Save the People; Fail the EU

Economy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Iran, Political Economy, Propaganda, Trade

“The EU is our biggest trading partner. We cannot afford to let it fail. We send much of our goods and services to Europe. We share their values. We want to crush Iran with our European pals. They bomb and regulate the world with us. If the Eurozone goes down in flames; if we let them—we’ll be next.” So said President Barack Obama on November 28. Well, sort of. (Okay, I’ve ad-libbed a LOT, but I think I know my president by now.)

Obama was entertaining leaders of the European Union. He promised them that America would stand ready to do its part to help them withstand the Eurozone crisis.

The stakes are too high, you say? For whom, Mr. President? Cui Bono? Who Benefits, Barack?

Ask yourself that question each time you hear a reporter/pundit/analyst/politician insist that the EU and the Euro zone cannot be allowed to fail.

In reply to the question as to what will happen if this colossus collapses, the stakeholders above parrot a bunch of non sequiturs or circular arguments. In the tradition of “a statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it,” these reasons don’t necessarily obtain:

We can’t allow the thing to fail because the stakes are too high. Again: For whom?

David Böcking of Spiegel Online (a most intelligent newspaper; the Germans are impressive) advances the arguments against the break-up of the Eurozone. These are mostly legalistic, and are not rooted in real economic realities. The treaties, observes Böcking, don’t allow for easy disengagement. Legal disputes could arise over debt owed if the seceding country had borrowed money. And, mostly, sinecured EU official would lose sway on the world stage.

Brace for impact, if you believed these bastards, but here are the economic realities:

We flesh-and-blood Americans trade not with Barack or with Brussels, the seat of the European central government, but rather with the people of Belgium, the Netherland, Germany, France. If the financial institutions into which Europeans and Americans have been herded by bureaucrats on both sides of the Atlantic collapse, well then, individual producers and traders will find a way to make a living without these artificial, inorganic structures.

This is a failure of government, not of all the people, although some of the governed, maybe even the majority, have failed. The people who’ve failed are those who have eaten the state’s forbidden fruit.

UPDATE III: Floating on $7,770,000,000,000 Worth of Paper

Debt, Economy, Fascism, Federal Reserve Bank

$7.77 Trillion: That’s the amount of money the central bank, chaired by Ben S. Bernanke, “parceled out” during “the bailout to America’s “Big Six,” ostensibly, to rescue the financial system. This according to “Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act” by “Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.”

Inflating America’s fascistic banking system has cost “more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.” It “lasted from August 2007 through April 2010.” Officially.

Starting in August 2007, when confidence in banks began to wane, [the Fed] created a variety of ways to bolster the financial system with cash or easily traded securities. By the end of 2008, the central bank had established or expanded 11 lending facilities catering to banks, securities firms and corporations that couldn’t get short-term loans from their usual sources.

America’s economy is floating on fiat. (Did I get the number of zeroes right?)

UPDATE I (Nov. 29): Myron, about those who confine their analysis to the Obama years: Some posters on this site, no less (who have yet to read, much less review, The Cannibal), have contributed to the smart alec Mark Steyn’s best-seller status, even trying to promote Steyn’s Obama-centric, limited analysis on BAB.

Unlike our Steyn-supporting readers, one of the man’s reviewers is on to him. Writes
Marsha Dahleeng:

“At first I appreciated Mr. Steyn’s humor. I enjoyed the clever jabs and the way he mocked the left/progressives. After awhile I grew weary of that – I began to skimread past the seemingly endless smart-alecky points and search for text where the author got down to the meat of the subject. Sadly, there was precious little meat, and what little there was, was disappointingly thin.”

“Disappointingly thin,” but predictably so.

UPDATE II: Exactly right, Robert Glisson: this state of affairs has a starting point: government.

UPDATE III: (Nov. 30): George, you credit Steyn with coming out of the Republican closet with some half-decent insights, after some of us libertarains have been doing this, to the detriment of our careers, for a decade at least before warmonger Steyn awoke. To compare a man who goes with the flow to the great Hebrew prophet Jeremiah does injustice to a truly great prophet. Jeremiah spoke truth to power and to the rabble at his own peril. Jeremiah was forced to sleep in the fields, away from home, for fear of the wrath of the people and the powers that be.

Pipes on Private Property (Courtesy of JIMS)

Individual Rights, Israel, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Pseudo-history, Russia

Sponsored by the Jerusalem Institute for market Studies, the “Property and Freedom” lecture below was given by Prof. Richard Pipes, author of the book Property and Freedom. Here’s a shocker: historians of the West have paid scant attention to the role of private property in the annals of America and Europe. “If you look for the word ‘property’ in the index of American books dealing with evolution of American [and European] attitudes you tend to find nothing there,” says Pipes.

(Property and Freedom is cited in Into the Cannibal’s Pot.)

You already know what this writer thinks. It should be, life, property, liberty. In that order. Property trumps liberty, for liberty can be variously defined. Our government insists we are free so long as we can vote. We know this to be untrue. Property, moreover, is harder to redefine by the state. If our rights to property were fully upheld—the same state that tells us to consider ourselves free (and be grateful) would be unable to control huge areas of our lives—bedroom, boardroom, deathbed, you name them.

PART I:

PART II:

PART III:

Uncle Sam: Serial Killer & Liar

America, Barack Obama, China, EU, Europe, Foreign Policy, Military, Neoconservatism, Russia

To the detriment of their sovereignty and their people do the Chinese, the Russians and, yes, the Germans, place their faith in “Washington’s trustworthiness.” Paul Craig Roberts offers an entirely plausible analysis for Putin’s lackluster push-back to US missile provocations. Roberts also highlights—and deciphers—the perplexing specter of the failure, the other day, of a German government bond auction. As Roberts reminds, Germany is “the only member of the EU with financial rectitude”:

“The Russian government, which prefers to use its resources for the economy rather than for the military, has decided that it has been taking too many risks in the name of peace. The day before Thanksgiving, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, in a televised address to the Russian people, that if Washington goes ahead with its planned missile bases surrounding Russia, Russia will respond with new nuclear missiles of its own, which will target the American bases and European capital cities.

The President of Russia said that the Russian government has asked Washington for legally binding guarantees that the American missile bases are not intended as a threat to Russia, but that Washington has refused to give such guarantees.

Medvedev’s statement is perplexing. What does he mean ‘if Washington goes ahead?’ The American missile and radar bases are already in place. Russia is already surrounded. Is Medvedev just now aware of what is already in place?

Russia’s and China’s slow response to Washington’s aggression can only be understood in the context of the two countries’ experience with communism. The sufferings of Russians and Chinese under communism was extreme, and the thinking part of those populations saw America as the ideal of political life. This delusion still controls the mentality of progressive thinkers in Russia and China. It might prove to be a disaster for Russia and China that the countries have citizens who are aligned with the US.

Belief in Washington’s trustworthiness even pervades the Russian government, which apparently, according to Medvedev’s statement, would be reassured by a ‘legally binding guarantee’ from Washington. After the massive lies told by Washington in the 21st century–’weapons of mass destruction,’ ‘al Qaeda connections,’ ‘Iranian nukes’–why would anyone put any credence in ‘a legally binding guarantee’ from Washington? The guarantee would mean nothing. How could it be enforced? Such a guarantee would simply be another deceit in Washington’s pursuit of world hegemony.

The day prior to Thanksgiving also brought another extraordinary development–the failure of a German government bond auction, an unparalleled event.

Why would Germany … not be able to sell 35 per cent of its offerings of 10-year bonds? Germany has no debt problems, and its economy is expected by EU and US authorities to bear the lion’s share of the bailout of the EU member countries that do lack financial rectitude.

I suspect that the answer to this question is that the failure of the German government’s bond auction was orchestrated by the US, by EU authorities, especially the European Central Bank, and private banks in order to punish Germany for obstructing the purchase of EU member countries’ sovereign debt by the European Central Bank.”

[SNIP]

Since the lying left-liberal media complex likes to depict Obama’s coronation as one that took place against all odds, and despite America’s racist population (a majority of which supported BHO)—consider this point made by Roberts:

No newly elected president in memory, neither John F. Kennedy nor Ronald Reagan, had the extraordinary response to his election as Barak Obama.