Obamanomics: Me, My Minions & YOUR Money

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Government, Political Economy, Reason, Taxation, The State

“Obama: U.S. economy cannot afford [a government] shutdown.” Unless the government continues “making key investments in things like education, infrastructure [and] innovation,” we won’t “win the future.” [Transcripts]

This dyed-in-the-wool statist needs the aid of Lego or some sort of pop-up children’s model to figure out that dolling out unemployment benefits, state aid, and government jobs programs, all necessitate the seizure of private wealth through taxing, borrowing, and printing paper.

That cannot create wealth! The fact that some individuals will get wealthy or be “helped” leaves out the unseen; the overall poverty and misery he, his minions and their schemes create.

There is no big secret about “creating” jobs. Government can’t do it. Unless it sucks more capital and credit out of the private economy, it has only the capacity to consume wealth, not create it.

Here’s a simple, crude model for Obama the statist. Play with it with the First Girls. Recommend it to your Fabian friends, Mr. president:

Put 10 blocks in box A. Take 5 blocks out of box A and place them in box B. The owner of box A is 5 blocks poorer, the owner of box B is 5 blocks richer. Total number of blocks: still 10. Total blocks added (or wealth created): 0.

Come on BO, you can do it.

The best BO can do is take a hike; go on a 4-year vacation; walk the plank; just GET OUT OF THE WAY!

His Holiness Eric Holder

Constitution, Crime, Federalism, Homeland Security, Law, Terrorism

Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., was unequivocal today in asserting Executive branch supremacy and his own omniscience in the matter of the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four, 9/11 co-conspirators. (Transcript.) Recall, Holder’s preference was for the federal courts to try the case. “[O]ur justice system,” he stated today, “would have performed with the same distinction that has been its hallmark for over two hundred years.” (Here’s one example of that justice.) Alas, Holder’s all-knowing self—he informed FoxNews’ reporter, and I paraphrase, “Yes, I do know best”—was frustrated:

Unfortunately, since I made that decision, Members of Congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States, regardless of the venue. As the President has said, those unwise and unwarranted restrictions undermine our counterterrorism efforts and could harm our national security. Decisions about who, where and how to prosecute have always been – and must remain – the responsibility of the executive branch. Members of Congress simply do not have access to the evidence and other information necessary to make prosecution judgments. Yet they have taken one of the nation’s most tested counterterrorism tools off the table and tied our hands in a way that could have serious ramifications. We will continue to seek to repeal those restrictions.

Interest Rates Mess With Time Preference Rates

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank

While crediting the “Fed’s interest-rate policies, together with other measures,” for having “helped avert a much deeper economic slump,” the War Street Journal is prepared to admit (here) that artificially keeping interest rates so low doesn’t “just hurt retirees. [It] also penalizes people of any age hoping to build up funds for the future, and discourage rainy-day savings that could make U.S. consumers more resilient to job losses and other financial jolts.”

Dah. Austrian economists have warned all along that the Fed’s policies will see the dollar drop like a stone, assets continue to devalue, and saving and retirement become near impossible. Prices will soar, and the currency will eventually collapse (hyperinflation).

“Americans who have done everything right, have worked hard, saved their money and stayed out of debt are the ones being punished by low interest rates.”

Time preference rates are the degree to which different people discount the future in favor of immediate gratification. In a credit-fueled, consumption-based economic culture, those who want it all now come out on top. The saver, investor or producer is not the type of economic actor that such a fiscal culture cultivates and rewards.

Migrant Remittances Dwarf Foreign Aid

Economy, Foreign Aid, Taxation, Welfare

Governments are good at talking-up the “charitable” nature of their wealth transfers, especially when budget cuts loom (the kind that threaten bloated bureaucracies). U.S. government aid, however, doesn’t come close to private American charitable donations in any given year (link). Private foreign aid greatly exceeds U.S. government aid. And the former, unlike the latter, can be channeled to recipients the donor – not government – favors. The depth and the consistency of America’s voluntary giving obviate the need for political pelf, i.e. foreign aid.

No devotee of Sir Peter Bauer, author of “Dissent on Development” and the foremost authority on foreign aid, takes seriously the warning (here) that the GOP’s meager proposed budget cuts “would cause the deaths of at least 70,000 children around the world who rely on American funding, according to the government agency in charge of foreign aid.”

Here is another interesting figure that further puts in perspective the $15 billion or so of foreign aid stolen from American taxpayers:

According to the “Atlas of Human Migration,” published in 2011, thanks to the opportunities created (indubitably, by and large, in developed nations), the remittances “sent back home by migrants in 2007 was an impressive $250 billion, putting the $103 billion sent in development aid, in the same year, to shame.” (TLS March 4, 2011)