Category Archives: Britain

John Maynard Keynes: Where’s The Genius?! (Part 2)

Britain, Capitalism, Celebrity, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, History, Inflation

The following is an excerpt from “John Maynard Keynes: Where’s The Genius?! (Part 2),” the conclusion of my conversation with Benn Steil. (Read part 1. ) Dr. Steil is senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book is “The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order.”

ILANA MERCER: After reading a negative review of your book in The Times Literary Supplement, I decided to go cold turkey on what had been a guilty pleasure for over a decade. I did not renew my TLS subscription. The TLS had stupidly assigned the review to one Eric Rauchway, a left-coast history teacher. Rauchway would not let an argument favorable to the gold standard—yours—stand. Your case against the Bretton Woods system of “managed currencies” he turned on its head. Rauchway credited Harry Dexter White, one of Bretton Woods’ architects, with helping to lift the “cross of gold” from the shoulders of the world’s working classes. Since White was also a Soviet spy, Rauchway quickly concluded that the Soviets saved capitalism (an “unknown ideal” for a very long time). Sound money is suspect, but a Soviet spy is capitalism’s savior. How do you unpack that!?

BENN STEIL: You can’t get blood from a stone, and you can’t get logic from Rauchway’s review, just gobs of nonsense and libel (as I documented on on my blog ). The review’s title, “How the Soviets saved capitalism,” is so inane that the only explanation for it is that Rauchway, or his TLS editors, fell in love with the sheer childish cheekiness of it. It certainly bears no relation to Rauchway’s account of Bretton Woods, nor that of anyone who can actually claim to know anything about it.
Rauchway would no doubt mock the economist who wrote the following of the 19th century classical gold standard: “[t]he various currencies, which were all maintained on a stable basis in relation to gold and to one another, facilitated the easy flow of capital and of trade to an extent the full value of which we only realize now, when we are deprived of its advantages.”

Unless, that is, Rauchway knew who it was – none other than J. M. Keynes.

MERCER: We can both agree that John Maynard Keynes’ opposition to WWI and his “bitterness over the terms of the peace” were admirable. Priceless too was John Maynard Keynes description of President Woodrow Wilson as “slowminded and bewildered”; a “blind and deaf Don Quixote.” (pages 70-71) On the other hand, also quite admirable was the following unflattering description of Keynes’ “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.” It comes courtesy not of Keynes, but of our author: “It is only slightly outlandish to liken the book to the Bible: powerful in its message, full of memorable, mellifluous passages; at times obscure, tedious, tendentious, and contradictory; a work of passion driven by intuition, with tenuous logic and observation offered as placeholders until disciples could be summoned to supply the proofs.” (page 88) Have Keynes’ disciples really delivered? It would appear that the Keynesian faithful have foisted on free-market capitalists an unfalsifiable theory. Evidence that contradicts it, Keynesian kooks enlist as evidence for the correctness of their theory.

STEIL: Yes, if the economy sinks, then Paul Krugman was right about the need for massive stimulus; if it recovers in the face of plunging deficits, from spending cuts and tax increases, then Krugman was right that deficits were not a problem. Heads he wins, tails you lose.

MERCER: Keynes assessed Karl Marx’s “economic value” as “nil… apart from occasional flashes of insight.” (page 87) I would venture that in the United States, Marxism has been far less destructive to free-market capitalism than Keynesianism. Marxists honestly wish for capitalism’s demise and say as much. We can fight such an enemy. Conversely, Keynesians have redefined capitalism and banished our definition therefrom. The Keynesians then proceeded to cripple capitalism so as to ostensibly save it. Positively Orwellian.

STEIL:

The conclusion of the Steil-Mercer conversation about Keynes is now on WND. Read “John Maynard Keynes: Where’s The Genius?! (Part 2).”

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Change Your Constitution, Says Another British Redcoat

Britain, English, Founding Fathers, GUNS, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Terrorism

He looks about 12-years old and is already retired. Where could he possible have worked? In the military, of course, where you are put out to pasture decades before individuals in the private sector (read the real economy) can retire. His name is Lt. Col. Michael Kay, formerly an adviser to the British Ministry of Defense. Lt. Col. Kay is here to tell Americans that, because the amorphous terrorist threat against us is “unconventional”—the National Security Agency has to take unconventional means to counter this undefined, unconventional threat.

Magnanimously, Kay concedes his host’s point about the NSA’s trampling of the Bill of Rights, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, in particular. But hey, what do the Brits know about a constitution—they’ve already trashed their ancient, unwritten, venerated freedoms which inspired the fathers of this nation. Kay, of course, makes his living stoking fear.

Piers Morgan is another Briton who, from his perch at CNN, suborns treason against Americans by preaching against their natural right to defend life and property.

The backdrop: The Washington Post’s revelation—a mere formality really—that the president’s protestations to the contrary, “The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.”

MORE.

What Ever Happened To Debtor’s Jail?

Affirmative Action, Britain, Debt, Government, Justice, Law

Judge Rosemary Aquilina is hoping to suspend reality in Detroit with her gavel.

Aquilina is “an Ingham County Circuit judge,” who “ordered Friday that Detroit’s federal bankruptcy filing be withdrawn,” reports the Detroit News. “Aquilina said the Michigan Constitution prohibits actions that will lessen the pension benefits of public employees, including those in the City of Detroit.” (Imagine: The state’s constitution works against Michigan taxpayers.)

The Library of Economics and Liberty remarks that “Early English bankruptcy laws were designed to assist creditors in collecting the debtor’s assets, not to protect the debtor or discharge (forgive) his debts.”

This was the wise, ancient common law. The latter is not the concern of Wikipedia, when it talks about the “debtor declaring bankruptcy to obtain relief from debt,” which “is accomplished either through a discharge of the debt or through a restructuring of the debt.”

That the US even allows Chapter 9—“municipal bankruptcy; a federal mechanism for the resolution of municipal debts”—says a lot.

Governments should not be availed of the legal instruments meant to protect private-property owners. How about debtor’s jail for politicians who defraud taxpayers?

Perhaps Aquilina worries that the fat cats (Detroit’s political class) will obtain relief at the expense of the little guy (public-sector workers) to whom the politicians and the unions promised the world?

The sooner the oink sector is disabused of its delusions, the better.

Last week’s column introduced readers to the Colosseum of courtroom cretins. In a word, a dumbed down courtroom commentariat that is incapable of separating politicized constructs (racism) from facts admissible in a court of law.

Judge Rosemary Aquilina is another of this idiocracy’s many exhibits.

Citizens Vs. Criminals (Lawful & Unlawful)

Britain, GUNS, Individual Rights, Islam, Jihad, Rights, The State

There is no doubt that were an American-born Jihadi stupid enough to perform an act of butchery in public, he would not have left the scene alive as Michael Adebolajo, the butcher from Woolwich, did. US police would have arrived on the scene quickly and that would be it.

As was observed in “Disarmed Brits Can Only Shoot Savage … With A Camera,” there is a lot to be said for “an armed citizenry and an unarmed police force.” Although permitted to bear arms, Americans are nevertheless severely limited in how vigorously they can defend their homes and lives without incurring the wrath of the law.

However, since the US police is not unarmed, as it is in the UK, our homegrown Jihadis are a little more circumspect about carving up a countryman in public, a la Adebolajo. They are still perfectly comfortable setting off remote-controlled explosions.

A day after “Disarmed Brits Can Only Shoot Savage … With A Camera” went up on WND, The Daily Caller asked, “Why did British bystanders watch a soldier get hacked to death?

The DC answered its rhetorical question with a list of regulations imposed in the UK which would prohibit any form of self-defense.

According to the United Kingdom government website, the online storehouse of British government regulations, it is illegal to:
sell a knife of any kind (including cutlery and kitchen knives) to anyone under 18
carry a knife in public without good reason – unless it’s a knife with a folding blade 3 inches long (7.62 cm) or less, eg a Swiss Army knife
carry, buy or sell any type of banned knife
use any knife in a threatening way (even a legal knife, such as a Swiss Army knife)
Folding knives, regardless of blade size, with a locking mechanism are illegal in the U.K. for carry in public and are referred to as “lock knives.” According to British law, “The maximum penalty for an adult carrying a knife is 4 years in prison and a fine of £5,000.”
Pepper spray is also illegal under section 5(1)(b) of the Firearms Act 1968, which prohibits “any weapon of whatever description designed or adapted for the discharge of any noxious liquid, gas or other thing.”
It is illegal to import pepper spray or a stun gun because British law expressly states that pepper spray and stun guns are classified as firearms. Blow guns are classified as “offensive weapons” and are prohibited to own, except for veterinarians or registered animal handlers.

The DC neglected to mention that the US also has “bewilderingly complex, startlingly severe” “State and local knife-control laws.”

There can be no doubt that an American is better off than a Brit in as much as he can defend himself in public if he abides by strict laws—rules which do not impede criminals (not that this fact would penetrate Piers Morgan’s skull).

An Englishman attempting the same is pretty much doomed. If the criminal does not get the better of the Brit, the long arm of the law surely will.