"Go!" No. "Stop!"

The government can prevent market forces from operating by channeling resources into artificial channels.

Broad intervention — for example, flooding the market with public funds while adding new and onerous restrictions on firms — is, like pressing down on a car's accelerator and brake pedals simultaneously, and is guaranteed to make the economy stall.

"Fast Forward to the NEP." By Mark Sunwall, Mises Daily, 2/26/09.

Advanced Muslim state.

Thus it is no accident that 70 percent of Turkish citizens never read books.

"Mahmud Cannot Read." By Bernie, Planck's Constant, 2/24/09.

Muslim representation in U.K. high-security prisons.

Two weeks ago UPI reported that there are too many Muslims in a high-security prison in the UK, almost 33% of the prison population; ten times their 3% representation among the general population.

An excellent argument for more Muslim immigration to the U.K.

"How Many Muslims are there in Prisons?" By Bernie, Planck's Constant, 2/22/09.

1.6 trillion dollars – to be borrowed from whom and at what cost?

I used to think Paul Craig Roberts was right on the mark about the erosion of our ancient liberties ("the rights of Englishmen") but then he wandered off the reservation on issue that I can't call to mind just now.

But, he's back (assuming he was gone) with what appears to be a right-on-the-money analysis of our current difficulties and our history since 1900. Credit swaps, the up-tick rule, and the error in bailing out AIG are explained clearly, as are other phenomena:

The Bush and Obama plans total 1.6 trillion dollars, every one of which will have to be borrowed, and no one knows from where. This huge sum will compromise the value of the US dollar, its role as reserve currency, the ability of the US government to service its debt, and the price level. These staggering costs are pointless and are to no avail, as not one step has been taken that would alleviate the crisis.

Death for short sellers of national currencies seems an extreme solution at first blush, but the idea's been growing on me . . . .

"Doomed." By Paul Craig Roberts, Counterpunch, 2/24/09.

Novel idea.

The thing is that compared to defending the USA from invasion and infiltration by foreigners, all other potential uses of the military are a complete waste of time from the standpoint of our vital interests.

But instead of using it for that purpose, our govenment uses it to defend Germany, Iraq, Afganistan, South Korea; and every other stinking country in the world where the taxpayers are too cheap to pay for their own defense.

We need the military on the border of Mexico. Otherwise the US Military should just be abolished off the face of the earth like the useless Dinosaur that it has become.

Let Germany defend Germany!
Let South Korea defend South Korea!
Let Iraq defend Iraq!

And let America defend America, for the love of God and for sake of our own continued existence.

Comment by Bob Johnson on "The Long Retreat." By Patrick J. Buchanan, Chronicles, 2/20/09.

Hugely true huge truths.

Or, "Crowbar of Events" category:

Our politicians need to address an accumulation of past excesses before sponsoring new ones.

And:

But his presidency will get really interesting in a year or two, or six months -- whenever he finally realizes that everything he thought he wanted to do is irrelevant. He'll then have to adapt an agenda for the world as it is, in which many childish things no longer have a place.

Swiss Bank Miss." By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., Wall Street Journal (subscription), 2/25/09.

Basic economic facts -- #1.

. . . Switzerland is the fourth-largest foreign investor in the United States.

And it gets its money to invest from . . . ?"

Swiss Bank Miss ." Wall Street Journal (subscription), 2/25/09.

Saudi shill appointed to National Intelligence Council.

Saudis are known to co-opt U.S. diplomats during their careers by hiring former diplomats to work for various pro-Saudi study groups, think tanks, and advisory groups after they retire. If the diplomats don't rock the boat before their retirement they get a lucrative job post-retirement and everyone's happy except the people of the U.S. who kinda sorta hope that their diplomats will represent U.S. interests forcefully not subordinate them to the interests of hostile foreigners.

Not that Saudi financial support for wahhabi terrorist pricks around the world is anything to get all worked up about. No. I'm not saying that.

Now note this fact about some outfit known as the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC):

The MEPC purports to be a nonpartisan, public-affairs group that "strives to ensure that a full range of U.S. interests and views are considered by policy makers" dealing with the Middle East. In fact, its original name until 1991 was the American-Arab Affairs Council, and it is an influential Washington mouthpiece for Saudi Arabia.

Put that fact together with the fact that a former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles "Chas" Freeman Jr., was formerly president of MEPC and then factor in that he now appears to have been appointed chairman of Obama's National Intelligence Council, which is responsible for producing National Intelligence Estimates. These intel estimates are what are produced for the president's consumption to aid him in the performance of his duties.

Will President Obama be getting his intel with a pro-Saudi gloss from now on?

Also, Mr. Freeman has views about the Chinese that are, to say the least, odd, such as his view that the Chinese government was overly cautious, I kid you not, in its response to the student occupation of Tian An Men square.

I'd hate to think how it might have reacted if it had not been so cautious.

Mr. Freeman is someone we can do without as one with any influence over what information makes it to the president's desk. I can only hope that Mr. Obama isn't aware of this man's background and views, but it's unlikely, worst luck, given his affinity for any and all manner of malcontents and America haters in his various earlier periods of being mentored by someone.

"Obama's Intelligence Choice. The president picks a China apologist and Israel basher to write his intelligence summaries." By Gabriel Schoenfeld, Wall Street Journal (subscription), 2/25/09.

Primer on Keynesianism.

Our continuing attempt to reexamine assumptions and explore the mysteries of finance and government policy . . . :

"The Waterloo of Keynesianism (Military and Domestic)." By David Beito, The Hawblog, 2/20/09.

Rank exercises.

David Beito doesn't think much of historians rating presidents:

Rated by the historians in the “worst” category, by contrast, is, you guessed it, Warren G. Harding: a president who successfully promoted economic prosperity, cut taxes, balanced the budget, reduced the national debt, released all of his predecessor’s political prisoners, supported anti-lynching legislation, and instituted the most substantial naval arms reduction agreement in world history. Go figure.

Expecting something useful to come out of such exercises is like expecting objective appraisals of same-sex marriage at an Academy Awards orgy of maudlin self-congratulation.

"In Defense of the (Relatively) Great Warren G. Harding." By David Beito, The Beacon, 2/17/09.

Killer komplacency.

I've written some about European America's ho hum attitude to inundation by illegal immigration and to the insane policy of bringing in legal Muslim immigrants who are host to the sick virus of their faith and its joined-at-the-hip culture of obscurantism, violence, subversion, and hostility to infidels.

If a pinch of salt added to the great ethnic stew (that America just simply by gosh must become) is good, and ratchets up our "diversity" one more notch to heavenly heights of righteous rapture, then, as current thinking goes, five pounds of salt won't screw up the stew either.

These come to my mind as cultural and political movements on a tectonic scale that warrant hardly a whisper of discussion in the MSM, and certainly not extended discussion:

• allowing, even celebrating, inundation by illegal immigration,
  
• being indifferent to the tsunami wave of transfer of power to the federal government,
  
• encouraging movement of significant manufacturing capacity to the shores of a communist dictatorship,
  
• failing to confront Islam for being the retrograde disgrace that it is,
  
• undermining bedrock principles like free speech, and
  
• kow towing to disgraceful subminorities (e.g., the black underclass).

Try discussing this at a cocktail party anywhere within 150 miles of the Washington Monument (or any urban area with one or more Starbucks) and you might as well clear your social calendar for all but roller skating, quilting bees, and NASCAR tail gate parties because you'll be persona non gratin at any event more glamorous than a Fourth of July picnic for Bryn Mawr mud wrestlers.

As a conservative, I don't want society and government to lurch this way and that with every blip on the NORAD radar occasioned by the occasional Canada goose or film-at-11 news chopper. But it can't denied that sometimes a nation just does reach a massive, spiked, command-detonated speed bump in the middle of the road that hints at systemic problems not amenable to solution by familiar means.

We are at the end of the post-WWII period where America had come out on top militarily, economically, and technologically and was internally blessed with dominance by European values. Only someone in an extended coma could fail to note that the rest of the world has caught up to us economically in significant ways and that our European values have been under an increasingly frenzied attack since the 60s. (You know the Brits are in trouble when a Nigerian woman immigrant has a better appreciation for traditional British values than native Brits do!)

So, what is called for at this time? I don't think many people have a very good idea about what's needed and, really, most of us don't want to spend time trying to identify and understand our bedrock cultural values. Nor do many relish mounting a defense of the white race to counter determined efforts to portray it as the spear point of all that is vile in the world. There's far more immediate return on our investment of time and energy taking care of daily problems.

But that option of walling off one's life from the "crowbar of events," as Solzhenitsyn termed it, has disappeared. One cannot rely on past solutions, let alone leaders.

A few voters genuinely wanted "change," albeit of an unspecified type, crossed their fingers, and hoped that Mr. Obama would supply the precisely right kind, frail and ridiculous hope that that was. "NOT BUSH" translated into "The Man From Nowhere and Friend to Commies, Black Bigots, and Terrorist Revolutionaries Everywhere" by a process that my staff has yet satisfactorily to explain.

That kind of voting behavior is like a frog's pouncing on a piece of chalk thinking it's a tasty bug, when it's actually reacting to movement rather than precise target identification.

Well, we've got a leader who wants change allright but where is the evidence that he's got a pipeline to anything new? It doesn't exist. His (??) showcase accomplishment of the "stimulus" package is business-as-usual, socialism-on-the-half-shell, pork-till-you-choke, beggar-our-descendants garbage that's as likely to positively affect our difficulties as ice cream would improve scrambled eggs.

We all live in "interesting times" as the alleged Chinese curse contemplates and, maybe we need, a la Orwell, simply to restate the obvious. We certainly could profit by going back to the Constitution of 1789 (plus the 13th and 15th Amendments). And we certainly all need to clear off our desks, put on the green eye shades, and begin to write down the essentials of a new National Owner's Manual. Nothing by way of blood-in-the-streets revolution, mind you – the usual liberal Rx for everything from hurtful looks to plastic grocery bags. But we certainly CAN identify fundamental problems and innovative solutions by engaging in original thinking and scraping from our cerebral gortex the layer of scum deposited by exposure to the treasonous MSM and liberal elite.

All of which is to encourage you to read Charles Hugh Smith's interesting piece on complacency:

When does supreme confidence turn into supremely dangerous complacency? When you read fawning accounts of U.S. innovation saving the day. The mainstream media is chockful of predictably mealy-mouthed mea culpas: OK, we missed the subprime meltdown, the housing bubble, the derivatives insanity, the inevitable collapse of over-leveraged lenders and insurers, the corruption and lax oversight--but really, some of our reporters did cover these things--on page B-11...occasionally....

"Complacency and The Will To Radical Reform." By Charles Hugh Smith, oftwominds.com, 2/12/09.

Sky not falling.

Carbon dioxide is neither a pollutant nor a creator of global warming.

Though it might make up a growing portion of our atmosphere, CO2 is still a mere 0.038% of the gaseous layer that surrounds the Earth, and only 3% of that thin slice is released by man.

"Our Self-Created Energy Problem." Investors Business Daily, 2/19/09.

Obama's Enemies List.

The left was ever given to moaning and tearing it hair over Dubya's violation of our precious liberties and his rending of the fabric of our beloved Constitution bequeathed to us by Our Founding Fathers.

Meanwhile back on earth, President Obama and his friends pursue policies characterized by opposition research, intimidation, and a willingness to drastically undermine freedom of speech, without a peep of alarm from the left.

The account of this in The American Spectator by Mark Hyman is worth your time:

"Obama's Enemies List." By Mark Hyman The American Spectator, 2/18/09.

What, me worry?

The U.S. dollar has lost 93% of its purchasing power since 1971.

Could this have affected the savings of millions of Americans and foreigners? Is it just me, or is that a significant loss of value?

I've never focused much on economics and high finance, let alone monetary policy and things like the gold standard and the Federal Reserve. Nor have most people, I suspect. Maybe this kind of information's always been out there, or I've heard it but it's not registered. Clearly a liiiiiittle more attention to these difficult matters is in order.

Notwithstanding my own failure to understand important aspects of our security, shouldn't there have been some institutional mechanism that was focused on finding leaks in the boat? Or, were we all so blinded by the heady rocketing of real estate values and cheap off shore consumer goods that we didn't think to ask basic questions?

Churchill complained of not being heard when he raised the alarm about Germany. Apparently no one wanted to hear any alarm raised by anyone, and surely there must have been many. Even President George Bush was ignored when he tried to rein in Fannie Mac, if I've got that right, though his administration will not go down in history as having championed fiscal probity or evidenced that its officials had an understanding of free markets. (The superb Accuracy in Media's AIMReport for November-A 2008 has a great article on "Using Socialism to Save Capitalism.")

The leadership, broadly defined, of this country seems not to understand the concept of the vigorous foot on the brake pedal whether in economic matters, illegal immigration matters, or legal immigration of inassimilable Muslims.

When we really need "change" it's all ahead full on the course of suicide. All problems can be ignored until the very grill of the 18 wheeler crashes through the living room window.

The pleasant breezes of late spring will last forever. This is America, after all, isn't it? Always free, always secure, beloved by all who grace our shores, protected from government excess by a vigorous, independent press and the steel structure of the Constitution.

"Unintended Consequences of the 20th Century and Beyond." By James Quinn, The Market Oracle, 1/8/09.

Forecast: partly cloudy, rampant inflation.

I'm not an economist. I only play one on tv. But does not this portend massive inflation?

It took 200-years for the monetary base to go from $0 to $800 billion, but in just the past 3-months it has grown from around $800 billion to $1.5 trillion, and by the time you read this it will probably be surpassing $1.6 trillion. That's double the number of paper dollars in existence since last summer!

"The Greatest Wealth Transfer in the History of Mankind Starts Now!" By Brent_Harmes, The Market Oracle, 12/19/08.

Simpletons regulating complex systems.

The conceit of modern man is that we are as gods in our ability to forge iron, explore the stars, and devise complex scams like global warming (or its precision concept cousin "climate change"). No problem is beyond our ability to understand and fix. Inconvenient facts about human nature and foreign cultures? Well, then, just pour on the love. Supply the missing hunk of love and stamp out the ignorance of our forebears and everything's jake.

Whatever conservatism is, it must surely be at heart a world view that is founded on a perception of the stupefying complexity of life. In the article I highlight here, James Quinn takes a close look at what happens when people in a simple system attempt to regulate something complex like the U.S. or even the world economy. He's right on the money when he outlines what the inputs for the simple political system are. Suffice it to say they are not inputs that have much to do with the communication of useful data about the economy to the ears and eyes of politicians:

“The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system. The political system is simple. It operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and poor and misaligned incentives. Society in contrast is a complex, evolving, high-feedback, incentive-driven system. When a simple system tries to regulate a complex system you often get unintended consequences.” Andrew Gelman

Andrew Gelman is dead on. He states that the political system is simple. I'd go a step further and say that lifetime politicians and entrenched government bureaucrats are simple. They show no indication of knowledge or expertise in American history or rational financial theory. The President, Congress, Federal Reserve, and Treasury try mightily to direct our economy. It is an impossible task. With a GDP of $14 trillion, there are thousands of inputs and outputs that feed the system. Their hubris leads them to believe that they are in control and can manipulate the gears of capitalism in a way that will produce their desired outcomes. If a desired outcome occurs, it is simply due to dumb luck. The more likely result of their manipulations of our complex system is a set of bigger problems that never occurred to them.

Much more . . . .


"Unintended Consequences of the 20th Century and Beyond." By James Quinn, The Market Oracle, 1/8/09.

Jingoists for the Other.

John Sullivan reflects on the vacuum at the heart of Britain and the betrayal of the British elite:

But modern Britain gave them [radical British-born Muslim youth] a vacuum in those parts of the soul where national identity, patriotism and allegiance take root and usually flourish.

Nature especially abhors this particular vacuum - and in places like the Finsbury Park mosque Islamo-fascism filled it.

Worse, Britain's government, political parties, establishment, major cultural institutions such as the BBC and even the police (now widely derided as "the paramilitary wing of the Guardian") foster this vacuum. They see patriotism as atavistic and discriminatory - and multiculturalism as its cure. At home and abroad, they are jingoists for the Other.

"England's Muslim Spleen." By John O'Sullivan, New York Post, 2/16/09 (emphasis added).

Behind that Muslim smile and handshake.

Now this isn’t Muslim doctrine as elucidated by the Muslim equivalent of the Grand Tetons Church of the Holy Dispensation. No, this is from a veritable Muslim Thomas Aquinas on the issue of what a good Muslim is to harbor in his or her heart when forced to endure the company of the filthy kuffar:

Al-Tabari’s (d. 923) famous tafsir (exegesis of the Koran) is a standard and authoritative reference work in the entire Muslim world. Regarding 3:28, he writes: “If you [Muslims] are under their [infidels’] authority, fearing for yourselves, behave loyally to them, with your tongue, while harboring inner animosity for them. … Allah has forbidden believers from being friendly or on intimate terms with the infidels in place of believers — except when infidels are above them [in authority]. In such a scenario, let them act friendly towards them.”

"Raymond Ibrahim: Islam, War, and Deceit: A Synthesis (Part I)." By Raymond Ibrahim, Jihad Watch, 2/14/09 (emphasis added).

Wife beating. Muslim sacrament.

Henry VIII call your office:

The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences has determined that over ninety percent of Pakistani wives have been struck, beaten, or abused sexually — for offenses on the order of cooking an unsatisfactory meal. Others were punished for failing to give birth to a male child. Dominating their women by violence is a prerogative Muslim men cling to tenaciously. In Spring 2005, when the East African nation of Chad tried to institute a new family law that would outlaw wife beating, Muslim clerics led resistance to the measure as un-Islamic.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for enlightened Islamic opinion to step up with a condemnation of the Chadian imams. Sooner expect the Pope to come out against the concept of Immaculate Conception.

To Muslims, wife abuse is holy writ. How else to explain the over 90% statistic above?

"Friends of moderate Muslim leader who beheaded his wife: he's a terrific guy, he must have just, er, lost his head." By Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, 2/14/09.