Shepherds and Sheep

Cass Sunstein needs to reread John Stuart Mill

By Thomas Sowell 

John Stuart Mill’s classic essay “On Liberty” gives reasons why some people should not be taking over other people’s decisions about their own lives. But Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard has given reasons to the contrary. He cites research showing “that people make a lot of mistakes, and that those mistakes can prove extremely damaging.”

Professor Sunstein is undoubtedly correct that “people make a lot of mistakes.” Most of us can look back over our own lives and see many mistakes, including some that were very damaging.

What Cass Sunstein does not tell us is what sort of creatures, other than people, are going to override our mistaken decisions for us. That is the key flaw in the theory and agenda of the left.

Implicit in the wide range of efforts on the left to get government to take over more of our decisions for us is the assumption that there is some superior class of people who are either wiser or nobler than the rest of us.

Yes, we all make mistakes. But do governments not make bigger and more catastrophic mistakes?

Think about the First World War, from which nations on both sides ended up worse off than before, after an unprecedented carnage that killed substantial fractions of whole younger generations and left millions starving amid the rubble of war.

Think about the Holocaust, and about other government slaughters of even more millions of innocent men, women and children under Communist governments in the Soviet Union and China.

Even in the United States, government policies in the 1930s led to crops being plowed under, thousands of little pigs being slaughtered and buried, and milk being poured down sewers, at a time when many Americans were suffering from hunger and diseases caused by malnutrition.

The Great Depression of the 1930s, in which millions of people were plunged into poverty in even the most prosperous nations, was needlessly prolonged by government policies now recognized in retrospect as foolish and irresponsible.

The Egyptian Army Is Making a Comeback

Egypt heading fast towards Civil War

By Zvi Mazel

Never has Egypt been so close to civil war and today it seems that only the army can prevent the worst from happening.

The Muslim Brothers and the opposition are both doing their utmost to bring the army to their side, with little success so far: Field Marshal Abd el-Fattah El-Sisi, the defense minister, never loses an opportunity to state that the army is taking no part in the political struggle and devotes its energy to protecting the country - while adding that it will not let it plunge into chaos. The opposition, in contrast, feels that only the army can bring back order - the way they want. During last Friday's demonstrations people called on the army to "Get out of the barracks and make President Mohamed Morsi resign and call for new presidential elections."

That state of affairs leaves the Brotherhood and Morsi with mixed feelings. In the course of the past few weeks they have became painfully aware of the fact that the army will not protect the regime should it lose its legitimacy and try to resort to force to stay in power. Last week the rumor that Morsi intended to fire the defense minister spread like wildfire, prompting an "unnamed military source" to warn that it would be "political suicide" for the president since the army - soldiers and officers alike - are angry with the regime. One of the president's representatives hastened to placate army commanders and the army in turn distanced itself from the "unnamed source."

Three days later Morsi declared that he had full confidence in the army and "the deepest appreciation" for the defense minister; the declaration was duly published in the media next to a photo of El- Sisi sitting opposite Morsi in the president's office. The rumor may have been a trial balloon launched by the Brothers who wanted to gauge what kind of reaction could be expected to such a radical move. However the incident can also be seen as part of a wider series of clashes between the army and the Brotherhood.

Morsi first became aware of the problem last November during the violent demonstrations led by the opposition to protest the new Islamic constitution and the presidential declaration granting the president legislative power and full immunity for his decisions.

The army issued a call for dialogue between "both sides" while stressing "the legitimacy of the people."

Can the President Kill with Drones in the USA?

Rand Paul’s Third Letter to the CIA

by Michael Krieger

This letter is a few days old, but is very important for every American to be aware of. Essentially, Rand Paul is threatening to filibuster Barack Obama’s nominee for the CIA, John Brennan, due to his refusal to answer a simple question:

Do you believe that the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial?

This should not be a complicated question to answer, yet it seems Obama, Brennan and pretty much every other little power consumed bureaucrat is incapable of doing so.  Below is Rand Paul’s letter reprinted in full (my emphasis added).

February 20, 2013

John O. BrennanAssistant to the President for Homeland Security and CounterterrorismThe White House1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NWWashington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. Brennan,In consideration of your nomination to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), I have repeatedly requested that you provide answers to several questions clarifying your role in the approval of lethal force against terrorism suspects, particularly those who are U.S. citizens. Your past actions in this regard, as well as your view of the limitations to which you are subject, are of critical importance in assessing your qualifications to lead the CIA. If it is not clear that you will honor the limits placed upon the Executive Branch by the Constitution, then the Senate should not confirm you to lead the CIA.

During your confirmation process in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), committee members have quite appropriately made requests similar to questions I raised in my previous letter to you-that you expound on your views on the limits of executive power in using lethal force against U.S. citizens, especially when operating on U.S. soil. In fact, the Chairman of the SSCI, Sen. Feinstein, specifically asked you in post-hearing questions for the record whether the Administration could carry out drone strikes inside the United States. In your response, you emphasized that the Administration “has not carried out” such strikes and “has no intention of doing so.” I do not find this response sufficient.

The question that I and many others have asked is not whether the Administration has or intends to carry out drone strikes inside the United States, but whether it believes it has the authority to do so. This is an important distinction that should not be ignored.

Just last week, President Obama also avoided this question when posed to him directly. Instead of addressing the question of whether the Administration could kill a U.S. citizen on American soil, he used a similar line that “there has never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil.” The evasive replies to this valid question from the Administration have only confused the issue further without getting us any closer to an actual answer.For that reason, I once again request you answer the following question: Do you believe that the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial?I believe the only acceptable answer to this is no.

Until you directly and clearly answer, I plan to use every procedural option at my disposal to delay your confirmation and bring added scrutiny to this issue and the Administration’s policies on the use of lethal force. The American people are rightfully concerned, and they deserve a frank and open discussion on these policies.

Sincerely,Rand Paul, M.D.United States Senator

Europe’s Battle over Symbols

Multiculturalism has created separate societies within the same territory

by Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt

Last summer, the director of Norway’s Trondheim Museum of Art, Pontus Kyander, decided that the museum should no longer fly the Norwegian flag. He argued that a nation’s flag is no longer a collective symbol that unites all citizens. On the contrary, it was divisive—rallying only ethnic Norwegians and Christians, while excluding the country’s newer inhabitants, who often profess a different faith. Kyander suggested that other symbols must be found, which could unite people across religions, ethnicities, cultures, and nationalities.

What if Kyander is right that no common cultural glue exists, not only in Norway, but also in other European countries—and they eventually break up into separate nations, no longer defined by territory, but by religious and moral values? In such split societies, the original populations would live with their customs and norms, separated from others—usually Muslim immigrants—who inhabit a world of their own. What symbol could incarnate the values that keep such distinct communities together? And what kind of community, if any, is left in a multiculturalist society that no longer shares culture, religion, nationality, or language?

The battle over symbols in Europe has intensified in recent years. Ethnically distinct groups increasingly make demands that they be able to practice their own customs and receive special dispensations for particular religious practices. Muslim organizations in Norway have gone so far as to demand special police uniforms for female officers; special opening hours for public swimming pools dedicated exclusively to Muslim women; special hours in fitness centers; special bathing curtains for Muslim boys to protect them from being exposed to other children; special diets in schools; special prayer rooms in airports; and interpretation facilities in all public institutions for those who don’t speak the nation’s official language. These demands are on the agenda in many European countries. Building on this self-inflicted separation from majority society, Muslims seek, through family arrangements, the introduction of spouses from their home countries. In this way, they establish a de facto separate nation within the new homeland. The effort leads to massive social problems, including unemployment and segregation in schools and other institutions—and it has prompted official pushback.

To much fanfare, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy prohibited the wearing of burqas in France in 2010. A ban on the use of religious symbols in schools and other public institutions was already introduced in 2004 under President Chirac. A year earlier, after a referendum, Switzerland introduced a prohibition against the construction of minarets. Many liberal Swiss citizens voted for the prohibition as a protest against what they saw as the Muslim minority’s illiberal practices. They sought to force a debate about taboo subjects—specifically, about what religious beliefs should receive special privileges in their democracy. But more generally, fearful of being called “Islamophobic,” European media shy away from discussing these issues, especially the bigotry of some Muslim norms—violent animosity against homosexuals, for instance, or the prohibition for Muslim youth to outmarry from their community.

Whether or not he realizes it, Pontus Kyander is opening up a new discussion about multiculturalism—the most radical attempt ever made to let people live in separate worlds within the same political territory. When an outside cultural group, like Muslims, seeks official sanction for its segregation from the mainstream, the clumsy counterreaction often advocates repression of Islamic cultural symbols. Pontus Kyander’s flag ban represents a strike against the counterstrikes. Political correctness makes honest discussion impossible, and thus both sides resort to censorship. One side bans minarets, the other prohibits the national flag, while neither dares address the real problem: whether Islamic dogmatism is compatible with human rights and democracy. And so Europe’s battle over symbols continues.

From War to Welfare

How taxes and entitlements begin with militarism

By IVAN ELAND

Conservatives should be leery of jumping into wars not only because American power may become overextended—especially in a time of fiscal crisis—but because war makes government expand rapidly at home, even in areas outside of national security. Although conservatives routinely criticize Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal for ushering in the era of big government, the deeper origins of the American welfare state lie in the warfare state.

During wars—especially big conflicts that require mobilization of the entire society to fight them—interest groups see the government doing things it didn’t do, or wasn’t allowed to do, previously. After the conflict, newly empowered bureaucrats and constituency groups benefiting from wartime expansion lobby to keep at least some of the new measures in place. The creation of the Food Administration during World War I, for example, ultimately led to the expectation in the farm sector that government regulation could prop up farmers’ incomes.

Even more fundamental, however, is the impact that war has on a government’s ability to finance its expansion at home. The potential for tax revenues determines how big government can grow and the number and size of programs that can be supported. (Even deficit financing is based on confidence in the government’s ability to raise funds through taxes.) And war is the force that has most often led to new and greater sources of nourishment for Leviathan. According W. Elliot Brownlee, author of Federal Taxation in America: A Short History, “moments of sweeping change in tax regimes have come invariably during the nation’s great emergencies—the constitutional crisis of the 1780s, the three major wars [the Civil War, World War I, and World War II], and the Great Depression.”

A case in point is the income tax, one of the most intrusive and economically irrational taxes a government can impose. One commissioner of Internal Revenue went so far as to say in 1871 that the income tax was “the one of all others most obnoxious to the genius of our people, being inquisitorial in its nature, and dragging into public view an exposition of the most private pecuniary affairs of the citizen.” Unlike sales or excise taxes, which inhibit consumption, the income tax penalizes economically productive work and the just rewards for it—thereby dragging down prosperity.

The federal income tax originated during the emergency of the Civil War, the nation’s first modern conflict. During that episode, spending by the federal government increased from less than 2 percent of the Gross National Product (GNP) to an average 15 percent of GNP. The Republican leadership admired how the British Liberals had used income taxes to finance the Crimean War instead of imposing higher taxes on property, and so the U.S. adopted the same device. By end of the Civil War, the wealthiest 10 percent of all Union households were paying income tax, which accounted for about 21 percent of federal tax revenues—with excise taxes comprising 50 percent and tariffs accounting for 29 percent.

The Civil War-era income tax was abolished in 1872, and the federal government returned to financing itself through its traditional antebellum means: excise taxes on particular goods and tariffs on imports (that is, two consumption taxes) and sales of public land. Yet the wartime policy had set a precedent, and after foreign trade (and thus tariff revenues) fell during the depression of the 1890s, the income tax was resurrected. Grover Cleveland, an otherwise very conservative president, accepted the income tax in exchange for lower tariff rates.

Drive Fast - Die Young

50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is About To Collapse

by Michael Snyder

The U.S. health care system is a giant money making scam that is designed to drain as much money as possible out of all of us before we die.  In the United States today, the health care industry is completely dominated by government bureaucrats, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations.  The pharmaceutical corporations spend billions of dollars to convince all of us to become dependent on their legal drugs, the health insurance companies make billions of dollars by providing as little health care as possible, and they both spend millions of dollars to make sure that our politicians in Washington D.C. keep the gravy train rolling.  Meanwhile, large numbers of doctors are going broke and patients are not getting the care that they need.

At this point, our health care system is a complete and total disaster.  Health care costs continue to go up rapidly, the level of care that we are receiving continues to go down, and every move that our politicians make just seems to make all of our health care problems even worse.  In America today, a single trip to the emergency room can easily cost you $100,000, and if you happen to get cancer you could end up with medical bills in excess of a million dollars.  Even if you do have health insurance, there are usually limits on your coverage, and the truth is that just a single major illness is often enough to push most American families into bankruptcy.

At the same time, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical corporations and health insurance company executives are absolutely swimming in huge mountains of cash.  Unfortunately, this gigantic money making scam has become so large that it threatens to collapse both the U.S. health care system and the entire U.S. economy.

The following are 50 signs that the U.S. health care system is a massive money making scam that is about to collapse...

#1 Medical bills have become so ridiculously large that virtually nobody can afford them.  Just check out the following short excerpt from a recent Time Magazine article.  One man in California that had been diagnosed with cancer ran up nearly a million dollars in hospital bills before he died...

By the time Steven D. died at his home in Northern California the following November, he had lived for an additional 11 months. And Alice had collected bills totaling $902,452. The family’s first bill — for $348,000 — which arrived when Steven got home from the Seton Medical Center in Daly City, Calif., was full of all the usual chargemaster profit grabs: $18 each for 88 diabetes-test strips that Amazon sells in boxes of 50 for $27.85; $24 each for 19 niacin pills that are sold in drugstores for about a nickel apiece. There were also four boxes of sterile gauze pads for $77 each. None of that was considered part of what was provided in return for Seton’s facility charge for the intensive-care unit for two days at $13,225 a day, 12 days in the critical unit at $7,315 a day and one day in a standard room (all of which totaled $120,116 over 15 days). There was also $20,886 for CT scans and $24,251 for lab work.

#2 This year the American people will spend approximately 2.8 trillion dollars on health care, and it is being projected that Americans will spend 4.5 trillion dollars on health care in 2019.

#3 The United States spends more on health care than Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia combined.

#4 If the U.S. health care system was a country, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet.

#5 Back in 1960, an average of $147 was spent per person on health care in the United States. By 2009, that number had skyrocketed to $8,086.

#6 Why does it cost so much to stay in a hospital today?  It just does not make sense.  Just check out these numbers...

In 1942, Christ Hospital, NJ charged $7 per day for a maternity room. Today it’s $1,360.

#7 Approximately 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are related to medical bills.

#8 One study discovered that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

#9 The U.S. health care industry has spent more than 5 billion dollars on lobbying our politicians in Washington D.C. since 1998.

#10 According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the U.S. is  currently experiencing a shortage of at least 13,000 doctors.  Unfortunately, that shortage is expected to grow to 130,000 doctors over the next 10 years.

#11 The state of Florida is already dealing with a very serious shortage of doctors...

Brace yourself for longer lines at the doctor's office.

Whether you're employed and insured, elderly and on Medicare, or poor and covered by Medicaid, the Florida Medical Association says there's a growing shortage of doctors — especially specialists — available to provide you with medical care.

And if the Florida Legislature goes along with Gov. Rick Scott's recommendation to offer Medicaid coverage to an additional 1 million Floridians — part of the Affordable Care Act that takes effect next January — the FMA says that shortage will only get worse.

#12 At this point, approximately 40 percent of all doctors in the United States are 55 years of age or older.

Putting the human rights industry on trial

An explosive clash over a new bill has exposed how hostile ‘human rights’ are to freedom

by Nick Cater 

It is time we re-examined the legacy of the late Thumpa Sheil, the rabbit farmer and senator whose unfashionable views on Apartheid, fearlessly expressed, made him the the shortest-serving minister in Australia. Two days of notoriety in 1977 overshadowed Glenister Fermoy Sheil’s other contributions to civic debate, which is a pity, because Thumpa was nobody’s bunny. Over the course of his 13 years in Australia’s federal parliament, he was a net contributor of common sense.

His finest hour came when Gough Whitlam’s Labor government tabled the Racial Discrimination Bill in 1975. Even as the conservative opposition was preparing to bring down the government by vetoing the budget, it was too nervous to back its instincts and block Australia’s first human-rights legislation.

It was left to Thumpa, and a handful of other crazy-brave senators, to raise questions about the bill’s questionable constitutional validity and its threat to free expression. Only Thumpa and his backbench chums were prepared to defend the reputation of the Australian people, impugned by the tabling of legislation designed to cleanse society of ingrained racism.

‘The passage of this bill would take some fundamental rights away from us, such as the right of free speech, free discussion and publication’, Thumpa told parliament during the bill’s second reading speech. ‘Far from eliminating racial discrimination by making it illegal, the bill will highlight the problems between the races and create an official race-relations industry with a staff of dedicated anti-racists earning their living by making the most of every complaint in much the same way as does the Race Relations Board in the United Kingdom.’

‘This bill’, Thumpa continued, ‘will create yet another large and expensive federal government department. It will be headed by a race-relations commissioner with the status of a High Court judge and with powers similar to those used in the Spanish Inquisition.’

Trust Me, This Time Is Different

Well, not really

by Simon Black

By 1789, a lot of French people were starving. Their economy had long since deteriorated into a weak, pitiful shell. Decades of unsustainable spending had left the French treasury depleted. The currency was being rapidly debased. Food was scarce, and expensive.

Perhaps most famously, though, the French monarchy was dangerously out of touch with reality, historically enshrined with the quip, “Let them eat cake.”

The Bourbon monarchy paid the price for it, eventually losing their heads in a 1793 execution.  But it took the French economy decades to finally recover.

Along the way, the government tried an experiment: issuing a form of paper money. It didn’t matter to the French politicians that every previous experiment with paper money in history had been an absolute disaster.

As French Assemblyman M. Matrineau put it in 1790, 

“Paper money under a despotism is dangerous. It favors corruption. But in a nation constitutionally governed, which itself takes care in the emission of its notes [and] determines their number and use, that danger no longer exists.”

Translation: This time is different. We’re different. We’re smarter. We won’t suffer the same fate. TRUST US.

Within a few years, hyperinflation had taken hold in France. A measure of flour that sold for two francs in 1790 was selling for 225 francs by 1795. Everything soared. Carriage hires. Butter. Sugar. Everything.

Naturally, the French government decided to fix this problem by printing even more money, doubling the money supply from 7 to 14 billion units in a six-month period.

When these measures also failed, the French government imposed every control in the book– price controls, capital controls, information controls, people controls. They confiscated lands, they filled the prisons, they waged genocide against their own people.

History shows there are always consequences to entrusting a paper money supply to a tiny handful of men. The French experiment is but one example. Our modern fiat experiment will be another.

Like the French, our politicians think this time is different. Our central bankers think they’re smarter. And they want us to trust them. After all, what could go wrong?

Ben Bernanke, a man who has expanded the Federal Reserve balance sheet by nearly 300% during his tenure as central banker, just wrapped up Congressional testimony downplaying the risks of his own money printing:

“We do not see the potential costs of the increased risk-taking in some financial markets as outweighing the benefits of promoting a stronger economic recovery…”

It’s also quite interesting that the Federal Reserve Chairman is discussing the ‘stronger’ economy, especially when by the government’s own numbers, US GDP contracted in the 4th quarter of 2012. Meanwhile the price of everything from food to fuel keeps getting higher.

Simultaneously, politicians in the US are racing to avoid imminent ‘sequestration’ budget cuts. They’ve created a problem caused by excess spending, and their solution is to ensure they can keep spending.

The French were in the same boat in the 18th century. During the time of Louis XV, no one could imagine how French society could possibly function if they cut the welfare system or defense budget. So they kept spending… kept going into debt… and kept debasing the currency.

We know what happened next.

The US already must borrow money just to pay interest on the money they’ve already borrowed. The political elite is dangerously out of touch. This time is not different. Assuming otherwise is really dangerous.

Ghost Cities

Victoria's Secrets No More

By mark steyn

In a dispute between Hamas and Fatah, it's tempting to take the old Kissinger line re the Iran–Iraq War: It's a shame they can't both lose. But, in fact, only one side wins: In Gaza, al-Aqsa University has just announced that female students will be required to attend in proper Muslim garb from head to toe — i.e., the full body bag. At present, some still wear headscarf, trousers, and a long coat, but that's too revealing for the new Gaza, so time to get fitted for your burka, niqab, or abaya. Al-Aqsa University is funded by the Palestinian Authority — i.e., Yasser Arafat's old Fatah — but it's controlled by Hamas. The higher-education minister, Ali Jarbawi, fumed impotently from Ramallah that the new dress code is illegal and must not be implemented, but the hard men on the ground in the Gaza Strip regard him as just another irrelevant member of a shriveling personality cult for a dead kleptocrat with a taste for Aryan rent boys.

And so it goes across the region: Regimes that represented nothing but their Swiss bank accounts have fallen, and in their stead arises the only alternative — an Islam purified by decades in opposition to the secularists and distilled to a scorching 175 proof. What else is left?

Some years ago, for a telly documentary, the BBC sent the novelist Lawrence Durrell back to Alexandria, the setting of his eponymous Alexandria Quartet, his "prose poem to one of the great capitals of the heart." Durrell had lived in Egypt during the war years, and did not enjoy his return. "The city seemed to him listless and spiritless, its harbor a mere cemetery, its famous cafés no longer twinkling with music and lights," wrote Michael Haag in Alexandria, City of Memory. "His favourite bookshop, Cité du Livre on the rue Fuad, had gone, and in others he found a lamentable stock."

Only on the Western fringe of the Ummah, in a few Moroccan redoubts, can you still discern the flickers of the way it was. Otherwise, to anyone who knew the "Muslim world" of the mid–20th century, today's Maghreb and Levant are dull places, drained of everything but Islam. And Durrell was returning in 1977: Another third of a century on, and Alexandria's stock is even more lamentable. Indeed, his cast of characters would be entirely bewildering to contemporary Alexandrians: an English writer (of course), a Greek good-time girl, a homosexual Jew, a wealthy Copt. In the old days, Alexandria bustled with Britons, Italians, and lots and lots of Greeks. All gone. So are the Jews, homo- and hetero-, from a community 50,000 strong down to some four dozen greybeards keeping their heads down. I got an e-mail a year or so back from the great-grandson of Joseph Cattaui, a Jew and Egypt's finance minister back in the Twenties: These days, the family lives in France — because it's not just that in Egypt a Jew can no longer be finance minister, but that in Egypt a Jew can no longer be. Now, in the absence of any other demographic groups to cleanse, it's the Copts' turn to head for the exits — as in Tripoli and Benghazi it's the blacks'. In the once-cosmopolitan cities of the Arab world, the minority communities are confined to the old graveyards, like the rubbish-strewn Jewish cemetery of broken headstones, squawking chickens, and hanging laundry I wandered through in Tangiers a while back. Islam is king on a field of corpses.

Nowadays, for the cosmopolitan café society Durrell enjoyed, you have to go to the cities of multicultural Europe, where "diversity" is not a quirk of fate but the cardinal virtue. At Westminster, the House of Commons has just voted in favor of same-sex marriage. Almost simultaneously, a group calling itself the Muslim London Patrol posted a YouTube video of its members abusing a young man for "walking in a Muslim area dressed like a fag." Another Londoner is made to empty his beer can: "No drink in this area." An insufficiently covered woman is warned, "This is not so Great Britain. This is a Muslim area."

The "moderate Muslim" Maajid Nawaz writes in the New York Times that his youthful European-born coreligionists, back from Islamic adventuring during the Arab Spring, are anxious to apply the lessons learned abroad. The Danish group Kaldet til Islam (Call to Islam) has introduced "Sharia-controlled zones" in which "morality patrols" of young bearded men crack down on underdressed and bibulous blondes. In the Balearic Islands, Muslims took against the local meter maids, and forced the government to withdraw them. In Dagenham, 20-year-old Naomi Oni, a black Londoner, suffered horrific burns after a woman in a niqab hurled acid in her face. She was returning home from her job at Victoria's Secret. Not secret enough.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that February 1 was the first World Hijab Day, in which non-Muslim women from 50 countries took a stand against "Islamophobia" and covered themselves to show how much they objected to society's prejudice against veiled women. From Gaza to Alexandria to Copenhagen to London, I don't think we'll have to worry about that. As Balthazar, Durrell's homosexual Jew, muses, "Narouz once said to me that he loved the desert because there 'the wind blew out one's footsteps like candle-flames.' So it seems to me does reality" — for the footsteps of Copts in Egypt, meter maids in Majorca, and Victoria's Secret clerks on the streets of the East End.

Bubble trouble

Is there an end to endless quantitative easing?

by DETLEV SCHLICHTER

The publication, earlier this week, of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee minutes of January 29-30 seemed to have a similar effect on equity markets as a call from room service to a Las Vegas hotel suite, informing the partying high-rollers that the hotel might be running out of Cristal Champagne.  Around the world, stocks sold off, and so did gold.

Here is the sentence that caused such consternation:

“However, many participants also expressed some concerns about potential costs and risks arising from further asset purchases (the Fed’s open-ended, $85 billion-a-month debt monetization program called ‘quantitative easing’, DS). Several participants discussed the possible complications that additional purchases could cause for the eventual withdrawal of policy accommodation, a few mentioned the prospect of inflationary risks, and some noted that further asset purchases could foster market behaviour that could undermine financial stability.”

Here is how one may freely translate it: “Guys, let’s face it: All this money printing is not without costs and risks. Three problems present themselves: 1) The bigger our balance sheet gets (currently, $3 trillion and counting), the more difficult it will be to ever load off some of these assets in the future. When we start liquidating, markets will panic. We might end up having absolutely no maneuvering space whatsoever. 2) All this money printing will one day feed into higher headline inflation that no statistical gimmickry will manage to hide. Then some folks may expect us to tighten policy, which we won’t be able to do because of 1). 3) We are persistently manipulating quite a few major asset markets here. Against this backdrop, market participants are not able to price risk properly. We are encouraging financial risk taking and the type of behaviour that has led to the financial crisis in the first place.”

All these points are, of course, valid and excellent reasons for stopping ‘quantitative easing’ right away. Readers of this site will not be surprised that I would advocate the immediate end to ‘quantitative easing’ and any other central bank measures to artificially ‘stimulate’ the economy. In fact, the whole idea that a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington scans lots of data plus some anecdotal ‘evidence’ every month (with the help of 200 or so economists) and then ‘sets’ interest rates, astutely manipulates bank refunding rates and cleverly guides various market prices so that the overall economy comes out creating more new jobs while the debasement of money unfolds at the officially sanctioned because allegedly harmless pace of 2 percent, must appear entirely preposterous to any student of capitalism. There should be no monetary policy in a free market just as there should be no policy of setting food prices, or wage rates, or of centrally adjusting the number of hours in a day.

Raise Middle Class Taxes Now!

Conservatives and liberals are both in the business of spreading illusions

by Mario Rizzo

I now favor expiration of the Bush era tax rates for everyone.  Why? Because the only way to curb spending in the long run is to make as large a number of Americans as possible truly feel the consequences of the expenditures they appear to desire.

If Americans saw the cost of the gigantic welfare state in their paychecks, they would, I am confident, radically re-evaluate the expenditure side of the situation we are in. Then when someone comes up with a genius idea for spending, the people would think: Is it worth higher taxes? Might I not spend it better on my family, my church – or even – on… champagne?

I realize that there are all sorts of imperfections in my idea. For example, if I am a large farmer with much to gain in subsidies, I can get the subsidies for a fraction of the cost in my taxes. Furthermore, the opportunity costs of government programs are not always correctly measured by their monetary costs. And so forth.

But there is a fundamental point here for liberals and conservatives alike: Let’s make the costs of our “generosity” clearer. Let us make the costs of fighting foreign wars more nearly explicit.

Neither conservatives nor liberals want this. They are each in the business of spreading illusions, albeit about different things.

Where is the honesty, where is the justice, in spending through trillion dollar deficits? 

Frankly, I have no patience with the Keynesians and fellow-travelers who conveniently argue that we cannot do this now because the economy is weak. It is never time for them. But if they insist, let us agree on a date certain for the change. The date they give us will reveal something about them.

But I have another idea in the interim.  Let us require, by law, that the taxpayer be simply informed on his pay stub of the amount of withholding that would occur if all government expenditures were fully funded by taxes.

Further, I have no patience with conservatives who know that, under the present system of political- incentives, there is little chance of meaningful expenditure reform. These incentives must be changed.

Finally, I have no patience with the” Ricardian equivalence” economists who argue that people rationally expect and incorporate in their decision-making the present value of all the future interest payments on the debt. In their minds, people already incorporate the costs of big expenditures into their economic decision-making.  I do not know first-hand just how good or how shaky the evidence is. 

I think almost all economists would say that it may work to explain some data but clearly does not work across the board. There is a subtle, but elementary problem here: Hardly anyone really believes that this cost is explicit in voters’ minds. It is just an instrumental assumption that may perhaps rationalize data of a certain sort.  

Let us perform an experiment. Let’s see if explicit taxes restrain government more than as if taxes. We can help settle a debate in macroeconomics as well as in political economy.

The most important argument against my proposal is that the relatively few innocent people who never wanted the state we have will get hit with higher taxes.  Yes, this is terrible. All I can say is that this proposal may be our last best hope for change. Forgive me. 

The True National Debt

You'd think this would be an easy question

By Robert Samuelson

Surely we know how much the government owes. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The true national debt could be triple the conventional estimate, anywhere from $11 trillion to $31 trillion by my reckoning. The differences mostly reflect explicit and implicit "off-budget" federal loan guarantees. In another economic downturn, these could result in large losses that would be brought "on budget" and worsen already huge deficits. That's the danger.

 My purpose is not to scare or sensationalize. It's simply to illuminate the problem. Broadly conceived, the national debt covers all debts for which the federal government assumes final responsibility. For politicians, the appeal of "off-budget" programs is that they allow the pleasure of spending without the pain of taxing. But they also create massive exposure for government.

Let's see why. Below are five estimates of the national debt. I compare each with our national income (gross domestic product), which is the economic base to service debts. In fiscal 2012, GDP was $15.5 trillion. Some economists say a debt ratio exceeding 90 percent slows economic growth. The United States already exceeds this threshold on four of my five measures.

(1) TREASURY DEBT HELD BY THE PUBLIC: $11.3 trillion, 73 percent of GDP for fiscal 2012. This is the most common measure of the national debt. Reflecting past annual deficits, it represents what must be borrowed through sales of Treasury bills, notes and bonds. In 2007, the figures were only $5 trillion and 36 percent of GDP. Today's levels -- as a share of GDP -- are the highest since World War II's immediate aftermath.

(2) GROSS FEDERAL DEBT: $16 trillion for 2012, 103 percent of GDP. This definition includes the "debt held by the public" (above) plus the Treasury securities issued to government trust funds, the largest being Social Security. Economists dislike this debt concept, because the trust-fund Treasury securities represent one part of the government owing another. It's comparable to lending yourself money. Congress could cancel these debts, though it almost certainly won't. The trust-account Treasury securities represent political commitments more than financial obligations.

(3) FEDERAL LOANS AND LOAN GUARANTEES: $2.9 trillion in 2011, 19 percent of GDP. The government makes or guarantees loans to college students, farmers, veterans, small businesses and others. The face value of most of these loans don't show up in the budget, but the government is on the hook if borrowers default. Adding this debt (19 percent of GDP) to gross federal debt produces a total debt ratio of 122 percent of GDP.

(4) FANNIE AND FREDDIE: $5.1 trillion, 33 percent of GDP. The government wasn't legally required to cover the debts of these "government sponsored enterprises" -- the major lenders to the housing market -- but almost everyone assumed it would if they got in trouble. That happened in September 2008. With Fannie and Freddie, the total debt ratio rises to 155 percent of GDP.

(5) THE FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION: $7.3 trillion, 47 percent of GDP. That's the insurance protection on bank accounts up to $250,000. Including the FDIC brings the total debt ratio grows to 202 percent of GDP.

So the most expansive measure of national debt ($31 trillion) is nearly three times the conventional estimate ($11 trillion). Almost all the items on my list -- whether Treasury bonds or bank deposits -- are ultimately legal obligations of the federal government. Note: They differ from Social Security and Medicare benefits, which are often called "debts." They aren't. Congress can alter the benefits anytime it chooses.

Now let me add some less alarmist qualifications.

First, some federally backed credit programs confer huge benefits. The FDIC's insurance prevented a depositors' panic in the financial crisis. It also has a $25 billion insurance fund to cover payments. Second, most federally backed credit goes to private borrowers who should be able to repay. Lax credit standards may produce some defaults, but in normal times they should be a tiny fraction of the total. Usually, these programs aren't a major drain on taxes. By contrast, borrowing to cover budget deficits is not automatically self-liquidating.

The rub is that we don't live in "normal times," as that term was used. Credit expanded on the upbeat belief that steady economic growth, marred only by modest recessions, would enable most debts to be serviced. The financial crisis and Great Recession demolished this permissive presumption. As the slump deepened, off-budget commitments became on-budget costs. Bank rescues swamped the FDIC's resources; mortgage losses impelled the Fannie and Freddie takeovers.

Something similar could happen again. A deep downturn could cause a cascade of defaults on "off-budget" guarantees that require on-budget bailouts. The lesson: We should reject new off-budget commitments and curb some that already exist.

Hollande in denial

France to pause austerity, cut spending next year instead

By Geert De Clercq

France will not introduce any further austerity measures this year but instead focus on spending cuts in 2014 to bring its deficit down to three percent of GDP that year, French President Francois Hollande said on Saturday.
The Europe-wide economic slowdown has forced France to delay its target of cutting the state deficit to three percent of GDP this year and the government has said it does not want to impose too much austerity on an economy near recession.
"It would be wrong to take measures that put another brake on consumption and investment," Hollande said at the annual Paris farm show on Saturday. "There is no need to add more austerity in 2013. A lot has already been asked of the taxpayer."
He added that while government efforts to reduce the deficit had until now consisted of more tax increases than spending cuts, that trend would be reversed in 2014.
Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said on Friday that France would ask its EU partners and the European Commission for an extra year to cut its public deficit below a targeted 3 percent of GDP, and would outline new savings measures soon.
Hollande said his government had brought down the deficit from 5.2 percent of GDP at the end of 2011 to 4.5 percent in 2012. The European Commission expects a French 2013 deficit of 3.7 percent of GDP.
"I admit it is not the three percent, but the movement is going in the right direction, as both the France national audit office and the European Commission recognize," he said.
Spending cuts in 2014 would be made in the state budget, local budgets and the social security budget, Hollande said, reiterating that the government maintained its longer-term goal of a zero deficit in 2017.
Holland said France would continue to try and boost growth through public investment, notably with funds gathered through tax-free savings books and by state investment companies.
But he was downbeat about jobs, saying that if economic growth in 2013 was not better than the 0.1 percent the European Commission expects, unemployment would rise further.
"But if forecasts for one or 1.2 percent growth in 2014 materialize, we will see new job creation again," he said.
He said his cabinet would focus on jobs for young people.
"When youth unemployment rates in some countries are above 50 percent, 25 percent in France, there is a risk of explosion, and I do not want to jeopardize national cohesion" he said.
He said his government expects a report on pension reform to be completed this summer.
That will be followed by talks between unions and employers with a view to implementing pension reforms in 2014.