Essays

The Cyprus Depositor Haircut

"The manager told him not to worry, saying the deposit insurance was per account, not per person. She added: ‘We just put your name on the account so your wife wouldn’t take money out without your consent.’ Remembering that in the 1980s his British building society had played down the risks of taking out an endowment mortgage, Demetriou asked if they were 100 per cent sure. He was told they were. The advice was 100 per cent wrong. The deposit insurance is per person, not per account. Soon afterwards, the banks closed for more than a week, and when they reopened, he’d been stripped of 44 per cent of his savings." Continue reading →

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Sheriff Bradshaw and the Palm Beach County Psihuska

"Although they were dealing with a sickly, unarmed homeless man who was not a criminal suspect, the Berserkers treated the incident as a combat situation. As they approached the encampment, Gaydos – who was holding his cell phone – stood up. Without a word of warning, he was shot twice in the head with rubber bullets. The first round damaged an ear; the second one destroyed his left eye. The assailants later tried to justify the head shots by claiming that they had seen a knife in Gaydos’s hand – but since no knife was ever recovered, this can be dismissed as a self-serving lie of the kind routinely offered by police officers after they kill or mutilate an innocent person." Continue reading →

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The Market Shall Set North Korea Free

"Today, when North Koreans are ordered by their state employer to take part in political activities, they know their time is being wasted. Fewer North Koreans show up for their state jobs. This growing economic and psychological independence among regular people is becoming the greatest thorn in the regime’s side. It is also the key to change. Instead of focusing on the regime and its agents as possible instigators of reform, we must recognize the power of the flourishing marketplace to slowly but definitively transform North Korea from the bottom up." Continue reading →

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David Galland: Chains of Convention

"It behooves us all to periodically stop and examine our life path. What's missing in your life? What seemingly never gets fixed, and unfixed, makes your unhappy or unfulfilled? On examination, you may find that the problem is that you are adhering to convention, and doing so at great personal cost. Nancy did something that probably not one in a half a million people in her circumstances would have done – break the chains of convention and set out to enjoy the remaining years of what is likely to be a much longer life as a free and independent woman." Continue reading →

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Doug Casey on Internationalizing Your Cash

"I'm quite serious about what I said about 'the grim reality of impending currency controls.' As the global economy continues to deteriorate, governments will have to appear to be 'doing something.' It's going to become very fashionable to institute some sort of foreign exchange control. Why might that be? Because obviously, people who are taking their money out of the country are unpatriotic…" Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: American grifters

"Here on the pampas, on the other hand, the Argentinians know better. Their brains have been sharpened by adversity and enlarged by necessity. They know they’re getting ripped off by the government. They find ways to protect themselves. 'There are invoices, and there are invoices. You can get an invoice at the official rate, or one at the unofficial rate. Or one that is not at any rate at all. A, B, or C. The government rigs the system to cheat us; we rig it right back. You just have to make sure you have the right invoice for the right transaction. At the end of the year, people buy and sell invoices. Everybody’s got a trick or two. You have to. Otherwise, you’re a sap.'" Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: Fed’s QE has not created one single extra job

"Our central banks are engaged in a breathtaking program of activism. We don't know where it will lead. But, from the historical record, activism and central banking go no better together than drinking and driving. Keep it up long enough and you're bound to have an accident. But the accident hasn't happened yet. So most people have stopped worrying about it. They smell the liquor on the driver's breath. But they get on the bus anyway. The most reckless driving in central bank history...raising the footings of the US financial system by a factor of 5 times...from $800 billion to $4 trillion...and it has not resulted in one single extra job." Continue reading →

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The case against cronies: Libertarians must stand up to corporate greed

"In the age of crony capitalism, libertarians must declare that some means of pursuing profit are immoral and call on executives to reject them. This would create a positive case for capitalism -- arguing that the pursuit of profit, in the context of fair and open competition, helps the whole society. The new corporate social responsibility, redefined for libertarians, must stand athwart crony corporatism yelling 'stop.'" Continue reading →

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Lower Taxes Tapped a Beer Revolution

"As recently as 35 years ago, there were fewer than 50 breweries in the whole country, and the fastest-growing type of American beer was light, which Miller introduced in 1975. The story of the U.S. ascent to the top tier of world beer began in the late 1970s, when brewing was liberated from government taxation and regulation that had held it back since Prohibition. Following the federal example, state legislatures also began rewriting their bans on home-brewing, and it is legal now in every state except Alabama. The rise of American beer wasn't an accident. It was spurred by efforts to cut taxes and regulation that unleashed entrepreneurship." Continue reading →

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Michael Scheuer: Limbaugh, Levin, and Hannity eager to see more dead Americans

"You will never hear directly from the mouths of Rush, Mark, and Sean what they are implicitly telling Americans; that is, that they hate virtually everything the Founding Fathers thought and prescribed for U.S. foreign policy — in short hand, do not stick your nose in other peoples’ affairs in which you have no interest — and that they do not mind how many Americans get killed as long as Washington keeps pursuing the interventionist foreign policy they believe benefits their friends overseas and their benefactors at home." Continue reading →

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