Category Archives: Economy

UPDATE III: Floating on $7,770,000,000,000 Worth of Paper

Debt, Economy, Fascism, Federal Reserve Bank

$7.77 Trillion: That’s the amount of money the central bank, chaired by Ben S. Bernanke, “parceled out” during “the bailout to America’s “Big Six,” ostensibly, to rescue the financial system. This according to “Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act” by “Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.”

Inflating America’s fascistic banking system has cost “more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.” It “lasted from August 2007 through April 2010.” Officially.

Starting in August 2007, when confidence in banks began to wane, [the Fed] created a variety of ways to bolster the financial system with cash or easily traded securities. By the end of 2008, the central bank had established or expanded 11 lending facilities catering to banks, securities firms and corporations that couldn’t get short-term loans from their usual sources.

America’s economy is floating on fiat. (Did I get the number of zeroes right?)

UPDATE I (Nov. 29): Myron, about those who confine their analysis to the Obama years: Some posters on this site, no less (who have yet to read, much less review, The Cannibal), have contributed to the smart alec Mark Steyn’s best-seller status, even trying to promote Steyn’s Obama-centric, limited analysis on BAB.

Unlike our Steyn-supporting readers, one of the man’s reviewers is on to him. Writes
Marsha Dahleeng:

“At first I appreciated Mr. Steyn’s humor. I enjoyed the clever jabs and the way he mocked the left/progressives. After awhile I grew weary of that – I began to skimread past the seemingly endless smart-alecky points and search for text where the author got down to the meat of the subject. Sadly, there was precious little meat, and what little there was, was disappointingly thin.”

“Disappointingly thin,” but predictably so.

UPDATE II: Exactly right, Robert Glisson: this state of affairs has a starting point: government.

UPDATE III: (Nov. 30): George, you credit Steyn with coming out of the Republican closet with some half-decent insights, after some of us libertarains have been doing this, to the detriment of our careers, for a decade at least before warmonger Steyn awoke. To compare a man who goes with the flow to the great Hebrew prophet Jeremiah does injustice to a truly great prophet. Jeremiah spoke truth to power and to the rabble at his own peril. Jeremiah was forced to sleep in the fields, away from home, for fear of the wrath of the people and the powers that be.

Freak Street

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, Government, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Taxation

The freaks of the Occupy Wall Street (bowel) movement make it plain that they want what Charles Payne of the Fox Business Network has worked so hard to attain. Their case? That Payne, who began his business in a Harlem basement apartment, with monies borrowed from family and friends, owes his success to the rabble and its willing sponsor, government.

Yes, statists and their prized sponsors—moochers and looters—like to claim that if not for the state, to whose coffers they hardly contribute—man would be unable to produce.

That’s like saying that the tick created the dog! Production predates government predation. Government doesn’t produce wealth—it only consumes it. What, pray tell, would government have fed off if people were not hard at work well before the advent of the bureaucracy? As usual, the statists have it topsy-turvy. First came the individual—he is the basic unit of society, without which there can be no society. And without man’s labor there is no wealth for government to siphon.

Meet two more good Americans: Derek and John Tabacco, proprietors of a small business on Wall Street. The two businessmen staged a counter-protest against the Occupiers, holding up neon green signs that read “Occupy a Desk!“ and ”Get a Job.”

“We got a bunch of small business owners together…and we thought that ‘hey, any good occupation couldn’t be ended without some resistance,’” John told Fox News, adding that there was a coalition of about 50 small business owners who are part of his movement.
“They were coming after us , they were screaming at us, trying to get in our face, putting their hands on us,” he said. He also identified with the “53%” — the group that pays taxes that the other 47% doesn’t — and said the “silent majority” was giving them the thumbs up during their counter-protest.

[The Blaze]

Predictably, the slimy Salon.com tries to discredit the Tabacco brothers’ case for industry and work by discrediting them.

Super Politburo: Teflon Politics at its Best

Debt, Democrats, Economy, Politics, Republicans

The more pertinent point to make about the Super Committee, and its failure today to come up with “$1.2 trillion in deficit-reduction measures,” is not that it is unelected. Unelected and unaccountable is the hallmark of the shakers and movers of our Managerial State.

A soviet-style, souped-up politburo is making decisions that are generally entrusted to the people’s representatives. That’s the mundane and obvious complaint that has been lodged against the Super Committee.

But who in his right mind still believes that elected representatives in this democracy of ours carry out the will of the majority and protect the minority? (A point belabored in “Into the cannibal’s Pot” is that democracy gives “the People’s representatives carte blanche to do exactly as they please.”)

The people’s business in the welfare-warfare managerial state is relegated to unaccountable, usually faceless bureaucrats, ensconced in enormous bureaucracies. Nothing unusual about that. We’re lucky to know the identity of the “twelve members of Congress, six from the House of Representatives and six from the Senate,” who’re officiating.

Of course this committee was destined to fail. There is no climbing out from under a government debt of $15 trillion when the pols and the people don’t want to downsize their taxpayer-sustained life styles. (Let’s see some leadership from our men and women in uniform; join the civilian workforce.)

The point about the Super Committee is that it has only ever been about Teflon politics: make sure nothing clings to the culprits, members of both Houses and the president. Its achievement—also its aim—is that it puts distance between the debt, on the one hand, and the Congress and the president on the other.

Edifying or Stupefying?

Business, Economy, Free Speech, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Propaganda

Omitted from the suspects lined-up in my WND column, “Fox News And Its Truth Deniers,” was U.S. Representative for New York’s 15th congressional district, Charlie Rangel. A more repulsive character to make himself at home on the “dueling perspectives political panel” would be hard to come by. A moral vacuum would open up, says Rangel, if the streets are swept clean of the Occupy Wall Street human and other detritus. Rangel apparently thinks that blocking access to the subway and disrupting business, which is what’s afoot, amounts to speech. Is this the opposite of edifying or what?