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What the Hell happened to “Swine Flu”?
Remember the ads? The govt’s warnings about this being potentially catastrophic “pandemic” (the formal UN classification)? The millions wasted on contingency plans?
Should we just ignore similar UN-issued warnings in the future if this one was such a joke, such a non-event, such a complete waste of time?
I suspect it’s a dry run, but who knows what the world’s governments are up to?
The motivating madness of government fascism
People don’t see crises coming because they believe in the rationality of government. They don’t see the dynamic inherent in a coercive rent seeking entity that necessarily compels governments worldwide towards madness again and again and again.
WWI was madness. The Great Depression was madness. WWII was madness. Hiroshima was madness. The Cold War was madness. Chernobyl was madness. The deliberate death of the Aral Sea was madness. The destruction of arable land worldwide to convert this precious fertile land into low-density residential development is complete madness. Deliberate and govt-supported over-fishing worldwide is unsustainable madness. The GFC was predictable madness. The continued presence of the West in Afghanistan is madness.
Why do governments the world over act with such apparent suicidal, manic-depressive blind stupidity, such venal short-termism, such environmental destruction, such barbarity?
Because very simple incentive structures built up over time around the coercive activities of government compel it towards destructive barbaric madness. Simple.
Those contractors supplying government make money out of what government does. Government (originally) was developed to provide a limited range of essential services – law and order and defence. Suppliers to government have a natural incentive to try to convince government to spend more, to make government bigger. It’s an easy gig because governments can print to finance their own spending habits (unlike the private sector).
Governments then get bigger doing things they shouldn’t do. And because there is no appeal process beyond government (all you can do is appeal to another agent of government), government has a natural tendency to get bigger because nothing can stop it short of complete anarchy. So it keeps growing until chaos really does ensue.
This happens again and again throughout history and every time people are “shocked” by the chaos, by the suddenness of the social breakdown. The Soviet Union, Iran, the US in the ’60s, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Europe after WWI… all these regions experienced government-induced chaos, government supported madness.
The US will experience exactly the same social breakdown, the same insane bankruptcy, the same comic-tragic stupidity. Why? Because the dynamics of government compel the country towards this inevitable denouement.
Let me explain by providing a quote from Bill Bonner of Daily Reckoning:
Bethesda is one of America’s wealthiest suburbs. Money from all over the nation rolls this way. The playing field is tilted in Bethesda’s direction.
“I was sitting in the Starbucks, having a cup of coffee,” Elizabeth reported. “One man next to me was on the phone. He was talking about some deal he had done with the US Army in Afghanistan. It sounded as though he was very happy with it. The man next to me on the other side was on the phone too. He was a jollier fellow, talking loudly about how much money he had made. I thought he was a stockbroker or something like that. Then, I realized he was talking about a contract with the government.”
While the rest of the nation has suffered a setback over the last ten years…the Washington metropolitan area has boomed more than ever. Real estate prices are down…but less than other areas.
And when we looked for a house to rent, we expected to be able to name our price. We thought it would be a buyer’s market. Not so. Nice houses in Bethesda are still being sought after. How so?
Wars…bailouts…boondoggles – this area loves them. Federal employees’ earnings keep going up…and a higher portion of the US national income goes to Washington.
People make money out of the government’s fascist madness. So the fascist madness increases.
Simple.
What’s hard to understand about rent-seeking?
Washington Post calls for fascism in America
To quote WaPo directly, to ensure there is no confusion:
Whatever good [the financial regulation bill] might do would be canceled out by the inclusion of Texas Republican Ron Paul’s proposal to subject the Federal Reserve’s monetary policymaking to regular audits by the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress.
Supporters suggest that the measure would merely provide “transparency” for a secretive, powerful institution. But for all its wide, bipartisan backing, this is anything but a prudent or centrist law. In fact, it is an attack — born of crisis and the attendant emotions — on the political independence the central bank must have to do its job.
The case for political independence at the Fed is elementary. Elected officials, such as members of Congress, are inherently loath to tighten the supply of money available to their constituents, even when that might be necessary to fight inflation. U.S. experience, and that of countries around the world, confirms this, which is why Congress exempted the Fed’s money-supply decisions from GAO scrutiny in a 1978 law. Mr. Paul’s proposal would effectively repeal that. Investors already spend enough energy and money trying to figure out where interest rates are heading without this additional dose of permanent uncertainty. Trust in the Fed, and, by extension, the dollar, will evaporate if markets believe that the Fed is courting the approval of Congress’s auditors.
Mr. Paul doesn’t care; he’s an “end the Fed” man. In the past, other members of Congress have basically just humored him. It’s a sign of the times — and not a good one — that they have been Fed-bashed into following him now.
The case for political independence at [insert any important government dept here] is elementary. Elected officials, such as members of Congress, are inherently loath to [do the right thing long-term], even when that might be necessary to [do so for the long-term interests of the country]. U.S. experience, and that of countries around the world, confirms this, which is why [we advocate fascism in America].
Do you see how this argument can apply to any important government policy?
If the same argument can apply to any government policy, why have democracy at all?
It must be because WaPo supports fascism in America.
Japanese govt is considering putting Lithium in the water supply to lift Japanese spirits
First Flouride.
Then Lithium.
I’m worried if the govt gets frustrated because the people aren’t happy enough it will do a “Jim Jones” and try to give us free Kool-Aid.
Hopefully we’ll all act happier and it won’t have to come to that. At least not in my lifetime.
Taxing the air we breathe
Copenhagen isn’t going so well.
India has labelled Australia’s delegation as an “ayatollah” for their zealotry on the one-track approach, which will eventually force all countries on to a single treaty.
It’s always best when there are only two wings on the govt bird of prey.
According to the SMH, there are 3000 journalists, 22,000 observers (including lobby groups and activists), and 8000 delegates representing 192 countries.
8000 wings on the same bird of prey.
That’s a lot of flapping around, but it’s unlikely to get off the ground.
One year to go, Germany
On 3 October, 2010, Germany will make its final payment on its WWI debts, imposed on it by the Allied Powers via the illegitimate, coercively imposed Treaty of Versailles, which precipitated the Weimar Republic’s hyperinflation, which wiped out the German middle class and precipitated WWII.
Can you believe that through all of this, the debt was still enforced, payments still honoured, and interest paid on the debt for nearly a century?
Oh, the humanity!
1984 in 2009
You know you’re living in an Orwell novel when:
1. The only politician who makes sense (Barnaby Joyce in Oz and Ron Paul in the US) is treated as a lunatic, and the lunatics (“robot” Julia Gillard in Oz and “Master Freemason” George Bush in the US) are treated with respect.
2. Joyce is castigated for telling the truth about sovereign debt.
3. Joyce is told it’s “irresponsible” to suggest that some States could not pay back their debts. Surely it’s “irresponsible” to have racked up enough debt for this to become a controversial issue in the first place!
4. The ETS is treated as serious policy and REAL environmental catastrophes such as dry land salinity, oil spills of the WA coast, the corrupt mining industry raping fertile farmland for a cheap buck, and topsoil erosion are all studiously ignored by the media.
5. Insane US and UK debt levels are treated as “normal”.
6. Krugman argues (successfully) that more deficit spending is the only “responsible” way for the US govt to get out of a financial crisis brought on by too much debt.
7. Not one mainstream media outlet seriously questions the billions in misallocated stimulus spending.
8. Counterfeit banking is respected, lauded and made legal.
9. Fake health scares such as SARS, and Swine Flu require compulsory vaccinations of the populace.
10. Good people are murdered, their lives or careers destroyed for speaking out and telling the truth.
Two wings of the same bird of prey
So, after all the political “intrigue” over the Liberal split, it looks like the ETS legislation will pass tomorrow no matter whether the Goldman Sachs message boy or the Banker’s Husband is voted in as leader. Abbott would vote down the legislation, but big ears is as likely to win as Dumbo is to fly.
Libertarians in the US often label the two political parties as “two wings of the same bird of prey,” a term coined by Butler Shaffer. To think the ETS legislation – giving unprecedented power over virtually all economic activity to Canberra – would be voted down by the central government is laughable. Those “employed” in this game are there to dole out favours to their backers. This increases that power. Everyone in Canberra wins. Only the “community” loses. So it will pass. Of course.
But step back and think of the irony, the lunacy of this legislation. We don’t yet have definitive uncontested factual evidence establishing whether grass absorbs more carbon than trees, whether storing carbon in trees is better than cutting them down and letting them grow again, whether the mouths or the butts of cattle cause more emissions, whether sequestration will work…we don’t know ANYTHING definitive about these and many other questions.
But, in the name of an invisible gas that may or may not be causing climate change, we will be forced to cede unprecedented planning, financial, economic, business, farming power to the central govt. Property rights will be rendered meaningless because a carbon tax could change the valuation of any asset at any time.
Two wings of the same bird of prey, flapping away to enslave the working men and women of the world. This is Mark of the Beast-style control over every transaction in the economy. I am reminded of Murray Rothbard’s sad, forlorn efforts to hold back the tide of govt oppression in the US. From the WP on this great man:
Building on the Austrian School’s concept of spontaneous order in markets, support for a free market in money production and condemnation of central planning, Rothbard sought to minimize coercive government control of the economy. He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term wellbeing of the populace, labeling the State as nothing but a “gang of thieves writ large” – the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.
Rothbard concluded that virtually all services provided by monopoly governments could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. He viewed many regulations and laws ostensibly promulgated for the “public interest” as self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats engaging in dangerously unfettered self-aggrandizement, as they were not subject to market disciplines which would quickly eliminate such parasitic inefficiencies if they were to occur in the competitive private sector.
Rothbard was equally condemning of state corporatism. He criticized many instances where business elites co-opted government’s monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals.
He argued that taxation represents coercive theft on a grand scale, and “a compulsory monopoly of force” prohibiting the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers. He also considered central banking and fractional reserve banking under a monopoly fiat money system a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial fraud, antithetical to libertarian principles and ethics. Rothbard opposed military, political, and economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations.
The locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.
Indeed,
We are regressing back to tired ideas about govt being the saviour with this legislation. Where are the lessons from Eastern Europe, from Chernobyl, from the Aral Sea? This stealth centralisation of economic decision-making, away from the market-based decentralised approach that has worked in the West for centuries is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. I stand as a witness to this madness.
What drives this fascist-socialist agenda? Certainly not genuine policy debate about the environment.
Madness drives it, the insane zealotry that has driven egotists and madmen for centuries.
And the paranoia of parasites.
Brilliance and courage from a government leader
Let it never be said I am irrationally negative about politicians and government employees.
Here is a courageous, correct and fundamentally sound statement from the Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, as reported in today’s Daily Telegraph:
We have been very clear that we do not put taxpayer money intended for healthcare or education into owning car companies or covering losses in car companies. You cannot save jobs just by pushing in taxpayers’ money if you don’t have the competitiveness to survive in a tough industry with overcapacity.
Wow.
I am in awe.
He is resisting pleas from the unions and pressure from GM to pour public money into Saab to save it. He is right.
What the Australian govt did in comparison was shameful.
I note that St Vincent’s Hospital may have to reduce purchases of new equipment because of $24 million in investment losses, I note that millions of dollars have been wasted on shoddy insulation due to the govt meddling in the private market for insulation in Australia, I note that hospitals are (according to the Tele) at overcapacity dealing with the spike in new births taking place, I note that billions and billions have gone to save the local car industry and the banks. From themselves.
I’m off work because of illness right now. Losing money. It wasn’t my fault.
Where’s my handout?
Once it starts, where does it stop?
The answer is it doesn’t. Until the whole system collapses and anarchy reigns.
Americans go on a permanent holiday to Brazil
After the removal of the last remnants of God’s money on Aug 15, 1971, it’s been a slow trip to Hell for most Americans, with a tiny minority of inter-generational super-rich elites now trapped in protected islands, living amidst a sea of dispossessed angry Americans.
The Plague of Self-Delusion
“Generations of complacency and ignorance are about to come to an end.”
I see catastrophe ahead. It’s just a matter of time before you do, too.
I vote deflation
I’ve finally gotten around to dragging out some discussion material on the hoary old deflation/inflation debate from the Ozrisk.net website here, where I explained my position. It will (mainly) be deflation, oscillating violently between the two. Here is the detailed discussion:
Most people just support their own little position (Rothbardians scream that govt everywhere is evil and must be killed. Some may have supported the repeal of Glass Steagall, as signalling a reduction in govt regulation. Idiots if they did). The real evil is central bank supported FRB. That’s what kills an economy through cancerous malinvestment. Socialism is preferable to fascism, if that’s the choice we have to make.
Similarly, there’s a debate between Keen/Mish debt-deflationists and Gary North/Jim Sinclair hyperinflationists. In a sense they are both right. There is and will continue to be both deflation and inflation – JUST IN DIFFERENT SECTORS OF THE ECONOMY. [I use the terms in the “modern” terminology (not in the old Austrian way – meaning an increase/decrease in the total money supply).]
Let me explain my position because I think this is interesting.
Near hyperinflation DID (already!) occur. For a decade. In HOUSE PRICES. Because housing prices were grossly underweighted in the CPI (housing is essentially a consumption good) this didn’t show up in conventional measures. But I agree with Keen/Mish – credit is money and debt issuance results in “money” (purchasing power) being created when some sucker goes into debt and buys whatever is on offer. What was on offer for the last decade was housing. It had the features of a classic bubble/Ponzi scheme with people looking at returns rather than yield. And because the asset was security for a loan, this could go on for many years longer than consumer credit/debt bubbles, which generally peter out because the issuance of debt “leaks” into consumption goods and doesn’t go back into an asset so doesn’t generate the recursive cycles that asset bubbles generate.
The “winners” in this game (like always) were the recipients of the debt money – property developers like Triguboff who rezoned land from industrial to residential and sold units en masse to the sucker public. They got debt and a 30 year mortgage. He got the debt money into his account. Magic! Where did the hyperinflationary money go? Into the pockets of the FIRST RECIPIENTS of the debt money – mainly residential property developers.
Now that the bubble has burst, the Japan deflation scenario is kicking in, because the main source of fresh debt money into the economy is fresh suckers going into debt to buy housing. The property market is double the value of the stockmarket.
But now that Ponzi scheme is over the Triguboffs are looking for a safe place to stash their cash. They don’t want their bank to blow or the exchange rate to collapse. So they take the money out of circulation (don’t keep developing units) and stash it overseas in gold or buy land and sit on it. Money velocity slows as the beneficiaries of the Ponzi scheme collect their winnings, take the chips off the table and stop paying their contractors and leave for Europe.
OK, that signals DEFLATION. Big DEFLATION. Keen/Mish are right – we’re turning Japanese.
But, hold on, what about North and the Austrians? Base money has exploded. It’s sitting at the banks. The problem is the banks can’t find a credit worthy borrower to “give” the new money to. If they could another bubble would quickly form. Bernanke is also keeping the powder dry by paying interest on the money held with the Fed. Why would a bank lend in this economy (at risk) when he has a risk-free client willing to pay interest income on the money just created? It’s like a mouse trap pulled back, waiting to snap. All that money just sitting there – like a dam waiting to burst into the next asset bubble.
When either (1) interest stops being paid or (2) the banks find a new bubble, then things will get interesting. What is the new bubble? It’s ALREADY HERE!
The new bubble is govt debt. Private clients have proven unexpectedly risky. Businesses and household default rates have spiked. Stuff them. Lend only to the Fed or the central govt (not even States or councils can get comparable rates to the biggies). “At least we’ll get paid back,” say the big gun-shy banks.
So ultimately this new govt debt money is going to govt employees (mainly) and on govt payouts. The size of govt is actually increasing in this recession. Incredible. For the first time a govt employee is paid more in the US that the average private worker.
So there is an “inflationary” bubble RIGHT NOW – in govt employment. These idiots sit around writing reports, writing regulations, filling in non-existent potholes. They exist simply to spend the money back into the economy. They are like zombie-consumers, doing nothing that is actually “needed” by the real economy but existing solely off coercive taxes/debt issuance from the govt. If the govt couldn’t counterfeit the money the whole apparatus of excessive govt employment would collapse and these guys would have to find real jobs.
But what happens when you have a bubble in govt employment? You have skills sucked out of the private economy. What skills are required most (that would be evident if the money supply was stable and govt couldn’t sell bonds to the Fed)? Sustainable technologies, agriculture, farming, etc. Govt sucks the factors of production away from where they are needed to where the money is – WITH PARASITIC GOVTS.
If this continues, who will actually do physical labour? Who will plant the food we rely on to survive? SUCKERS. Stupid people who don’t understand the game. But stupid people are the least qualified to produce sustainable agriculture!
So like the budding nuclear scientist being “sucked” into parasitic banking by the screwed by pricing structure from central bank supported FRB, now budding farmers/labourers are being sucked into the police-force, the local and State govts etc as useless pen pushers.
So it is inevitable that a destruction of our farming industries will occur, with “quantity” adjusting (ie a reduction in the quality and quantity of food) rather than price, because indebted dumb farmers can’t price adjust – they are trapped in debt (as Rowbotham has pointed out). That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences. It just means quantity/quality adjusts, not price.
So North is wrong to see “hyperinflation” coming up soon. Hyperinflation is here in the West – in the form of zombie govt employees. Deflation for the private economy will continue. Then eventually starvation for low-income countries as oil spikes, food prices spike and availability becomes scarce.
Global warming zealots
This is crazy stuff. But the zealots winning. And sanity and truth are losing. Is it any wonder my health is collapsing under the weight of watching this slow-moving disaster. Perhaps I’d prefer to go blind, rather than watch this unfolding catastrophe.
Legal tender laws as oppression
Why do governments lie about job creation?
Both about the true causes of unemployment and the cure?
Because they don’t want to hear the real answers to our problems. Because that would mean a lot of bureaucrats would have to get real jobs and make a living. This they fear more than telling untruths.
NY Fed “screwed up” AIG bailout
Totalitarianism starts
when stupid people try to control one aspect of the economy. And keep going. And going. And going.
Communist Tsar says increasing debt will lead to prosperity
Reasssuring words from the guy who didn’t predict the GFC, and has no idea what’s to come.
Great. I feel so much better.
All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men…
Keynesian-Leninist Censorship on Wikipedia
It is shocking that senior administrators within the bowels of Wikipedia have considered it necessary to censor Skip’s own talk page. Skip’s (personal?) talk page simply recorded his appeal to have his unjustified ban removed and also provided a record of the abuse he suffered at the hands of others. Why would anyone want to delete this history unless the nefarious purpose was to wipe out any record of his existence and his reasonable appeal for the ban to be removed? This does not show confidence in the reasons given for his ban, nor does it exemplify the best spirit of “openness” on WP.
I mourn his death on WP, as it symbolizes the creeping mindless robotic bureaucratization on WP, which is merely a reflection of the creeping mindless robotic bureaucratization in the ugly, polluted real world I have to live in.
Karma is King 