Capitalism, Classical Liberalism, Economy, Ilana Mercer, South-Africa
As we head into possible hyperinflation, the demand for gold and platinum remains consistent. Yet production is down in South Africa, one of the world’s biggest producers. Ever wonder why?
I guess you haven’t. Jay Taylor does daily, on Voice America Business’ “Turning Hard Times Into Good Times.
I will be talking to Mr. Taylor, who broadcasts and invests in the tradition of Austrian economics, on Tuesday, August 28, at 12:30 Pacific Time.
Britain, Business, Capitalism, Conspiracy, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Feminism, Journalism, Media
American cable commentariat is dominated by horrible bimbos, sporting big hair, overbites, and grating voices that sound as though they’ve been squeezed from the other end of the woman’s anatomy (to use a Greg-Gutfeld analogy I’ve refined). That’s the ubiquitous TV tart’s better angle. Even when these females are kind-of on the right side of the issues, they are boring, second-handers, who spout mind-numbing banalities with great confidence. (I don’t know how a husband or boyfriend puts up with That “Creaky Voice.”)
Unlike the practically unknown Dominic Frisby, the teletart’s assets are not between her ears.
Introduced to American audiences by RT’s Max Keiser, Frisby is “resident gold bug at Moneyweek,” and author of the essay, “Why Gold Is The Currency Of The Free.”
Why can’t cable hosts be more like Max Keiser? Notwithstanding his program’s many idiosyncrasies—lefty nooks and crannies and conspiracy theories—RT’s Keiser Report always introduces its viewers to highly intelligent, often original, individuals who have a great deal to impart and add.
Twenty five minutes (and 49 seconds) into the latest broadcast, Frisby dealt an analytical blow to Warren Buffet’s claim that “gold is worthless as it pays no interest.” Since RT provides no transcript, I quote here from Frisby’s online column, “Gold pays no interest, has no use and no fundamental value – really?”:
“…gold pays no interest. True. But then, nor does cash – unless you lend it to people. The world needs to realise that by putting cash in the bank you are lending it. Gold can pay interest – if you lend it out. And lots of people do (though for what purpose I cannot say). But in this environment of negative real rates (when the central bank rate of interest is below the rate of inflation), who gives a hoot about interest anyway? 1 or 2% interest. Whoopee-do.”
[SNIP]
Exactly. You lose money by keeping cash. Anyone with some savings knows that you might as well not have them, if you are after the yield on your savings.
…Next, there’s this idea that “gold has no use”. Really?
Gold has very little industrial application, yes. It’s too expensive. But no use? Gold, unlike bubbles and government bonds, lasts forever. This makes it a highly effective form of money, as I’m about to explain.
But how can gold be money, runs the next argument, when you can’t go into a shop and buy stuff with it? Absolutely. You can’t.
Err … actually, you can. The gold sovereign is still legal tender. But it only has a face value of one pound, when it’s worth over £250. You’d be a plum if demanded that some poor shopkeeper accept it as payment. (And he’d be a plum if he refused it). But I’m splitting hairs.
As a day-to-day medium of exchange, gold has never found much use. A piece of gold the size of a penny (about £125 or $200 in today’s money) contains too much value for anything other than expensive transactions. Copper, nickel, silver, paper and now digital money have all found far more prolific use.
But to assert that you can’t buy stuff with it therefore it isn’t money, is a facile and ignorant argument. Money is more than just a medium of exchange. Indeed, this is just one of the three essential functions of money: it also has to act as a store of wealth and as a unit of account.
It is gold’s very inert, intrinsic, eternal uselessness – and we have Mother Nature to thank for that – that makes it such an effective form of money. It has no other function other than to be a store of wealth. Even its use in jewellery is an extension of that function – to store (and display) wealth.
Governments can’t print gold, they can’t ‘quantitatively ease’ it, they can’t loan it into existence. They can’t debase it the way they do their own currencies. It just stays there, unconsumed, forever. Which all means that gold is constant – and therefore an excellent unit of account, far better than government money.
Max Keiser stepped in to correct the record about Buffoon Buffest’s stock, which has been down 90% versus gold over the past 10 year.
Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Foreign Policy, Media, Neoconservatism
Here’s an excerpt from the current column, “Just In From Mainstream: Barack Is As Thick As A Brick,” now on WND:
“… Nevertheless, Niall Ferguson has performed a small service, in so far as he has offered the first comprehensive, utterly damning case against Barack Hussein Obama, from establishment intelligentsia’s perspective.
Easily his greatest feat, however, is to have admitted that Barack Obama doesn’t comprehend the issues about which he is expected to decide; to intimate that the president is a product of—how shall we put it?—political grooming.
“You can’t just march in and make that argument and then have him [Obama] make a decision,” [Lawrence] Summers told [Peter] Orszag, “because he doesn’t know what he’s deciding.”
About the president’s comprehension skills, the one Harvard professor seconds the assessment of the other, quoted above. Writes Ferguson: “I have heard similar things said off the record by key participants in the president’s interminable ‘seminar’ on Afghanistan policy.”
Now, that is remarkable.
When “You Can’t Fix Stupid” was published (April 15, 2011), legions of WND readers wrote in to patiently and laboriously explain to me that Barack Obama was not “stupid,” only evil. An evil genius, if you like.
If indirectly, Ferguson disproves that misconception.
Yet I have to wonder who here is the real schmo—the man who was led to believe throughout his “career” trajectory that he was up to the task, or the sycophants and enablers, equally represented among The American People, and among those who’ve pirated the ghost-ship of state. All have helped enforce Barack Obama’s delusions of grandeur. …”
The complete column, “Just In From Mainstream: Barack Is As Thick As A Brick,” is now on WND.
Also available from WND or from Amazon is the prophetic “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid.”
If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive libertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.
JOIN THE DISCUSSION, AND DO BATTLE FOR LIBERTY:
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Barack Obama, Economy, Elections, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Media, Neoconservatism
“A member of this global, glamorous elite; people who are at home in London and New York” is how Byron York wryly (and aptly) described economist Niall Ferguson (6 minutes into this clip). Ferguson has penned a Newsweek article, “Hit The Road, Barack: Why We Need a New President,“ which has infuriated the Obama-Head media. The Washington Examiner’s York set the scene for Ferguson’s defiance: “It is very fashionable among [this global elite] to support President Obama.”
From the perspective of the libertarian, Professor Ferguson’s piece is unremarkable (although, as I have said before in covering him, Ferguson’s knowledge is formidable).
On foreign policy, Ferguson accuses Obama of not being enough of a statist, which this neoconservative equates with statesmanship.
However, for a member of establishment intelligentsia to openly admit that Barack Obama doesn’t understand the issues about which he is supposed to decide; to intimate that he is the affirmative action appointee: Now, that is remarkable.
“You can’t just march in and make that argument and then have him make a decision,” Summers told Orszag, “because he doesn’t know what he’s deciding.” (I have heard similar things said off the record by key participants in the president’s interminable “seminar” on Afghanistan policy.)
Except, I have to wonder who’s the real Schmo? The man who was led to believe that he was up to the task throughout his “career” trajectory, or the enablers and sycophants who enforced Barack Obama’s self-delusions.
I recall that when, in April 15, 2011, I wrote ‘You Can’t Fix Stupid,’ readers patiently explained to me that BHO was not stupid, only evil. (Even IQ ace Steve Sailer might have been gulled.) No. I’ve always maintained that Obama was cunning, but not clever.
But there is much more to the article. Read it.
(*Schmo: From Yiddish, dull, stupid, fool.)
UPDATE: Non-writers, or armchair scribblers, will be cavalier about the comprehensiveness of the Ferguson piece. I am not, for obvious reasons. I disagree with Ferguson on many issues—for example, he cites “official” unemployment figures, rather than real joblessness, which not even the U6 statistic covers.
In addition, his notion of GDP is in all likelihood off too; official GDP numbers are a gambit.
And, as far as the Killer Drone’s actions abroad go, Ferguson objects not so much to the stealth killing of innocents, but to the loss of “crucial intelligence” assets caused by BHO’s “assassination program.”
As for Ferguson’s China fear mongering; that was addressed in an earlier critique: “Chinese mercantilism is not free trade, but is it not better than American militarism?” You bet it is.
On and on.
I understand that all Ferguson’s condemners believe they could have bested the Prof. Still, Ferguson has done a serious service in so far as he has offered the first damning case against BHO from the perspective of mainstream.
…the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak. Meanwhile, since 2008, a staggering 3.6 million Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability insurance program. This is one of many ways unemployment is being concealed.
…In his fiscal year 2010 budget—the first he presented—the president envisaged growth of 3.2 percent in 2010, 4.0 percent in 2011, 4.6 percent in 2012. The actual numbers were 2.4 percent in 2010 and 1.8 percent in 2011; few forecasters now expect it to be much above 2.3 percent this year. Nearly 110 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011, mostly Medicaid or food stamps.
…Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.
…By the end of this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), [government debt] will reach 70 percent of GDP. These figures significantly understate the debt problem, however. The ratio that matters is debt to revenue. That number has leapt upward from 165 percent in 2008 to 262 percent this year, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund. Among developed economies, only Ireland and Spain have seen a bigger deterioration. Under this president’s policies, the debt is on course to approach 200 percent of GDP in 2037—a mountain of debt that is bound to reduce growth even further.
…Yet the public mistakes his administration’s astonishingly uninhibited use of political assassination for a coherent strategy. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, the civilian proportion of drone casualties was 16 percent last year. Ask yourself how the liberal media would have behaved if George W. Bush had used drones this way. Yet somehow it is only ever Republican secretaries of state who are accused of committing “war crimes.”