Category Archives: Inflation

Send Us Your Cameron; We’re Tired Of Our Crazyman

Britain, Debt, Economy, Government, Inflation, Political Economy, Socialism, The State

He has “unveiled 23 bills (and one draft bill) detailing ambitious plans for major reform of schools, welfare, the police and the political system. Every week brings another policy, proposal or white paper,” and all ­aim at “dismantling the British welfare system and rolling back the state; to make changes which … ‘will affect [that country’s] economy, [its] society – indeed, [its] whole way of life.'” He is David Cameron, Britain’s Prime Minister. And he is making the Fabian socialists at the New Statesman furious for not being more like FDR.

The Keynesians at TNS consider Tony Blair and Gordon Brown proponents of the free market. In this essay, the argument for the continuation of deficit spending, state-sector growth and endless stims and bailouts—until the English economic Eden is restored (not)—takes the form of The Complaint. Mehdi Hasan believes that he need not argue his case for the merit of FDR-like government growth, massive public works, regulation of banking and Wall Street, and subsidies for agriculture and labor. These “proven” state initiatives are good on their face.

On the other hand, doesn’t everyone know that living within your means is a dangerous gamble, the province of reckless high rollers?

In his zeal to cut an already falling deficit and “balance the books”, for example, Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, have delivered £40bn of tax rises and public spending cuts on top of the £73bn target they inherited from Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling. In the US, cutting the deficit may be a medium-term challenge, but here in the UK, for the Cameron-led coalition, it has become an obsession – “the most urgent issue facing Britain”, according to a letter sent by Cameron and Clegg to their cabinet colleagues on 2 August.
Inside the space of 50 days, and behind the cover of an “emergency” and “unavoidable” Budget, Cameron and Osborne have taken one of the biggest macroeconomic gambles of any prime minister and chancellor to have entered Downing Street.

Hasan takes credit for having warned his homies of the impending austerity.

We cannot say we were not warned. In his speech to the Conservative party conference, in October 2009, Cameron declared that his mission as prime minister would be to tear down so-called big government. The phrase “big government” appeared 14 times in that one speech, in which, studiously ignoring the role played by bankers in causing the worst financial crisis in living memory, he claimed: “It is more government that got us into this mess.”

AND:

“Despite appearances to the contrary, Cameron is less a Whiggish pragmatist than a radical, in the Margaret Thatcher mould. His combination of market-oriented reforms to the public sector and savage cuts to public spending – hailed by the investment bank Seymour Pierce as heralding a ‘golden age of outsourcing’ – suggests that he is intent on completing the neoliberal, state-shrinking revolution that Thatcher began and which Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did little to reverse.”

“Cameron’s right-wing instincts on the economy, however, have never been properly acknowledged by a press pack beguiled by his ‘rebranding’ of the Conservative Party and distracted by his ‘progressive’ stance on gender, sexuality and race issues, [classical-liberal like] as well as his self-professed passion for civil liberties and the environment. …

Disregard the rhetoric and image, and consider instead the record: in his first 100 days, Cameron has gone further than Thatcher – and much faster, too. His ‘modernising’ ally and minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, has said that the Tories always planned to outstrip the Iron Lady.”

[SNIP]

The nation of shopkeepers may soon leave the US in the dust.

Send Us Your Cameron; We're Tired Of Our Crazyman

Britain, Debt, Government, Inflation, Political Economy, Socialism, The State

He has “unveiled 23 bills (and one draft bill) detailing ambitious plans for major reform of schools, welfare, the police and the political system. Every week brings another policy, proposal or white paper,” and all ­aim at “dismantling the British welfare system and rolling back the state; to make changes which … ‘will affect [that country’s] economy, [its] society – indeed, [its] whole way of life.'” He is David Cameron, Britain’s Prime Minister. And he is making the Fabian socialists at the New Statesman furious for not being more like FDR.

The Keynesians at TNS consider Tony Blair and Gordon Brown proponents of the free market. In this essay, the argument for the continuation of deficit spending, state-sector growth and endless stims and bailouts—until the English economic Eden is restored (not)—takes the form of The Complaint. Mehdi Hasan believes that he need not argue his case for the merit of FDR-like government growth, massive public works, regulation of banking and Wall Street, and subsidies for agriculture and labor. These “proven” state initiatives are good on their face.

On the other hand, doesn’t everyone know that living within your means is a dangerous gamble, the province of reckless high rollers?

In his zeal to cut an already falling deficit and “balance the books”, for example, Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, have delivered £40bn of tax rises and public spending cuts on top of the £73bn target they inherited from Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling. In the US, cutting the deficit may be a medium-term challenge, but here in the UK, for the Cameron-led coalition, it has become an obsession – “the most urgent issue facing Britain”, according to a letter sent by Cameron and Clegg to their cabinet colleagues on 2 August.
Inside the space of 50 days, and behind the cover of an “emergency” and “unavoidable” Budget, Cameron and Osborne have taken one of the biggest macroeconomic gambles of any prime minister and chancellor to have entered Downing Street.

Hasan takes credit for having warned his homies of the impending austerity.

We cannot say we were not warned. In his speech to the Conservative party conference, in October 2009, Cameron declared that his mission as prime minister would be to tear down so-called big government. The phrase “big government” appeared 14 times in that one speech, in which, studiously ignoring the role played by bankers in causing the worst financial crisis in living memory, he claimed: “It is more government that got us into this mess.”

AND:

“Despite appearances to the contrary, Cameron is less a Whiggish pragmatist than a radical, in the Margaret Thatcher mould. His combination of market-oriented reforms to the public sector and savage cuts to public spending – hailed by the investment bank Seymour Pierce as heralding a ‘golden age of outsourcing’ – suggests that he is intent on completing the neoliberal, state-shrinking revolution that Thatcher began and which Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did little to reverse.”

“Cameron’s right-wing instincts on the economy, however, have never been properly acknowledged by a press pack beguiled by his ‘rebranding’ of the Conservative Party and distracted by his ‘progressive’ stance on gender, sexuality and race issues, [classical-liberal like] as well as his self-professed passion for civil liberties and the environment. …

Disregard the rhetoric and image, and consider instead the record: in his first 100 days, Cameron has gone further than Thatcher – and much faster, too. His ‘modernising’ ally and minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, has said that the Tories always planned to outstrip the Iron Lady.”

[SNIP]

The nation of shopkeepers may soon leave the US in the dust.

Official Monetization Commences

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Glenn Beck, Inflation

“The Fed,” reports Bloomberg.com, “will buy about $18 billion of Treasury securities and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities through mid-September in the first month of purchases …”

We’re printing money to buy up our debt, because China and our other debtors won’t. Why is no one but Beck alerting our comatose countrymen to this indicator of bankruptcy, moral and material?

We are supposed to take comfort in the fact that, “While the move shows a change in policy direction away from exiting monetary stimulus, the Fed didn’t indicate it was ready to pursue larger-scale purchases of securities.”

Change in direction? How so? The policy of easy credit will continue apace, except that the Fed will be counterfeiting the country’s coin to pay down the government’s stratospheric debt. Let a private citizen try that trick. See where it’ll land him.

Brace for impact.

UPDATED: Gold Is Bad For Government Health (Remember Executive Order 6102)

Business, Debt, Economy, History, Individual Rights, Inflation, John McCain, Regulation, Rights, Socialism, The State

The health scare bill is the gift that just keeps giving—giving-up individual freedoms to government. From a “TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE” to a “SURCHARGE ON HIGH INCOME INDIVIDUALS” to “STUDENT LOAN REFORM”; it’s all there, designed to leave little room for voluntary, peaceful exchanges. But we missed another provision among the thousands of sections the H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010 sports:

A “tack-on provision to the law that puts gold coin buyers and sellers under closer government scrutiny.”

Gold is a necessary financial hedge in the survival on the road to serfdom.

UPDATE (July 24): Gold Confiscation coming? FDR, idolized by BHO and McMussolini alike—by almost all offshoots of the duopoly, in fact—forbade “the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates” at pains of punishment: a fine of “not more than $10,000, or “imprisoned for not more than ten years or both.”