"First they came to register your guns, and now they want to register when you sell (and sometimes when you buy gold) gold. A bill has been introduced in Illinois, the most anti-gun state in the US, that will require the registration of the buyers and sellers of gold. In Houston, a law has been passed in the city that requires any consumer selling gold to submit to fingerprints and mugshots." Continue reading →
"Given the preponderance of housing in bank assets, household wealth, and the perception of wealth, the key policies of Central Planning largely revolve around housing: keeping interest rates (and thus mortgage rates) low, flooding the banking sector with liquidity to ease lending, guaranteeing low-down-payment mortgages via FHA, and numerous other subsidies of homeownership. At least three aspects of this broad-based support are historically unprecedented." Continue reading →
"Given the preponderance of housing in bank assets, household wealth, and the perception of wealth, the key policies of Central Planning largely revolve around housing: keeping interest rates (and thus mortgage rates) low, flooding the banking sector with liquidity to ease lending, guaranteeing low-down-payment mortgages via FHA, and numerous other subsidies of homeownership. At least three aspects of this broad-based support are historically unprecedented." Continue reading →
"Pursuit of price stability is the one goal that nearly everyone agrees is a central bank responsibility. Yet it is the one on which the Fed and other central banks have failed miserably. Since the Fed's founding in 1913, consumer prices have increased by a factor of 23 times. If the U.S. can extricate itself from fiscal deficits, price stability would be an attainable goal for central banks. Otherwise, central banking is nothing but mythology." Continue reading →
"The supposed 'countervailing power' of Big Government against Big Business turned out to be as genuine as the conflict between 'good cop' and 'bad cop' interrogators. Historian Gabriel Kolko showed that the primary force behind the much-vaunted 'progressive' regulatory agenda at the turn of the 20th century was the regulated industries themselves. Major portions of the New Deal regulatory/welfare state were backed, even drafted, by the most powerful factions of corporate capital. Don’t fall for the line that state functionaries 'work for us.' Take a look at where they worked before they entered 'public service' and watch where they go back to afterward." Continue reading →
"The $825 billion stimulus program cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per job, even based on the administration's own inflated job estimates. Cash for Clunkers cost $3 billion merely to shift car sales forward a few months. The PPIP to buy toxic assets from the banks to speed lending generated just 3% of the $1 trillion that the program planners anticipated. And now? Mr. Obama proposes universal preschool ($25 billion per year), 'Fix it First' repairs to roads and bridges, plus an infrastructure bank ($50 billion), 'Project Rebuild,' refurbishing private properties in cities ($15 billion), endless green-energy subsidies, and a big hike in the minimum wage." Continue reading →
"The recovery in the early 1920s is an example of an economy rapidly recovering as government spending and taxes were cut. Another example is 'The Austerity of 1946', which despite Keynesian economists’ predictions of doom and gloom, was in fact was a period of rapid return to relative prosperity following the massive reduction in government spending which followed the end WW II. Given how poorly the economy has fared following the ‘treatment’ proscribed by Dr. Bernanke and Dr. Obama isn’t it time to try a Dr. Rothbard’s natural cure?" Continue reading →
"Many have dubbed the last decade or so to be an era of easy money. As it turns out, that characterization may have been premature. Based on the new crop of central bankers who are primed to take control of the world's financial system, the age of truly easy money may be just getting started. Many expect that when Bernanke's term expires in January 2014, he will be succeeded by the dovish Yellen. But that's just the beginning. In short order, a host of serial money printers will take up the reins at the world's most important central banks." Continue reading →
"They are the latest example of an uprising of the lost generation, that mass of people on Europe's periphery who are under the age of 40, desperate, unemployed and who have very little left to lose. The public outrage in Europe came to a boil in tent camps in Madrid's Puerta del Sol. It inspired the Occupy Wall Street activists. And it continued in Greece, where youth unemployment has reached 59.4 percent, and where there are no jobs and no economic recovery. In the eyes of many, the power of the politicians only serves their own interests." Continue reading →
"It has stabilized the colossal debts left from taking on the gambling losses of Anglo Irish Bank at EU behest, that is to say from shielding German, British, Dutch and Belgian lenders from systemic contagion at a critical moment. Deo volente, it will be the first of the EMU victim states to escape control of the EU-IMF Troika, though it will answer to inspectors for another 20 years and the yet unborn will be paying off the €67bn of Troika indenture until 2042. A mass exodus of 40,000 to 50,000 each year to the four corners of the Irish Diaspora have kept unemployment down to 14.1pc, 'What we need here in Ireland is a good dose of inflation,' confided one official." Continue reading →