Category Archives: Economy

Indian Savings Grace

Capitalism, Debt, Economy, Inflation, Morality

I watched Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s interview, some months back, on the Charlie Rose Show. Mr. Rose scolded Chidambaram for his countrymen’s high savings rate, mouthing the Keynesian mantra about the need for non-stop spending so as to keep demand from falling. I recall thinking how morally bankrupt was Mr. Rose’s advocacy of micro-bankruptcy, in the face of the Indian minister’s savings grace.

I have been unable to locate the transcripts for the segment (help?), but in The Hindu (a newspaper), Mr. Chidambaram is quoted as proudly talking up the thing Keynesians shun: savings.

“See, our savings rate in the worst year was 30 percent. In the best year, was 36 percent of GDP. Pick any number between 30 and 36 for incremental capital output ratio, what economists call ICOR, is about 4. Our potential growth rate is about 8 percent.”

The above excerpt is from the Charlies-Rose interview mentioned. The minister did look flabbergast at Rose’s suggestion that savings were a bad thing, explaining ever-so politely that this was a tradition in India.

Rose had smiled patronizingly, as liberals like him do about ethnic exotica.

Our Parallel Economic Universe

Crime, Economy, Objectivism, Political Economy, Politics, Propaganda, Reason

Financier Peter Schiff’s findings of fact in Florida V. George Zimmerman are much like mine in “The Colosseum of Courtroom Cretins,” where it was noted that “Idiocracy elite lacks the ability to separate the political constructs to which it is wedded (racism) from the facts of a case brought in a court of law.”

Or, as Mr. Schiff puts it in “Print the Legend”: “preconceived emotional commitments to a narrative [consistently trumped] demonstrable facts.”

Schiff goes on to compare the parallel reality constructed in the response to the Zimmerman acquittal and the fiction of our economic indices:

“The vast majority of observers continue to subscribe to the dominant narrative that our economy is improving, the Fed’s Quantitative Easing programs are responsible, and that the debt we are currently accumulating is not a long-term problem.”

“The current administration, the media, Wall Street, and the Fed itself, are particularly committed to this narrative. After all, we have been pursuing these policies for more than five years, and many of these parties have a particular emotional and pecuniary investment in a positive outcome. It would be difficult for them now to admit that their preferred cures have not only been ineffective, but harmful. As a result, they will continue to advocate for the current policies until they get the answers they expect.”

“Not only do their underlying assumptions defy economic law and objective rationality, but they are also at odds with the evidence that continues to arrive. The data makes it clear that while asset prices (stocks, bonds, and real estate), are currently being inflated by an activist monetary policy, the real economy continues to stagnate. What supports do exist are based solely on government intervention. Yet they nevertheless discuss a potential Fed exit strategy as if the economy were in a position to make such a transition without bringing on an even more severe recession than the last. In this light, the failure of QEI to produce a real recovery led directly to QEII, and so on to QE Infinity. We are unwilling to challenge our initial assumptions about what is really wrong with our economy and how to fix it.”

“To get a sense of justice and emotional clarity over the death of Trayvon Martin, many cling to the image of a saintly youth and ignore the more difficult reality of a troubled teen picking a fight with an inept neighborhood watchman. Accepting this reality does not lead to a conclusion that Trayvon deserved to die, but it denies the self-justifying conclusions that keep race relations dysfunctional. It also allows us to ignore more troubling and far more common tragedies like the one that befell 18 year old Jett Higham, another African American youth who lost his life in a nighttime run to a local convenience store. The media decided that this tragedy was a non-story, as his killers were also African Americans teens.” [Emphasis added.]

Pray For MORE Chaos; Let ObamaCare Implode

Barack Obama, Business, Constitution, Economy, Government, Healthcare, Private Property, Socialism

When the law itself is naturally illicit—in violation of our individual, natural rights—we should not care one bit that its perverse provisions are being violated, flouted or delayed by the law’s enforces.

Such a strategic delay in the implementation of a key part of ObamaCare was authorized by the almighty Obama Executive. Economic Policy Journal picks up on a point made, in this context, by FDR slayer Amith Shlaes. “It is a trick similar to the type FDR pulled with regard to Social Security.”

Or, as Shlaes tweets it, “Timing of Obamacare requirement: New Deal passed Social Security in 1935, but [Social Security] tax was collected only in 1937, also after key election.”

When the “Republicans challenge [Obama’s] authority to delay, ‘ignore’ ObamaCare provision,” they look like the rudderless idiots they are. Do Republicans want to repeal the law or not? Then let it implode. Let it collapse like a black hole under its own onerous weight.

Barack Hussein Obama’s interloper government is no longer pretending it’s doing the people’s business. The second term is about displays of raw power and wanton lawlessness.

Duly, and in the quest to recruit even more Democratic voters, this government has also waved “a provision in the Affordable Care Act meant to protect against fraud.” Not that these “safeguards” ever work, given the nature of state-run systems, where there is no incentive to protect scarce resources because these resources are not privately owned. (Well, they are privately owned, but, to be precise, these resources have been stolen from their rightful private-property owners.)

Via Beck’s The Blaze:

“Days after delaying health insurance requirements for employers, the Obama administration has decided to roll back requirements for new state online insurance marketplaces to verify the income and health coverage status of people who apply for subsidized coverage,” the report reads.
President Barack Obama’s health care requires that applicants applying for tax subsidies for health insurance prove that their income was somewhere between 100 percent to 400 percent of the federal poverty line. The bill also requires that applicants prove that they weren’t receiving employer-provided insurance.
But HHS decided last week to suspend these anti-fraud measures.

This chaos is a logical consequence of perverse central planning. Pray for more creative destruction. Let ObamaCare implode.

MORE Background In Mercer Archive:

The Survivalist’s Guide to ‘Obammunism’ And Beyond
3/8/2013

The Ass With Ears And His Ali Baba Thieves
8/10/2012

A Romp Down Memory Lane With Justice Roberts
7/6/2012

Heeere’s Health-Scare
3/19/2010

They All Lie For Someone
9/18/2009

Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured
8/7/2009

Code Blue! How Canada Care Nearly Killed My Kid
7/31/2009

Obama’s Politburo Of Proctologists

The Authentic Ass-troturfers
8/14/2009

Click on “Socialized Medicine.”

The Voluntary Free Market: An Extension Of Life Itself

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, libertarianism, Propaganda, Regulation, The State

“The voluntary free market is a sacred extension of life itself. The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time—is really a spontaneously synchronized order comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts that individuals perform in order to make a living. Introduce government force and coercion into this rhythm and you get life-threatening arrhythmia. Under increasing state control, this marketplace —this magic, organic agora—starts to splutter, and people suffer.”—ILANA (April 23, 2010)

The market place brings plenty; the state does the opposite. Yet not a day goes by when the masses, ignorant of the forces that feed, clothe, cure, employ, entertain them and innovate for them, do not demand that those who’ve done nothing of the kind—the McCains, Obamas, Bushes, Clintons, Keith Alexanders, Lois Lerners, Eric Holders of the world—proceed with force against those who do nothing but.

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