The world’s central bankers, entrusted as they are with keeping themselves in style and their politician friends in power, would very much like to be able to access YOUR wallet. Feel like saving Greece? Bailing out Portugal? The EU’s Uncle Jean-Claude Trichet has a plan: Let’s centralize political spending—incur debt in unison and inflate our way out of the pit. Let the serfs suffer.

FORBES.COM:

“The President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, told Forbes that global governance is extremely necessary if we want to prevent another financial crisis. In his prepared printed and spoken remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations, Trichet emphasized that politicians, economists, and financiers must work across the Atlantic and collaborate on methods to create an international set of standards. It is his belief that through global governance, the resiliency of the global financial system can be assured, noting that ultimately it was governments’ use of taxpayer’s money, equivalent to around 25% of GDP on both sides of the Atlantic, that prevented another catastrophic great depression from occurring.” …

When Messrs Hannity et al., next carry forth about the wonders of American freedoms, having been hindered only under BHO, point them to this caption and diagram courtesy of RealClearMarkets:

“A study of the progressiveness of household taxes (income plus social security taxes) by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development charts the percent of taxes paid by the top 10 percent of households in OECD countries and compares that number to the percent of income earned in each country by the same top 10 percent. The U.S. finishes at the top of the list, with the highest tax-to-income ratio of any country. Above are the top countries, as well as the average for all 24 OECD countries studied.”

The tabulated chart is below here.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman expresses the monetary policy of the US government, both Obama and his predecessor. If anyone doubts how progressive the US is, listen to Krugman (via Peter Schiff) berate “the monetary priggishness of the German heavyweights in the European Union, who are ‘foolishly’ seeking to prevent inflation [in the Greek debt crisis] and impose fiscal discipline.”

Krugman argues “that the best solution for Athens would be to simply inflate away its debt burden with printing press money. His theoretical justification is put forward in a familiar Keynesian recipe: deficit spending leads to inflation and growth, which leads to greater employment and rising GDP, which makes debt payments much easier to bear in relative terms. He laments that Greece does not control its own currency and is therefore unable to pursue such a policy on its own accord. He implores U.S. policy makers, who do control their own monetary policy, to take heed of the danger and avoid such a course.

In simple terms, Krugman believes that inflation is the best cure for burdensome debt problems.” …

Peter Schiff, always worth reading.

Update I (April 12): Keynes’s theory is not economics, but politics. He came to dominate political platforms by opposing free trade, balanced budgets and the gold standards, and by proposing economic management and interventionism through busting the budget. His devotees are indeed pimps to the political class, with no fealty to or familiarity with the laws of economics.

Update II (April 13): WHEN KEYNESIANS PREACH TO COMMONERS. “Fed’s Bernanke stresses need for financial literacy”:

“Many American families are struggling in the aftermath of the financial crisis, which reinforces the need for reliable and useful information to facilitate good financial choices,” he said in remarks prepared for delivery to the National Bankers Association Foundation.

If applied by the Little Man, literacy such as the Chairman’s would imply endless spending financed by the counterfeiting of funny money.

The minaret is the quintessential symbol of Islam’s power. Not only is this structural spire an imposing eyesore, towering over 200 meters above, but it emits—by virtue of the muezzin’s ululations—noise pollution five times a day.

The Swiss have not rejected freedom of religion—Muslims can worship as they wish. What the Swiss have decided is to reject the architectural, auditory and cultural imposition that the minaret signifies and retain the western flare of their cities. Naturally, CNN has framed the plebiscite as the work of the far right:

Swiss voters on Sunday adopted a referendum banning the construction of minarets, seen by some on the far right as a sign of encroaching Islamism.

“The Federal Council respects this decision,” said a statement from Switzerland’s government. “Consequently the construction of new minarets in Switzerland is no longer permitted. The four existing minarets will remain.

MORE.

Update I (Nov. 30): On the meaning of the minaret, Islam scholar Andy Bostom quotes “the official Brill Encyclopedia of Islam”:

“It seems on the whole unrelated to its function of the adh?n [q.v.] calling the faithful to prayer, which can be made quite adequately from the roof of the mosque or even from the house-top. During the lifetime of the Prophet, his Abyssinian slave Bil?l [q.v.], was responsible for making the call to prayer in this way. The practice continued for another generation, a fact which demonstrates that the minaret is not an essential part of Islamic ritual. To this day, certain Islamic communities, especially the most orthodox ones like the Wahh?b?s in Arabia, avoid building minarets on the grounds that they are ostentatious and unnecessary. … It must be remembered, however, that throughout the mediaeval period, the role of the minaret oscillated between two polarities: as a sign of power and as an instrument for the adh?n.”

AND:

“The venerable Brill Encyclopedia of Islam (EOI) entry on minarets makes plain that minarets are a political statement of Islamic supremacism. Interestingly, given current Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s provocative statement while mayor of Istanbul (the full statement was quoted in a NY Times story http://www.kurdistan.org/Washington/nyt.html by Stephen Kinzer from 2/16/1998: ‘The mosques are our barracks, the domes are our helmets, the minarets are our swords, and the faithful are our army’), cited by opponents of minaret construction in Switzerland—the observations from the Brill EOI about the Ottoman perspective on minarets are of particular note.”

MORE.

Update II: Diana West has rounded up responses from across Europe to the Swiss’s anti-Islamization declaration.