Category Archives: Inflation

The Uncertainty Chant

Barack Obama, Business, Debt, Economy, Inflation, Regulation, Taxation

In “You Can’t Fix Stupid,” I counted the ways of Barack Obama’s stupidity, as far as the natural laws of economics go. Today he did me one better, claiming that “uncertainty over the debt ceiling has hindered hiring in the private sector.” The horrible jobs reports, in other words, were a function of market fears that the US would halt the borrowing and bankruptcy trends. That’s certainly novel. Let’s not forget that Republicans feed this folly by advancing, as a counterargument, the same tack: we have no certainty in capital and other markets, therefor no one will hire.

Nonsense on stilts: There is ample certainly; certainly about economic gloom-and-doom to come. Given the indicators in the US—OPD (Outstanding Public Debt) almost equaling GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the first is growing faster than the second—businesses have to become as lean as possible.

The uncertainty mantra is a mindless one. There is plenty of certainty: certainty about a dark future. A business that is to survive needs to streamline and become super efficient. It has to hunker down and stay in survival mode. So should you.

Borrowing From … Brazil

America, Debt, Economy, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Inflation, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

Did you know that Brazil “is now the United States’s fourth-largest creditor”? They’ve been increasing their wealth, which has afforded the US the opportunity to spread its debt.

This according to a book by Larry Rohter, BRAZIL ON THE RISE: The story of a country transformed, reviewed in the June 17, 2011 issue of the Times Literary Supplement.

To read between the lines, Brazil is changing from a crappy country to a not-so crappy country. Given Rohter’s retarded analysis—Brazil’s improvement he puts down, in part, to wise “cash-transfer social programmes”—it’s hard to know what’s afoot. The Left truly feels—for they don’t think—that moving money from wealth creators to wealth consumers generates plenty.

It’s safer to say that, as in Chile, freeing markets has generated greater prosperity for Brazil.

Like white on rice, the Us in on any country with “significant foreign currency reserves.”

UPDATED: The Animal (Spirits) Move Chairman Ben

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Political Economy, The State

John Maynard Keynes wrote impenetrable prose. Likewise, Ben S. Bernanke speaks it. Obscurantism typified Bernanke’s address at the International Monetary Conference, Atlanta, Georgia. The “animal spirits” are lurking everywhere here. See if you can spot them.

UPDATED (June 8): John Maynard Keynes, “the commie who controls economies from the grave,” is alive and well in Fed Chairman Ben’s voodoo economics:

BEN: “[T]he ability and willingness of households to spend will be an important determinant of the pace at which the economy expands in coming quarters.”

“Spooky dude” Keynes, and his acolytes, honestly believed that the fickle consumer’s biorhythms control the economy. If the consumer is spooked, “the economy” gets that way too.

BEN: “[H]ouseholds are facing some significant headwinds, including increases in food and energy prices, declining home values, continued tightness in some credit markets, and still-high unemployment, all of which have taken a toll on consumer confidence.”

The Keynesian mixes cause and effect liberally. After all, the average man hasn’t a hope in hell of grasping the exclusive knowledge and magic formulas to which only Voodoo economists are privy. What Ben fails to mention is this: He is pumping vast amounts of paper, non-stop, into America’s phony economy. With every infusion of fake money, as Austrian economists have warned, the dollar drops like a stone. Assets will continue to devalue. Saving will be difficult; retirement near impossible. Prices will soar, and the currency will eventually collapse (hyperinflation).

Before you blame Obama, the Republikeynsians began this spiral in earnest.

Have at it.

UPDATED: An Inflationary Flight From Truth

Business, Conspiracy, Debt, English, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Inflation, Intelligence, Political Economy, Propaganda, The State

An observant manager at a social event commented recently about my husband and me: “You both use language very precisely.” The man was bright alright, but he was not necessarily flattering us, since my spouse (PhD, dubbed “guru” in his field) is constantly pelted with admonitions: Be vaguer when zeroing in on a problem—solve it to the group’s advantage, but don’t dare speak openly of incompetence. However obvious, credit the collective, submerge your achievements, ditch the “I” pronoun in favor of the “we.” (And how, pray tell, does one solve problems without removing the obstacles to their resolution? Easy: the able do double shifts to cover for the deadwood.)

The private sector is silhouetted by the state–and infected with the same collectivist philosophy, which aims to maintain the status quo, abolish the deference to ability (since we are all the same, given the right nurture, right? WRONG), and never admit that some are brighter than the rest. Or if this cannot be denied, rope the better man in the service of the mediocre majority that thrives in a culture of collectivism.

To be clear, this impetus is reflexive, rather than a matter of collusion and conspiracy. With few exceptions, most people believe they benefit from state- and corporate enforced collectivism—they believe this is the right way to be, the thing to strive for. (The Bell Curve—normal distribution—will give a hint as to why this is so.)

The co-optation of language plays a large role in subverting reality. The state and its lick-spittle toadies—educrats, mediacrats, and “intellectual”—have co-opted semantics over the years; stolen our words so that the new words better serve the parallel reality they’ve manufactured.

This is serious stuff since language mediates thoughts, actions, and hence public debate and policy.

The mutation in the accepted “meaning” of the word inflation serves as a good example of the process I’ve touched upon.

“Samuel Johnson’s famous A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, had just one definition for inflation,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahart, in “Inflation Definitions: Through the Ages”:

The state of being swelled with wind; flatulence.

Naturally, the WSJ does not anchor its historical survey of “the evolution of the dictionary definition of inflation from ‘flatulence’ to ‘rising prices'” in any philosophical framework; it certainly omits any reference to the natural laws of economics. Nevertheless, do read “Using a Dictionary to Define Inflation Can Spell Trouble”

You ought to conclude that the culture en masse is fleeing from truth.

UPDATED: Compassionate Fascist, sadly, proves my point: The official line, which he repeats, has it that inflation is a rise in prices. False! Inflation is an increase in the money supply. The general rise in prices is but a consequence of an increase in the money supply.