Antics Road Show

Gore the old village idiot, Bernanke the new

Just like the Global Warming Contortionists who blame Global cooling and everything else on carbon emissions, Ben Bernanke just keeps telling the same lies over and over hoping that a lie will eventually become the truth.

From WSJ:

"Asked about all this (rising prices) at a recent House hearing, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said QE2 is a success because stock prices are rising. He blamed the increase in commodity prices on other things, such as growing world demand and the weather. Mr. Bernanke holds himself accountable only for the asset price increases that are popular.

If that answer sounds familiar, it is because Mr. Bernanke said the same thing in 2003 and 2004 when the Fed last fretted about deflation. Then the Fed also maintained a policy of negative real interest rates for years and blamed asset price spikes on everyone else. Once again the Fed seems to have worried about deflation long after the threat had passed and even as price pressures from its easier policy were preparing to build. Let's hope it turns out better than it did the last time.

Snippets from Conrad

Conrad Black in NRONLINE

"The United States seems to be enduring a prolonged Groundhog Day. No matter what happens, responses from the governing liberal establishment remain the same."

"At the prospect of freer elections in Egypt, the New York Times produces pages of anesthetizing treacle on the benignity of the Muslim Brotherhood."

"Columnist Tom Friedman, in the same pages, briefly set aside his passionate concerns about global warming in the midst of this frigid winter, and the need to put a hand-held communication device in the fingers of everyone in the world above the age of three weeks, to complain about Israeli settlements. The ability of Mr. Friedman to continue to believe that Israeli settlements have anything to do with the attainment of a durable peace in the region is a triumph of superstitious self-brainwashing over mind, spirit, and flesh."

"And in Washington, after a long drum roll, and intimations of pending mountain-moving in deficit reduction, the Obama administration gave birth to a deformed mouse of a budget."

"Mr. Obama has left it to the Republicans to tackle entitlements, as everyone with the benefit of a Grade Three education in arithmetic who examines the budget, however cursorily, can see must happen."

"Velocity of money is when transactions or other money transfers occur without any real generation of increased collective wealth, because no value is added or created...............There is some of that in the U.S. now, with $4.5 trillion spent annually in legal, consulting, and financial-transaction fees ..(snip).. and $2.4 trillion in medical costs. Very little of it is really value added as primary (extraction of resources) and secondary (manufacturing) industry revenues are."

"American lawyers and stockbrokers work hard, but they are just as much a charge on productive work as German welfare cases are."

"Ben Bernanke is doubtless correct that it will take at least five years to reduce unemployment appreciably, because it will take at least that long for the U.S. to be weaned partially away from the chimera of the service economy."

Think about it: "The Chimera of the service economy". 

CHIMERA:  A fanciful mental illusion or fabrication. or if you prefer:

An imaginary monster made up of grotesquely disparate parts.

Either one is a good description of the ever popular service economy myth. The notion that real value added can be sustained long term without manufacturing or resource extraction as the primary drivers of economic prosperity is the fabrication of the "professional economics guild" and enlightened academic elite that disdains real productive work in favor of incompetent monetary theories that continually fail to produce any credible predictions of the future.   Amen Conrad

 

Unanimous Slapdown of Durbin in Michigan

From AmSpect:

"On Tuesday, the first salvo was fired against another command-and control scheme of the last Congress -- from the newly purple state of Michigan. There, the state Senate, following the state House last Friday, passed the first resolution against a provision of the 2400-page Dodd-Frank financial "reform" of 2010.

In an amazingly unanimous vote, the Republican and Democrat state senators condemned a specific amendment from U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and the corresponding proposed rule from the Federal Reserve implementing a debit price control scheme that benefits Walgreens, Home Depot, and some of the nation's biggest retailers and shifts costs to consumers in terms of loss of free checking, higher bank fees, and reduced card rewards." (Bold mine)

further:

"The big retailers claim that if they pay less in fees, they'll pass on the savings to consumers. But if Australia's experience in capping interchange fees for credit cards in 2003 is any guide, this just ain't so.

George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki noted in the Wall Street Journal, "Annual fees increased an average of 22% on standard credit cards and annual fees for rewards cards increased by 47%-77%. Card issuers also reduced the generosity of their reward programs by 23%." But Aussie consumers experienced no corresponding decline in retail prices. A study by the Government Accountability Office of the U.S. Congress found no "conclusive evidence" that any of the Aussie retailers' $1.1 billion in savings had been passed on to consumers."

 

The Adulterous Fannie Mae, or Sleeping with the Money

No, not John Edwards, Franklin Raines. 

Ann Coulter: "In 2003, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee wrote a bill to tighten the lending regulation of Fannie and Freddie. Every single Democrat on the committee voted against it."

 

Just who was guarding the bedroom door?  While critics were warning of the insanity of no money down loans with no visible collateral, Chuck Shumer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Christpher Dodd played the Alfred E Neuman "What me worry?" card.  So which is the party of Banksters?

The Big "D" , the largest recipients of campaign donations, end of story.

Allison Shrugged ..... my view

The blog "Vie De Malchance" posted an excerpt of a New York Times article about BB&T's John Allison, and his adherence and promotion of Ayn Rand's objectified philosophy.  

 The moral value of objectivism is the adherence to what Ayn Rand calls "rational self interest".  The philosophy posits that if all persons worked in their "rational self interest" the world would be a better place.  In simple terms, it is not in my long term rational self interest to overcharge you for goods because in a free and open market, word will get around and buyers of my products will go elsewhere (all other things being equal) to get a better price.

Many have criticized her views about altruistic behavior, and I think that where her views fall short is that she fails to recognize that the "transaction"(my term) OF MY OWN FREE WILL of donating my time, money or other support to someone who can't help his or her self actually does involve a payment to me, although the payment is certainly one of satisfaction and not monetary remuneration. “OF MY OWN FREE WILL” is really the guiding principle here. The Golden Rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is actually quite consistent with objectivism.  Objectivism is really about non-coercion and liberty.

The will of the majority through governmental laws to mandate or coerce individuals to "sacrifice" (Ayn Rand’s term) wealth for the transfer and benefit of non-producers (or in some cases other producers ) is antithetical to objectivism, and I share this view. 

The congress , local, and state governments have intervened in the free markets certainly as far back as the late 1800’s to curry favor with certain interests.  The intervention of the government to advantage an enterprise that NECESSARILY inhibits another ongoing enterprise from its lawful business is in essence a confiscation of private property and an infringement of constitutional rights although nothing of “substance” has been taken other than the free right to pursue one’s self interest.  

"An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because it is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy..."

Hartley Burr Alexander

Unfortunately, this country now values shoddy philosophy as practiced by the majority of politicians more than good plumbing.  Thankfully the plumbers have not yet caved.

For A link to Give BB&T Liberty, but Not a Bailout

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/business/02bbt.html

For a link to a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123698976776126461.html

 

Greider: Krugman Gets His History Wrong

I listened to the first hour of the Diane Reem show today on NPR and the discussion was about the direction of American Capitalism.  William Greider was one of three "panelists" and his views were located somewhere in the middle of the other two. He had no trouble pointing out the excesses of both the Republicans and Democrats.

I checked out his blog and he had an interesting post back on June 1st pushing for a correction from Paul Krugman on Krugman's "falsifying" of history

Quoting Greider:

Paul Krugman, like many other Democratic partisans, wants to blame Republicans and right-wingers for causing the financial disaster by deregulating the system.  This may be comforting to Dems but, alas, it requires them to falsify the history, as Krugman does in this morning's column. Krugman flogs the notorious Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 and quotes Ronald Reagan's extravagant praise for the measure.

What Krugman leaves out is that financial deregulation actually started two years earlier -- before the Gipper got to Washington. A Democratic Congress and Democratic president (Jimmy Carter) enacted the Monetary Control Act of 1980 which removed all remaining controls on interest rates and repealed the federal law prohibiting usury (note that sky-high interest rates and ruinous predatory lending have been with us ever since).

Link to Greider's Blog post: http://williamgreider.com/content/krugman-gets-his-history-wrong

Link to Krugman's Op-Ed:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/opinion/01krugman.html?_r=1&hpw

It's funny how a nobel prize allows you to become a fact cherry picker. Paul Krugman who's column "Conscience of a Liberal" in the NY Times is little more than partisan blather, constantly cites incomplete data to push his agenda.  "Lack of Conscience" should be the title.

Krugman may have nailed the cause and effect, but he just couldn't find enough "conscience" to tell the truth about the players.