Essays

Schedule 7 and the detention of David Miranda

"One of the most troubling aspects of Section 7 is that the UK government is using it to seize computers and mobile phones of travellers without cause, and retain the data indefinitely. The UK justifies its actions as a natural extension of its powers to examine a traveller's paper documents. But mobile electronic devices carry so much more intimate information about us than we would have previously hauled around in our luggage. Everything from a list of contacts, to photos of loved ones, to financial and medical documents, to trade secrets might be contained on a traveller's computer." Continue reading →

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FATCA and the End of Bank Secrecy

"It seems that there is little understanding that it was banking secrecy that helped to resist twentieth-century dictatorships and that high tax rates — not money havens — are responsible for tax evasion, as Prince Hans-Adam of Lichtenstein has pinpointed. Clearly the amount of information collected for the purpose of future tax investigation is enormous, leaving little place for human privacy and dignity." Continue reading →

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Jeffrey Tucker: An Empire in Panic

"Snowden had only behaved as a patriot should, but he then found himself on the run from the law, trying to find safe haven somewhere in the world where the U.S. did not have control. The safe haven he found was the old Cold War enemy of Russia — a deeply embarrassing reality for those of us who cheered the U.S. victory in the Cold War. But that was just the beginning. The national security state is out there right now trying to settle all family business, Godfather style, taking down anyone and everyone who might have assisted him in his deeds. It’s all part of the great drama called 'the empire strikes back.'" Continue reading →

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Bitcoin and China: More than Meets the Eye?

"If the Chinese government intends to steer the country toward being an effective post-industrial economy, then offering increased economic freedom and a pro-innovation environment is the way to go. Perhaps there is indeed an 'avant garde' in the Chinese government, which sees Bitcoin as a place to make one of its first moves. Or, perhaps, China’s Bitcoin-friendliness is still simply the result of government blindness, and a crackdown is due to come in two or four months. But with every passing week the alternative hypothesis is becoming increasingly likely; perhaps China’s Bitcoin acceptance has more behind it than meets the eye." Continue reading →

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You Have To Use This Checklist When Buying A House

"There's no way to predict if housing is going up or down. So you need to get Death, Debt, or Divorce on your side. These are basically the ONLY ways you can guarantee you are getting a better deal than anyone else. If every house in an area is going for $400,000 then you want to make sure you don't pay more than $200-250,000. That's called 'good investing'. Good investing is not about predicting the future, it's about getting a deal. This is an important concept no matter what you are investing in and it's the concept everyone forgets. Don't buy a house unless you are getting a deal, even if you've convinced yourself you will living there for 30 years." Continue reading →

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The New Deal Origins of Fannie Mae and the Government-Housing Complex

"Fannie Mae is a classic crony capitalist progeny of the New Deal that began life in 1938, quite innocently, as still another ad hoc New Deal program to boost the depression-weakened housing market. It grew into something quite different: a monster that deeply deformed and corrupted the nation’s entire financial system seventy years later. The policy aim of Fannie Mae was 'forcing water to flow uphill' in the residential mortgage market so that low-rate thirty-year home mortgages became available to wage-earning households of modest means. Such mortgages did not then exist for a good reason: they were not economic." Continue reading →

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Vote Harder: The Barack Obama Story

"He opposed the Iraq war, promised to shut down Gitmo and denounced warrantless domestic wiretapping by the NSA. But we see this 'progressive' superstar, who all but promised to usher in a 21st century Church Committee, presiding over the massive expansion of illegal drone warfare around the world and the largest expansion of the surveillance state in history. We see this man, who promised the 'most transparent administration in history,' pursuing vindictive reprisals — on a scale rivaling Woodrow Wilson or Richard Nixon — against whistleblowers who expose the surveillance state’s terrifying scope." Continue reading →

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This failure rate will shock you

"There’s always a new elite showering themselves with unchecked dictatorial powers– from control of the money supply to control of the military. For example, four men control over 70% of the world’s money supply in our modern central banking system. They have the power to conjure unlimited quantities of currency out of thin air in their sole discretion. Meanwhile, the 'richest' countries in the world (US, Europe, Japan, etc.) are so deeply in debt that they have to borrow money just to pay interest on the money they’ve already borrowed. This isn’t rocket science. Predicting the end of this system is not attention-seeking sensationalism; it’s just common sense." Continue reading →

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Few Dare Discuss Social Security and the Decline in Full-Time Employment

"If the global economy slides into recession in the years ahead, as seems increasingly likely, full-time employment in the U.S. could slip to 100 million while the number of beneficiaries continues to soar by 10+ million a decade. All the official projections assume steady, strong increases in payroll taxes and full-time employment; the system's deficits will explode higher if full-time employment sags while the number of beneficiaries increases from 57 million to 70 million and then on to 80 and 90 million. Anyone who cares about the viability of Social Security had better wake up to the widening divergence of full-time employment and SSA beneficiaries." Continue reading →

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Yes, We Live in a Communist Country

"Since the hunger strike began in February, the gulag-keepers in Guantanamo Bay have employed the same tactic once used by their Soviet forebears in dealing with dissenters: They have been punishing the hunger-strikers by force-feeding them, an act widely recognized as torture. This involves shackling a victim to a restraint chair, immobilizing his head, and either forcing a feeding tube down his throat, or snaking it down a nasal passage through the alimentary canal into his stomach. Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who underwent force-feeding after being arrested by the KGB and sent to the Soviet psychiatric gulag, has described the experience." Continue reading →

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