Who is better at helping the poor? Capitalist vs. government agency?

Here is a real life example of how a "greedy" capitalist really helps people. He manufactures something others want, and are happy to pay for, because it makes their lives better. At the bottom of the quoted text, you will see what happens when the World Bank tries to help. Yep, makes things worse.

If necessity is the mother of invention, Paul Polak is one of its fathers.


For 30 years Dr. Polak, a 78-year-old former psychiatrist, has focused on creating devices that will improve the lives of 2.6 billion people living on less than $2 a day. But, he insists, they must be so cheap and effective that the poor will actually buy them, since charity disappears when donors find new causes.


His greatest success has been a treadle pump that lets farmers raise groundwater in the dry season, when crops fetch more money. He has sold more than two million, he said.


He also helped develop a $25 artificial knee and a $400 hospital lamp to save newborns with life-threatening jaundice.


...the treadle pump. It was brilliantly simple, it could be manufactured by local workshops, and a local driller could dig a 40-foot well and install it for $25. Studies showed that farmers made $100 in one season on that investment.

Retails for $25 US. Farmer can profit $100 in a season.

We talked to 75 little welding shops where they make things like bedsprings, and jawboned them into making treadle pumps.


As we were developing our pump, the World Bank was subsidizing deep-well diesel pumps that could cover 40 acres. The theory was that you’d get a macroeconomic benefit, but it was also very destructive to social justice. The big pumps were handed out by government agents; the government agent was bribeable. The pump would go to the biggest landholder, and he’d become a waterlord.


Link

Altas Shrugged: Francisco D'Anconia's Money Speech

Ron Paul beats Obama: Harris poll

LAKE JACKSON, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- In a new Harris Poll, 2012 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul beats President Obama 51 percent to 49 percent in a general election race.

“This is yet another poll that clearly proves how competitive Ron Paul is against the sitting President,” said Ron Paul 2012 National Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton. “Dr. Paul is making strides, affirming that the American people are looking for conviction instead of the typical status quo rhetoric being offered by establishment candidates.”

These results come just a few weeks after a Reuters/Ipsos survey showed Ron Paul polling within striking distance of President Obama among registered voters. Furthermore, a late August Rasmussen poll showed him within 1 percent of President Obama in a head-to-head matchup.

link

Take notice: some people are starting to "get it".

Quote of the Day 9/28

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man; a debt he proposes to pay off with your money.


-G. Gordon Liddy

Political Cartoon of the Day

via Townhall.com

Powers that be in Westchester County, NY use dirty tricks to keep Libertarians out of election

This is how things really work behind the MSM facade in the Land of the Free:

Verbatim letter from party chair to Libertarian Party mailing list in Westchester County, NY, just north of NYC:

This morning, I appeared in Supreme Court, Westchester County, to support our Westchester Libertarian candidates for Town Supervisor and Town Councilmembers in North Castle (Armonk), New York.

Even though they submitted sufficient signatures to qualify for a Libertarian line, a challenge was filed to nullify the petition because one of the witnesses (Howard Arden) previously signed a Republican pertition. While such action would have previously disqualified the signatures he witnessed, the relevant statute was changed in July 2009 such that now one only has to be a registered voter in NYS to witness signatures.

Nevertheless, on September 14, the Westchester Board of Elections disqualified 99 signatures Howard had obtained based on a law that was rescinded two years ago!

On September 14, Matt Rice called BOE and was advised that no decision was rendered. On Friday, September 16, he called and wrote to BOE and again was not advised that a decision had been rendered.

In fact, the BOE members and its attorney lied to Matt as a decision was rendered and snail-mailed to him on the 14th, which he received when he got home Friday evening, Sept. 16.

The statute requires that a court proceeding to overturn a BOE ruling be commenced within three days of the date of the determination. By mailing rather than faxing or emailing the decision, BOE acted to vitiate the time frame in which a proceeding could be commenced.

Having received the BOE petition, Matt Rice with input from Kerry Lutz, Gary Donoyan and me, worked over the weekend and on Monday, Sept. 19, only one business day after receipt of the determination, Matt Rice and Howard Arden filed an Order to Show Cause in Supreme Court. The Order was signed on Sept. 20 and served on the BOE and Objector per its terms on Sept. 21.

This morning BOE moved to dismiss the petition claiming it was served more than three days after the determination and that therefore its absurd ruling based on a law which is no longer in effect would stand.

Supreme Court Justice Joan Lefkowitz reserved judgment so that Matt and Howard would have an opportunity to submit opposition papers to the BOE's motion to dismiss.

As an aside, the Judge's clerk indicated that they believed we had a winning argument on the merits, but first we had to resolve the jurisdictional issue.   

It's rare that we see the tryanny of the Republican-Democratic duopoly manifest itself so blatantly as in this instance. I am advised that the members of the Westchester BOE answer directly to the leaders of the local political parties.

I thank those who have contributed generously of their money (Howard Arden, Willie Aponte, Carl Svenson, Michael McCarthy and one other) and especially Matt Rice for all his time and effort in this fight against those who will do anything to remain in power.

This particular battle is not over.

Mark Axinn
Chair

PS. As I will not be at Sunday night's teleconference, this constitutes the Chair's report as well.

How's that democracy thing workin' out for ya?

Can you wait 'til 2012?

Party activists want to make your visit to the polls memorable

NC Governor suggests suspending Congressional elections for 2 years

...so they can focus on creating jobs...LMFAO.  Oh, that's precious. Congress fixing a problem they created by tossing gasoline on a fire. 


How about suspending Congress' pay and benefits for the next two years? They can be paid if they meet certain benchmarks of performance.  I doubt Congress critters can be honorably incentivized, however.


Bev Perdue's suggestion is an example of how democratic socialism tends towards totalitarianism over time, especially during economic crises. She suggests that the Congress should not have to answer to their constituents, flouting a hard and fast Constitutional rule.  


Does anyone find that acceptable, in this economic environment? Let big State morons run amok in Washington without a two year long leash? Great idea!

As a way to solve the national debt crisis, North Carolina Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue recommends suspending congressional elections for the next couple of years.
“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue said at a rotary club event in Cary, North Carolina, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”
Perdue said she thinks that temporarily halting elections would allow members of Congress to focus on the economy. “You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things,” Perdue said.

Link

Gunwalker update: Potential to be the most devastating scandal in American political history

Another coup by patriot bloggers Vanderboegh and Codrea:

ATF used taxpayer money,  in cash, to buy guns and hand them to Sinaloa cartel members.


If Vanderboegh/Codrea are correct — and for the duration of this scandal they have been dead-on accurate — Dodson [first whistleblower] was chosen by his superiors to become the “walker” of Fast and Furious guns in order to “dirty” him for his previous vehement arguments against the operations. The apparent hope was that if he was sullied in the operation himself, that he would be unwilling or unable to blow the whistle on crimes that he himself participated in. Obviously, they miscalculated his character.

The plot to ensnare Dodson sounds like a Hollywood mob movie for a very good reason; this kind of stunt has been revealed in multiple RICO prosecutions of organized crime.

The unraveling Gunwalker conspiracy has the potential of being the most devastating scandal in the history of American politics.

Link

Independent trader to BBC: Eurozone will crash, and hard; governments can't do anything about it

Rare candor on the Beeb.



Good night, and good luck.

Bonnie Blue Cufflinks, and my wife argues with a stranger outside a picket line

Recently, we had a family event, and my wife surprised me with a pair of custom made Bonnie Blue Flag cufflinks, which I now treasure.  She had looked for similar cufflinks online, and when she couldn't find them, she had them made! 

To top that off, the other day, she was walking past a group of union members picketing, and ended up getting into an argument with a total stranger about how unrealistic their demands were economically, even bringing up the school of Austrian economics! She ended up telling the guy that he was drinking the kool-aid of the mainstream media.


It wasn't long ago that she drank the same kool-aid, btw.  


Could it be someone actually took what I've been saying to heart, that I'm not just preachin' to the choir?


Did you ever get the feeling the Rapture might be just around the corner? ;-)

Dwelling on the vaccine controversy raised by Bachmann and Perry

This would not ever have become an issue if it were not for the implementation of collectivist/socialist central planning of medical care in this country, growing in size and scope since Medicare was passed in 1965. Since the government now pays for some people's healthcare by taking away money from other people, they feel they must minimize their costs by implementing "mandatory" programs of preventative medicine.


The HPV vaccine (aka Gardisil) is the focus of many state legislature debates and laws since 2006. It is a product of the Merck company, which you can be certain profits nicely from successfully lobbying various governments to mandate the vaccine's use.


---------


This post was inspired by this NYT article:


The HPV (Human Papilloma Virus) vaccine is effective towards the two virus variants that cause 70% of the cases of cervical cancer. Vaccines have certain risks, and studies have shown the rate of adverse reactions to be within a certain arbitrary low rate as to be acceptable (according to the .gov) to be administered to the public that still have faith in the system, such as it is.  The vaccine is not 100% effective for each individual; it does not take in some people. More than 3 out of 10 who get the shot will not get the benefit that the shot promises.


Many commentators describe their own experiences with HPV or cervical cancer, very moving and not to be diminished in any way by my commentary. Others choose to vent their exasperation and disagreement with either Mrs. Bachmann, or the party to which she belongs. Still others dwell on the stupidity of resisting an effective vaccine.


My point is this: Any government that mandates a person to be vaccinated is unreasonable, coercive by definition, and tyrannical.


Freedom in the United States is not freedom from poverty or disease. Luck or providence will dictate a person's suffering or lack thereof.


Freedom in this country is supposed to be freedom from government interference in a citizen's private affairs, in particular regarding personal choices about their body and private property.


A federal or state government which forces a citizen to do anything to their body or property goes against anything that anyone over 40 was weaned on in school, and what our troops supposedly fight for: personal freedom.


Wouldn't you prefer to learn the risks, benefits, and alternatives to a medical treatment and make your own value judgement about the risk-benefit ratio, or would you prefer coercion of a sort like fines, suspension from school, jail time, a criminal record? It may be that a reasonable person opts out of an effective treatment for their own good reason.


If a compos mentis citizen with private insurance refuses this vaccine, and that refusal violates a federal or state law, then this citizen becomes a criminal for making a decision about his or her own body.


What freedom, then?

-----------------------


Read further about the States meddling in our health here:

The debate in states has centered-in part-around school vaccine requirements, which are determined by individual states. Some states grant regulatory bodies, like the Board of Health, the power to require vaccines, but the legislature must still provide funding. Some people who support availability of the vaccine do not support a school mandate, citing concerns about the drug's cost, safety, and parents' rights to refuse. Still others may have moral objections related to a vaccine mandate for a sexually transmitted disease. Financing is another concern: if states make the vaccine mandatory, they must also address funding issues, including for Medicaid and SCHIP coverage and youth who are uninsured, and whether to require coverage by insurance plans. This has caused some to push for further discussion and debate about whether or not to require the vaccine.
The CDC announced that the HPV vaccine is available through the federal Vaccines for Children (VFC) program in all 50 states, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Washington DC. VFC provides vaccines for children ages nine to 18 who are covered by Medicaid, Alaskan-Native or Native American children, and some underinsured or uninsured children.


State Action


The Michigan Senate was the first to introduce legislation (S.B. 1416) in September of 2006 to require the HPV vaccine for girls entering sixth grade, but the bill was not enacted. Ohio also considered legislation in late 2006 to require the vaccine (H.B. 703), which also failed. Since 2006, legislators in at least 41 states and D.C. have introduced legislation to require the vaccine, fund or educate the public about the HPV Vaccine and at least 20 states have enacted legislation, including Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington. The CDC announced that The New Hampshire Health Department announced in 2006 that it will provide the vaccine at no cost to girls under age 18. As of May 2007, the department reports they have distributed over 14,000 doses in the state. South Dakota's governor also announced a similar plan in January 2007 that combines $7.5 million in federal vaccine funds and $1.7 million from the state's general fund. As of May 2007, the department reports distributing over 20,000 doses of the vaccine. The Washington legislature approved spending $10 million to voluntarily vaccinate 94,000 girls in the next two years. 


(This is the Perry action that Bachmann was sniping at during the GOP debate):


On February 2, 2007, Texas became the first state to enact a mandate-by executive order from the governor-that all females entering the sixth grade receive the vaccine, with some exceptions. Legislators in Texas passed H.B. 1098 to override the executive order and the governor withheld his veto.




The Virginia legislature passed a school vaccine requirement in 2007 and considered a bill that would delay that requirement but it was passed by indefinitely by the Senate Committee. In 2007, at least 24 states and D.C. introduced legislation to specifically mandate the HPV vaccine for school (California and Maryland withdrew their bills). DC's bill was enacted and requirement started 30 days after Congressional Review Period expired. See the bills marked under the school mandate column in the table below for more information.


As of October 2010, 19 state have proposed HPV related legislation or resolutions in 2009-2010. See the charts below for more information.


As of April 2011, 3 states have proposed HPV related legislation for the 2011 session. See the chart below for more information.

Feds claim global reach on another victimless crime

Verbatim article from the Salisbury Post, NC, via Drudge;

A Salisbury resident has been banned from hunting anywhere in the world for two years as part of an agreement with federal authorities in Kentucky on charges that he illegally hunted in and took wildlife from that state.

Rodney L. Poteat agreed to the ban in U.S. District Court in Kentucky last week, according to a Department of Justice press release. Reached at his Perryman Drive home Wednesday evening, Poteat declined to comment.

He also agreed to pay the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources $5,300 in restitution, and $50 in special penalty assessments. The restitution is to compensate the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources for the fees Poteat would have paid for hunting in Kentucky between 2002 and 2011, the press release said.

Poteat was charged July 27 and sentenced Sept. 7. He received unsupervised probation. The hunting ban was a condition of that sentence, Justice Department statement said.

According to federal authorities, on Nov. 27, 2010, Poteat transported a 14-point white-tailed deer from Hart County, Ky. to his home in Salisbury. Poteat was required to purchase a non-resident hunting license and deer permit prior to hunting in Kentucky. He also was required to report the harvest of any deer taken in Kentucky, and to make a report before transporting the deer outside of Kentucky.

Poteat also pleaded guilty to knowingly transporting a bobcat from Hart County, Ky. to Salisbury in November 2010 without purchasing a non-resident hunting license. Poteat also failed to report the harvest of a bobcat taken within Kentucky, authorities said.

According to the press release, Poteat used to live in Hart County, Ky.

--------------

So this guy nails a bobcat and a 14 point buck and gets the (stupid) book thrown at him. Did he encroach on another person or their property?  Nope. Just hunting.

Just wonderin' if this ever happened to folks during the founding generation.  Probably not. Can you imagine the face of an 18th or 19th Century North Carolinian or Kentukian when you told them this story?

Gee, what did we do before we had licenses to hunt? I guess we were acquiring food and killing varmints illegally for millenia.

Just askin'.

...Big federal dopes.

We 'mericans aint too smart

Funny yet sad post from zerohedge.com:

It's Official: America Is Now As Dumb As A Bag Of Hammers

Ever wonder why America will elect precisely the president it deserves in just over a year? Here's why.

And the award for the best sarcastic comment below the original post is:

caerus

can someone explain this chart to me...i'm bad at math

---------
Ok, kids, stop doin' that homework and watch TV.

Rand Paul, defender of the little guy against .gov run amok

Rand Paul on Lou Dobbs on 9/7. 

Subject: Failed economic policies of the Obama administration, abuses of big government against its citizens and small businesses. Worth the six and a half minutes of your time:

Bloomberg article disses States' Rights, the 10th Amendment, the Bonnie Blue Flag, and Ron Paul

All in one short Editorial essay:

The concept of “states’ rights” has a disgraceful history as the intellectual backbone of the Southern cause during the Civil War. One hundred years later, it was still being asserted as a legitimate, supposedly nonracist, reason for opposition to the civil-rights movement.

But there’s another historical thread, too: a progressive one that claims the states can be “laboratories of democracy.” The phrase comes from a 1932 dissent by Justice Louis Brandeis: “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”

On the other hand, “Turn it over to the states” is a favorite dodge for national politicians of all stripes when there is an issue they want to duck. As if there were the slightest evidence that state governments are more efficient or less corrupt than the feds.

In fact, the evidence is quite the other way: If you had to choose between the federal government or the typical state government to handle your affairs, if you had any sense, you would choose the feds.

Look what they did to our Bonnie Blue Flag; this is the image used on the top of the article:

My comments on this article will follow later in another post.

Start with this, though: Statist bastards. They must be perturbed.

Thomas Jefferson's relationship with slave Sally Hemmings disputed -- new scholarship

In a book due out Thursday, eminent scholars say it’s unlikely that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings‘ children, disputing a decade’s worth of conventional wisdom that the author of the Declaration of Independence sired offspring with one of his slaves.

The debate has ensnared historians for years, and many thought the issue was settled when DNA testing in the late 1990s confirmed that a Jefferson male fathered Hemings‘ youngest son, Eston. But, with one lone dissenter, the panel of 13 scholars doubted the claim and said the evidence points instead to Jefferson’s brother Randolph as the father.

The scholars also disputed accounts that said Hemings‘ children received special treatment from Jefferson, which some saw as evidence of a special bond between the third president and Hemings.

“It is true that Sally’s sons Madison and Eston were freed in Jefferson’s will, but so were all but two of the sons and grandsons of Sally’s mother Betty Hemings who still belonged to Thomas Jefferson at the time of his death. Sally’s sons received by far the least favorable treatment of those freed in Thomas Jefferson’s will,” said Robert F. Turner, a former professor at the University of Virginia who served as chairman of the commission.

read the rest.

Our debt crisis explained so simply that even a Congressman can understand.

This was posted as a comment below a post on humblelibertarian.com.  It sums up in a few lines what no MSM journalist can ever seem to spell out in a 10 minute report. 

Simply stated, and therefore brilliant:

The below states the U.S.A. financial position succinctly:

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $38,500,000,000

Now just remove eight zeros and pretend it is a household budget--

Annual family income: $21,700
Money the family spent: $38,200
New debt on the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Total budget cuts: $385

Do you understand why I like to say that knowledge of economics should drive your politics?

With that income, how do you even pay the interest on the debt?  You can't.

Time to cut the fedgov down a few pegs, wouldn't ya say?

Cartoon of the Day 8/31

Read the sign being written in the lower left hand corner, and marvel. This was in the Chicago Tribune in 1934, during the New Deal:

The indirect way the Federal Reserve contributes to our debt-slavery

...and undermines Capitalism:

July personal income and expenditures were quite surprising in that while many were expecting the drop in the market to force consumer saving to upshift (lower spending than income), not only was this not true, but expenditures spiked by 1 whole percent from -0.2% to 0.8%, on expectations of 0.5%, even as Personal Income came in line with expectations of 0.3%, up from a revised 0.2% (concurrent with extensive prior data revisions). This was the biggest difference between a monthly change in income and spending since October 209. The net result was a plunge in the savings rate from 5.5% to 5.0%. And while on the surface this would be good news, as in Americans are spending again, a quick look at the PCE components indicates that virtually the entire surge is due to a spike in Energy goods and services. In other words, the entire spike in spending was to... pay for gas and associated energy expenses. Which makes sense: in June this was a drop of -4.5%, it is only logical that the subsequent jump in Brent and WTI forced American savings to drop.

All in all: in July Americans continued to max out their credit cards to pay for gas. As for the income side, transfer payments as a % of spending refuse to budge: thank you Uncle Sam.

link to Zero Hedge post.

No mention of the Federal Reserve above, right?

Here is the bottom line, as understood by the Austrian school of economics:

We can't save money because our expenditures continue to rise as our income is stable or contracting. The squeeze is on. Oil costs no more to produce now than it did before. Commodities like oil and gold tend to go up in price in $ when the dollar is less valuable from the Fed doing their Quatitative Easing (printing digital money not worth the paper it's not printed on, to quote Gerald Celente).

If you can't save, you cannot extract yourself from debt-slavery. If the country cannot save, it cannot use it's capital (i.e. saved wealth) to reinvest in industry to increase the country's productive capacity. That, by the way, is the definition of Capitalism. Keeping an economy going by blowing savings on purchases, by definition, has a finite time in which to do it. Eventually your savings is gone, and you go into hock. Look at chart above during pre 2008 housing bubble. No savings, living off real estate equity. When real estate bubble pops, savings rate has to increase. Individuals realize they must do what their grandparents always said: save for a rainy day, save to invest, save, save save.   I, for one, sooo regret not taking that to heart, even though I knew better.

---------------------

(Anyone with a more sophisticated grasp of Austrian theory feel free to correct me in the comments.)

To Serve Man

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged Americans on Saturday to recall the spirit that united the country after the September 11 attacks and take part in a national day of service to mark the anniversary next month. [Hmm...yes, I do recall that--people helping people, nothing to do with sacrificing time and effort for the .gov]


In remarks acknowledging the "great challenges" that confront the U.S. economy[that is, impossible to overcome], and could hurt his reelection chances next year[ya think?], Obama also sought to rise above the partisan political rancor that has divided Washington all summer[LOL].


"As we mark this solemn anniversary, let's summon that spirit once more. And let's show that the sense of common purpose that we need in America doesn't have to be a fleeting moment; it can be a lasting virtue[i.e. collectivism is good--and should be indefinite part of this HM]," Obama said in his weekly radio address.  
--Reuters article, this morning via news.yahoo.com.


--------------


It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.--Ayn Rand


--------------



The goal of the “liberals”—as it emerges from the record of the past decades—was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot—by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the “conservative” was only to retard that process.)


The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.--Ayn Rand


-----------------



To Serve Man:
"It's a cookbook"
(Damon Knight short scifi story written in 1950, made into a Twilight Zone episode)


Dear President Obama, public servant:
Eat me.

Uncle Sam I'm not

I do not like this Uncle Sam, I do not like his welfare-warfare scam.
I do not like these dirty crooks, or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals, I do not like their secret deals.
I do not like these dirty bombs, or how they kill with no qualms.
I do not like their fiat money, it is worthless paper and oh so funny.
I do not like taxation as theft, I will be happy when none are left.
I do not like this kind of hope. I do not like it. nope, nope, nope!

via http://blog.mises.org/, Justin Ptak.
Love it.

Your taxes pay Verizon workers while they are on strike, not unemployed

Obama's Latest Stimulus: Handing Out Jobless Benefits To Striking Workers


One of the oddities that seemed out of whack in this morning's weekly Unemployment Claims update was the explanation for the spike in this week's receipents of government generosity: apparently it had to do with the BLS handing out weekly benefits checks to striking Verizon workers. We will repeat the key word from that sentence because it bears repeating: "striking." Now, we may be wrong here, but if one is striking, one is not u-n-e-m-p-l-o-y-e-d, and hence the US government should probably not be using taxpayer money to double pay such individuals who have singlehandedly decided to forgo pay in return for making a labor statement. Otherwise, it kinda kills the whole "sacrifice" thing. And, lo and behold, as it turns out, we are not wrong. From JP Morgan: "Striking workers are generally not eligible to receive unemployment insurance benefits, but it looks like about half of the total amount of striking workers filed claims over these two weeks to formally determine their eligibility." Generally... except when the administration is willing to hand out money to anything and everything with a pulse. After all, there is that massive $2.2 trillion Bank of America balance sheet that has to be funded. And with direct reserve funding already failed, as per QE1 and 2, the only other possible way is via deposit increases. Alas, by the time this money could possibly be saved, it has been spent 5 times, the other 4 hitting Bank of America's bad credit card receivables department.


From JP Morgan:


Initial claims increase during week ending August 20, with or without striking workers






Initial claims for the week ending August 20 increased 5,000 to 417,000 from a figure for the prior week that was revised up. The Department of Labor noted that the Verizon worker strike generated about 12,500 claims during the week ending August 13 and about 8,500 claims the week ending August 20 (not seasonally adjusted). Striking workers are generally not eligible to receive unemployment insurance benefits, but it looks like about half of the total amount of striking workers filed claims over these two weeks to formally determine their eligibility. If we remove these striking workers from the claims data to give us a better indication of labor market conditions, claims would have increased about 10,000 to 409,000 between the weeks ending August 13 and August 20; the four-week moving average for claims during these weeks would be around 400,000, showing improvement relative to the July labor market survey week when the four-week moving average was 422,000.






Continuing claims for the week ending August 13 declined 80,000 to 3.641mn. Continuing claims have been basically flat since the end of March, but this was the largest single-week drop reported since mid-February. The insured unemployment rate for the week ending August 13 ticked down from 3.0% to 2.9%, equaling the low for the recovery to date.

link

Tea Party terrorists exposed

Humor is cute/silly, but the parallels drawn at the end are chilling--


link to Breitbart

Two great graphics from williambanzai7 on zerohedge





link

Time to clean up DC--Divine intervention

To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.--Deuteronomy 32:35

image via market-ticker.org

Aug 17-18 Gallup poll, Ron Paul in statistical dead heat with Obama

Please, someone check my pulse, I think I've died and gone to heaven:

Link to article from Gallup

Federal Reserve actions making things worse, not better

verbatim post from mises.org

Hayek's Ghost Haunts the World
by Jeffery Tucker

Did you ever have the feeling that we've been through this before?

Think of it. Those in charge have only recently sworn — yet again! — that if we keep interest rates at zero, keep battling the symptoms of recession and unemployment with spending and jobs programs, clobber the speculators with regulations, and otherwise keep trying to revive moribund industries, all will be well. Just don't cut government spending or let interest rates rise!

So where have we heard it all before? It was the 1930s, when the battle between F.A. Hayek and J.M. Keynes raged in the English-speaking world, not only in the academic journals but in the newspapers in London and the United States.

Hayek gave a series of lectures based on his previous works in German that tried to explain that the ruling elite and their theoretical apparatus had it all wrong.

In a thousand different ways he said the same thing: "To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about."

Further, "because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection — a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end."

The essays in which Hayek so prophetically explained the boom and bust are collected in the most convenient form possible: Prices and Production and Other Works. It is a 528-page book that explores every conceivable aspect of business cycles.

Because this book is in print, it is really inexcusable that the same errors should be revisited upon the world today, strangling growth and driving every major economy further into the depths.

Now, granted, many decades went by when these writings were hard to come by. Many people had only bound photocopies they would let others borrow. But since 2008, the Mises Institute has had them all gathered in a single book, with explanatory material and at the price of $25.

Wherever this book lands, and wherever it is read and studied, the answers to what to do and what not to do are clear as bottled water. Hayek could barely mask his frustration. This was hardly the first time that governments and central banks had tried to cure the bust with the very poison that had destabilized the economy in the first place.

He cites, for example, the expansionary policy of the Fed in 1927, which the Fed itself described as "the greatest and boldest operation ever undertaken by the Federal Reserve System." In Hayek's view, it was this very action that caused the explosion in stock prices that led to the bust that wouldn't seem to go away.

He concludes, already in 1932: "We must not forget that, for the last six or eight years, monetary policy all over the world has followed the advice of the stabilizers. It is high time that their influence, which has already done harm enough, should be overthrown."

Note the constant focus: the root of the problem is to be found in the boom, not the bust.

Hayek's frustration was not so intense as to prevent him from very patiently refuting every theory that imagined that the business cycle was caused by something other than monetary factors. He marched through the theories one by one until he concludes that only a distortion in monetary signaling can cause so many to be so wrong in their investment decisions.

Turning to positive theory, Hayek celebrates J.B. Say's view that, absent such interest rate and monetary manipulation, there can be no tendency for entrepreneurs to make such systematic errors that create economy-wide booms followed by busts.

And here we have the heart of the difference between Hayek and Keynes: one knew that markets work to give us the best of all possible worlds, while governments create and exacerbate malfunctions; the other imagined that governments were somehow capable of both perceiving and correcting malfunctions by means of the printing press, provided the right technocrats are in charge.

The fundamental differences are obvious in the 60-page critique that Hayek wrote of Keynes's own Treatise on Money (1930). The criticism came out in 1931, even as Keynes was working on his General Theory. Hayek — who, as Joseph Salerno points out in the introduction to the collection, was very young at the time but had the courage to correct the current giant of the English-speaking profession — corrects Keynes on point after point.

Hayek offers a polite but devastating demonstration that Keynes (a) was unfamiliar with any of the most sophisticated capital theory emerging from the Austrian tradition, (b) contradicted himself constantly, and (c) was so unclear in his writing and thought that he made serious correction almost impossible.

After this essay appeared, Keynes casually dismissed it with the comment that he no longer accepted the views put forward in that book. Keynes went one step further and wrote a petty attack on Hayek's own book! Hayek was so discouraged by this that he was loath to take up criticizing the General Theory with the same level of detail.

The experience of the 1930s and since underscores that Hayek's view, beautifully presented in this book, is the one that conforms to reality. Hayek is fastidious in crediting Ludwig von Mises for having been the first to link together all the theoretical parts that make up the Austrian business-cycle theory. Mises is "certainly to be regarded as the most respected and consistent exponent of the monetary theory of the trade cycle," he writes.

Hayek's argument is relentless but all the more praiseworthy given the times. Unlike today, where the dissent against the stimulus is intensifying, Hayek and Mises had very few colleagues whom they could count on to back up their arguments. For this reason, however, Hayek, writing in English, must have felt a special burden of proof. He wrote with vigor, scientific precision, and passionate intensity about the entire topic of boom and bust.

It's as if Hayek had an object in his hand, turning it slowly every which way and describing its shape, color, and size in every way he knew how.

It is also in these essays that Hayek first laid out the triangles that illustrate the relationship between time and the stages of production. This was a true innovation and one of his most lasting contributions to economics. The Hayekian triangle is brilliant in its simplicity, but it highlights a point that had been lost on economists at the time and has still not penetrated today: the capital structure is incredibly complex and embeds a vast range of time horizons within the plans of every actor.

Only a full comprehension of this point prepares a person to see how it is that the manipulation of interest rates by the central bank can cause such damage. But Hayek is also careful to note that reversing the course of monetary policy is probably not enough to end an economic bust.

Monetary policy might have caused the boom, but monetary factors alone are not enough to explain the fullness of the bust. There are other factors: taxes, which discourage savings and production; regulations, which block discovery and entrepreneurship; government spending, which draws resources out of the private sector; debt, crowds out investment, and more.

Hayek concludes by calling not only for an end to discretionary policy but also "a radical revision of public policy" in all areas. The same is precisely true today, which is why rereading Hayek's work from the late 1920s and 1930s is at once eerie and enlightening.

Many decades went by before English-speaking readers were made aware of a parallel series of writings that were taking place in Austria at the time. Mises himself wrote during the same period from 1928 to 1936 and on the same issues. His essays are collected in a book that is a kind of companion volume: The Causes of the Economic Crisis.

However, here we find a much clearer presentation: a different personality, a different audience, a different mode of writing and thinking. If anyone is left with a lack of clarity after reading Hayek, Mises provides the essence of the issue at hand in 1931:

Credit expansion cannot increase the supply of real goods. It merely brings about a rearrangement. It diverts capital investment away from the course prescribed by the state of economic wealth and market conditions. It causes production to pursue paths which it would not follow unless the economy were to acquire an increase in material goods. As a result, the upswing lacks a solid base. It is not real prosperity. It is illusory prosperity. It did not develop from an increase in economic wealth. Rather, it arose because the credit expansion created the illusion of such an increase. Sooner or later it must become apparent that this economic situation is built on sand.

Those words could have been written this very day, describing our very predicament. So it is with Mises and all the Austrians. They wrote not just for their times but for all times.

Quote of the Day

Credit expansion cannot increase the supply of real goods. It merely brings about a rearrangement. It diverts capital investment away from the course prescribed by the state of economic wealth and market conditions. It causes production to pursue paths which it would not follow unless the economy were to acquire an increase in material goods. As a result, the upswing lacks a solid base. It is not real prosperity. It is illusory prosperity. It did not develop from an increase in economic wealth. Rather, it arose because the credit expansion created the illusion of such an increase. Sooner or later it must become apparent that this economic situation is built on sand.

--Ludwig von Mises, 1931, speaking on central bank reaction to Great Depression