Mad Statists

Argentina: Give Us Your Real Dollars for Our Fake Dollars

"President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s wish of being able to print dollars is coming true as the central bank begins issuing dollar-denominated certificates today that trade in pesos. Argentina is issuing the certificates, known as Cedines, as part of a tax amnesty plan to attract undeclared cash back into the economy. The Cedin 'is an ideal medium for the payment of U.S. dollar obligations,' and can be used for buying products from house appliances to construction materials, according to the law approved by congress May 29, Argentines with undeclared foreign-currency savings have until Sept. 30 to trade their dollars for a certificate of deposit for investment, or Cedin." Continue reading →

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“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”: The new warrior cop is out of control

"Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn’t a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit. Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. On the night of January 24, 2006, Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T-shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team began to move in." Continue reading →

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Anthony Wile: The Danger Beyond Employment Numbers

"When most people in a country have no money or land or even a house, and take no pleasure in working, and when only half of what may be considered the potential working population is formally employed, then it is probably not too strong a statement to say that the system itself is not producing satisfactory results and is even in danger of breaking apart entirely. The US's advantage throughout the post-War years was its dollar reserve currency; US officials could fund deficit spending by printing dollars without generating price inflation. Countries around the world had to hold dollars because they needed dollars to buy oil. This system is changing now." Continue reading →

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Nigel Farage: There is a Gathering Electoral Storm

"With 62% youth unemployment in Greece, and with Spain not far behind, it is perhaps about time we were honest and admitted we are causing it ourselves. And yet your recipe is more bureaucracy. A youth guarantee scheme, another six billion for the Youth Employment Initiative, the setting up of the European Alliance for Apprenticeships backed up by the Quality Framework for Traineeships, and the list goes on and on and on of yet more highly paid civil servants setting up organisations that will achieve nothing. Until the euro is broken up, until you reverse the social market model you will not help youth unemployment." Continue reading →

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Argentina Applies Law That Jails Hoarders as Bread Price Surges

'Interior Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno announced the measure in the official gazette today. The 1974 law allows authorities to freeze prices and obliges companies to maintain supply. Those in breach are subject to fines and imprisonment. 'If the law on supply is applied, the one who should go to jail is Moreno himself,' former Economy Minister Martin Lousteau said in an interview with Radio Mitre today. 'He’s to blame for the lack of wheat in Argentina.' Argentine wheat production has decreased since 2006, when President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s predecessor and late husband Nestor Kirchner set export quotas." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingArgentina Applies Law That Jails Hoarders as Bread Price Surges

Can You Pass The Terrorism Quiz? (Updated June 2013)

"It should be banal to read in the mainstream media that the US not only engages in terrorism but often aggravates it; that if the current crop of terrorists in, say, the Middle East were killed, new terrorists would simply arise if the underlying political and economic conditions remained unchanged; and, that if a particular country is perceived as actively supporting dysfunctional political and economic conditions in a part of the world, it will become the target of anger and, possibly, violence. Yet, instead of such obvious conclusions about terrorism, we are daily exposed to much bias and distortion. To counter such inadequate journalism, I have prepared the following quiz." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCan You Pass The Terrorism Quiz? (Updated June 2013)

Wall Street Journal says Egypt needs a Pinochet

"Presumably, the WSJ thinks the Egyptians now have 17 years in which to think themselves lucky when any who dissent are tortured with electricity, raped, thrown from planes or – if they’re really lucky – just shot. That’s what happened in Chile after 1973, causing the deaths of between 1,000 and 3,000 people. Around 30,000 were tortured. Presumably, the WSJ hopes a general in the mold of Pinochet (or generals, as they didn’t break the mold when they made him) will preside over all this with the assistance of Britain and America. Perhaps he (or they) will return the favour by helping one of them win a small war." Continue reading →

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Mexican police chief killed with rifle lost in ATF ‘Fast and Furious’ program

"A high-powered rifle lost in the ATF’s Fast and Furious controversy was used to kill a Mexican police chief in the state of Jalisco earlier this year, according to internal Department of Justice records, suggesting that weapons from the failed gun-tracking operation have now made it into the hands of violent drug cartels deep inside Mexico. Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga, the police chief in the city of Hostotipaquillo, was shot to death Jan. 29 when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire. Also killed was one of his bodyguards. His wife and a second bodyguard were wounded." Continue reading →

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Is the lawlessness of Obama’s drone policy coming home?

"Global powers have an antisocial habit of bringing their work back home. The British government imported some of the methods it used against its colonial subjects to suppress domestic protests and strikes. Once an administrative class becomes accustomed to treating foreigners as if they have no rights, and once the domestic population broadly accepts their justifications, it is almost inevitable that the habit migrates from one arena into another. If hundreds of people living abroad can be executed by American agents on no more than suspicion, should we be surprised if residents of the United States began to be treated the same way?" Continue reading →

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US Obsession With the Importance of the Mideast and Solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

"Recent developments in Egypt–with a sizeable minority of the population justifiably concerned about their rights at the hands of the majority of fundamentalist Islamists—show that arriving at liberal democracy from democracy may be a difficult and destabilizing prospect. The lesson from this messy process is not that the United States should intervene and remain until liberal democracies take hold in developing nations, but that the process is so chaotic that the United States should stay out of these nations, especially in the Middle East. This recommendation will be hard for the government of a swaggering superpower to stomach." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingUS Obsession With the Importance of the Mideast and Solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict