It’s yours, and it depends on your ability, your effort, your tenacity

Cuba’s little capitalists are ready to rumba

Customers are entertained as they dine inside the newly licensed restaurant "El Bedouino" in Havana April 1, 2012.

By Jeff Franks

When Ojacy Curbello and her husband opened a restaurant at their home in Havana in late December, not a single customer showed up.

It was a disheartening debut for Bollywood, the first Indian restaurant in the Cuban capital. Curbello worried that their dream of cashing in on recent reforms in this Communist-run country would collapse.

People eat at a popular low-end, privately licensed
 restaurant, or "paladar," in Havana.

The next day customers began trickling in. As word spread, the trickle became a flood. Many nights the couple had to turn people away or serve them at the family dining table and call in extra help. Today they are planning to increase the 22-seat capacity by expanding their 1950s home and putting tables and a bar in what is now their bedroom.

“It has been amazing how quickly it has taken off,” said Curbello, still looking slightly stunned. She sat with her husband, Cedric Fernandez, a Londoner of Sri Lankan descent, in the main dining area, hung with prints of Indian figures.

Bollywood’s story is an example of how life is slowly changing in Cuba since President Raul Castro launched a string of limited economic reforms in 2010.

Voter Weeding

Curley Effect in California

David Henderson

"James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. Boston as a consequence stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections."

This is from Edward L. Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer, "The Curley Effect," May 2002.

In their paper, Glaeser and Shleifer write:

Free Markets Vs The Dominion of Liars

"If I wanted America to fail"

Currency Debasement and Social Collapse

The decline of the empire and the decay of its civilization

by Ludwig von Mises

Knowledge of the effects of government interference with market prices makes us comprehend the economic causes of a momentous historical event, the decline of ancient civilization.

It may be left undecided whether or not it is correct to call the economic organization of the Roman Empire capitalism. At any rate it is certain that the Roman Empire in the 2nd century, the age of the Antonines, the "good" emperors, had reached a high stage of the social division of labor and of interregional commerce. Several metropolitan centers, a considerable number of middle-sized towns, and many small towns were the seats of a refined civilization.

Time to fasten your economic seat belts

The fiscal cliff cometh

By Mohamed A. El-Erian

Economists are rightly starting to warn that the United States faces a worrisome “fiscal cliff” at year’s end. The blunt spending cuts mandated by the 2011 compromise on the debt ceiling — and the failure of the “supercommittee” that followed — along with across-the-board tax increases would derail the U.S. recovery and undermine the well-being of the global economy. We should be avoiding the edge of this cliff — and politicians should not believe that they have until the end of this year to act.

Jon Will’s gift

The gift of serenity

By George F. Will

When Jonathan Frederick Will was born 40 years ago — on May 4, 1972, his father’s 31st birthday — the life expectancy for people with Down syndrome was about 20 years. 

That is understandable.

The day after Jon was born, a doctor told Jon’s parents that the first question for them was whether they intended to take Jon home from the hospital. Nonplussed, they said they thought that is what parents do with newborns. Not doing so was, however, still considered an acceptable choice for parents who might prefer to institutionalize or put up for adoption children thought to have necessarily bleak futures. Whether warehoused or just allowed to languish from lack of stimulation and attention, people with Down syndrome, not given early and continuing interventions, were generally thought to be incapable of living well, and hence usually did not live as long as they could have.

A Decade of War — for What?

U.S. and the dark cloud of war

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“My fellow Americans, we have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war,” said Barack Obama from Bagram Air Base.

“Here in the predawn darkness, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon. The Iraq War is over. The number of troops in harm’s way has been cut in half, and more will be coming home. … The time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end.”

Interesting comment, that last.

If “the time of war” is at an end, does that rule out U.S. military action in Syria or war on Iran?

Setting aside the 14,000-mile round trip to Afghanistan to do an end zone dance on the anniversary of Seal Team Six’s dispatch of Osama bin Laden, Obama seems to have boxed in his Republican rivals.

Too young to retire, too old to keep the job

The quirks of law mean that ageing workers are damned by the critics whatever they do.

By Theodore Dalrymple

Most people of a certain age, including me, like to think that they are irreplaceable. It’s a delusion that, like osteoarthritis, is almost inevitable after one has passed the meridian of one’s life.

How pushy all those young people are, how eager to take one’s place, when one knows perfectly well that they are not yet ready (from the point of view of skill and experience) to do so! They never will be ready, of course, because the world has gone steadily downhill ever since one’s childhood. Really, they all have unresolved Oedipus complexes, these youngsters. That’s why they are so eager to take over.

Anything the Government Gives You, the Government Can Take Away

Citizens looking for a free lunch or an easier world should be careful what they wish for

From the Guardian:

A majority of doctors support measures to deny treatment to smokers and the obese, according to a survey that has sparked a row over the NHS‘s growing use of “lifestyle rationing”.

Some 54% of doctors who took part said the NHS should have the right to withhold non-emergency treatment from patients who do not lose weight or stop smoking. Some medics believe unhealthy behaviour can make procedures less likely to work, and that the service is not obliged to devote scarce resources to them.

And that’s the trouble with services and institutions run from the taxpayer’s purse, administered by centralists and bureaucrats. It becomes a carrot or a stick for interventionists to intervene in your life. Its delivery depends on your compliance with the diktats and whims of the democracy, or of bureaucrats. Your standard of living becomes a bargaining chip. Don’t conform? You might be deemed unworthy of hospital treatment.

Money Demystified

Keynes's one man in a million

Central banks cannot create wealth but they can redistribute it. And the system confers a tremendous power upon those who exercise it. They are Keynes’s one man in a million

By John Phelan

I’ve found that if I write an article about taxes, whether its avoidance or the 50p band, it’s likely to generate angry replies. But when I write about monetary matters, interest rates or Quantitative Easing for example, there is often a silence. Perhaps this is because few people share my interest in it, perhaps it’s because they think it less important than I do. Or perhaps, to borrow from Keynes, it’s because monetary policy works “in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose”?

The textbook functions of ‘money’ are familiar to anyone with a smattering of economics; a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. But each of these functions is entirely dependent upon money maintaining its value. If the value of the pound fluctuates it is no more useful as a unit of account or measure than a twelve inch ruler which kept changing length. Money which declines in value is a poor store of value.

Anti-growth and the subjugation of the masses

And now the redistribution of consumption

Robbing Peter to pay Paul? The Royal Society's approach to growth

The Royal Society wants you to give up your lifestyle so developing countries can grow. But does it really work like that?

By Raheem Kassam

Edmund Burke’s prescience regarding the French Revolution and the inherent nature of ‘radicalism’ – that is to say the inevitability of spending, debt and tyranny inflicted by leftist ideals – is just as relevant in the 21^st century as it was at the time of his writing ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’.

One of Burke’s most crucial points in my mind is the remarkable nature of populist rhetoric and how the ideas of ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ would result in further subjugation of the masses at the hands of Robespierre and subsequently, Napoleon.

No alternative to austerity

Calls for Europe to spend its way out of debt are an illusion

By Gideon Rachman

Spanish unemployment is nearing 25 per cent. The suicide rate is climbing in Greece. Britain is in a double-dip recession. Amid all this pain, the cry is growing louder. Austerity policies in Europe are dangerous. Someone has to stop this madness.

Step forward, François Hollande, the likely winner of the French presidential election. He is campaigning as the man who will stand up to the austerity ayatollahs in Germany. His campaign is resonating – not just in Europe, but even in the US, where the grandees of the economics profession, from Larry Summers to Paul Krugman, are lining up to call for an end to Europe’s austerity policies. “Insane,” Mr Krugman calls them, with characteristic understatement.

Sowing the seeds for the next crisis

Our central bankers are intellectually bankrupt

By Ron Paul

The financial crisis has fully exposed the intellectual bankruptcy of the world’s central bankers.

Why? Central bankers neglect the fact that interest rates are prices. Manipulating those prices through credit expansion or contraction has real and deleterious effects on the economy. Yet while socialism and centralised economic planning have largely been rejected by free-market economists, the myth persists that central banks are a necessary component of market economies.

Who, Science is for?

Sticking up for scientific research

The green plonkers intent on destroying research into aphid-resistant wheat crops view mankind as a blight on nature.

by Tim Black 

Aphids are not exactly man’s best friend. Whether you’re a gardener or a farmer, these little sap-sucking buggers can almost single-handedly destroy a plant or a crop. And if they don’t manage it by themselves, the fungal viruses their sugary ‘honeydew’ secretions invite can usually finish the job. We, as a species, have not taken this lying down, however. And over the years, we have had some success in developing insecticides that have helped to combat this literal blight on horticulture and agriculture.

But there might be another, more effective way to get rid of aphids. A group of scientists at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire is currently trying to genetically modify wheat so that - and this sounds incredible - it will produce a pheromone called E-beta-farnesene. For those, like me, who have gained their knowledge of pheromones almost entirely from Lynx deodorant adverts, this particular one is emitted by aphids when they are threatened. So, when they smell it, they fly away. Not only that, when the insects that like to eat aphids - ladybirds, for instance - get a whiff, they will head over to said crop in the hope of some lunch.

All of which sounds potentially fantastic. Farmers will no longer have to lay waste to infested or infected wheat crops, and we in turn will figuratively reap the benefits of a resilient, less costly agricultural product.

The cost of a fair-trade macchiato

The Descent of Man

By Mark Steyn

While Americans have over a trillion dollars in college debt and 50 percent of recent graduates can’t get jobs, Quebec students are demanding the right to get to the dole office a lot cheaper. They’re currently striking, and rioting, violently, to protest a proposed tuition increase of $1,625. Spread out over seven years. Or about 232 bucks per annum. Or about the cost of one fair-trade macchiato a week. Nevertheless, they’re not gonna swallow it:

Students in Quebec are like no others, we’re told. We need to understand that tuition fees are not the real issue. The real issue is social justice. The real issue is the promise made during the Quiet Revolution that universities would eventually be free. The real issue is the fight against the ruling class, the greedy corporations, the tar sands, and the entire capitalist, neo-liberal elite. Of course, since universities actually do cost money, somebody will have to pay. Who? The greedy corporations!

Assuming Away Reality

Often times the fix only makes things worse, because it was not the reality that needed fixing

By Predrag Rajsic

If you are taking or have taken some of the typical courses in economics, it is quite likely that you asked yourself questions like the following: If an economic model is not like the real world, why should I trust the results of that model? One of the answers I would often get when posing this question goes something like this: Of course the model is not like the real world; it is not supposed to be like the real world. If it were, then it would not be a model!

This response can leave one feeling intellectually inferior or incapable of abstract thinking. One may get the impression that there is something obvious that he or she is missing. Sometimes, the answer would go a bit further: models are simplified representations of reality that we use to better understand that reality. This answer is somewhat more polite, but it still does not tell us how we determined which features of reality were not important enough to be included in the model. Building a model in this way also seems to imply that we already understand the elements of reality and how they are interrelated.

Self-Inflicted Poverty

Why is it that Egyptians do well in the U.S. but not Egypt? 

by Walter Williams

We could make that same observation and pose that same question about Nigerians, Cambodians, Jamaicans and others of the underdeveloped world who migrate to the U.S. Until recently, we could make the same observation about Indians in India, and the Chinese citizens of the People's Republic of China, but not Chinese citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Let's look at Egypt. According to various reports, about 40 percent of Egypt's 80 million people live on or below the $2 per-day poverty line set by the World Bank. Unemployment is estimated to be twice the official rate pegged at 10 percent.

Much of Egypt's economic problems are directly related to government interference and control that have resulted in weak institutions vital to prosperity. Hernando De Soto, president of Peru's Institute for Liberty and Democracy (www.ild.org.pe), laid out much of Egypt's problem in his Wall Street Journal article (Feb. 3, 2011), "Egypt's Economic Apartheid." More than 90 percent of Egyptians hold their property without legal title.

De Soto says, 

"Without clear legal title to their assets and real estate, in short, these entrepreneurs own what I have called ‘dead capital’ -- property that cannot be leveraged as collateral for loans, to obtain investment capital, or as security for long-term contractual deals. And so the majority of these Egyptian enterprises remain small and relatively poor."

We Are Not Powerless

Resisting Financial Feudalism

It's comforting to think "I can't do anything to resist the Central State and its financial Plutocracy," but it's not true. There are many of acts of resistance you can pursue in your daily life; here are 12 perfectly legal ones.

BY CHARLES HUGH SMITH
That we are powerless is one of the key social control myths constantly promoted by the Status Quo. What better way to keep the serfs passive than to reinforce a belief in their powerlessness against the expansive Central State and its financial feudalism?

But we are not powerless. Our complicity gives the aristocracy its power. Remove our complicity and the aristocracy falls.

The pathway of dissent is to resist financial feudalism and its enforcer, the expansive Central State. Here are twelve paths of resistance any adult can legally pursue in the course of their daily lives:

A demoralizing commentary on the state of American democracy

Here’s what Washington really does

By Robert J. Samuelson

The Washington of conventional wisdom and the real Washington are two entirely different places. The Washington of conventional wisdom is overrun by well-paid insiders — lobbyists, lawyers, publicists — who systematically manipulate government policies to benefit corporations and the rich, defying the “will of the people.” The real Washington has government paid for by the rich and well-to-do. Benefits go mainly to the poor and middle class, while politicians of both parties live in fear that they might offend the “will of the people” — voters.

Recently, Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, testified before the House Budget Committee on the growth of the 10-largest “means tested” federal programs that serve people who qualify by various definitions of poverty. Here’s what Haskins reported: From 1980 to 2011, annual spending on these programs grew from $126 billion to $626 billion (all figures in inflation-adjusted “2011 dollars”); dividing this by the number of people below the government poverty line, spending went from $4,300 per poor person in 1980 to $13,000 in 2011. In 1962, spending per person in poverty was $516.

A battle to save France from her non-existent foes

The Republic is too fragile 

Far from representing a return of left and right, the French presidential campaign confirms the ascendancy of the politics of fear.

Brendan O’Neill 

Commentators go green with envy when they look upon the French presidential election campaign. Where most Western European political offices are stuffed with samey politicians, here’s a campaign which seems to pit right against left, even hard right against far left, in a teeth-baring battle for the soul of France. Observers distressed by the post-political era they find themselves plonked in see in France the resurrection of the left-right divide, the return of that familiar-feeling, old-world clash, which could define ‘the future of Europe’.

This is wishful thinking. Because what the French candidates share in common is far more important than what seems to distinguish them. Behind the fireworks, behind the self-conscious use of left-right rhetoric, the candidates are united in their belief that the French Republic is threatened by external actors and that it falls to them to defend France’s honour. In short, this campaign doesn’t signify the resuscitation of old principles – it confirms that the politics of left and right has been superseded by the politics of fear, and that modern politicians have developed a seriously bad habit of political displacement.

The New Class Warfare

California’s superwealthy progressives seem intent on destroying middle-class jobs.

by Joel Kotkin

Few states have offered the class warriors of Occupy Wall Street more enthusiastic support than California has. Before they overstayed their welcome and police began dispersing their camps, the Occupiers won official endorsements from city councils and mayors in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, Irvine, Santa Rosa, and Santa Ana. Such is the extent to which modern-day “progressives” control the state’s politics.

But if those progressives really wanted to find the culprits responsible for the state’s widening class divide, they should have looked in a mirror. Over the past decade, as California consolidated itself as a bastion of modern progressivism, the state’s class chasm has widened considerably. To close the gap, California needs to embrace pro-growth policies, especially in the critical energy and industrial sectors—but it’s exactly those policies that the progressives most strongly oppose.

The horror and the pita

Egypt is in a classic pre-revolutionary situation

By Spengler

Egypt's national tragedy took a turn towards farce April 27, when Saudi Arabia closed its embassy and several consulates after demonstrations that "threaten the security and safety of Saudi and Egyptian employees, raising hostile slogans and violating the inviolability and sovereignty", according to a Saudi statement. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States were supposed to anchor an international aid package that will forestall a disorderly financial crisis.

With a critical fuel shortage cutting into food supplies and essential services, Egyptians already have a foretaste of chaos. The two-for-a-penny pita, the subsidized flat bread that provides much of the caloric intake for the half of Egypt's population living on less than $2 a day, is at risk.

The vision of yesteryear

Is Europe Sailing on the Titanic?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

U.S. growth in the first quarter fell to 2.2 percent, a disappointment. But in Europe, that news would have caused general rejoicing.

For consider the gathering crisis on the old continent.

With negative growth now for six months, Britain has fallen back into recession. “I don’t think we’re anywhere near halfway through the eurozone crisis,” said Prime Minister David Cameron this weekend.

Romania’s government fell last week. The Czech government barely survived a vote of no confidence. In the capital cities of both countries, tens of thousands have angrily protested the new austerity.

The Dutch government also fell last week, when the Freedom Party of right-wing populist Geert Wilders abandoned the governing coalition.

Growth versus Austerity

A Phony Debate

by Pater Tenebrarum
The Aggregation Fallacy

We have recently mentioned an article in the WSJ that focuses on a point we have always regarded as very important.

The popular press continues to frame the debate over Europe's crisis in terms that suggest that 'austerity' is the antonym of 'growth'. In other words, if the government spends less, the economy cannot grow, or so the story goes. You can see similar thoughts expressed in this 'chart of the day' comment at Business Insider. 'This is what's crushing GDP!' Krugman fan Joe Weisenthal exclaims. 'This' being a reduction in government's consumption spending.

So let's get this straight: an economy can not grow unless the government spends more? Really?

The WSJ article notes:

“Growth or austerity? That's the choice facing Europe these days—or so the Keynesian consensus keeps saying. According to this view, which has dominated world economic councils since the 2008 crisis began, "growth" is mainly a function of government spending.

The Separation of Money and State

The state is the problem. It will not be part of the solution.

By Detlev Schlichter 

My conclusion is straightforward. There should be no policy. The existence of policy is already the problem. What we need is proper capitalism in money and finance. We do not have that now. What we have is limitless state fiat money, quantitative easing, systematic market manipulation, bailouts, regulations, the IMF, the World Bank, the FSA, FDIC, TARP and LTRO. We need proper markets, not more policy, not more manipulation, and not more bureaucracy. And not more fiat money. We need the state to exit the field of money and banking. Completely.

The main problem with monetary policy is that there is such a thing as monetary policy.

The state is the problem. It will not be part of the solution.
Before I tell you what I think should be done, let me give you another reason why I have been so reluctant to offer policy advice. The aim of my book Paper Money Collapse was to expose widespread fallacies and debunk erroneous common wisdom concerning money. It was not to provide a program for reform. The book is meant to be an eye-opener.

Almost the entire discussion on money and banking today is based on deeply flawed theories. This is true of the financial markets industry where I worked for 19 years. It is equally true of most of the discussion in the media and, as far as I can see, academia. The book was meant to debunk a lot of this misinformation.

My intention was to challenge the present consensus and the established orthodoxy. I think this is what needs to happen before we can even talk about the drastic changes that our system requires. Any policy debate of the type you read in The Economist or The Financial Times occurs within the boundaries of the established consensus. Questions of a more fundamental nature cannot be addressed in the context of policy debates.

But I am not going to evade the question about policy. So let me talk a bit about policy and reform.

The big mistake has already been made. The gold standard was abandoned, in a step-by-step process that began around the time of World War I and that culminated in Nixon’s closing of the gold window in August 1971. For more than 40 years, gold has played no official role in global monetary affairs. State paper money ruled. Everywhere.

In Defense Of The Corporation

Reclaiming the meaning of honorable words

by Keith Weiner

Today, the government of the USA is in an accelerating transition.  For the first 100 years (with a few exceptions) the government of the USA existed to set man free from men.  The rights of the people were respected by the law and by the courts.  And it is no coincidence that the USA grew from a small agrarian society in the 18th century to a wealthy superpower barely a century later.

But today, the government is taking control over every facet of the economy: sector by sector, law by law, regulation by regulation, court decision by court decision, czar by czar, presidential diktat by president diktat.

The Bizarre Attraction to Fascism

Call it "consumer protection."

By Charles Hugh Smith

This is truly Orwellian: the latest and greatest Executive Branch/Federal Reserve power grab is labeled "consumer protection." I am indebted to correspondent Jim S. who seems to be one of the few Americans to have actually sorted through this monstronsity and gleaned its true nature: an unprecedented extension of Executive (i.e. Imperial Presidency) and Federal Reserve power.

Let's start by recalling that the Federal Reserve is a consortium of private banks.Calling a private consortium of banks the "Federal Reserve" is the original Orwellian misdirection, for there is nothing "Federal" about the Federal Reserve. It is not a government agency.

Now guess who will fund and control this vast new bureaucracy of "consumer protection"? Yes, the private consortium known as the Federal Reserve. 

"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will be an independent unit located inside and funded by the United States Federal Reserve. It will write and enforce bank rules, conduct bank examinations, monitor and report on markets, as well as collect and track consumer complaints."

The west is not owed a living by the rest

Euro and the Decline of the West

Big government was harming Europe's prospects anyway, but the euro is making things much worse

By John Redwood

The rising strength of China and Brazil, of India and the Civets, is based on hard work and free enterprise. Economies which have been kept poor by too much state control and by bad government in past decades, are being progressively liberated.

As this occurs, so more businesses are set up, more jobs created, more people are better educated. A virtuous circle has been created.

The declining relative strength of the west, especially of Europe, is based on the opposite process. There is growing government interference in every aspect of economic life. The top down Euro scheme, little wanted by the German and French people, let alone the British, is doing untold damage to economic prospects.

Doubters, Traitors and Skeptics should be in jail for all eternity

The Rise of Eco-Fascism

By Peter Glover

Threats to life and limb, property destruction, public smears, curtailing free speech and imposing un-democratic regulatory laws are associated with totalitarianism. The green-shirts of eco-fascism fit neatly into this category

I read William Golding’s superb book Lord of the Flies as a kid. It had a lasting impact. Especially about how the thin veneer of civilization, democracy, liberty and prevailing morality can be swept away by a brutish elitist power grab. It’s the same philosophy that resorts to threats to life and limb, property destruction, public smears, vilifying dissent, curtailing free speech and imposing un-democratic regulatory ‘laws’ to get its way.