End Game ...

Timothy Geithner says borrowing more from China to finance tax cuts for the most affluent Americans would be irresponsible.

The Treasury secretary has it backward. The real question is whether Beijing is willing to double down on a nation whose balance sheet makesItaly look good. Holding $1.2 trillion of U.S. debt is a fast-growing risk to China.

Traders have a theory about why the euro is reasonably stable amid a broadening debt crisis: Asian central banks are converting proceeds from recent intervention moves into other currencies. “Asian central banks” has become a euphemism for China, whose reserves now exceed $3 trillion.

China is making deals with nations such as Brazil to conduct trade in yuan. It’s also making noises about the Federal Reserve’s zero interest-rate policies and Congress playing games with the debt limit. If you were managing China’s reserves, how many more dollars would you really want in this environment?

Heck, China is even loading up on Spanish debt these days. “China’s open admission of continual purchases of European debt shows it doesn’t consider the U.S. any safer,” says Simon Grose-Hodge, head of investment strategy for South Asia at LGT Group in Singapore.

America’s Sugar Daddy

The risk that America’s sugar daddy is getting fed up hasn’t escaped U.S. officials. It’s probably no coincidence that Fed officials are talking about dismantling their quantitative- easing program, while Washington is homing in on the deficit.

This enough-is-enough dynamic was on display last week as the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the BRICS economies, met in the Chinese resort city of Sanya. Chinese President Hu Jintao called for reform of our international monetary and financial systems. A commentary by Zheng Xinli may offer a clearer view of what Hu meant.

Zheng, an executive vice president of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, wrote in China Daily that the “root cause” of the financial crisis was U.S. “long-term abuse” of sovereign credit. He called for the Group of 20 Nations to devise a multicurrency system.

The U.S. takes its AAA credit for granted, knowing that neither Moody’s Investors Service nor Standard & Poor’s has the bravado to downgrade it. Yet we may now be observing the flipside of the 1971 musing by Nixon-era Treasury Secretary John Connally that the dollar is our currency, but your problem. The dollar may soon be Washington’s problem.

Government Motors

By MARK MODICA

Fans of the federal govern ment's auto bailout will push the "GM comeback" story at this week's New York International Auto Show. Good luck with that one.

Taxpayers still own about 26 percent of GM, and it looks increasingly unlikely that they'll ever get their money back: The share price would have to rise to more than $54, and it's stuck in the low thirties. Here's why:

GM's management team lacks stability, with Dan Akerson being the fourth chief executive in less than two years (oh, and CFO Chris Liddell recently resigned).

One of Akerson's main focuses has been to ballyhoo the Chevy Volt, but Consumer Reports says GM's hybrid "just doesn't make a lot of sense." More important, it isn't selling -- only 1,210 Volts have sold this year through the end of March.

Akerson also likes to talk about China as GM's "crown jewel." Huh? The Chinese market is far less profitable than North America. Anyway, GM lost ground on both market share and profitability in China in the fourth quarter. (China first-quarter sales figures will be issued when GM reports earnings next month.)

GM's European division, Opel, continues to struggle. It's not clear when, if at all, Opel will get out of the red.

Adding insult to injury, Ford -- which avoided a federal bailout -- sold more vehicles than GM in March, for only the second time in the last 13 years. GM sales growth the month before was driven by incentives that were about $1,000 higher per vehicle than Ford and the industry average. This is an indication that Ford benefits from a stronger product lineup than GM.

'Consensus'

Josef Mengele would be delighted.

Children Given Drugs to Suspend Puberty to Facilitate Sex Change Operations

When you combine liberal social engineering with science, the result is horror. From Britain:

Children as young as 12 are to be allowed drugs to block puberty while they decide whether to have a sex change, it has been revealed.

The monthly injection suspends the onset of adulthood so that young people confused about their gender can be sure of any decision before they take on too many masculine or feminine features.

How do children become confused about their gender? Probably by attending moonbat-controlled schools, which the liberal ruling class has been using with alarming aggressiveness to brainwash impressionable kids into becoming perverts and freaks (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.).

One of the main effects of the drugs is to stunt the development of sexual organs so less surgery will be required if someone chooses to permanently change their gender at a later date. …

Boys will be prevented from developing male traits such as facial hair, deeper voices and Adam's apples and girls will not develop breasts or menstruate.

Celebrating Vandalism

By Heather Mac Donald

Drive behind the Geffen Contemporary, an art museum in downtown Los Angeles, and you will notice that it has painted over the graffiti scrawled on its back wall. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be surprising; the Geffen’s neighbors also maintain constant vigilance against graffiti vandalism. But beginning in April, the Geffen—a satellite of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art—will host what MOCA proudly bills as America’s first major museum survey of “street art,” a euphemism for graffiti. Graffiti, it turns out, is something that MOCA celebrates only on other people’s property, not on its own.

MOCA’s exhibit, Art in the Streets, is the inaugural show of its new director, Jeffrey Deitch, a former New York gallery owner and art agent. Deitch’s now-shuttered Soho gallery showcased vandal-anarchist wannabes whose performance pieces and installations purported to strike a blow against establishment values and capitalism, even as Deitch himself made millions serving art collectors whose fortunes rested on capitalism and its underpinning in bourgeois values. MOCA’s show (which will also survey skateboard culture) raises such inconsistencies to a new level of shamelessness. Not only would MOCA never tolerate uninvited graffiti on its walls (indeed, it doesn’t even permit visitors to use a pen for note-taking within its walls, an affectation unknown in most of the world’s greatest museums); none of its trustees would allow their Westside mansions or offices to be adorned with graffiti, either.

Even this two-facedness pales beside the hypocrisy of the graffiti vandals themselves, who wage war on property rights until presented with the opportunity to sell their work or license it to a corporation. At that point, they grab all the profits they can stuff into their bank accounts. Lost in this antibourgeois posturing is the likely result of the museum’s graffiti glorification: a renewed commitment to graffiti by Los Angeles’s ghetto youth, who will learn that the city’s power class views graffiti not as a crime but as art worthy of curation. The victims will be the law-abiding residents of the city’s most graffiti-afflicted neighborhoods and, for those who care, the vandals themselves.

Euthanasia, PG-13

By Hal G.P. Colebatch

As both a science-fiction author and teacher of political science, I have read a good deal of dystopian literature and political horror-stories about the future as nightmare, not to mention the holocausts which have existed not in imagination but reality.

What they have in common is a vision of a society in which individual human life has no value. Nor, of course, does individual conscience or belief.

I have previously described Britain today as showing features of "soft totalitarianism." Recent news items suggest something a good deal nastier may be on the way unless there is a widespread moral regeneration.

One of the most shocking developments has been a video shown to 14-year-old children featuring assisted suicide campaigner Dr. Philip Nitschke, whose extremist attitudes have been condemned even by other pro-euthanasia groups.

Nitschke is shown on the video demonstrating a machine that delivers lethal injections. The film is already being shown to pupils as young as 14 in schools across the country. A program is also being made by the BBC.

There is footage of Nitschke giving workshops on assisted suicide methods. Also appearing in the program is one Michael Irwin, a former doctor and euthanasia campaigner who was struck off the medical register six years ago for attempting to assist a suicide.

The video, being shown as the BBC -- now dominated by the hard left -- is said to encourage assisted suicide. It actually films a man killing himself at the suicide Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. Writer Terry Pratchett, an outspoken advocate of euthanasia, presents the documentary, which is due to be broadcast on BBC2 this summer.

The Education Rip-off

By Alan Caruba

It has taken a severe recession, combined with rising costs for gas and the weekly grocery list, for Americans to begin to seriously question where their tax dollars are going and why. As individuals, as families, and communities, we can no longer be indifferent or profligate.
The events in Wisconsin where the teacher’s union led to protests against collective bargaining has made many Americans begin to question all those TV ads about what a great job teachers are doing and the reassuring message that it’s all about the kids. No, it’s all about salaries, health benefits, and pensions that far exceed those in the private sector.
A recent Policy Analysis (No. 662) published by the Cato Institute on March 10th and written by Adam Schaeffer is titled “They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools.” 

Earth Day and environmental insanity

Anyone who has been paying any attention to the environmental movement has got to have concluded it is insane. 

• While the United States stands poised on defaulting on its ever-growing debt—the highest in the nation's history; 

• While wars and insurrections are waged in the Middle East, across northern Africa, and in the Ivory Coast; 

• While Japan struggles to deal with a major earthquake and nuclear plant meltdown; 

• While Islam wages terrorism worldwide, and 

• While European nations attempt to deal with their own financial crisis, the environmentalists—Greens—engage in the most absurd frauds and nonsense since the Dark Ages.

In news from the United Nations—a misnomer if ever there was one—Bolivia is proposing a UN treaty that will give "Mother Earth" the same rights as accorded to human beings. It has just passed a domestic law that grants these rights to bugs, trees, and all other natural things in its own country. 

Rothbard on Greenspan (1987)

Yup, Alan Greenspan, Mr. Free Market, Mr. Small Government, this morning on Meet the Press said that the Bush tax cuts must expire. He also said that the U.S. government should not be allowed to default on its debt. And, he also on technical grounds questioned why there should be a debt limit at all.

This guy is as anti-big government as Mao. How this guy is even allowed on television after it is clear that his low interest rate policy, when he was Fed chairman, was responsible for the real estate crisis is nothing but a testament to how mainstream media will support anyone who continues to advance the big government cause.

Murray Rothbard nailed Greenspan decades ago. In 1987 Rothbard wrote:

The astute observer might feel that anyone accorded such unanimous applause from the Establishment couldn't be all good, and in this case he would be right on the mark...

Greenspan's real qualification is that he can be trusted never to rock the establishment's boat. He has long positioned himself in the very middle of the economic spectrum. He is, like most other long-time Republican economists, a conservative Keynesian, which in these days is almost indistinguishable from the liberal Keynesians in the Democratic camp. In fact, his views are virtually the same as Paul Volcker, also a conservative Keynesian. Which means that he wants moderate deficits and tax increases, and will loudly worry about inflation as he pours on increases in the money supply. 

Conventional Education Will Go the Way of Farming

by Doug French
Food is vital for survival, yet less than 2 percent of America's population works in agriculture. That's a big change from 100 years ago, when over 40 percent of the workforce was toiling away on the farm. If I had been born at the start of the 20th century in Kansas, rather than at the end of the 1950s, no doubt my life would have been spent on the farm.

Agriculture was labor-intensive then, requiring plenty of strong backs, human and animal alike. In addition to nearly half the human workforce, 22 million animals worked the fields. Now 5 million tractors and a dazzling array of farm implements do the work of thousands. Farms have become more productive and specialized. And the number of farms has plunged, while the average-sized farm has quadrupled.

According to the USDA's website, in 1945 it took 14 labor hours to produce 100 bushels of corn on two acres. By 1987, it only took 3 labor hours and one acre to produce the same amount. Now, it takes less than an acre.

Euro vs. Invasion of the Zombie Banks

by Tyler Cowen
Is a euro held in an Irish bank in Dublin, or in a Portuguese bank in Lisbon, as sound and secure as a euro in a German bank in Berlin? That apparently simple question holds the key to understanding why the euro zone may splinter and bring a new financial crisis. 

In Ireland, there has been a “silent bank run” on financial institutions for much of the last year. In February, for instance, Irish private sector deposits dropped at an annual rate of 9.8 percent. That’s largely because some depositors doubt the commitment of the Irish government to the euro. They fear that they will wake up one morning to frozen bank accounts, followed by the conversion of their euro deposits into a lesser-valued new Irish currency. Pre-emptively, the depositors send their money outside Ireland, where it still represents safe euros or perhaps sterling, accessible by bank transfers and A.T.M. cards.

Excuse me sir, that cockroach has rights ...

by Rex Murphy 

Does environmentalism rot the mind? I am beginning to believe that the more feverish and agitated greens are suffering from a morbid condition. There is, it appears, no intellectual folly to which they are immune, no frenzied leap off the pier of reason they will not joyfully execute, in their reliably bizarre efforts to horrify the rest of us into supporting their cause.

It was only a few months ago that I read an endearing article entitled “Was Genghis Khan history’s greenest conqueror?” on something called The Mother Nature Network. The article noted the “widespread return of forests after a period of massive depopulation,” which arose, of course, thanks to Genghis Khan’s hordes slaughtering 40-million people. An upside to ethnic cleansing?

And just this week, Bolivia’s president, Eva Morales, hailed national legislation that would enshrine the “rights of Mother Nature” — human rights extended to earth itself. Pause to marvel at the powers of the Bolivian legislature. May we note that Morales is a James Cameron fan? I think we may.

Vice-President Alvaro García Linera describes the country’s new legislation (“The Law of Mother Earth”) as making “world history. Earth is the mother of all.” He also gushed that the law “establishes a new relationship between man and nature.”

Ireland

In 2000, suddenly among the richest people in Europe, the Irish decided to buy their country—from one another. After which their banks and government really screwed them. 

by Michael Lewis

When I flew to Dublin in early November, the Irish government was busy helping the Irish people come to terms with their loss. It had been two years since a handful of Irish politicians and bankers decided to guarantee all the debts of the country’s biggest banks, but the people were only now getting their minds around what that meant for them. The numbers were breathtaking. A single bank, Anglo Irish, which, two years before, the Irish government had claimed was merely suffering from a “liquidity problem,” faced losses of up to 34 billion euros. To get some sense of how “34 billion euros” sounds to Irish ears, an American thinking in dollars needs to multiply it by roughly one hundred: $3.4 trillion. And that was for a single bank. As the sum total of loans made by Anglo Irish, most of it to Irish property developers, was only 72 billion euros, the bank had lost nearly half of every dollar it invested.

The two other big Irish banks, Bank of Ireland and, especially, Allied Irish Banks (A.I.B.), remained Ireland’s dirty little secrets. Both older than Ireland itself (the Bank of Ireland was founded back in 1783; A.I.B. is made up of three banks founded in the 19th century), both were now also obviously bust. The Irish government owned big chunks of the two ancient banks but revealed less about them. As they had lent vast sums not only to Irish property developers but also to Irish homebuyers, their losses were also obviously vast—and similar in spirit to the losses at the upstart Anglo Irish.

third anniversary of the creation of European Soviet Union

Now all of Europe is governed by a Kremlin
by Bruno Waterfield 


Behind closed doors, in conditions of utmost secrecy, two of the highest jobs in European public office were stitched up on the basis of lowest-common-denominator expediency rather than merit. The decision, taken in a conclave of European leaders , marks an important stage in the evolution of institutions, a statecraft and political method that have entirely dispensed with any reference or accountability to the public.

Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium’s prime minister, and Lady Ashton, a serial appointee from the UK who has never been elected to public office, embody the spirit of an inward-looking and defensive European political elite that has given up leading or representing their own societies on either the domestic or world stage. They are both anti-political leaders, in the sense that neither has earned their high public offices through democratic struggle. In fact, quite the opposite is the case. Van Rompuy – an eccentric haiku-writing but highly traditionalist Christian Democrat – is a shrewd operator who disguises his ruthlessness and steady political climb behind a quirky literary persona and dishonest protestations that he never wanted to be either Belgium’s prime minister or the EU’s new president in the first place (1). He became prime minister not as the result of a general election in Belgium but by royal appointment by King Albert II, after a financial and judicial scandal had caused the collapse of Yves Leterme’s resented government (he is now tipped to come back as Van Rompuy’s replacement).Van Rompuy’s low-key European federalism, a default political position in Belgium’s elite, has quickly got the chauvinistic British eurosceptic tabloids fizzing and frothing (2). But it is not his mild dreams of a European ‘superstate’ that are the problem. Six months before becoming Belgium’s prime minister, in April 2008, he abused his position as speaker of the Belgian parliament to cancel a politically inconvenient debate (3). Opposition MPs have alleged that to make doubly sure that the debate would be silenced he had officials change the locks on the plenary chamber so deputies could not get into their own parliament. The tactic was described as a ‘coup d’etat’. His humbug protests that leadership has been thrust upon him, and his dubious democratic pedigree, mark him out as the kind of anti-political leader that is well qualified for the EU’s highest office.

There is no such thing as a 'free lunch'

By THEODORE DALRYMPLE

All attempts to reduce bureaucracy increase it, and the same goes for cost. Such, at any rate, has been my experience of the British health care system—its famed, or infamous, National Health Service.

Thus, I could not but smile a little wanly when President Barack Obama said this week that he hoped an increase in the use of generic drugs, together with an expert commission to examine the cost-effectiveness of medical treatments, would make a significant impact on the vast budget deficit of the United States. We in Britain have been there and we have done that, and our health-care costs doubled, perhaps not as a result, but certainly at the same time.
The best that might be said for these measures is that the increase in health-care costs was lower than it might otherwise have been. That is certainly not enough to save a country from a financial apocalypse, or even enough to be a major contribution to its salvation.
In Britain we have been prescribing generics for years; I cannot remember a time when I personally did not. Our National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE, a typically Blairite acronym) has done cost-benefit analyses of drugs and procedures, often very sensibly, for years. But despite its best efforts, our system has been highly inventive in finding other ways of wasting immense quantities of public money.

... the men who risked all in the dark days of 1961

Sunday we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the saddest day in Cuban history, the invasion at the Bay of Pigs. It should be a day of reflection for Cubans on both shores. The fighting lasted for several days — Cubans fought and killed one another while the two super powers stood on the sidelines and observed. During the few bloody days of combat all Cubans fought with conviction and honor. But one side (Brigade 2506) was under-equipped, poorly advised and, worst of all, betrayed.

Over the last few weeks I’ve had an opportunity to speak to veterans of those dark days of April, 1961. I have always been amazed by the humility with which many of the Brigade members tell their stories. In fact, there are many Brigade 2506 members in the community, and you would never know that half a century ago they were abandoned in Cuba by the Kennedy administration, left to fend for themselves on a beachhead. They are our grandfathers, neighbors, friends and, sometimes, few know of their plight.

Greece, the last bastion of Socialism

‘Last Congress’ for Cuba’s old guard

BY ANDY GOMEZ

Among the significant changes taking place in Cuba is an unfolding and most unusual pattern where criticism and dissent within the political class at large, intellectuals, and academia is more visible today than ever before.

At the same time, as an initiative of the Cuban government, a political dialogue started with the Catholic church that resulted in the release of scores of political prisoners, in particular those known as the “75 Group,” while dissident groups continue to conduct their activities in what could be described as a tug-of-war relationship with Cuban authorities. In addition, the Catholic Church has been granted permission by the government to establish the first seminary since the start of the revolution and continue its humanitarian aid through Caritas. Meanwhile, the US-Cuba conflict remains very much the same, the main issues being the incarceration of Alan Gross in Cuba, the so-called “Cuban Five” in U.S. jails, and the U.S. trade embargo. Further U.S. concessions are unlikely until Cuba makes the next move.

According to reports out of Havana, the Cuban economy is transforming from an almost 100-percent state economy to a clearly defined mixed, market, socialist economy. By 2015, the Cuban government expects that at least 1.8 million people and their families will represent a huge micro-economy of small businesses, cooperative businesses, and self employed, in the urban areas while most of the land in rural areas from which state farms have disappeared almost entirely will be in the hands of private farmers, finqueros and private cooperatives.

Progressive's Dream Pipe

An open mike caught President Obama in Chicago speaking to donors during a fund raiser, when he didn't realize the microphone was live.

          I found these comments that he made fascinating:


''I had the emir of Qatar come by the Oval Office today. Pretty influential guy. He is a big booster, big promoter of democracy all throughout the Middle East. Reform, reform, reform. ... Now he himself is not reforming significantly. There's no big move toward democracy in Qatar. But you know part of the reason is that the per capita income of Qatar is $145,000 a year. That will dampen a lot of conflict. I make this point only because if there is opportunity, if people feel their lives can get better, then a lot of these problems get solved.''

Is it the beginning of the end of the FED

Federal Reserve Gave, as Part of Bailout, Hundreds of Millions to the Wives of Wall Street Bigwigs

This one is totally insane. Thank heavens Ron Paul has put pressure on the Fed, trying to find out what it is up to. Rolling Stone magazine is out with a story so hot, it is going to rock louder than any music band the mag has ever covered. RS reports:

Now, following an act of Congress that has forced the Fed to open its books from the bailout era, this unofficial budget is for the first time becoming at least partially a matter of public record. Staffers in the Senate and the House, whose queries about Fed spending have been rebuffed for nearly a century, are now poring over 21,000 transactions and discovering a host of outrages and lunacies in the "other" budget. It is as though someone sat down and made a list of every individual on earth who actually did not need emergency financial assistance from the United States government, and then handed them the keys to the public treasure. The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. "Our jaws are literally dropping as we're reading this," says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "Every one of these transactions is outrageous."

Child molesting

Homosexual Brainwashing in Elementary School

With these videos I rest my case for homeschooling:

Cambridge Friends School is a Quaker school, but kids can be subjected to the same perverse social engineering at taxpayer expense:

What possible benevolent purpose could motivate brainwashing small children into accepting as normal a potentially lethal form of sexual depravity?

Art forms

The Spook Racket

Magicians Todd Robbins and Teller take on the supernatural in their bloody off-Broadway sensation Play Dead

Damon W. Root | April 5, 2011

On July 13, 1930, an audience of nearly 6,000 crowded London’s Royal Albert Hall to spend a few hours with the ghost of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The world-famous creator of the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, Doyle had also been an outspoken believer in ghosts, Ouija boards, ectoplasm, and other dubious forms of paranormal activity. “That I am perfectly certain is surely demonstrated by the mere fact that I have abandoned my congenital and lucrative work, left my home for long periods of time, and subjected myself to all sorts of inconveniences, losses, and even insults, in order to get the facts home to the people,” Doyle wrote in his 1924 autobiography Memories and Adventures. Who better to deliver a public message from beyond the grave?

So joining Doyle’s widow and assorted relatives onstage was the medium Estelle Roberts, who previously claimed to have made contact with the late King George of Greece. “He is here!” Roberts finally shouted to the restless crowd waiting for a sign from the renowned author. “He is here!” Lady Arthur Conan Doyle later said she was convinced, though a reporter covering the event for theSaturday Review wasn’t so sure. “I should like to have heard Sherlock Holmes examining the medium at Albert Hall last Sunday,” he wrote, “for the methods that were employed were hardly reminiscent of Baker Street.”

Wrong by design

''There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong''. –H. L. Mencken