Category Archives: Inflation

Is Germany's Finance Minister An Austrian?

Capitalism, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Political Economy

Is Germany’s finance minister really an Austrian … economist, that is?

I don’t know if Peer Steinbrück is with von Mises, but Chancellor Angela Merkel is fortunate to have him in her cabinet. He has been vetoing the assorted Pan-European economic rescue responses, which would fall on Germany’s back.

The Social Democratic finance minister is talking a little like a free market Austrian economist—advocating what this column, Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, and other libertarians advocate: suck it up.

Read the entire interview, “‘It Doesn’t Exist!: Germany’s outspoken finance minister on the hopeless search for ‘the Great Rescue Plan.'”

Newsweek being Newsweek, Steinbrück’s assessment of the a “crass Keynesianism” undertaken by the US, UK, and EU will be like pearls before swine. Here are some particularly poignant excerpts (the kind you’ve heard before here):

• No matter how much any government does, the recession we are in now is unavoidable.
• The speed at which proposals are put together under pressure that don’t even pass an economic test is breathtaking and depressing.
• The switch from decades of supply-side politics all the way to a crass Keynesianism is breathtaking. When I ask about the origins of the crisis, economists I respect tell me it is the credit-financed growth of recent years and decades. Isn’t this the same mistake everyone is suddenly making again, under all the public pressure? [The Mercer version: “A crisis that was created by cheap credit must be corrected by less of the same.”]
• The risk is greater of burning money without significant effects and in the end having a budget weighed down with even more debt. [Remember, Germany is not bankrupt like the USA is.]
• I’m ambivalent about leadership. [Mercer’s version: “’Leadership’ is a euphemism for overriding the will of the people. No sooner does the pesky popular will intrude into the debate than the top Republican contenders begin to yammer about their obligation to demonstrate ‘leadership.'”]

Here we have a European “Social Democratic” who’s more free market than the American centrists (which is what Republicans pride themselves on being).

Updated: Your Godless Government At Work

Barack Obama, Bush, Christianity, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Government, History, Inflation, Judaism & Jews, The West

The excerpt is from my latest WND column, “Your Godless Government At Work“:

“…Your gut tells you that your government is not only economically bankrupt, but morally bankrupt too—detached from any ethical moorings.

Alas, ‘figures don’t lie, but liars can figure’:

The experts say the complete opposite: The values and virtues ordinary mortals hold themselves to don’t apply to government. The macroeconomic and microeconomic solitudes are governed by separate codes of morality. Never the twain shall meet. Or so the money mavens claim.

Whereas you’ll pay dearly for your profligacy; the government’s recklessness will be rewarded. Whereas your debt will wipe you out; government debt will lift us all up. The latter is ‘stimulating’; the former sapping. …”

The complete column is: “Your Godless Government At Work”

Update (Nov. 29, 2008): At the “Secular Right,” John Derbyshire, also the only interesting writer at National Review Online (there you go, Ilana, making friends again), has written a post about “Your Godless Government At Work.”

I like the way Derb neutralizes me with the “ravishing and brilliant” appellations. Duly subdued. As one of the few intellectually honest, brilliant, paleo-conservatives around, Derb, naturally, always has my attention. (There are quite a few brilliant paleos, but not all are intellectually honest.)

A couple of comments from one secular rightist (me) to another (Derb): Although not religious, I’m a defender of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition. I’m not hostile to religion (except to Islam, which is a political system).

The main points of Derb’s post are:

Derb: “Any given theology is of zero interest to anyone outside the tribe.”
Ilana: You don’t need to be an able Talmudist to knock that logic down. Islamic theology, for example, is of considerable interest if only in showing naive westerners that it (and its adherents) is incompatible with their creature comforts and their very continuance. Therefore, Islamic theology is of some, limited interest to those outside the Umah.

Derb: Talmud “is all just tribal chanting.”
Ilana: The little Talmud I learned at school I liked and was good at. It’s fun, and doesn’t involve “elucidate[ing] what Rabbi So-and-so meant back in the 13th century.” At least not when studied in a secular school such as the Israeli secondary school I attended. It involved logic and law. A great deal of the logical method—pilpul—through which Talmudic scholars arrived at the law seemed to me to follow logic, and is thus more universal than tribal. Brilliant too.

For the reductionists who whittle down aggregate, Ashkenazi IQ to exogenous factors—breeding and natural selection—I venture that the study of Talmud must have contributed to innervating those dendritic connections in Jewish brains.

As a secular individual, Thomism and the Talmud interest me both as part of Western tradition. Talmud a little more, maybe, for tribal reasons (grin): in the context of my column, my readers (evangelicals) value the Jewish tradition. If I can show that the latter values freedom, why, then I can turn them against their leaders. I can also try and draw religious Jews away from leftism. That’s why I think JIMS’s impetus is important, because it might help save a few Jewish souls from the sins of leftism and convert them to the righteous philosophy of freedom.

So are Judaism’s texts—theological and other—merely a tribal affair? No. Are all the scholars who busy themselves with the respective texts members of the tribe?

(The same goes for the Hebrew Bible. I’m of a generation of secular Jews which knows and loves the Hebrew Bible as a tremendous literary, philosophical, and historical achievement. It’s unique. Those who have studied it in Hebrew, as I have, know the 39 books for the vital, lively (very Jewish), earthy, pioneering, and fascinating works they are. There is nothing stuffy or pompous about the Hebrew Bible, either. Paul Johnson (is he a member of the tribe?) agrees. In A History of the Jews, he writes: “The Bible is essentially a historical work from start to finish. The Jews developed the power to write terse and dramatic historical narrative half a millennium before the Greeks.”)

The central error of anti-religion crusaders is that they consider the Jewish and Christian traditions systems of ideas, denuded of historical context, to be accepted or rejected on the strength or weakness of their intrinsic logic (or lack thereof). Judaism and Christianity, however, are who we are historically (the same is true, unfortunately, of followers of Islam). One can no sooner denounce them than one can disavow history itself.

And that would be irrational.

Stop Stimulating In Public

Barack Obama, Economy, Inflation, Political Economy

Reports the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Obama’s team is putting together a new economic stimulus plan containing more than $500 billion in federal spending and tax cuts over the next two years, Obama aides and advisers said Sunday. That package would be far more aggressive than anything envisioned during the campaign.

My admonition against the last such lewd display obtains:

“ To revive flaccid financial markets, American politicians are now groping obscenely for their ‘stimulus packages.’ It’s an ugly image. It’s also worse than useless. They might as well be gesturing lewdly like crotch-grabbing rappers, because that’s as likely as their economic package is to get the country out of economic straits. …”

Read on.

Keynesian Commies

Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Political Economy, Socialism

The American economy is being socialized. The government has nationalized the mortgage market and a good chunk of the investment banks. No principled argument is offered against the government acquiring a share of the auto industry. The debate hinges only on whether the government’s growing “investment” portfolio will solve the “problem” or not.

Government intervention in the economy invariably results in a complete takeover. Consequently, once it was agreed that this one industry, GM, was too vital to fail, the government went on to specify the conditions of the baleful bailout. The political ponces—the people who do nothing but sap the productive economy—want to see a viable business plan, no less.

The public and the experts don’t think to question the State’s financial savvy–its ability to “plan” a viable industry. Where is the money coming from—this too is never asked. The soundness of borrowing or printing funny money out of thin air to implement the grand plans—this is never doubted. (Except by Ron Paul.)

Public works and big-time spending by government are planned as ways to get the economy going. Even Lou Dobbs, The Independent, fails to question Paul Krugman, the Keynesian commie, as to why more credit expansion and spending is key to recovery.

Note: Every economist touting the Keynesian twaddle of spending ourselves out of the recession is speaking the language of politics, not economics. The laws of economics are natural, immutable laws. The government, like the average Joe and Jane, can’t spend itself out of bankruptcy. (Try suggesting that to your banker, won’t you?)

With its capacity to inflate the economy with worthless fiat money, all the state does is pacify some politically powerful debtor sectors, to the detriment of politically powerless creditor sectors and other solvent citizens. At least we can hope that’s all they’ll do: The difference between Generic Joe’s insolvency and the government’s is that the first will not bring down the entire country.

A good guide to the perplexed is Mises.org’s “Bail Out Reader.”