Category Archives: Business

'Putting Americans Back To Work'

In October, I blogged Pat Buchanan’s timely call for a moratorium on immigration. Peter Brimelow of VDARE.COM has timed his demand for such a logical move with the clueless Obama’s Job Summit. In an article for WorlNetDaily.com titled “Putting Americans Back To Work,” Peter exhorts:

“Incredibly, despite the recession, about 125,000 legal immigrants and “temporary” workers a month – as many as 1.5 million a year – are still entering the U.S.

And, with some 15 million Americans unemployed, there are still an estimated 8 million illegal aliens holding jobs here.

Indeed, the Obama Administration has repeatedly promised that it will try to amnesty these illegals next year. This would end any hope that they might eventually leave the American job market. In fact, because there’s usually a fair degree of back-and-forth across the border in the illegal-alien population, the administration’s repeated promises of amnesty are probably discouraging departures.

Democrats and Republicans have been bickering about whether the Obama administration’s stimulus package really created the claimed 650,000 jobs.

But during the same period, twice that number of legal immigrants and “temporary” workers entered the U.S. – easily swamping even the most optimistic estimate of jobs created. …

It’s literally a holy cause with them, and they react very nastily if you question it. You even sometimes find economists making easily refuted claims that immigration does not impact U.S. employment and incomes – in other words, that the laws of supply and demand have been repealed, uniquely, in the area of immigration.

In contrast, contrary to stereotype, critics of immigration policy are generally rational. What’s not rational about supply and demand?

But why don’t MSM journalists at least ask policymakers about the option of an immigration moratorium as a way of reducing unemployment?

There’s the usual liberal media bias, needless to say.

But my own theory (which will probably sound weird to anyone who hasn’t spent the years I have in establishment financial journalism!) is that it goes beyond bias. Journalists don’t ask about an immigration moratorium because nobody else has asked about it. The idea would just never occur to them on their own.

Call it intellectual inertia – if you want to be kind.”

[SNIP]

Peter is indeed too kind. I’ve tied this mindless ennui to the “Age of the Idiot.”

Boobs Inadvertently Affirm Austrian Business Cycle

Business, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation

The lower-rung boobs informing the higher-ups—the economy’s monetary central planners—require empirical studies to confirm what the Austrian School of Economics, headed by Ludwig von Mises, had deduced through reason (i.e., via praxeology) almost a century ago.

Bloomberg.com:

“[L]ow interest rates spur banks to take on too much risk, according to a study by the Bank for International Settlements. …

The study showed several ways in which low borrowing costs over an extended period can cause banks to take on more risk. It found that if market interest rates are kept below the benchmark rate for 10 straight quarters, the probability of an average bank defaulting increased by 3.3 percent. …

Central banks may have previously ignored the effect that low interest rates have on risk-taking because of a lack of empirical evidence that such a link existed, Gambacorta said.

The risk of banks defaulting jumped by more in economies where interest rates remained low for an extended period before the recent financial crisis, the report by the Basel, Switzerland-based organization said.”

The bankrolling by Barack of bad loans, on our backs, continues Give bankruptcy judges more power. It is suggested that gov. purchase more of the bad loans at a discount from the banks.”

Updated: Statist/Stupid Summit On Mount Olympus

Barack Obama, Business, Debt, Economy, Military, Regulation, Republicans

If you are a private-sector sucker plumping for a panoply of new government programs, consider the following: The more of them there are, the fewer of you there will be. Think zero-sum, or parasite vs. host. The first is sucking the lifeblood of the second. The larger the parasite gets, the weaker the host will grow.

[From “Life In The Oink Sector”]

Alas, STATISM AND STUPIDITY ARE INTERCHANGEABLE. Obama can “summit” (forgive this horrid “verbing” of a noun) about jobs all he likes, nothing will come of it. Because he is a dyed-in-the-wool statist, BO cannot conceive—not even with the aid of Lego or some sort of pop-up children’s model—that dolling out unemployment benefits, state aid, and government jobs programs, which all necessitate the seizure of private wealth through taxing, borrowing, and printing paper—cannot create wealth.

Here’s my simple, crude model for Obama the statist. Play with it with the First Girls. Recommend it to your friends:

Put 10 blocks in box A. Take 5 blocks out of box A and place them in box B. The owner of box A is 5 blocks poorer, the owner of box B is 5 blocks richer. Total number of blocks: still 10. Total wealth created: 0.

Come on BO, you can do it.

There is no big secret about “creating” jobs. Government can’t do it. Unless it sucks more capital and credit out of the private economy, it has only the capacity to consume wealth, not create it.

The best BO can do is take a hike; go on a 4-year vacation; walk the plank; just GET OUT OF THE WAY!

Update: Mitt Romney’s 10-point “to lift our economy” gives you an idea of the limits of Republican economic “thinking,” such that it is.

Repair and re-diretc the stimulus is one of Mitt’s recommendations. In other words, keep businesses that should go under or find a new equilibrium artificially inflated.

Individualists, proponents of the Constitution, who understand that individual liberty cannot coincide with the growth of government both at home and abroad cannot categorically accept the Republicans’ perverse notion of limited government.

Mitt also advises the president (who is beyond hope) to limit only non-military discretionary spending, and limit “new spending … to items that are critically needed and that we would have acquired in the future, such as new military equipment to support our troops abroad.”

To Republicans, the warfare state is viable; commensurate with liberty, and without the pitfalls that plague the welfare apparatus:

When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small.
Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.

[From “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program.”]

My Doomsayer Is Better Than Yours

Business, Debt, Economy, Inflation

Via the Business Insider: “Peter Schiff takes on [noted doomsayer] Nouriel Roubini on the subject of gold. Nouriel Roubini believes every asset, including gold, is over-inflated due to the dollar carry trade. Schiff disagrees, and says Roubini doesn’t understand the fundamentals behind gold — that it’s going to keep heading higher as a result of government action.”