of our Republic. The first is the increased concentr
  • ation of corporate and private wealth. Both of which are quickly yelled down in the media as anti-free market and class war hysteria. The second is the use of this wealth to capture all three branches of government in order to ensure the continued extraction of capital from the many and to the few.The rich might have climbed the ladder because they earned it, but they have then purchased government to pull up the ladder behind them. The consequence of the first two components is a democracy in name only that represents the very few.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • 1. Faux Capitalism = Wealth Consolidation / Income Inequality
  • While there is no true beginning to the story, we can start with the incredible build up and concentration of wealth among corporations in recent decades. The USA now boasts a cartel-like set of corporate titans in almost every industry. It goes beyond, but certainly includes, our Too Biggerer To Fail banks, merged from what was 37 banks in 1995 into a Frankenstein’s monster like 5 (Citigroup, JP Morgan-Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs). In agriculture, Monsanto alone controls over 85% of all corn and soy bean crops, four companies control 83% of the beef market, 66% of the hog market and 58% of the chicken market. So while shopping at the grocery store might appear to be the manifestation of capitalism at its finest, it doesn’t take much digging to look behind the curtain to see how little competition truly exists.
  • When the average American goes to pick up some groceries, they are shopping at Walmart and buying something from P&G that is mostly made of Monsanto corn. Is that true choice? The same story plays out with our news and media (and other industries) where we have gone from 50 companies in 1983 to the big 6 which control over 90% of all media. Is choosing to watch one of 30 news channels, all of which are owned by News Corp (Rupert Murdoch) a real choice? This is not capitalism and they are not competing, not in the true sense of the word. Along with this consolidation of corporations in recent decades, their senior leaders have taken up a larger and larger piece of the pie at the expense of their employees. In particular, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased 1,000 percent since 1950. Unsurprisingly, Walmart is both the largest employer in the country and the worst CEO pay offender with a ratio of over 1000:1. This is at a time where worker productivity has increased significantly, something that historically correlated with increased pay. But no more. It’s a new twist on the old Soviet saying “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”, but now it’s closer to “we do all of the work and they pretend to pay us”.
  • Private Wealth: As a consequence of the royal tribute we pay to the C-suite class these days, we have likely surpassed the pre-Depression Roaring Twenties in terms of inequality.
  • This, amazingly, has only accelerated since the crisis in 2008 in thanks to bailouts, Quantitative Easing and other gifts from Congress and the Fed. The wealthy 1% and in particular the .01% have now grown their fortunes to levels that tax comprehension and even their ability to spend it (the decisions by a few billionaires such as Bill Gates to essentially donate his fortune is a tacit acknowledgement that our current system over provides wealth to a select few).
  • So what is an incredibly wealthy capitalist CEO of a mega-corporation do once they control their industry and have essentially limitless wealth? Well in a competitive market, the only way to go from the top is down and the only thing that can make that happen is competition. Consequently, competition must be avoided whenever possible.
  • To squash or prevent competition, the oligopolies and oligarchs target their resources on the one place that can make competition illegal, our government.Something to keep in mind the next time you see a corporate billionaire grandstanding about the importance of “Free Markets” when their strategy is quite the opposite. As this capture of the government has taken place we have essentially shifted from capitalism and to crony capitalism. So we now have industries that have mastered the art of faking capitalism by turning our government into one that fakes democracy. This government takeover took time, but the purchase of all 3 branches of government has almost been completed by 2014. You don’t have to take my word for it, luckily that has now been empirically proven in an analysis of over 20 years of government policy where the clear conclusion was that policy makers respond solely to those in the top 90th percentile and essentially ignore the large majority of Americans.
  • 2. Wealthy Purchase of Government Institutions / Elections
  • Purchase of the Executive Branch:
  • Let’s take a step back and take a glimpse at how the government was purchased, beginning with the executive branch. In 1980, Reagan’s election cost less than $300 million. When Bush beat Kerry in 2004, it cost almost 3x times as much, almost $900 Million. 4 years later, the 2008 election cost a record $1.3 Billion. It was in this election where Obama hammered the final nail in the coffin for government funded for elections. Obama, more so than any other candidate in recent decades had the widespread support of millions of small donors, but in the end I guess it wasn’t enough. So when Obama “leaned to the green”, it forever set the precedent that you can’t win without the backing of our nation’s oligarchs. Consequently, the money has only gushed in since as the cost of Obama’s reelection in 2012 skyrocketed to an unfathomable $7 billion. Needless to say this is slightly above the rate of inflation. Our Presidents are now preselected exclusively by a tiny fraction of Americans can have the money to fund what has become necessary for a legitimate run. Summary: Candidates spend years courting the super-rich to build up a multi-billion dollar war chest. Only those who succeed can actually run a campaign that an average American will be aware of. Then Americans get to choose one of the pre-selected “candidates”. No wonder voter turnout is so low… Executive branch, check!
  • – Note that media corporations benefit doubly as they can use their cash to fund elections, but are also the beneficiary of all that money as it is used for campaign spending.
  • Purchase of the Legislative Branch:
  • The process has progressed similarly in Congress. In 1978, outside groups spent $303,000 on congressional races. In 2012 that was up to $457,000,000. That is over 1,500 times the level in 1978. It would be funny, if it was so blatant and terrifying. By many accounts, our “leaders” in Congress spend 50% or more of their time working the phones or fundraisers rather than trying (and failing) to actually do the “people’s business”. Let’s also take a minute to appreciate the hypocrisy of anyone that pretends that the money doesn’t influence our government. Businesses do not give to politicians for charity. This is a payment for services that has proven exceedingly reliable and profitable. The ROI for money invested in purchasing Congressman is what CEO dreams are made of. No wonder the incentive is to invest in Congress rather than R&D or marketing. There are very few places in the world or times in history where you can find ROI’s in the thousands, or even the tens of thousands.
  • Review: Congressmen beg for money to get elected, make sure to vote the way your benefactors would like, consequently get more money to get elected again. If at any point they do lose or quit, they take the big payday to work for those who have been paying them all along. Legislative Branch, Check!
  • In addition, increasingly those who work on Congress (and regulators) were previously employed by these large corporations or expect to work there later. A recent example is Chris Dodd who left the Senate the head lobbyist for Hollywood at the MPAA, the guys behind SOPA and PIPA, but there are many many others.
  • Judicial Branch Endorsement of the Purchase of Government:
  • Last but not least, we have the enabling Judicial Branch. It only took a few purchased presidents to ensure the appointment of a majority of “free market” and “pro-business” judges. For instance, and disgracefully, Clarence Thomas was once legal counsel for Monsanto, but has not once recused himself from any cases involving Monsanto and always votes in their favor. These radicals have now fully endorsed and enabled the influx of money used to purchase the other branches. Specifically, 2 major decisions have completely opened the floodgates, Citizens United and McCutcheon. The first allowed unlimited contributions of corporate money into elections and brought us the notorious declaration that “corporations are people” and that “money is free speech”. This was more recently followed up with the private wealth equivalent in McCutcheon. In this ruling, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said as part of his majority opinion (presumably with a straight face) “… nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner influence over or access to elected officials or political parties”. And with this, the Supreme Court has fully endorsed both major sources of immense wealth to purchase our elections and consequently our government. Review: The rich fund Presidential elections, Presidents nominate “business-friendly” judges and then the bought Congress approves their nominations. New judge then votes to ensure even more money is allowed to purchase elections. Judicial Branch, CHECK!
  • 3. A Faux Republic Dependent Upon the Funders and Not the Voters
  • The Founder’s Hope and the Sad Reality:
  • Acknowledging where we are as a country, it is often helpful to look to where we started for some perspective. Unsurprisingly, this type of problem was not overlooked back in the 18th century. In 1776, James Madison stated that his goal was to design a republic in which “powerful interest groups would be rendered incapable of subdoing the general will”. Madison hoped, perhaps naively, that factions would be thwarted by competing with other factions. Sadly, we are now in a time where factions (aka wealthy special interests) subdue the will of the people and ensure the government responds to them alone on those issues where they have a “special interest” and consequently asymmetric stakes in the game (Charles Hugh Smith). As a result, these groups essentially collude to allocate their resources to their own issues, but do not “thwart” or compete with other factions as they do the same. It’s a pretty great system, as long as you’re one of the wealthy few who can use their money to drown out the poor and voiceless many. And just like that, what was once a Republic has become a corrupt shell of its past self. All the signs are still there; votes, elections, campaigns, branches of government, etc., but behind the scenes the only ones represented are those who can afford to be heard.
  • Summary: This massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government, or as Dick Durban once stated, “frankly they [the banks in this case] own the place”. If money = free speech, then those with all the money, have all the free speech.
  • What Might Help? Now that I have likely and thoroughly depressed the reader, let’s bounce around some ideas for what can be done. As stated in the beginning, this is not an unknown problem and many people are promoting a number of ways to fix or at least ameliorate the problem. I will briefly describe just a few which I think provide some direction any of us could easily implement or support.
  • Change the Rules: Laurence Lessig of Harvard Law has put forward a visionary proposal for re-writing the way that campaigns are financed in his book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It. Put simply, he would like to empower every voter with a stipend, say $150 per election to give to whatever candidate or candidates they prefer. If you would like to accept this money, you would need to forgo any other contributions or support (one would hope including the indirect PAC kind). This would actually provide even more money than is used in current elections, but would effectively democratize the funding process. While there would still be a “funding election” that takes place before the actual election, the funding would not be unequally provided. Lessig’s work has only begun, as this sort of bill or likely constitutional reform is nearly impossible to achieve, but he has undertaken and I assume will continue to implement many brave and creative ways of bringing about the change all American’s should support. Most recently he has suggested we begin to fund, ironically enough, a Super PAC to end all Super PACs. It would be funded with the solitary goal of changing how money impacts our elections. Please support them here: www.mayone.us/
  • Change Our Day-to-Day: At the more micro level, Charles Hugh Smith believes that we will inevitably see our overly centralized and inefficient system erode away as it is replaced by more resilient, local and efficient businesses and societies outside of the current system. With that in mind, he recommends that “all anyone can do is the basic things--lower our energy footprint, stay healthy and avoid unnecessary medications and procedures, support local businesses, organic food growers, etc. In other words, what we can do is support local businesses that are part of the emerging economy rather than support corporate cartels.” Your Vote Does Matter: Do you live in Ohio, Florida or New Hampshire? Probably not. Despite what we are told every 4 years, there are actually states outside of the “swing states”, and even more surprising, the very large majority of Americans live in those states where your “vote doesn’t matter”. New Yorkers an Californians all know their state will turn Blue no matter who the candidates are and either don’t vote at all, or often vote for the Blue team in order to feel like they are on the winning side.
  • The truth is that if you see the election as Red vs. Blue, you vote probably doesn’t matter. But here is the trick, if all the people who think their vote didn’t matter decided to vote for whom they might actually believe in, then their votes just might matter.
  • What if all the growing number of “Independents” (who usually still vote Blue), chose to vote for a third party? What if a third party candidate won a state like New York or California? What if that candidate was one whose primary promise to the voters was to champion a change to the role of money in government (perhaps in line with what Lessig proposes)? Would you vote for such a person?I would argue you should. If California alone (with 55 electoral votes) were to vote for a 3rd party that would likely prevent either Red or Blue candidate from winning the requisite 270 electoral votes.
  • Think about the message that would send to both parties. I would predict that both sides would start to bend over backwards for an endorsement from that 3rd party and they would have to get it by taking up the same primary cause for reforming money in government. Consequently, at the root of our corrupted system which is perpetually ignored as both sides might suddenly become the big issue of the election. Then maybe we might begin to turn things around.
  • Sources: Charles Hugh Smith (oftwominds, Surivival+, etc.), Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism, Econned), Laurence Lessig (Republic Lost, multiple TED Talks), Matt Taibbi (blog at Rolling Stone and now at The Intercept), Zero Hedge, John Robb, Max Keiser, Clay Shirky (Cognitive Surplus), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited), George Orwell (1984), Michael Lewis, Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow), James Richards (Currency Wars), Han Joon Chang (23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism) and Joseph Stiglitz (Mismeasuring Our Lives) 
Gary Edwards

Obsessed by Megalomania: Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe - 0 views

lewrockwell.com/...hoppe31.1.html

Hans-Hermann-Hoppe Libertarian Ludwig-Von-Mises Austrian-Economics

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • The ‘Occupy’ movement consists of economic ignoramuses who fail to understand that the banks’ dirty tricks, which they rightly deplore, are possible only because there is a state-licensed central bank that acts as a "lender of last resort," and that the current financial crisis therefore is not a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of statism.
  • The ‘Pirates’, with their demand for an unconditional basic income, are well on the way to becoming another ‘free beer for all’ party. They have a single issue: criticism of ‘intellectual property rights’ (IP rights), which could make them very popular – and earn them the enmity in particular of the music, film and pharmaceutical industries. But even there they are clueless wimps.
  • IP has nothing to do with property, but rather with state privileges.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • IP rights are not property but, on the contrary, are an attack on property and therefore completely illegitimate.
  • The idea of a monopolistic property protector and law keeper is self-contradictory.
  • In order to guarantee the protection of property and safeguard the law there has to be free competition in the area of law as well. Other institutions apart from the state must be allowed to provide property and law protection services.
  • The state then becomes a normal subject of private law, on an equal footing with all other people. It can’t raise taxes any more or unilaterally enact laws. Its employees will have to finance themselves just the same as everybody else does: by producing and offering something that freely engaging customers consider value for money.
  • States go to war because they can, via taxes, pass on the cost to third parties who are not directly involved.
  • By contrast, for voluntarily financed companies war is economic suicide.
  • There is an interim solution. It’s called secession and political decentralization. Small states must be libertarian, otherwise the productive people will desert them. Desirable therefore is a world made up of thousands of Liechtensteins, Singapores and Hong Kongs.
  • In contrast, a European central government – and even more so a world government – with a ‘harmonized’ tax and regulation policy, is the gravest threat to freedom.
  • All highly-developed forms of religion forbid the coveting of someone else’s property. This prohibition is the foundation of peaceful cooperation. In a democracy, on the other hand, anyone can covet anybody else’s property and act according to his desire – the only precondition being that he can gain access to the corridors of power.
  • Thus, under democratic conditions, everybody becomes a potential threat.
  • No, the state is anything but the result of a contract!
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12
     
    Jaw dropping libertarian analysis.  Hoppe argues that democracy, or more correctly called "mobocracy" results in "The Competition of Crooks".  Fascinating stuff.  I've highlighted some of the more resounding libertarian bites. excerpt: "Are taxes nothing but protection money? The state a kind of mafia? Democracy a fraud? Philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe is not only considered one of the most prominent pioneering intellectuals of the libertarian movement, but also perhaps the sharpest critic of the Western political system. Professor Hoppe: In your essay collection 'Der Wettbewerb der Gauner' ('The Competition of Crooks') you write that '99 percent of citizens, asked if the state was necessary, would answer yes.' Me too! Why am I wrong?"
Gary Edwards

Doug Casey on American Socialism - Casey Research - 0 views

www.caseyresearch.com/...doug-casey-american-socialism

Doug-Casey Socialism economic-ruin

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Oct 12
     
    "Doug Casey on American Socialism"  .  Awesome interview, especially the discussion on Liberalism and how the socialist Norman Thomas decided to co-opt the term as an effective replacement for the disreputable socialism.  Links to the Thomas 1932 socialist platform that Casey points out has pretty much been put into place.   Good discussion.  Focus on an article published by socialist apologist and idiot, Allan Colmes.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 12
     
    I agree that Colmes is far from the sharpest knife in the drawer. In my opinion, he was largely a Fox News invention to give Shawn Hannity a far weaker opponent to argue against that Hannity's idiocy could still overcome. There are in reality liberals that Hannity could never have gone toe-to-toe with. (That's not an endorsement of liberalism; it's commentary on the quality of Hannity's arguments.) The show was mostly a variant of the straw man logical fallacy; the fact that Colmes lacked the ability to think critically or communicate effectively made Hannity "win" the pseudo-debate in the eyes of those unable to think critically themselves. I have some criticism of Casey's remarks that apply more generally to my experience of strict Libertarians and perhaps even farther to strict adherents to any "ism." My criticism boils down to a couple of examples of hard issues usually avoided by strict Libertarians. -- The Disabled: When discussing Social Security disability benefits, Casey changes the subject from the genuinely disabled to a short rant about those whose disability claims are bogus and the "ambulance chasing" lawyers who pursue their claims. But if pressed to the wall and forced to answer, I strongly suspect that Casey would admit that there are people, likely the majority of Social Security disability benefits, whose claims are genuine. The net effect of his relevant argument: an impression that he has a Darwinian view that he would leave the disabled dying in the streets without sustenance or medical care. That kind of society is unacceptable to me. Perhaps it is to Casey too, but if so I think it was incumbent on him to offer a solution for the genuinely disabled. (In fairness, I'll note that at one point Casey hinted but did not forthrightly say that he would favor financial assistance for single mothers in Harlem.) -- Medical Care: I agree that our health care system is badly broken. But again Casey is long on criticism but short on realistic idea
Paul Merrell

Why Public Banks Outperform Private Banks: Unfair Competition or a Better Mousetrap? | ... - 0 views

ellenbrown.com/...petition-or-a-better-mousetrap

banksters TPP TTIP public-owned-banks fast-track

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Public banks in North Dakota, Germany and Switzerland have been shown to outperform their private counterparts. Under the TPP and TTIP, however, publicly-owned banks on both sides of the oceans might wind up getting sued for unfair competition because they have advantages not available to private banks.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Feb 15
     
    Ellen Brown opposes fast-tracking the TPP and TTIP in part because they would allow private banksters to sue publically-owned banks for unfair competition. I have no sympathy for the private banksters. None. 
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Richard Ebeling on Higher Interest Rates, Collectivism and the Coming ... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...tivism-and-the-Coming-Collapse

Richard-Ebeling The-Daily-Bell Austrian-Economics Liberty-Tryanny

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The "larger dysfunction," as you express it, arises out of a number of factors. The primary one, in my view, is a philosophical and psychological schizophrenia among the American people.
  • While many on "the left" ridicule the idea, there is a strong case for the idea of "American exceptionalism," meaning that the United States stands out as something unique, different and special among the nations of the world.
  • the American Founding Fathers constructed a political system in the United States based on a concept on which no other country was consciously founded:
  • ...95 more annotations...
  • But the American Revolution and the US Constitution hailed a different conception of man, society and government.
  • n the rest of the world, and for all of human history, the presumption has been that the individual was a slave or a subject to a higher authority. It might be the tribal chief; or the "divinely ordained" monarch who presumed to rule over and control people in the name of God; or, especially after the French Revolution and the rise of modern socialism, "the nation" or "the people" who laid claim to the life and work of the individual.
  • the idea of individual rights.
  • That is, as long as the individual did not violate the equal rights of others to their life, liberty and property, each person was free to shape and guide his own future, and give meaning and value to his own life as he considered best in the pursuit of that happiness that was considered the purpose and goal of each man during his sojourn on this Earth.
  • Governments did not exist to give or bestow "rights" or "privileges" at its own discretion.
  • Governments were to secure and protect each individual's rights, which he possessed by "the nature of things."
  • The individual was presumed to own himself. He was "sovereign."
  • The real and fundamental notion of "self-government" referred to the right of each individual to rule over himself.
  • Each individual, by his nature and his reason, had a right to his life, his liberty and his honestly acquired property.
  • during the first 150 years of America's history there was virtually no Welfare State and relatively few government regulations, controls and restrictions on the choices and actions of the free citizen.
  • But for more than a century, now, an opposing conception of man, society and government has increasingly gained a hold over the ideas and attitudes of people in the US.
  • It was "imported" from Europe in the form of modern collectivism.
  • The individual was expected to see himself as belonging to something "greater" than himself. He was to sacrifice for "great national causes."
  • He was told that if life had not provided all that he desired or hoped for, it was because others had "exploited" him in some economic or social manner, and that government would redress the "injustice" through redistribution of wealth or regulation of the marketplace.
  • If he had had financial and material success, the individual should feel guilty and embarrassed by it, because, surely, if some had noticeably more, it could only be because others had been forced to live with noticeably less.
  • left on its own, free competition tends to evolve into harmful monopolies and oligopolies, with the wealthy "few" benefiting at the expense of the "many."
  • They are the crises of the Interventionist-Welfare State: the attempt to impose reactionary collectivist policies of political paternalism and redistributive plunder on a society still possessing parts of its original individualist and rights-based roots.
  • it is in the form of communism's and socialism's critique of capitalism.
  • Unregulated capitalism leads to "unearned" and "excessive" profits; unbridled markets generate the business cycle and the hardships of recessions and depressions;
  • These two conflicting conceptions of man, society and government have been and are at war here in the United States.
  • And if it cannot be gotten and guaranteed through the redistributive mechanisms of the European Union and the euro, well, maybe we should return power to our own nation-states to provide the jobs, the social "safety nets" and the financial means to pay for it through, once again, printing our own national paper currencies.
  • This is the political-philosophical bankruptcy of the West and the dead ends of the collectivist promises of the last 100 years.
  • Ludwig von Mises's book, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, originally published in 1922, demonstrated how and why a socialist, centrally planned system was inherently unworkable.
  • The nationalization of productive property, the abolition of markets and the prohibition of all competitive exchange among the members of society would prevent the emergence and operation of a price system, without which it is impossible to know people's demands for desired goods and the relative value they place on them.
  • It also prevents the emergence of prices for the factors of production (land, labor, capital) and makes it impossible to know their opportunity costs – the value of those factors of production in alternative competing uses among entrepreneurs desiring to employ them.
  • Without such a price system the central planners are flying blind, unable to rationally know or decide how best to utilize labor, capital and resources in productively efficient ways to make the goods and services most highly valued by the consuming public.
  • Thus, Mises concluded, comprehensive socialist central planning would lead to "planned chaos."
  • And, therefore, there is no guarantee that the amount of investments undertaken and their time horizons are compatible with the available resources not also being demanded and used for more immediate consumer goods production in the society.
  • As a consequence, financial markets do not work like real markets.
  • Thus, the interventionist state leads to waste, inefficiency and misuses of resources that lower the standards of living that we all, otherwise, could have enjoyed.
  • We cannot be sure what the amount of real savings may be in the society to support real and sustainable investment and capital formation.
  • Government intervention prevents prices from "telling the truth" about the real supply and demand conditions thus leading to imbalances and distortions in the market.
  • We cannot know what the "real cost" of borrowing should be, since interest rates are not determined by actual, private sector savings and investment decisions.
  • Government production regulations, controls, restrictions and prohibitions prevent entrepreneurs from using their knowledge, ability and capital in ways that most effectively produce the goods consumers actually want and at the most cost-competitive prices possible.
  • This is why countries around the world periodically experience booms and busts, inflations and recessions − not because of some inherent instabilities or "irrationalities" in financial markets, but because of monetary central planning through central banking that does not allow market-based financial intermediation to develop and work as it could and would in a real free-market setting.
  • But in the United States and especially in Europe, government "austerity" means merely temporarily reducing the rate of increase in government spending, slowing down the rate at which new debt is accumulating and significantly raising taxes in an attempt to close the deficit gap.
  • The fundamental problem is that over the decades, the size and scope of governments in the Western world have been growing far more than the rates at which their economies have been expanding, so that the "slice" of the national economic "pie" eaten by government has been growing larger and larger, even when the "pie" in absolute terms is bigger than it was, say, 30 or 40 years ago.
  • European governments, in general, take the view that "austerity" means squeezing the private sector more through taxes and other revenue sources to avoid any noticeable and significant cuts in what government does and spends.
  • So there is "austerity" for the private sector and a mad rush for financial "safety nets" for the government and those who live off the State.
  • In reality, of course, it is the burdens of government regulation, taxation and impediments to more flexible labor and related markets that have generated the high unemployment rates and the retarded recovery from the recession.
  • Instead, the "common market" ideal has been transformed into the goal of a European Union "Super-State" to which the individual countries and their citizens would be subservient and obedient.
  • Keynesian policies offer people and politicians what they want to hear. Claiming that any sluggish business or lost jobs are due to a lack of "aggregate demand," Keynes argued that full employment and profitable business could only be reestablished and maintained through "activist" government monetary and fiscal policy – print money and run budget deficits.
  • What Britain and Europe should have as its goal is the ideal of the classical liberal free traders of the 19th century – non-intervention by governments in people's lives, at home and abroad. That is, a de-politicization of society, so people may freely work, trade and travel as they peacefully wish, with government merely the protector of people's individual rights.
  • Take the benefits away and tell people they are free to come and work to support themselves and their families. Restore more flexibility and competitiveness to labor markets and reduce taxes and business regulations.
  • Then those who come to Britain's shores will be those wanting freedom and opportunity without being a burden upon others.
  • What was needed was a change in ideas from the statist mentality to one of individual freedom and unhampered free markets.
  • In an epoch of collectivist ideas, don't be surprised if governments regulate, control, intervene and redistribute wealth.
  • The tentacle of regulations, restrictions and politically-correct social controls are spreading out in every direction from Brussels and its European-wide manipulating and mismanaging bureaucracy.
  • In the name of assuring "national prosperity," politicians could spend money to buy the votes that get them elected and reelected to government offices.
  • And every special interest group could make the case that government-spending programs that benefitted them were all reasonable and necessary to assure a fully employed and growing economy.
  • Furthermore, the Keynesian rationale for government deficit spending enabled politicians to seem to be able to offer something for nothing. They could offer, say, $100 of government spending to voters and special interest groups but the tax burden imposed in the present might only be $75, since the remainder of the money to pay for that government spending was borrowed. And that borrowed money would not have to be repaid until some indefinite time in the future by unspecific taxpayers when that "tomorrow" finally arrived.
  • instability
  • Keynes argued that the market economy's inherent
  • arose from the
  • who were subject to irrational and unpredictable waves of "optimism" and "pessimism."
  • animal spirits" of businessmen
  • Mises argued that there was nothing inherent in the market economy to bring about these swings of economic booms followed by periods of depression and unemployment.
  • If markets got out of balance with the necessity of an eventual correction in the economy to, once again, set things right, the source of this instability was government monetary policy.
  • Central banks too often followed a policy of trying to create "good times" in the economy by expanding the money supply through the banking system.
  • With new, excess funds created by the central bank available for lending, banks lower rates of interest to attract borrowers.
  • But this throws savings and investment out of balance, since the rate of interest no longer serves as a reliable indicator and signal concerning the availability of real savings in the economy in relation to those wanting to borrow funds for various investment purposes.
  • The economic crisis comes when it is discovered that all the claims on resources, capital and labor for all the attempted consumption and investment activities in the economy are greater than the actual and available amounts of such scarce resources.
  • The recession period, in Mises's view, is the necessary "correction" period when in the post-boom era, people must adapt and adjust to the newly discovered "real" supply and demand conditions in the market.
  • Any interference with the "rebalancing" of the economy by government raising taxes, imposing more regulations, or new artificial government "stimulus" activities merely makes it more difficult and time-consuming for people in the private sector to get the economy back on an even keel.
  • Friedrich A. Hayek, once observed, unemployment is not "caused" by stopping an inflation, but rather inflation induces the artificial employments that cannot be sustained and which inevitably disappear once the inflation is reined in.
  • The recession of 2008-2009 was the result of several years of central bank stimulus.
  • From 2003 to 2008, the Federal Reserve increased the money supply by about 50 percent.
  • Interest rates for much of this time, when adjusted for inflation, were either zero or negative.
  • Awash in cash, banks extended loans to virtually anyone, with no serious and usual concern about the borrower's credit-worthiness.
  • This was most notably true in the housing market, where government agencies like Fannie May and Freddie Mac were pressuring banks to make mortgage loans by promising a guarantee that they would make good on any bad home loans.
  • Since 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve has, again, turned on the monetary spigot, increasing its own portfolio by almost $3 trillion, by buying US Treasuries, US mortgages and other assets.
  • So why has there not been a complementary explosion of price inflation?
  • In some areas there has been, most clearly in the stock market and the bond market, But the reason why all that newly created money has not brought about a higher price inflation is due to the fact that a large part of all newly created money is sitting as unlent reserves in banks.
  • This is because the Federal Reserve has been paying banks a rate of interest slightly above the market interest rates to induce banks not to lend.
  • (a) general "regime uncertainty," that is, no one knows what government policy will be tomorrow; will ObamaCare be fully implemented after January 2014?;
  • Among the reasons for the sluggish jobs growth in the US are:
  • (b) what will taxes be for the rest of the current president's term in the White House
  • (c) what will the regulatory environment be like for the next three years – in 2012, the government implemented around 80,000 pages of regulations as printed in the Federal Registry;
  • (d) how will the deficit and debt problems play out between Congress and the White House and will it threaten the general financial situation in the country; an
  • (e) what wars, if any, will the government find itself involved in, in places like the Middle East?
  • China
  • is still a controlled and commanded society, with a government that works hard to try to determine what people read, see and think.
  • All these building projects have been brought into existence by a government that not only controls the money supply and manipulates interest rates but also heavy-handedly tells banks whom to specifically loan to and for what investment activities.
  • Central planning is alive and well in China, with the motives being both power and profits for those inside and outside the Communist Party having the most influence and connections in "high" places.
  • In my opinion, China is heading for a great economic crisis, resulting from a highly imbalanced and distorted economic system still guided far more by politics than sound market decision-making.
  • global financial markets in any foreseeable future. It is a money that still primarily exists to serve the political purposes of those who sit in the "inner circles" of power in Beijing.
  • One hundred years ago, in 1913, how many could have predicted that a year later a European-wide war would break out that would lead to the destruction of great European empires and set the stage for the rise of totalitarian collectivism that resulted in an even worse global war two decades later?
  • Thus, whether, at the end of the day, freedom triumphs and the future is one of liberty and prosperity is partly on each one of us.
  • Near the end of his great book, Socialism, Ludwig von Mises said:
  • "Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us . . . Whether society shall continue to evolve or where it shall decay lies . . . in the hands of man."
  • In my view, the idea of a "soft landing" is an illusion based on the idea held by central bankers, themselves, that they have the wisdom and ability to know how to "micro-manage" the all the changes and adjustments resulting from their own manipulations of the monetary aggregates. They do not have this wisdom and ability. So hold on for what is most likely to be another rocky road.
  • It was Mises's clear vision that once society has broken the relationship between value and payment, sooner or later people would not know the price of anything.
  • At this point, investment ceases and business becomes furtive and transactional.
  • People cannot plan for the future because they do not understand the reality of the present.
  • Society begins to sink.
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 13
     
    Incredible.  A simple explanation that explains everything.  Rchard Ebeling's "Unified Theory of Everything" is something every American can understand.  If only they would take a break from "Dancing with the Stars" and pay attention to the future of their country and the world.  It's a future where either "individual freedom", as defined by our Constitution and Declaration of Independence, will win out; or, the forces of fascist socialism / marxism will continue to roll and rule.  Incredible read!!!!
Gary Edwards

Professor Hoppe's new book: "The Competition of Crooks") | The God That Failed - 0 views

thegodthatfailed.org/...uner-the-competition-of-crooks

Hans-Hermann-Hoppe Libertarian Democracy

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • And perhaps then, finally, will come the realization that democracy – in whose name all these dirty tricks have been done – is nothing more than an especially insidious form of communism, and that the politicians who have wrought this immoral and economic madness and who have thereby enriched themselves personally (never, of course, being liable for the damages they have caused!), are nothing more than a despicable bunch of communist crooks.
  • democracy which is causally responsible for the fatal conditions afflicting us now
  • The number of productive people is constantly decreasing, and the number of people parasitically consuming the income and wealth of this dwindling number of productive people is increasing steadily. This can’t work in the long run.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation.
  • And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic ‘miracles’ would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism.
  • the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.:
  • In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation – that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government “welfare assistance”, subsidies and monopolistic privileges.
  • book’s thesis is that the government is a monopolist of ultimate justice and law enforcement and that every monopoly is always bad from the perspective of the consumer – in this case the citizen. Your alternative solution is a private law society.
  • The basic idea is quite simple. Abolish monopoly and encourage competition.
  • I can only go to a state court of law, staffed by judges who themselves are paid from taxes to enforce government regulations.
  • In this way, government-staged robbery, assault, manslaughter, murder, war is “legally” sanctioned.
  • In a private law society, if we had such a conflict, we would instead approach arbitrators who are independent of both parties, and who are competing with other arbitrators for voluntarily paying customers.
  • We would not use an inherently biased judge working for and paid directly by the state, who is therefore partisan, but rather a neutral third party, to adjudicate the normal human legal conflicts arising between existing and recognized property rights and private contract law.
  • the mediation market.
  • My income from my work is my property (not the state’s) and the restaurant is my property (not the state’s).
  • Therefore, any government-imposed tax upon me or use restrictions upon my property (such as a smoking ban) would therefore be judged unlawful, as robbery and expropriation.
  • the state is nothing but a “great band of robbers,” a mafia, only a much larger, more overwhelming and dangerous one.
  • the subject of class consciousness
  • “there’s absolutely no reason in any case why the state should have anything at all to do with the production of money.”
  • And every newly printed bill causes a redistribution of social wealth.
  • More paper money doesn’t make a society richer overall. It’s just more paper. But every new piece of printed paper reduces the purchasing power of all the other previously-existing paper bills
  • these machinations, taking place every day on an almost unimaginable scale, are nothing more than a gigantic case of fraudulent theft.
  • in a competitive environment, a better kind of money would be produced. Why? Because there’ll always be a demand for means of exchange.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12
     
    Interview with Hoppe where he once again pushes libertarian thinking forward.  Hoppe puts most of the blame on "democracy" itself, caling it "an insidious form of communism".  Good stuff.  Highlighted parts. excerpt: "That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation. And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic 'miracles' would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism. If, and when, this insight finally bears fruit will depend upon the class consciousness of the population. There is a Marxist myth, eagerly promoted by the state, of an irreconcilable clash of interests between employers (capitalists) and employees (workers), or between the rich and the poor. As long as this myth prevails in public opinion, nothing at all will change and disaster is inevitable. A fundamental change can only occur if, instead of this, the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.: In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation - that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government "welfare assistance", subsidies and monopolistic privileges. Only when the producer class clearly recognises this, and publicly speaks out; when the producers are finally confident to take the moral high ground and reject the insolent admonitions from the po
Gary Edwards

Rand Paul's Tea Party Response: Full Text - 0 views

www.newsmax.com/...490118

Rand-Paul Libertarian USA-Constitution

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • With my five-year budget, millions of jobs would be created by cutting the corporate income tax in half, by creating a flat personal income tax of 17%, and by cutting the regulations that are strangling American businesses.
  • America has much greatness left in her. We will begin to thrive again when we begin to believe in ourselves again, when we regain our respect for our founding documents, when we balance our budget, when we understand that capitalism and free markets and free individuals are what creates our nation’s prosperity.
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Feb 13
     
    Outstanding statement about what made America great, an dhow are government is destroying that greatness.  This is the full Text of Sen. Rand Paul's Tea Party Response to Obama's State of the Union Address: I speak to you tonight from Washington, D.C. The state of our economy is tenuous but our people remain the greatest example of freedom and prosperity the world has ever known. People say America is exceptional. I agree, but it's not the complexion of our skin or the twists in our DNA that make us unique. America is exceptional because we were founded upon the notion that everyone should be free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. For the first time in history, men and women were guaranteed a chance to succeed based NOT on who your parents were but on your own initiative and desire to work. We are in danger, though, of forgetting what made us great. The President seems to think the country can continue to borrow $50,000 per second. The President believes that we should just squeeze more money out of those who are working. The path we are on is not sustainable, but few in Congress or in this Administration seem to recognize that their actions are endangering the prosperity of this great nation. Ronald Reagan said, government is not the answer to the problem, government is the problem. Tonight, the President told the nation he disagrees. President Obama believes government is the solution: More government, more taxes, more debt. What the President fails to grasp is that the American system that rewards hard work is what made America so prosperous. What America needs is not Robin Hood but Adam Smith. In the year we won our independence, Adam Smith described what creates the Wealth of Nations. He described a limited government that largely did not interfere with individuals and their pursuit of happiness. All that we are, all that we wish to be is now threatened by the notion that you can have something for nothing, that you can have your cake and ea
Gary Edwards

Is The US Finally Ready For Revolution? - Democratic Underground - 1 views

www.democraticunderground.com/101970

ready-for-revolution

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Jul 13
     
    Written in June of 2012, before the national elections, this commentary remains the ringing truth.  Maybe more Americans are ready to listen this fourth of July? ........................... "Is America Ready For Revolution? I have always strongly believed that it's not possible to be a good Christian without standing up against social injustice and government corruption in all its forms. As I take a look around me today I find a lot of things wrong with our country. In fact, I have been a proponent for radical change for several years now, and I have written and published 2 books on this very topic. Where shall I begin? In God-blessed America, the land of the free where everyone is an economic slave, our founding fathers' sacred idea of a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has become but a cruel joke. Former president George W. Bush has notoriously called our Constitution - our supreme law of the land - "that (expletive) piece of paper". The federal government is currently spending at least $60 billion per month on military excursions in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and northern and western Africa - including operating between 800 and 1,000 foreign military bases all over the world. Our country's over-used flying drone aircraft kills hundreds daily overseas, many of whom are only innocent bystanders. Meanwhile here on the home front, one in seven people are on food stamps, and at any given time one in four American children are going hungry today. Our country spends more money incarcerating people than it does on education. What's up with that? Our political system is openly rigged against the best interests of the American people. A massive market mechanism is securely entrenched in our political system where political influence is openly bought and sold. Tens of thousands of highly-paid middlemen called "lobbyists" facilitate the legal transfer of billions between moneyed special interests and our so-called "representatives" i
Gary Edwards

An Inconvenient Truth: Liberal Climate Inquisition Can't Explain Past Temperature Changes - 0 views

dailysignal.com/...plain-past-temperature-changes

Climate-Change Global-Warming Carbon-Tax redistribution-of-wealth

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 May 16 - No Cached
  • For instance, the chart above shows reconstructed average world temperature data for the past 500,000 years. Depending on the magnification and size of your monitor, each pencil dot would span something on the order of 1,000 years. The myriad 10-degree Celsius temperature flips all happened before man-made carbon dioxide could have had any impact—the final temperature spike started at the end of the last ice age.
  • Now see if you can follow this: The “science thought police” insist that even though none of the temperature variations for the first 499,950 years had anything to do with human activity, virtually none of the temperature increases of the past 50 years had anything to do with nature. Got it?
  • Gary Edwards on 07 May 16
     
    "In the week prior to the administration signing what should constitute an international climate treaty, one think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was subpoenaed for casting doubt on the agreement's associated science of climate catastrophe. As disturbing as such thuggery from state attorneys general would be in any case, the premise of the subpoena is faulty. The Competitive Enterprise Institute did not cast doubt on the dubious climate science. The actual data cast the doubt. The think tank and others have simply pointed out what the data show. It looks like thoughtcrime has now moved from George Orwell's novel "1984" to the twisted reality of our judicial system. Pointing out facts should never be a real crime. The Heritage Foundation's new Paris-bubble-popping science summary is also a case of letting the numbers tell a story. A story many never hear in the media-hyped spectacle that is international climate policy."
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Richard Ebeling on Libertarianism, Anarchism and the Truth of Austrian... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...he-Truth-of-Austrian-Economics

Richard-Ebeling Libertarian banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • These are at least two conceivable methods of compelling the government to stop, or limit, its abuse of the monetary printing press.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 12
       
      Ebeling proposes two methods of reining in out of control government printing of paper money.  There is a third method; one used by Lincoln and Kennedy.  This is the issuance of gold/silver/oil backed reserve notes.  The notes represent gold or silver being held on deposit, and are fully redeemable.   The value of the gold/silver or another commodity represented floats in the marketplace against goods and services.  Nor is there a fixed exchange rate for converting fiat (paper) dollars.  The market will figure those things out if left free to do so.  And that's one big big "if".
  • So the normal market pressures of downward price and wage adjustments in the recession are partly counter-acted by a new monetary expansion that is delaying the necessary re-coordination of market activities. Thus, given these two pressures, prices do not fall as much as a post-recession adjustment may require and they do not rise as much or as fast as might otherwise occur due to the renewed monetary expansion.
  • At the same time, as you correctly ask, the Federal Reserve has been paying banks a relatively low rate of interest to keep large excessive reserves in their accounts at the Federal Reserve, rather than to fully lend those excessive reserves to private borrowers. And given the low market rates of interest that Federal Reserve policy has generated, even the low rate of interest on unlent excess reserves offered to banks by the Federal Reserve appears the relatively more profitable way to use their available funds.
  • ...44 more annotations...
  • Why has the Federal Reserve done this? They infused these two trillion dollars into the financial markets back in 2008-2010 because they feared that an economy-wide bank collapse was possible. They are afraid to reverse this monetary expansion because to do so would reduce potential bank-lending capacity and put upward pressure on interest rates at a time when the Federal Reserve wants to prevent the sluggish recovery from slowing down even more and also raise the cost of the US government's financing of its trillion dollar a year deficits. So, instead, they leave this excess bank lending power sloshing around in the system, while keeping it off the market and from causing significant new price inflationary pressures, by paying banks not to lend those vast sums.
  • Austrians argue that economics is fundamentally a science and study of "human action." It attempts to trace out the logic and implications of man's intentional conduct in selecting among ends desired and applying perceived means to try to attain them. Austrians emphasize that all human action and the social and market interactions among men occur in a setting of imperfect knowledge, inescapable degrees of uncertainty and always through the passage of time.
  • They try to explain the market processes by which men discover mutual gains from trade.
  • They emphasize that the networks of social institutions in which and through which men discover ways to coordinate their interdependent actions in complex systems of division of labor are not the creations of government edict or command; but are most often among those unintended consequences of multitudes of self-interested individual actions and interactions.
  • They have developed theories of market competition and the role of the entrepreneur as the individuals always alert to market opportunities, and whose actions tend to bring about coordination between market supplies and demands.
  • The Austrian analysis of markets, competition and prices, led them to devastating critiques of the unworkability of all forms of socialist central planning, the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies in virtually all forms of government intervention and regulation, and a theory of money and the business cycle that points the finger of responsibility for inflations and recessions at the doorstep of government monetary and fiscal policies.
  • The philosophy of liberty proclaims that each individual is unique and possessing inherent rights to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property.
  • It is not surprising that classical liberal and libertarian ideas are often attacked. After all they are the ideas that consistently oppose the current political systems of plunder, privilege and power lusting.
  • That government, if it is to exist, is to serve as the protector and guardian of our distinct individual rights, and not the master of men who are obligated to sacrifice themselves for some asserted "national interest," "general welfare," or "common good."
  • The only reasonable meaning to the "common good" or the "general welfare" is when each individual is free to peacefully live his life as he chooses and is at liberty to voluntarily associate and interact with his fellow men for mutually beneficial improvements to their lives.
  • It is virtually inevitable that those who use political power for their own gain at their neighbor's expense will vehemently resist and oppose any attempt to stop them from feeding at the government trough.
  • there is everywhere a class of plundering peoples – politicians, bureaucrats, special interest groups – receiving tax-based income redistributions and subsidies and benefiting from anti-competitive regulations and protections against and at the expense of their fellow human beings.
  • This is the great battle of the twenty-first century;
  • Austrian Economics, not surprisingly, has been attacked precisely because of its insightful and cogent analysis of how it was government intervention and central bank monetary manipulation that generated the unsustainable boom in the last decade that set the stage for the inescapable bust, which the world is still suffering from.
  • There are "natural rights" libertarians
  • "utilitarian" or "consequentialist" libertarians.
  • most convincing case for human liberty
  • Because libertarians have not agreed about this among themselves, nor have they been able to persuade enough others in society to move the world further away from the collectivist premises and the interventionist-welfare state policies that guide so much that goes on in the world.
  • I happen to have been most strongly influenced by the "natural rights" defense of liberty, and especially as formulated by Ayn Rand in her philosophy of Objectivism.
  • First, it is argued that if one believes that the use of any and all forms of coercion are morally unacceptable in human relationships, then this should also imply that any compulsory taxation, even when for the funding of defense and legal justice, is unjustifiable. And, second, it is argued that the private sector could provide such admittedly essential services far more efficiently and cost-effectively than the monopoly agency of government. Murray Rothbard and David Friedman probably have been among the most well-known and articulate proponents of the anarcho-capitalist position over the last 50 years.
  • Others like the Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick and Ludwig von Mises have made the case for constitutionally limited government. Their counter arguments have centered on the ideas that conflicts over jurisdiction, disputes among private defense agencies contracted by different individuals who have disagreements, and the likelihood that "defense" would turn out to be a "natural monopoly" anyway – that is, a tendency for one agency to end up being the single provider of defense and judicial services over a wide geographical area – raise questions about the long-run workability and sustainability of competing defense companies in society.
  • From a moral perspective, I am in sympathy with the anarcho-capitalist position, in that I find the compulsory taking of people's income and wealth without their consent for whatever reason to be ethically repugnant.
  • We should focus on what we all agree upon:
  • This means that the Supreme Court has said that you are the slave of "society" and the government that represents "the people," since, in principle, anything that you do or not do can be argued to have some affect, positive or negative, on others.
  • Think about this Court decision. It is saying that if you do not buy health insurance the government will tax you to pay for it. If you refuse to pay the tax, the government will end up attempting to seize financial assets or real property you own in lieu of failure to pay. If you try to prevent this taking of your property, you are subject to arrest and imprisonment. If you resist arrest or imprisonment, the police have the authority to force you to comply – up to and including lethal force to subdue you into obedience.
  • the freedom and dignity of the individual human being; and the attempt whenever and wherever on our part to reduce, repeal and abolish all forms of regulation, control, restriction, prohibition on the peaceful and honest affairs of our fellow men.
  • Once you accept this premise, there is no end to the minutest detail and content of your life and actions the government cannot claim jurisdiction over to regulate, control or prohibit.
  • Here is that end-of-the-road of the notion of unlimited democratic rule by "the people" and those who claim to speak for "the people" and rule on their behalf.
  • Ayn Rand, of course, rejected any connection or compatibility with libertarianism. She argued this on two grounds. First, she felt that too frequently libertarians spoke of individual freedom, free markets and limited government, but failed to explicitly and clearly ground their political-economic ideas in a demonstrable philosophy of man, nature and society.
  • Government control of money is the potentially most dangerous and damaging form of government power short of outright socialism.
  • Rand's political philosophy arises out of the "natural rights" tradition, that rights are inherent in the nature of man and precede government.
  • Mises believed that rights were, in a sense, "social conventions" that had evolved out of the discovery that certain social institutional arrangements were more conducive to the mutual betterment of all members of society for achieving their individual goals and values
  • What they did agree upon was that, given their respective conceptions of the basis of individual rights, there was no social and economic system more consistent with the protection of those rights and more likely to generate the material and cultural achievements that are potentially possible than laissez-faire capitalism.
  • And in the twentieth century, Rand and Mises were two of the most principled and uncompromising advocates for the completely free market society
  • Second, she rejected the anarchist elements in the libertarian movement, believing that any reasonable analysis of the reality of man and the human condition strongly suggested the inescapable need for a single legal standard for defining and enforcing individual rights and a single authority to as impartially and "objectively" as possible enforce laws defending each individual's rights to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property.
  • "Hardly ever do the advocates of free capitalism realize how utterly their ideal was frustrated at the moment the state assumed control of the monetary system . . .
  • A 'free' capitalism with government responsibility for money and credit has lost its innocence.
  • From that point on it is no longer a matter of principle but one of expediency how far one wishes or permits government interference to go.
  • Money control is the supreme and most comprehensive of all governmental controls short of expropriation."
  • Government basically has three ways to acquire the income and wealth of its citizens: taxation, borrowing and printing money
  • So, governments throughout history have turned to the monetary printing press to fund the expenditures not covered by taxes or borrowed money
  • This "non-neutral," or uneven, impact on prices and wages in the economy during the inflationary process brings in its wake distorted profit margins, misallocations of resources and labor and various mal-investments of capital. Here are the seeds for the artificial and unsustainable "booms" that invariably come crashing down in the "bust" once the monetary expansion that has set it all in motion is stopped or slowed down.
  • I believe that the choice and use of money should be left to the market, that is, to the free and voluntary interactive decisions of those buying and selling in the market.
  • I consider a private, competitive free banking system to be the only one consistent with a truly free market society.
Gary Edwards

The Libertarian View: Are Tariffs Bad? - 1 views

www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php

Libertarian Austrian-Economics Tariffs-NAFTA China Ron-Paul

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 12
     
    As many know, i spent quite a bit of time working for a Chinese Company seeking to enter the USA-European software market.  My task was to research the market, discover and define a market opportunity, design the product, and then work as product manager to get that service to market.  I took this job to better understand the Chinese marketplace and how sovereign Chinese companies work.  What i learned is how the Chinese seek to exploit and totally dominate open markets.  Software is just a category whose time has come.  and there are thousands of Chinese companies lining up.  The first step though is to fine tune the existing blueprint used by other Sina sovereigns.  amazing stuff. My take away from this experience is that the USA MUST set up a 30% tariff on ALL imports, and do so IMMEDIATELY!!!  Yesterday is not soon enough! As a newly minted libertarian, i wondered about the obvious conflict with Austrian Economics and their dedication to free markets and free trade?  I found the answer at this Libertarian forum, where many members were in heated discussion.  Comment #7 sums it up best i think.  Including a link to Ron Paul's Tariff-NAFTA speech. The thing is, the 30% Tariff should be part of an overall TAX REDUCTION PLAN.  I support the FAIR TAX and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  As an alternative to the Fair Tax, I would also support a 17% flat tax with no exceptions.  The ideal situation being an immediate, uncompromising, no exceptions 30% tariff on ALL imports coupled with the Fair Tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment.   And yes, i do believe this plan is consistent with the Founding Fathers Constitution.  But it took some kind of research to establish that opinion.   I've also concluded that "conservatism" is a convenient philosophical vehicle for the corrupt crony corporatism of both the military-industrial-complex, banksters and, international corporations.  Free trade and open markets concepts are perverted to become a thin veil
Paul Merrell

2012: The Year of the Cooperative by Jessica Reeder - YES! Magazine - 0 views

www.yesmagazine.org/...12-the-year-of-the-cooperative

world-sans-banksters cooperatives statistics economy

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The United Nations has named 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives, and indeed, co-ops seem poised to become a dominant business model around the world. Today, nearly one billion people worldwide are cooperative member-owners. That’s one in five adults over 15
  • Most co-ops also follow the Seven Cooperative Principles, a unique set of guidelines that help maintain their member-driven nature.
  • In fact, the United States is full of co-ops — around 30,000 of them with nearly 900,000 members. Thirty percent of Americans belong to cooperatively-owned credit unions, the largest of which serves 3.4 million Department of Defense employees and has $45 billion in assets. In 2004, the ten largest co-ops in America earned over $12 billion in revenues
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  • In America, 93 million credit union member-owners control $920 billion in assets.
  • “Cooperatives, in their various forms, promote the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of all people, including women, youth, older persons, persons with disabilities and indigenous peoples, are becoming a major factor of economic and social development and contribute to the eradication of poverty.” - UN Resolution 64/136, 2010
  • The trend is well-established: The cooperative model is expected to be the world’s fastest-growing business model by 2025.
  • Paul Merrell on 04 Nov 13
     
    Are worker-owned co-ops replacing unions as the method to ensure that workers share in business profits and productivity gains? The thought had occurred to me until now. But we buy most of our groceries from Winco, a worker-owned grocery chain because their prices are lowest, even lower than Walmart. And many of the forestry-related companies in our area are worker-owned co-ops. They have big competitive advantages for several reasons, not the least of which is that their bottom-up leadership is far smaller and less expensive than the leadership of a top-down stock corporation with comparable sales. No competition between the workers and upper managers/external stockholders for profit sharing. Far less turnover in workers; as owners the workers are more committed to the co-op and to staying with it. Are co-ops part of a shadow economy emerging from the ashes of the U.S. bankster-driven economy? And is there enough flexibility in U.S. law for a bottom-up shadow government to begin taking shape, based on contract law perhaps? No one could be forced to sign the contract, of course, but I see room for at least an alternate dispute resolution process to resolve disputes between contract parties. One based on mediation rather than arbitration, as the U.S. judicial system behaves. (The U.S. judicial system is beyond salvage, in my studied opinion.)  Food for thought. 
Paul Merrell

News - Antitrust - Competition - European Commission - 0 views

ec.europa.eu/...news.html

antitrust Google European Commission DG Competition Android comarison-shopping-search

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Google inquiries Commission accuses Google of systematically favouring own shopping comparison service Infographic: Google might be favouring 'Google Shopping' when displaying general search results
  • Antitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Google on comparison shopping service; opens separate formal investigation on AndroidWed, 15 Apr 2015 10:00:00 GMTAntitrust: Commission opens formal investigation against Google in relation to Android mobile operating systemWed, 15 Apr 2015 10:00:00 GMTAntitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Google on comparison shopping serviceWed, 15 Apr 2015 10:00:00 GMTStatement by Commissioner Vestager on antitrust decisions concerning GoogleWed, 15 Apr 2015 11:39:00 GMT
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Apr 15
     
    The more interesting issue to me is the accusation that Google violates antitrust law by boosting its comparison shopping search results in its search results, unfairly disadvantaging competing shopping services and not delivering best results to users. What's interesting to me is that the Commission is attempting to portray general search as a separate market from comparison shopping search, accusing Google of attempting to leverage its general search monopoly into the separate comoparison shopping search market. At first blush, Iim not convinced that these are or should be regarded as separable markets. But the ramifications are enormous. If that is a separate market, then arguably so is Google's book search, its Google Scholar search, its definition search, its site search, etc. It isn't clear to me how one might draw a defensible line taht does not also sweep in every new search feature  as a separate market.   
Paul Merrell

Excite News - EU files antitrust charges against Google - 0 views

apnews.excite.com/...-europe-google-bd4bb7b354.html

Google European Commission antitrust search Android DG-Competition

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union's competition chief is filing an antitrust complaint alleging Google has been abusing its dominance in Internet searches and is opening a probe into its Android mobile system.EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Wednesday she is "concerned that the company has given an unfair advantage to its own comparison shopping service."Vestager said the separate antitrust probe into Android will investigate whether the Internet giant relies on anti-competitive deals and abuses its dominant position in Europe's mobile market.Vestager said her chief goal was to make sure multinationals "do not artificially deny European consumers as wide a choice as possible or stifle innovation".Google's general counsel Kent Walker wrote late Tuesday that a "statement of objections" to Google's business practices was to be released by Vestager Wednesday.
Paul Merrell

Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club * President of Russia - 0 views

en.kremlin.ru/...50548

war & peace Russia Putin U.S.-foreign-policy terrorists™ acusation must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,Allow me to greet you here at this regular meeting of the Valdai International Club.
  • Why is it that the efforts of, say, our American partners and their allies in their struggle against the Islamic State has not produced any tangible results? Obviously, this is not about any lack of military equipment or potential. Clearly, the United States has a huge potential, the biggest military potential in the world, only double crossing is never easy. You declare war on terrorists and simultaneously try to use some of them to arrange the figures on the Middle East board in your own interests, as you may think.
  • The end of the Cold War put an end to ideological opposition, but the basis for arguments and geopolitical conflicts remained. All states have always had and will continue to have their own diverse interests, while the course of world history has always been accompanied by competition between nations and their alliances. In my view, this is absolutely natural.The main thing is to ensure that this competition develops within the framework of fixed political, legal and moral norms and rules. Otherwise, competition and conflicts of interest may lead to acute crises and dramatic outbursts.We have seen this happen many times in the past. Today, unfortunately, we have again come across similar situations. Attempts to promote a model of unilateral domination, as I have said on numerous occasions, have led to an imbalance in the system of international law and global regulation, which means there is a threat, and political, economic or military competition may get out of control.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Why is it that the efforts of, say, our American partners and their allies in their struggle against the Islamic State has not produced any tangible results? Obviously, this is not about any lack of military equipment or potential. Clearly, the United States has a huge potential, the biggest military potential in the world, only double crossing is never easy. You declare war on terrorists and simultaneously try to use some of them to arrange the figures on the Middle East board in your own interests, as you may think.
  • This year the discussion focusses on issues of war and peace. This topic has clearly been the concern of humanity throughout its history. Back in ancient times, in antiquity people argued about the nature, the causes of conflicts, about the fair and unfair use of force, of whether wars would always accompany the development of civilisation, broken only by ceasefires, or would the time come when arguments and conflicts are resolved without war.
  • President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,Allow me to greet you here at this regular meeting of the Valdai International Club.
  • It is impossible to combat terrorism in general if some terrorists are used as a battering ram to overthrow the regimes that are not to one’s liking. You cannot get rid of those terrorists, it is only an illusion to think you can get rid of them later, take power away from them or reach some agreement with them.
  • It is impossible to combat terrorism in general if some terrorists are used as a battering ram to overthrow the regimes that are not to one’s liking. You cannot get rid of those terrorists, it is only an illusion to think you can get rid of them later, take power away from them or reach some agreement with them. The situation in Libya is the best example here.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 15
     
    This is a must-read speech by Putin. He takes the U.S. soundly to task on a variety of war & peace issues, but bluntly accuses the U.S. of going soft on ISL and of using terrorist organizations as U.S. weapons. Regretfully, he's right, of course. 
Gary Edwards

Dan Ferris - The real story on financial regulation you need to see - 0 views

www.thedailycrux.com/...eml

Michael-Lewis Dan-Ferris obammunism government-regulation

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Like everyone else, Lewis ignored the fact that the CDS market is private only because the Commodity Futures Modernization Act made it that way. It was regulated underground. Without the CFMA, a transparent public futures market in CDSs could have formed and was, in fact, being discussed before the law put the kibosh on it. Everybody and his brother would have seen prices on CDSs for Lehman Brothers and AIG rising during the summer of 2008, harbingers of impending doom, way ahead of the ratings agencies. What's more, banks sold prime mortgage loans and bought "triple-A-rated" collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) only because the Basel II Capital Accords established lower capital requirements for triple-A-rated securities than for prime mortgage loans. When capital requirements drop, you suddenly have more money you can spend on other things. Basel II made the ratings agencies instantly more powerful and important to a bank's competitive position than the behavior of its own underwriters. Throw in the Community Reinvestment Act, two ill-managed massive entities making markets in mortgages (Fannie and Freddie), and the Federal Reserve – a government-created private banking cartel – and you have a government-led financial disaster. There's plenty of blame to go around, I know. But how anyone could miss the massive role of the misguided, heavy-handed regulation is beyond me. Everyone who ought to know better – from hedge-fund managers to our elected representatives – says we need more regulation, not less. Isn't that curious? The solution is never less regulation, and the fault is never too much regulation. If I were more paranoid, I'd cry conspiracy.
  • delivering an oligopoly to JPMorganChase, Bank of America, and Citigroup.
  • The only reason the industry isn't paying for its failures is the government interfered and staged the biggest bailout in history! The government creates a problem, and the solution is somehow always... more government.
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Mar 10
     
    Like everyone else, Lewis ignored the fact that the CDS market is private only because the Commodity Futures Modernization Act made it that way. It was regulated underground. Without the CFMA, a transparent public futures market in CDSs could have formed and was, in fact, being discussed before the law put the kibosh on it. Everybody and his brother would have seen prices on CDSs for Lehman Brothers and AIG rising during the summer of 2008, harbingers of impending doom, way ahead of the ratings agencies. What's more, banks sold prime mortgage loans and bought "triple-A-rated" collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) only because the Basel II Capital Accords established lower capital requirements for triple-A-rated securities than for prime mortgage loans. When capital requirements drop, you suddenly have more money you can spend on other things. Basel II made the ratings agencies instantly more powerful and important to a bank's competitive position than the behavior of its own underwriters. Throw in the Community Reinvestment Act, two ill-managed massive entities making markets in mortgages (Fannie and Freddie), and the Federal Reserve - a government-created private banking cartel - and you have a government-led financial disaster. There's plenty of blame to go around, I know. But how anyone could miss the massive role of the misguided, heavy-handed regulation is beyond me. Everyone who ought to know better - from hedge-fund managers to our elected representatives - says we need more regulation, not less. Isn't that curious? The solution is never less regulation, and the fault is never too much regulation. If I were more paranoid, I'd cry conspiracy.
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