The Debt Keeps Obamby Up At Night

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation

The same economists who’ve insisted on billions in bailout and stimulus monies now say the country’s debt is unsustainable.

The same president who ballooned Bush’s bailouts, authorized astronomical outlays, deepened the socialization of the economy, and now carps about the need for more of the same—trillions in healthcare expenditure and crippling cap-and-trade costs—the same sod complains that the debt “keeps me awake at night.”

The same Counterfeiter-in-Chief, Ben Bernanke, who turned his snout up when Rep. Ron Paul questioned his sanity and the source of his authority, is now lecturing the numskulls in Congress that “Unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term, we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth.”

Only a few weeks back all these government gurus, and the pundits in their peanut gallery, insisted that digging America out of the financial grave is a long-term goal. For the short term, it’s stimulus time, baby. “Show me the fake money, shower me with cheap credit; and send me sailing on a ship of fools.”
(See “I.O.U.S.A.”)

Amidst reports that, at $11.5 trillion, “the overall debt is now slightly over 80% of the annual output of the entire U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product,” that “this year’s deficit is now estimated at about $1.85 trillion,” that the nation’s full (unfunded) obligations stand at around $60 trillion, and that each one of us has been saddled with roughly $184,000 of state debt—Paul Krugmanites and their acolytes now tell us that, “We are on an utterly unsustainable fiscal course.”

Of course, we on BAB, and all fellow adherents of the Austrian school of economics, have been sounding the alarm for years and with the following caveat: we have only ever advocated allowing the economy to contract and purge the malinvestment poisons.

Do I need to remind you that the aforementioned criminals have refused to concede that a contraction was a good and necessary thing; that the same creeps are in the habit of pathologizing an economic downturn by using terms such as “deflation,” and calling for government to step in and pick up the slack by spending—measures that have resulted in what is a depression by any other name.

That’s called Voodoo economics (also Keynesianism.)

Throw these bums out, and that includes the “Republikeynesians”.

…Like A Housewarming For The Homeless

Debt, Economy, Government, Inflation, Labor, The State

A JOBLESS RECOVERY is the equivalent of a housewarming for the homeless. You have got to know that this sophistic term is a political construct, not an economic one. The term is meant to coat the entrenched, systemic effects of endemic, employment-killing government policies with a patina of scholarly respectability.

Typically, establishment economists will waffle about “structural changes—permanent shifts in the distribution of workers throughout the economy”—causing job losses, but will gleefully tout GDP growth, or some or other highly manipulable indicator, as evidence that the the jobless are fussing needlessly.

And here we return to square one: I am not sure that a vigorous recovery is even possible given government funded and unfunded debt amounting to upwards of $60 trillion, and counting. I don’t know that a country can surface from under all that. At the very least, a natural shift must take place—and be evident—from a credit-fueled, consumption-based economy, to one founded on savings, investment and production.

But, what do you know, the GDP statistic is consumption-driven: it measures the kind of economic Brownian motion of which less is required. “This statistic is constructed in accordance with the view that what drives an economy is not the production of wealth but rather its consumption,” confirms (Austrian) economist Frank Shostak. “What matters here is demand for final goods and services. Since consumer outlays are the largest part of overall demand, it is commonly held that consumer demand sets in motion economic growth.”

The prevailing “theory” of John Maynard Keynes “is not economics, but a statist political theory. Keynes’s political creed guaranteed a hand-in-glove relationship between the state and its stooge economists. Most of what Keynes advocated entails giving the state enormous … powers.”

Essential in this scheme of things is semantic obscurantism. “A Jobless Recovery” is exactly that.

So when you hear that “employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, far more than expected, and the jobless rate hit a 26-year high of 9.5 percent”; and that “wages shrank to their lowest in nearly a year,” consider these vital indicators of a moribund economy.

Updated: Palin Gives Up Governorship ('Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow')

Media, Military, Political Philosophy, Politics, Sarah Palin

I’m glad I waited a few hours pursuant to the announcements on cable that Sarah Palin had resigned, before posting this. For that is how long it has taken to get the truth from the horse’s mouth. To listen to David Shyster of MSNBC, with his version of news, you’d think Palin was leaving politics. This was the crawl caption plastered below Shuster’s facetious face:

Palin Leaving politics for good.

A bit of wishful thinking.

The same odious character was quick to conduct the ubiquitous interviews with Palin’s Alaskan GOP rivals. You see, beamed Shyster, a lot of sensible Republicans believe Palin lacks gravitas (something Barney Frank oozes).

Why my prudent wait? For the first few hours following the announcement, the cable culprits failed to screen Palin’s brief press conference announcing her resignation. When they finally did, the short resignation speech was truncated, and only the incoherent parts excerpted, as Anderson Cooper pulled ugly faces, and his colleague Candy Crowley feigned horror.

Why?

Our faux journalists and their producers are quite capable of screening and re-screening clips they like at a rate that would drive the placid Dalai Lama to a homicidal rage.

Granted, Palin, as I have said before, doesn’t know when to stop rambling. That much is true. But her announcement was, for the better part, perfectly coherent and even inspired in places (hell, anyone who favorably mentions the Tenth Amendment and States’ Rights inspires me, if only fleetingly).

Here it is. Decide for yourselves.

Update (July 4): To those on whom distinctions, made in plain English, are lost, this post, of course, is a critique of the coverage of the Palin resignation, not an endorsement of the woman’s political plank, an impossibility for this classical liberal.

For more on Palin—her empty homilies to our dead-as-a-doornail Constitution, her profoundly feminist, mod approach to her daughter’s foray into siring a (poor) bastard baby, her promises to erect unconstitutional government departments to serve the retarded, her whooping it up for equally unconstitutional, immoral wars, her selling her soul by soaking up McMussolini’s creed; on-and-on—all in the Sarah Palin archive, on your right.

Did she display promise? Of course. You’d have to be an idiot, or an envy-riddled female, or both, not to recognize her Reaganesque charisma (although he served as governor for 9 years, no quitting). But she has shown no learning curve.

Take this bit from her resignation speech:

“…this most recent trip to Kosovo and Landstuhl, to visit our wounded soldiers overseas, those who sacrifice themselves in war for our freedom and security… we can ALL learn from our selfless Troops… they’re bold, they don’t give up, they take a stand and know that life is short so they choose to not waste time. They choose to be productive and to serve something greater than self… and to build up their families, their states, our country. These Troops and their important missions – those are truly the worthy causes in this world and should be the public priority with time and resources and not this local / superficial wasteful political bloodsport.”

[SNIP]

I mean, what on earth are we still doing in Kosovo, and how does that relate to “freedom” here at home, the proper purview of a constitutional government?! This Bush-era neocon nonsense I do not miss. As for the “military” being so much better than the rest of us, to quote, “I confess to growing as sick-and-tired of the odes to the military in militarized America, as I have of the constant fretting over the toll stratospheric state debt will take on ‘our children.’ (What about all us stiffed working stiffs?) About the country’s under-educated, over-indulged, hyper-sexed, super-confident kids I don’t care. (I’m confident the homeschooled among them will survive on this road to serfdom.) The military is certainly no more deserving than the rest of us…”

Updated: Palin Gives Up Governorship (‘Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow’)

Media, Military, Political Philosophy, Politics, Sarah Palin

I’m glad I waited a few hours pursuant to the announcements on cable that Sarah Palin had resigned, before posting this. For that is how long it has taken to get the truth from the horse’s mouth. To listen to David Shyster of MSNBC, with his version of news, you’d think Palin was leaving politics. This was the crawl caption plastered below Shuster’s facetious face:

Palin Leaving politics for good.

A bit of wishful thinking.

The same odious character was quick to conduct the ubiquitous interviews with Palin’s Alaskan GOP rivals. You see, beamed Shyster, a lot of sensible Republicans believe Palin lacks gravitas (something Barney Frank oozes).

Why my prudent wait? For the first few hours following the announcement, the cable culprits failed to screen Palin’s brief press conference announcing her resignation. When they finally did, the short resignation speech was truncated, and only the incoherent parts excerpted, as Anderson Cooper pulled ugly faces, and his colleague Candy Crowley feigned horror.

Why?

Our faux journalists and their producers are quite capable of screening and re-screening clips they like at a rate that would drive the placid Dalai Lama to a homicidal rage.

Granted, Palin, as I have said before, doesn’t know when to stop rambling. That much is true. But her announcement was, for the better part, perfectly coherent and even inspired in places (hell, anyone who favorably mentions the Tenth Amendment and States’ Rights inspires me, if only fleetingly).

Here it is. Decide for yourselves.

Update (July 4): To those on whom distinctions, made in plain English, are lost, this post, of course, is a critique of the coverage of the Palin resignation, not an endorsement of the woman’s political plank, an impossibility for this classical liberal.

For more on Palin—her empty homilies to our dead-as-a-doornail Constitution, her profoundly feminist, mod approach to her daughter’s foray into siring a (poor) bastard baby, her promises to erect unconstitutional government departments to serve the retarded, her whooping it up for equally unconstitutional, immoral wars, her selling her soul by soaking up McMussolini’s creed; on-and-on—all in the Sarah Palin archive, on your right.

Did she display promise? Of course. You’d have to be an idiot, or an envy-riddled female, or both, not to recognize her Reaganesque charisma (although he served as governor for 9 years, no quitting). But she has shown no learning curve.

Take this bit from her resignation speech:

“…this most recent trip to Kosovo and Landstuhl, to visit our wounded soldiers overseas, those who sacrifice themselves in war for our freedom and security… we can ALL learn from our selfless Troops… they’re bold, they don’t give up, they take a stand and know that life is short so they choose to not waste time. They choose to be productive and to serve something greater than self… and to build up their families, their states, our country. These Troops and their important missions – those are truly the worthy causes in this world and should be the public priority with time and resources and not this local / superficial wasteful political bloodsport.”

[SNIP]

I mean, what on earth are we still doing in Kosovo, and how does that relate to “freedom” here at home, the proper purview of a constitutional government?! This Bush-era neocon nonsense I do not miss. As for the “military” being so much better than the rest of us, to quote, “I confess to growing as sick-and-tired of the odes to the military in militarized America, as I have of the constant fretting over the toll stratospheric state debt will take on ‘our children.’ (What about all us stiffed working stiffs?) About the country’s under-educated, over-indulged, hyper-sexed, super-confident kids I don’t care. (I’m confident the homeschooled among them will survive on this road to serfdom.) The military is certainly no more deserving than the rest of us…”