Category Archives: Capitalism

A Bum’s Rush To Pope Francis

Capitalism, Christianity, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Private Property, The State, Uncategorized

In his 1998 encyclical, “Faith and Reason,” Pope John Paul spoke with unhectoring clarity about the errors of relativism in modern thought. While Karol Wojtyla’s role in the fall of communism is likely exaggerated, he was no communist. Pope Benedict XVI was—still is— a great intellect, who took a risk in attempting to explain why “Islam may be a closed and irrational system, impermeable to reform.”

Pope Francis, the new Holy See, is no match to his predecessors. In fact, Jorge Bergoglio is shaping up to be more of a bumpkin than expected.

Courtesy of conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh comes Pope Francis’ “latest papal offering”:

Pope Francis attacked unfettered capitalism as ‘a new tyranny’ and beseeched global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality, in a document on Tuesday setting out a platform for his papacy and calling for a renewal of the Catholic Church. … In it, Francis went further than previous comments criticizing the global economic system, attacking the ‘idolatry of money.'” … “Pope Francis said that trickle-down policy…” We hear about trickle-down policies? “Pope Francis said that trickle-down policies have not proven to work.”

Preached Pope Francis: “I encourage financial experts and political leaders to ponder the words of one of the sages of antiquity: `Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs,’ said Francis, quoting the fifth-century St. John Chrysostom.”

In other words, the livelihood for which a successful man labors belongs not to him, but to the poor and their benevolent proxy: the government. Some doctrine that is.

Rightly, Rush rails against the Pope. Read on.

Seattle Fool Foments Violence Against Business

Business, Capitalism, Glenn Beck, Government, Political Philosophy, Socialism

“They did it. Seattle voters elected a socialist candidate to the city council,” reported The Blaze, on Nov. 15.

Seattle City Councilor Kshama Sawant has since delivered a screed tying economic freedom to all social ills. Real original, isn’t she? A true intellectual too. She’s a professional academic, what else?

We need to recognize what is at the root of racism, this hatred and fear of black people, of people of color, of poor people,” Sawant said. “The root cause of these blatantly unjust laws is the capitalist system itself … this system does not work for us. Racism is necessary for this oppressive system to exist.

Nov. 21, the socialist councilwoman “accused aerospace and defense giant Boeing on Monday of ‘economic terrorism’ and told Boeing machinists they should consider taking ‘over the factories.'”

“The workers should … shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Kshama Sawant told a group of activists in the city’s Westlake Park.
Sawant’s comments were made at a rally organized by machinists after they rejected a deal that would reduce pensions for union members in return for guaranteed jobs in Everett, Wash., building 777X Boeing airliners for eight years.
Now Boeing is considering taking those jobs elsewhere.

Go ahead, Boeing. Take the leap and move major operations from “The Evergreen State” to a right-to-work state. South Carolina residents will be only too happy to work rather than wreck stuff.

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).”

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:

• At the WND Comments Section. Scroll down and “Say it.”

• On my Facebook page.

• By clicking to “Like,” “Tweet” and “Share” this week’s “Return To Reason” column.

‘Rock Star Preaches Capitalism,’ Or, Rather, Emerges From Retardation

Capitalism, Celebrity, Foreign Aid, Hollywood, Intelligence

Bono, a chap who fronts a three-chord band of unimpressive droners, has emerged from retardation to preach capitalism.

Said BONO (via EPJ): “Commerce—entrepreneurial capitalism—takes more people out of poverty than aid, of course.”

Free-market capitalism, baby.

This was not always the case. Read “BONO AND HIS BAND OF BANDITS” and “FOREIGN AIDS,” which tells how Bono joined professional confiscators and colossi of ignorance like the Clintons to “claim that human misfortune is a result of external contingencies that can be fixed by social planners like themselves. They hammered home the wicked lie that the wealthy—individuals and nations—thrive at the expense of the poor and essentially deserve to be relieved of their possessions.”

In the not-so-distant past Bono used to point “an accusing—and untalented—finger at the West [for AIDS in Africa]. At the same time, the self-righteous activist used to reserve only praise for Africans for being a ‘rare and spirited people,’ concealing that if the spirit didn’t move them in some pretty wild ways, rates of infection in Southern Africa would not have reached 20 to 33.7 percent of the adult population.”

Now that Bono has emerged from a coma, he should brief that bimbo Charlize Theron, who just the other day complained about her adopted country’s abysmal contribution to foreign aid coffers. In fact, America’s generosity in response to “disasters all over the world makes USAID and other ‘compassionate’ state pickpockets as unnecessary as they are unethical.”

MORE.

U2’s Bono Speaks at GU Global Social Enterprise Event from Values & Capitalism on Vimeo.