Category Archives: Europe

U.S. To The World: 'Don’t Worry Be Happy'

Addiction, Barack Obama, Bush, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation

“World worries how US will pay for stimulus,” blared a headline in The International Herald Tribune.

But, like the lyrics to that 1988 drone, the US’s message to the world is: “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”

Obama’s cool with spending more than even “W” the wastrel managed to spend. What does it say about galloping central planning in the US, when even statist France, where 2.5 million protesters took to the streets, is refusing to go beyond its Keynesian comfort zone:

“Prime Minister François Fillon on Monday rejected demands that the French government seek to stimulate consumer spending … to lift France out of its economic slump”:

‘It would be irresponsible to chose [sic] another policy, which would increase our country’s indebtedness …,’ Fillon said in a speech in Lyon.”

To cure the addict, the world must stop enabling the American government: dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency—a status that comes with a license to print money promiscuously. Successive American governments have abused this status and debased their country’s coin.

The American people refused to stop the madmen in change (they could have, by electing Ron Paul, the only sane representative running). Maybe the world must stop enabling the madmen and the addicted American electorate.

Muslim Fit Over ‘Fitna’

Europe, Free Speech, Islam, Jihad, The West

The excerpt is from my new WND column, “Muslim Fit Over ‘Fitna’“:

“Those who’ve been following the latest installment in the saga know that [Geert] Wilders released a film: ‘Fitna.’ ‘Fitna’ is unremarkable: it’s your basic primer to Islam.

The Koran commands the faithful to kill the kafir. Wilders excerpts these Koranic commandments, and shows Muslim believers articulating and acting on them.

Wilders could have easily been neutralized had Muslims across the West, and their puppy-dog proxies, allowed the screening of “Fitna,” and adopted a Western, live-and-let-live stance toward this tradition of benign protest. …”

Read the complete column, “Muslim Fit Over ‘Fitna.‘”

Muslim Fit Over 'Fitna'

Europe, Free Speech, Islam, Jihad, The West

The excerpt is from my new WND column, “Muslim Fit Over ‘Fitna’“:

“Those who’ve been following the latest installment in the saga know that [Geert] Wilders released a film: ‘Fitna.’ ‘Fitna’ is unremarkable: it’s your basic primer to Islam.

The Koran commands the faithful to kill the kafir. Wilders excerpts these Koranic commandments, and shows Muslim believers articulating and acting on them.

Wilders could have easily been neutralized had Muslims across the West, and their puppy-dog proxies, allowed the screening of “Fitna,” and adopted a Western, live-and-let-live stance toward this tradition of benign protest. …”

Read the complete column, “Muslim Fit Over ‘Fitna.‘”

Liquidity Lunacy

America, Debt, Economy, Europe, Inflation

Reports the Wall Street Journal:

“The world’s major central banks banded together Thursday to flood global money markets with massive amounts of U.S. dollars, in hopes of taming a major source of the tensions rocking the financial system.
[Global Power Boost chart]

In a concerted move, the U.S. Federal Reserve said it will expand or introduce measures to shuttle dollars to major European central banks, the Bank of Canada and the Bank of Japan, so that those banks can provide short-term dollar funding to commercial banks. Officials in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other markets also pledged to inject more money into their financial systems.

The central banks’ moves came in the wake of a meltdown in global financial markets as short-term funding markets seized up and investors piled into U.S. Treasury bills in an unprecedented rush to safety. Concerns about redemptions in the $3.6 trillion money-market industry — a key provider of liquidity to short-term funding markets — and rising strains in the banking system had sent short-term funding rates sharply higher Wednesday. …

The U.S. Fed boosted its U.S. dollar swap line with foreign central banks by $180 billion. (The swap line is an arrangement through which foreign central banks can get U.S. dollars from the Fed.)”

[Snip]

I’m no economist, but as a devotee of Austrian economics, I can’t see how more credit is helpful when the proper correction ought to involve a continued contraction of the hitherto orgiastic lending exuberance.