From the Summit of the Moral High Ground

The detection of the rapid rise in USTreasury Bonds in the Belgium official central bank account has aroused broad and deep suspicions. Finally an open sore is visible that cannot be explained away easily. It first appeared a couple months ago. The initial knee-jerk reaction was that the USFed was colluding with the Euro Central Bank to hide heavy bond monetized purchases in New York, in effect demonstrating the Jackass point that the QE volume was huge, that the Bernanke and Yellen Fed were. Next the evidence pointed to Russia having embarked on a significant dump of USTBonds using the proxy of EuroClear. It all made so much sense, the Russian account having declined in roughly the same volume as the Belgium account rose. Be sure to know that tiny Belgium has a rather notable current account deficit, no surplus funds to invest. Belgium has a GDP of $480 billion, the bulge fast approaching the size of their entire economy. Their chief export is tied closely to the hot air emanat...

I earn and live on £9,200 per year, I live in a 300 sq foot house, I "work" (because there is no distinction to my mind between work and the rest of my life, it is just my existence) 70 to 80 hours per week, 7 days a week, I have no holidays, no sickness, no assistance from the government, but I want for nothing. But my nickname is 'smiler', because I am truly content. I do what I want, when I want and I dare any petty bureaucrat to get in my way. I do what makes me happy, I try to make those around me happy because in doing so I am happy. I abhor alcohol and drugs because they simply get in the way of me feeling content. The Enlightened Soul Gandhi If I contrast the way I feel with the way I used to feel when I was 'employed' in enforced subservience for both my employer and the government, then I understand why people drink and take drugs and do anything to escape from the harsh reality of their day to day existence. I also have to thank my ex...

Milton Friedman once said, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand.” The great economist wasn’t just being cute. He was pointing to a very serious problem with government management of resources. And in this chapter, we’ll talk about why it’s a problem. But first we should ask: Why are people so concerned that we will run out of resources? And how can we find a reasonable balance between using resources and conserving them? When most people think about resources, they think about the possibility they might be used up. And running out of resources means there will be nothing left for future generations. This scares people. So the notion goes something like: If parents let kids get into the groceries on the first night of the camping trip, there won’t be any sandwiches left for the picnic. The parents wisely ration the resources and restrict the kids’ access so that there is something left for later. People w...

"Love is an artificial sentiment, created by society and nurtured with great skill and care in order to make dominant the sex which ought to obey" Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762) Marriage is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic church, (I do not propose to enter into the discussion as to whether the Church of England is Catholic or Protestant which would be a distraction). Marriage is also a lawful contract, perhaps the most important contract there is. The contract is one of procreation and confers inheritance rights on the offspring of the marriage. Marriage is a product of its times and the often harsh reality of life in bygone times. Marriage arose before the welfare state as a community led way of ensuring the security of women and children in the world. In the days before contraception and abortion, when infant mortality and death during child birth were relatively common, the lot of a woman was not to be the dominant gender that they a...

Income Inequality Arises From Market Forces and Requires Government Intervention Inequality is everywhere. In a rainforest, mahogany trees take up more water and sunlight than all the other plants and animals. In our economic ecosystems, entrepreneurs and investors control more of the assets than the rest of us do. No one worries about the mahogany trees, and yet there is terrible fretting about the wealthy. In the case of ecosystems and economies, however, there are very good reasons for an unequal distribution of resources. The sources of some forms of inequality are better than others. For example, inequality produced by crony capitalism—or what Barron’s editor Gene Epstein refers to as “crapitalism”—is surely undesirable. Therefore, it’s important for us to make a distinction between economic entrepreneurs and political entrepreneurs: The former create value for society; the latter have figured out how to transfer resources from others into their own coffers, usually by l...

“Clichés of Progressivism,” a series of insightful commentaries covering topics of free enterprise, income inequality, and limited government. “Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.” I wish I could remember who first said that. It ought to rank as one of the great truths of all time, and one that is fraught with profound meaning. Equality before the law—for instance, being judged innocent or guilty based on whether you committed the crime, not on what colour, sex, or creed you represent—is a noble ideal and not at issue here. The “equalness” to which the statement above refers pertains to economic income or material wealth. Put another way, then, the statement might read, “Free people will earn different incomes. Where people have the same income, they cannot be free.” Economic equality in a free society is a mirage that redistributionists envision—and too often are willing to shed both blood and treasure to accomplish. But free people are di...

Systemic failure and its pathogenesis have been over 50 years in progress, with countless events. The origin is found with the cabal murder Kennedy, but the climax finale will be found with the Saudi Petro-Dollar rejection and the arrival of Eastern gold-backed currencies. The pathogenesis is fierce, vicious, multi-faceted, coordinated, enforced, unstoppable, destructive, vile, with many unfortunate aspects and facades. The extreme vulnerability of the financial crime syndicate can finally be seen, the symptoms obvious.  If somebody had asked Greenspan in 1995 whether the day would ever come when the US Federal Reserve would install Zero Interest Policy and keep the 0% rate in place indefinitely, then install Quantitative Easing and keep the bond monetization in place permanently, approximately 0% of the experts would say the day would arrive.  But here it is. In early 2009, the Jackass forecasted that the arrival of official rate cuts would result in ZIRP Forever. In mid-...

Getting "Versailled", as in the French royal palace Versailles — the epitome of excess of the French aristocracy in the Courts of Louis XV and XVI during the 18th century. The excesses of the French monarchy caused enough economic pressure on the working classes to instigate what was finally the rise of the violent revolt that would usurp the French aristocracy and sweep it beneath the swelling tide of the ideals of reason and individualism of the Age of Enlightenment. “Privatizing profits and socializing losses” refers to any instance of speculators benefiting (privately) from profits, but not taking losses, by pushing the losses onto society at large, particularly via the government. How utterly aristocratic are our modern-day courtiers who preside over the board rooms as masters of the universe, also known as Wall Street executives. Their dealings are portrayed in Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article  The Real Housewives of Wall Street , which brings to light the theft...

Ravi Batra is a cyclical analyst, and bases many of his predictions on what he calls the Law of Social Cycles, which was pioneered by his late teacher P.R. Sarkar. I first encountered this theory about ten years ago when I read the above mentioned  Great Depression of 1990  and it has remained with me as a useful and interesting way of looking at the world. Batra re-introduces the theory in Chapter 4 of his latest work, and it is essential to the understanding of how he believes we will arrive at the New Golden Age.  The Four Types of People The Law of Social Cycles states that while people in any society are all relatively similar - we all have generally the same goals, desires and ambitions - we differ in the way we go about achieving our goals. An individual's specific methods for achieving success depend on his physical and psychological make-up. Essentially, there are four different types of people who find basic fulfilment in four different kinds ...