Category Archives: Government

Updated: The 'Stock Scare': Connecting the Dots

Free Markets, Government, Media

Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Institute connects the dots:

“Ah, nothing focuses the mind that a good ol’ fashioned stock market sell-off. Nothing is more likely to cause people to decide that Bush is a really bad president, or inspire pessimism about the future. One might think that a war in Iraq and US equity valuations have politically nothing to do with each other, but when portfolios show declining cash value, blame flies in unexpected ways. Depending on how long this lasts, we might find that brutal criticism of all this president’s policies will become even more ubiquitous.
Meanwhile, looking through my email archive from yesterday, I see this alert from Frank Shostak: ‘The central bank of China’s tighter stance runs the risk of creating a financial accident, which could have serious effects on US real economic activity.’
So let us make another prediction: Republicans will blame China for its reckless monetary policy. And while the data seem to suggest that there is merit to the idea, Frank himself says that we must distinguish between the bullet (bubble in the US) and a trigger (China’s inflation).”
[End Quote]

I listened to Kudlow and Friends, but they seemed more interested in justifying their abiding political faith in Bush, deficit spending, and the miracle of tax cuts. Sure, on the face of it, returning stolen goods to their owners is a good thing for the robbed and the economy in general. The problem lies in what is unseen: the hidden theft/tax of inflation, which finances deficit spending. Congress, as you know, is spending so much more than the treasury collects in revenues. Could this malpractice possibly have (gasp) wider repercussions?!

Some “Texas Straight Talk” will help complete the picture.

Update: Wouldn’t you know it, “his Holiness Alan Greenspan, who can’t stand not being in the spotlight” (as a friend put it), shot his gob off about a recession on Sunday, and voila: the market reacted. Greenspan’s Delphic pronouncement contributed to a stock-market decline. The man should be muzzled!

On Petitioning ANC Kleptocrats About Crime in South Africa

Government, South-Africa

I keep getting petitions—plaintive pleas I am asked to sign, destined for the government of South Africa, to make it stop crime.
The premise here is worse than naïve: just let those good old thugs at the African National Congress know you’ve had enough of the pillage and murder around you, and they’ll break down in tears, and do something. After all, they do have good intentions and are such able individuals—each and every one. All this bunch of underutilized talent needs to do, apparently, is to allocate more money to the “South African Police Service’s —mostly an illiterate, ill-trained force, riven by feuds, fetishes, and factional loyalties,” and often complicit in crime.

C’mon, South Africans, if you want to survive, you have to rediscover your proverbial male appendages: demand the thugs stop stripping you of your guns–take to the streets with those; not with petitions and scented candles–and demand your old police force back, not the new warlord force, and above all, understand and prepare for what’s in store for you.

I’ll help from here, but I won’t petition a bunch of oleaginous kleptocrats, who encourage the idea of black entitlement, and who’ve set the minority population up for a shakedown–and worse–the likes of which has not been witnessed since Zimbabwe, RIP.

Recommended Reading:

http://www.ilanamercer.com/Africa.htm.

Deadly Decider

Bush, Government

Here’s what another, far-less dangerous, Decider had to say about war powers:

“No offensive expedition of importance can be taken until after they [Congress] have deliberated on the subject and authorized such a measure.” —George Washington

It goes without saying that having the cockroaches in Congress debate something, guarantees nothing.

The deadly Decider is still on the loose and dangerous.

Gene’s Healey’s paper, “The Arrogance of Power Reborn,” is well-worth reading, but will probably need to be updated with Genghis Bush’s exploits.

To paraphrase the French political scientist Pierre Rosanvallon, the Bushies speak like Tocqueville but think and act like Robespierre.

Bush Babbles About Government Job Creation

Bush, Economy, Government

From last Night:

The Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs.

Question: The Iraqi government has its own money? $10 billion of it?

In any event, government job creation schemes are predicated on government taxing, borrowing or inflating the money supply. Such programs are politically popular because they are visible. However, for every job “created” by government, an unidentifiable job will, tit-for-tat, be destroyed in the private sector.

Fox News, keen to hype this good-news story, may broadcast images of earnest Iraqi men and women put to work by Nuri Kamal al-Maliki (read the American taxpayer). Invisible will be those thrown out of work because private economic activity has been crowded out by taxing or borrowing to finance these job programs. Government borrowing (and Iraq is all about borrowing: American borrowing) serves to reduce capital available to the private sector (Iraqi, American—your choice, whoever you believe is really funding this latest scheme). A further diminution of assets occurs when government expands the money supply and causes inflation in order to finance job creation schemes.

Creating good, long-lasting employment lies in producing goods or services for which there is a legitimate consumer demand. A rise in consumer demand for a product, reflected in relative higher prices, galvanizes business to hire more workers and produce more of the commodity. Hence jobs in the private sector are real jobs because they are sustained by consumer preferences. Unsustainable government make-work schemes merely usurp the wishes and needs of consumers, and substitute them with the fancies of bureaucrats, who, in turn, are beholden to their political masters.

Sustainable jobs in Iraq will be created by the private sector. For that, ordinary Iraqis require peace and the rule of law. These preconditions are unlikely in the chaos of a civil war, created by Bush’s adventure in the region.

Bush remains oblivious to an immutable principle, once understood by conservatives: Top-down central planning—economic or political—is doomed to fail.