All euros are not (created) equal

The Eurozone X-Factor

By Finance Addict

Whatever one thinks about Lord Wolfson’s euro-skeptical meddling, it certainly has been entertaining. The British baron’s offer of a £250,000 prize for the best ideas to deal with a possible breakup of the eurozone has brought all sorts of people out of the woodwork. (Including this precocious 11-year old.) But one of the most fascinating ideas on the shortlist has come from Neil Record — although I’m not sure that my takeaway was his main intent.

Suppose that a country does leave the eurozone — this was the starting premise of all the responses to Wolfson’s essay contest. Greece, as the weakest link, seems the most likely candidate. But on the other hand it’s possible that one of the strongest countries chooses to go its own way. Of course we’re talking about Germany. Whether it remains in the euro or decides to take its chances by introducing a new Deutschemark, the fact is that in the case of a euro breakup, Germany is where it’s at. Its fiscal position and reputation for prudence is among the strongest of all developed countries. If it were on its own then its currency would rise to reflect this. So, to the extent that you can choose, you will want to get your banknotes from Berlin.

Central Planning for Dummies

The US government prepares for economic collapse

By Mike Krieger

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations.

Each central bank... sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.

- Carroll Quigley (Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown) from his 1964" book Tragedy and Hope

Crime Once Exposed Has no Refuge but in Audacity.

- Tacitus

Euramerica

A Safety-First Economy

by Anthony de Jasay

The thirty years from the end of the war to the mid-1970s were the Glorious Thirties of Europe on the nicer side of the Iron Curtain. Spurred on by a sense of dire necessity, people went hard at work to clear up the rubble, repair the damage, and get over as fast as they could the grim phase of post-war reconstruction. In 1948, the Marshall Plan came in to fill up empty economies with working capital, and Western Germany amazed all by taking off into the Wirtschaftswunder. Robust economic growth, exceptional by historical standards, became a commonplace.

Millions Cried… No One Listened…

The forgotten people

By Alfred de Zayas

Historical Theses

1. Mass expulsion, deportation for purposes of slave labour and genocide have existed since biblical times.

2. During the Second World War Nazi demographic manipulation was done for purposes of gaining “Lebensraum” or vital space. The German approach to “Lebensraum” had its parallels in history, including the policy of Spanish “christianization” of Central and South America, the British and French “colonization” of North America, and the American policy of “manifest destiny” pursuant to which the autochthonous population of North America was decimated and driven out of historical lands.

Emulating Barbarism

Blasphemy by any other name

Hamza Kashgari

By Barbara Kay  

A few months ago, a young Saudi man, Hamza Kashgari, expressed his views on the prophet Mohammed in a Tweet: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you. I will not pray for you.” A Facebook group of 20,000 soon demanded his execution for apostasy under sharia law. He is imprisoned awaiting trial and possible execution.

Execution for religious blasphemy? How primitive. In Canada, we merely have blasphemers called up before human rights commissions, to be humiliated and occasionally bankrupted.

Human beings are not random events

The Invincible Dogma

By Thomas Sowell

A long-standing legal charade was played out again recently, when Federal Express paid $3 million to settle an employment discrimination case brought by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Federal Express was accused of both racial discrimination and sex discrimination. FedEx denied it.

Why then did they pay the $3 million? Because it can cost a lot more than $3 million to fight a discrimination case. Years ago, the Sears department store chain spent $20 million fighting a sex discrimination charge that took 15 years to make its way through the legal labyrinth. In the end, Sears won — if spending $20 million and getting nothing in return can be called winning.

Open Letter to Ben Bernanke

Dear Ben

You have publicly gone on record with some off-the-wall assertions about the gold standard.  What made you think you could get away with it?  Your best strategy would have been to ignore gold.  Although I concede that with the endgame of the regime of irredeemable paper money near, you might not be able to pretend that people aren’t talking and thinking about gold.  You can’t win, Ben.  In this letter I will address your claims and explain your errors so that the whole world can see them, even if you cannot.

"Personal" Nuclear Reactors to be on Sale Within 5 Years

Hyperion, Toshiba, others, race to produce "personal" nuclear power

by Michael Asher

Using technology licensed from the U.S. government, an Arizona-based company is planning to bring a new generation of miniature nuclear reactors to market. The Hyperion Hydride Reactor is not much larger than a hot tub, is totally sealed and self-operating, has no moving parts and, beyond refueling, requires no maintenance of any sort. The reactor will output 27MW, enough to power a community of 20,000 homes, says Hyperion Energy, makers of the new reactor. The first models will roll off the assembly line in five years.

Unlike conventional nuclear reactors, the Hyperion design uses no water for cooling, meaning it can be sited anywhere. It is designed to be covered in concrete and then buried while in operation, to reduce the risk of tampering. The reactor must be excavated every 7-10 years for refueling, but can otherwise be left entirely undisturbed.

"Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world", says Hyperion CEO John Deal.

Children need education, not qualifications

"Making good progress towards the next level"

Schooling has a crucial, humanist task: to introduce pupils to the accumulated learning of humanity.

by Alka Sehgal Cuthbert 

Every summer - during a notoriously slow period for news in Britain - we are invariably treated to a flurry of media headlines either celebrating or denigrating the latest school exam results. This is often accompanied by a ‘debate’ on whether standards have gone up, down or stagnated. This, in turn, is followed closely by a discussion on who’s to blame or what current educational fad can be extolled for having worked wonders.

The List

No country for anyone

by Brian Rogers

If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I’d worked for all my life.
And I had to start again,
with just my children and my wife.

I’d thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
‘ Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can’t take that away.

   - Proud To Be An American, Lee Greenwood

America, F*CK YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother f*cking day yeah,
America, F*CK YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now, 
it’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow

F*CK YEAH!

McDonalds, F*CK YEAH!
Wal-Mart, F*CK YEAH!
The Gap, F*CK YEAH!
Baseball, F*CK YEAH!
NFL, F*CK, YEAH!
Rock and roll, F*CK YEAH!
The Internet, F*CK YEAH!
Slavery, F*CK YEAH!

   - America, F*ck Yeah, 
   Trey Parker (of South Park)

Coffee Shop at Union Square

I was out having drinks the other night with brilliant financial mind and Wall Street veteran Paulo Pereira.  Paulo is a Brazilian-American who's worked on both the buy and sell-side for years and has a long track record covering many of the large natural resource exporting countries.  A Yale grad with a degree in music, Paulo brings a unique perspective to finance and economics to say the least.

A different GDP yardstick

Worth a thousand words

The Ugly Truth For Northern Europeans

One way or another wealth will be transferred from the north to the south.

As Europe's exuberance from the LTROs fades (with Italian banks now negative YTD, Sovereigns wider than LTRO2 levels, and financials desparately divided by the LTRO Stigma) Jefferies David Zervos uncovers the sad reality that faces peripheral creditors and Northern Europeans - as we noted a month ago here. The 'success' of the LTRO monetization scheme (as opposed to EFSF/ESM transfer dabacles) is what enabled the Greek restructuring, and as Zervos notes, the losses that the big boys (Spain and Italy) need to take will not be taken via a haircut but a monetization as the number 1 rule is we must always assume that losses will be taken in a way that protects the large northern banks, northern jobs and most importantly Northern politicians. If the loss realization is not managed correctly (and losses there will be), then the ugly truth will escape but the North's large-scale vendor-financing scheme with the periphery will have to continue - even in the knoweldge that the debt will never get paid back.

The income and savings of Northern workers must be ploughed (directly or indirectly) into the rest-of-Europe or the entire structure becomes insolvent and the breaking of that social contract (that they will be looked after when they are old) will inevitably lead to revolt and nasty nationalist political forces being unleashed. The hope to avoid this is the 'wealth illusion' as the workers of the north can never be allowed to realize they have only 50% of their worth in reality. Ireland will be next on the loss-realization-monetization path but as we move from relatively small and containable sovereigns to the big-boys, the idea that Spain and Italy will roll over and accept a decade of austerity in exchange for a haircut is pure folly. These countries hold too much clout in the Eurozone and their threat of exit is a material threat to the northern jobs and hence northern politicians. 

Cheer Up!

17 18 reasons it's a great time to be alive

By Matt Ridley

“The world has never been a better place to live in,” says science writer Matt Ridley, “and it will keep on getting better.” Today, in a world gripped by global economic crisis and afflicted with poverty, disease, and war, them’s fightin’ words in some quarters. Ridley’s critics have called him a “denialist” and “shameful” and have accused him of “playing fast and loose with the truth” for his views on climate change and the free market.

Yet Ridley, 54, author most recently of The Rational Optimist, sticks to his guns. “It is not insane to believe in a happy future for people and the planet,” he says. Ridley, who’s been a foreign correspondent, a zoologist, an economist, and a financier, brings a broad perspective to his sunny outlook. “People say I’m bonkers to claim the world will go on getting better, yet I can’t stop myself,” he says. Read on to see how Ridley makes his case. Brilliant or bonkers? You decide.

1. We’re better off now

Compared with 50 years ago, when I was just four years old, the average human now earns nearly three times as much money (corrected for inflation), eats one third more calories, buries two thirds fewer children, and can expect to live one third longer. In fact, it’s hard to find any region of the world that’s worse off now than it was then, even though the global population has more than doubled over that period.

Israel's New Strategic Environment

Israel's national security interests outstrip its national resources

By George Friedman

Israel is now entering its third strategic environment. The constant threat of state-on-state war defined the first, which lasted from the founding of the Jewish state until its peace treaty with Egypt. A secure periphery defined the second, which lasted until recently and focused on the Palestinian issue, Lebanon and the rise of radical Sunni Islamists. The rise of Iran as a regional power and the need to build international coalitions to contain it define the third.

The $15 Trillion Dollar Party

The party is almost over, so enjoy yourselves while you can

By Giordano Bruno

If you knew that you could live in luxury for the rest of your life but that by doing so it would absolutely destroy the future for your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren would you do it? Well, that is exactly what we are doing as a nation. Over the past several decades, we have stolen 15 trillion dollars from future generations so that we could enjoy a dramatically inflated level of prosperity. Our 15 trillion dollar party has been a lot of fun, but what we have done to our children and our grandchildren has been beyond criminal. We ran up the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the planet and we are sticking them with the bill. Sadly, both political parties have been responsible for the big spending that has been going on. Both Democrats and Republicans have run up huge budget deficits when in power. But instead of learning the hard lessons of the past, both political parties continue to vote for even more debt. They would rather continue to steal trillions of dollars from future generations than have the party end and have to face the consequences.

Sleight of Hand

Put Some Limits in Place on Federal Power Now

by Richard A. Epstein

Professor Erwin Chemerinsky pushes all the right buttons for the government in making out the claim that the imposition of the individual mandate is in his words "clearly constitutional" under today's law. I have written here and here that the current Commerce Clause jurisprudence of the Supreme Court is wholly inconsistent with the original vision of the Constitution as giving the federal government few and enumerated powers.

With ObamaCare, the Congress has stretched that overbroad power even further, by allowing the government to impose taxes on individuals who have not engaged in any form of activity at all. Chemerinsky takes the view that this benign intervention is intended to make sure that individuals who will always be in the need of health care will be prevented from free riding on the system by showing up without insurance coverage or cash at an emergency room.

Shortcuts to Prosperity

There Is No Shortcut, But All We Have Are Shortcuts

Cheating on the final exam to get an A doesn't mean you mastered the subject. Yet cheating is all we have in America because sacrifice and adult trade-offs are too painful.

We all know there is no shortcut to anything worth having--mastery, security, wealth-- yet all we have in America is another useless, doomed shortcut. Insolvency is scale-invariant, meaning that being unable to live within your means leads to insolvency for households, towns, corporations, states and national governments.

There is no shortcut to living within one's means. Expenses must align with revenues or the debt taken on to fill the gap will eventually bankrupt the entity--even an Empire.

Cry for Argentina

The Two Women that Are about to Destroy Argentina

Two women have taken control of Argentina's central bank and are about to use it as if they are on a weekend shopping spree.

Mary Anastasia O'Grady reports:

Argentina's Franken-state stormed the central bank last month, destroying the last vestiges of independence. Given the hyperinflationary history of that nation, it is worth asking why Argentines have allowed this to happen.

The pathology of a government power grab is not hard to discern. The state creates the conditions for crisis. Crisis strikes. Politicians seize extraordinary powers. Crisis passes. Left behind is a popular perception that complete annihilation was averted due to government genius. Politicians are permitted to expand their power...

Backing the Wrong Horse

Third World Poor Turn to Private Education

By James Tooley 

 Last fall the High-Level Plenary Meet­ing of the UN General Assembly brought together more than 170 heads of state—“the largest gathering of world leaders in his­tory”—to review progress toward the Millennium Devel­opment Goals. It was, we were told, “a once-in-a-gen­eration opportunity to take bold decisions,” a “defining moment in history” when “we must be ambitious.”

One of the internation­ally agreed-on development goals the heads of state reviewed was the achieve­ment of universal primary education by 2015. The UN was not happy with progress. There are still officially more than 115 million children out of school, it reported, of which 80 percent are in sub‑Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. But even for those lucky enough to be in school, things are not good: “Most poor children who attend primary school in the developing world learn shockingly little,” the UN reported.

Understanding The Slave Mentality

The system is their drug

by Brandon Smith

In the initial stages of nearly every recorded tyranny, the saucer eyed dumbstruck masses exhibit astonishing and masterful skill when denying reality.  The facts behind their dire circumstances and of their antagonistic government become a source of cynical psychological gameplay rather than a source of legitimate concern.  Their desperate need to maintain their normalcy bias creates a memory and observation vacuum in which all that runs counter to their false assumptions and preconceptions disappears forever.  It is as if they truly cannot see the color of the sky, or the boot on their face.  The concrete world of truth becomes a dream, an illusion that can be heeded or completely ignored depending on one’s mood.  For them, life is a constant struggle of dissociation, where the tangible is NOT welcome…

Real vs. the illusion of growth

On Gold, A Cracked Dam, And The Fed's Small Thumb

by Brian Rogers,

We get some rules to follow
That and this
These and those
No one knows

We get these pills to swallow
How they stick
In your throat
Tastes like gold
                           -Queens of the Stone Age

Understand the short video below and you will understand what I mean when I say that the United States of America (and the rest of the world for that matter) has not fundamentally grown much at all over the last 40 years. 

We have instead replaced fundamental growth with the illusion of growth brought on by constantly increasing the monetary supply, aka, inflation.

Usually, when a good or service is dramatically increased, it's price will fall.  Too many cars manufactured?  Prices will fall.  Too many new houses?  Prices will fall.  You get the idea.  Good ol' laws of supply and demand. 

Europe’s Real Crisis

The Continent’s problems are as much demographic as financial and they won’t go away soon

By MEGAN MCARDLE

All of us can breathe easy now: policy makers and analysts finally agree on how to fix Europe’s problems.

“Europe Debt Crisis Plan Hinges on Economic Growth,” declared the Los Angeles Times in October, after finance ministers announced what felt like the hundredth plan to seriously, no-foolin’-this-time, really rescue the European Union’s illiquid and insolvent states.

“Countries have to undergo significant structural reforms that would revamp growth,” said Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank, in a December interview with the Financial Times.

Too Crooked to Fail

A few things i know about Bank of America

The bank has defrauded everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed. So why does the government keep bailing it out?

by Matt Taibbi

At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they'll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world's worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt's funeral. They're out of control, yet they'll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard.

In the mean time in Palestine

Building Palestinian prosperity
By Alexander Joffe And Asaf Romirowsky

Modern café in Ramallah

The Palestinian cause has never been more marginalized than it is today. That was the message conveyed by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in a recent meeting in Ramallah. The Arab Spring has deflected the attention of the international community and the Arab world, to the detriment of the Palestinians. But Fayyad was also frank that the uprisings were inevitable. The fundamental lack of respect for citizens in places such as Syria, Tunisia and Egypt, he stated, could not be sustained forever. With understated pride, he pointed to the lack of similar protests in the Palestinian Authority.

But the drama of the uprisings has contributed to a "lack of focus" on the Palestinians, a situation that Fayyad clearly found both novel and disturbing. He also added forcefully that the missteps of world powers in the fall of 2011 had dramatically set back the cause of Palestinian statehood. Pushing for agreement on final-status issues such as borders and refugees, at the expense of incremental moves to build infrastructure, co-operation and confidence, had been disastrous.

Greece is not even trying anymore

Back to square one

by Wolf Richter

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, while visiting Japan, summarized it eloquently when he said, "The financial aspect of the crisis is over." The ECB, despite any apparently fake German reservations, has jumped with both feet on the money printing bandwagon where it happily joins the Fed, the Bank of Japan, and other central banks around the world. The endless flow of money has started in the Eurozone, and Greek politicians, it now turns out, have figured this out.

A conflict of visions

It's All About Race Now

By Pat Buchanan

If it had been a white teenager who was shot, and a 28-year-old black guy who shot him, the black guy would have been arrested.

So assert those demanding the arrest of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

And they may be right.

Black life doesn't hold so much value in the region Trayvon was killed

Trayvon Martin had it coming ...

by Gary Gibson

We read those words to that effect from an article linked to by a libertarian website we visit very regularly.

"In Zimmerman's case, Martin was an athletic six-foot-two-inch tall football player that had him on his back pounding on him. Martin got what he deserved."

So wrote Paul Huebl, a former Chicago cop and proud member of the Screen Actors Guild.

We've tried to avoid having to write anything publicly about the shooting of Trayvon Martin. But we feel we must let our thoughts be known, if only in passing...

You see, dear patron, we spent a few years of our adolescence in the Central Florida town just south of where Trayvon was killed. We have some experience with being Black in that corner of the world.

The Sultan of Swing

Swingin’ Kennedy

By Mark Steyn

Since the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor, Swingin’ Anthony Kennedy has been the swingingest swinger on the Supreme Court, the big Numero Cinco on all those 5–4 white-knuckle nail-biting final scores. So naturally Court observers have been paying close attention to his interventions in the Obamacare oral arguments. So far he doesn’t sound terribly persuaded by the administration’s line:

“The government is saying that the federal government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases, and that changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.” 

Human Achievement Hour

The gift of lighting

Light in North & South Korea

by Julie Kirsten Novak

It’s that time of year again when that rag‑tag coalition of conspicuously compassioned doctor’s wives, tambourining hippies still living as if they’re in the ‘60’s, ‘hug a whale’ do‑gooders, humanity =camphylobacter misanthropes, anti‑coal wowsers, and eco‑warriors brainwashed by standardised school curricula exhort the general public to replicate North Korea by turning off the lights for Earth Hour 2011.

The practical curiosity and problem-solving inclination of previous generations to seek to transform night into day, for mass convenience, started to produce real outcomes from 1800. The English chemist Humphry Davy connected two pieces of wire to a battery with a piece of charcoal between the ends of the wires. The carbon fragment glowed, producing light.

Dimming the light on human ingenuity

The candle-lit world of Earth Hour is a decadent celebration of an era that we ought to be glad we’ ve left behind.

On 26 March 1886, the House of Lords debated amendments to the recently enacted Electric Lighting Bill, with Lord Houghton proclaiming electric lighting had a ‘very brilliant future before it’. Exactly 125 years later,  the lights will go out on this optimistic vision of a better future.

by Colin McInnes

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is asking for lights to be switched off in homes, public buildings and historic monuments for 60 minutes during Earth Hour, an annual event highlighting the impact of energy use on the environment. ‘Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth… [L]eaving them on is a vote for global warming’, states WWF. Unfortunately the symbolism of this gesture is entirely misplaced and ignores the socially and environmentally progressive story of artificial lighting.

The sweet, and deadly, sides of President Assad

Reports that President Assad sent his wife sentimental pop lyrics perfectly fits the profile of a modern despot.

By Theodore Dalrymple

Some men are born evil, some achieve evil, and some have evil thrust upon them. Bashar al-Assad of Syria falls into the third category; but from the point of view of his victims, it hardly matters. For them, evil is evil and death is death. The psychological origins of a man’s crimes don’t make them less real or horrible to those who suffer from them.

You are being herded and the gate is closing.

“Rise and Rise Again until Lambs become Lions.”

by Mike Krieger

When Central Banking Dies: China and Oil

1. China

China is a topic on which I have differed greatly from many analysts and macro commentators with whom I generally share a similar economic philosophy.  What I have heard from many in this camp is this story about how China was the next great power and that they are going to revalue the yuan higher.  In that process, they would be able to shift their economy away from a dangerous overemphasis on fixed asset investment and toward consumption.  


There was this notion that China had its house in order and was about to totally shift the balance of economic power in the world as the West melted away.  In the middle part of the last decade I heard this argument yet it always seemed a little preposterous.  In 2007/2008 as the Western housing markets and banking systems came apart this view was expressed in the now much maligned (and rightfully so) “decoupling thesis” which turned out to be nothing but a fantasy.  Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the implosion in the West there was still this notion that China was ok.  

Liberal Whitewashing

The Media and Black Homicide Victims

By Heather Mac Donald

Cable mogul Evan Shapiro had a stunningly clueless Trayvon Martin entry on Huffington Post yesterday asking: Why doesn’t the media cover more black crime victims?

Shapiro, the president of indie cable broadcaster IFC, should pose the same question to Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and every member of the black protest establishment: Why don’t you protest more black crime victims? The answer would be the same in all cases: Because the only black victims who interest the race industry and its mainstream media handmaidens are blacks who have been killed by “white” civilians, including honorary whites like Martin’s killer George Zimmerman, or blacks who have been killed or offended by the police (black officers will do here in a pinch).

Unfortunately, there are very few such victims. Ninety-three percent of all black homicide casualties from 1980 to 2008 were killed by other blacks, and are thus of no interest whatsoever to today’s race advocates, because they fail to support the crucial story line that blacks remain under siege by a racist white power structure.