Nothing is preordained. Time and the action of individuals will tell the tale

Old Game Plan Made Anew?

"Spain's economy contracts as recession fears grow ... The Spanish economy has shrunk for the first time in two years, increasing fears the country could be heading for a recession. The country's economy shrank by 0.3% in the three months to December, after stagnating in the previous quarter. Household spending fell by 1.1% from the previous quarter, while spending by public bodies dropped by 3.6%. The country has the highest jobless rate in the EU, with almost one in four people out of work. Spain's unemployment figure passed the five million mark in the last quarter of 2011. Figures showed 5.3 million people were out of work at the end of December, up from 4.9 million in the third quarter. The downbeat fourth-quarter economy figures come even before the impact of new austerity measures unveiled last month by new Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy." – BBC

Dominant Social Theme: Austerity is tough but builds character.

Free-Market Analysis: Did you hear that about half of Europe is in recession or headed that way? We can see from the above excerpt that Spain is certainly headed that way. Greece, Portugal and Ireland are also in various forms of economic collapse.

Call it recession, depression or simply cataclysmic economic conditions. But one way or another Southern Europe is in a terrible state. Greece is in a meltdown; half the young people in Spain aren't working and Portugal and Ireland aren't far behind.

Heck, let's just call it a continental depression. And one that is as unnecessary as it is terrible. The elites that set up the European Union by subterfuge bribed the Southern government PIGS with funds.

The Great Escape

Delivering in a Delevering World

By Bill Gross

About six months ago, I only half in jest told Mohamed that my tombstone would read, “Bill Gross, RIP, He didn’t own ‘Treasuries’.” Now, of course, the days are getting longer and as they say in golf, it is better to be above – as opposed to below – the grass. And it is better as well, to be delivering alpha as opposed to delevering in the bond market or global economy. The best way to visualize successful delivering is to recognize that investors are locked up in a financially repressive environment that reduces future returns for all financial assets. Breaking out of that “jail” is what I call the Great Escape, and what I hope to explain in the next few pages.

Black Rednecks and White Hispanics

Look over there, a shiny thing!

Here’s a new bright and shiny thing from the NYT, calculated to energize the base against its evil enemy, serve the chosen narrative of the moment (in spite of inconvenient facts), and to draw your attention away from how much you paid to fill your gas tank, etc., etc.

"The White Hispanic" Progressive Racial Narrative 

The west has lost in Afghanistan

The number three in al-Qaeda has been killed at least five times

By Gideon Rachman

Five years ago the Americans were refusing to speak to the Taliban. Now the Taliban are refusing to speak to the Americans. That is a measure of how the balance of power has shifted in Afghanistan. The western intervention there has failed. As Nato prepares to withdraw from the country in 2014, it is only the scale of the defeat that remains to be determined.

A senior Pakistani official comments sardonically: “I remember when the Americans used to say that the only good Taliban was a dead Taliban. Then they talked about separating the reconcilable from the irreconcilable. Now, they say, the Taliban are not our enemy.” In fact, Nato and Taliban forces are still enemies on the battlefield. But in a desperate effort to leave behind a stable Afghanistan, the US and its allies are also battling to include the Taliban in the political process. However, the Taliban are in no rush to negotiate – and recently broke off talks. With western troops on their way out, there is little pressure on them to compromise now.

Complex Societies Need Simple Laws

The anti-Canutes of today

We need to end the orgy of rule-making at once and embrace the simple rules that true liberals like America’s founders envisioned.

By John Stossel

“If you have 10,000 regulations,” Winston Churchill said, “you destroy all respect for law.”

He was right. But Churchill never imagined a government that would add 10,000 year after year. That’s what we have in America. We have 160,000 pages of rules from the feds alone. States and localities have probably doubled that. We have so many rules that legal specialists can’t keep up. Criminal lawyers call the rules “incomprehensible.” They are. They are also “uncountable.” Congress has created so many criminal offenses that the American Bar Association says it would be futile to even attempt to estimate the total. 

Nobody Knows Anything

Telling Tales About Money

“With the US economy showing signs of recovery and fears about the eurozone sovereign debt crisis easing, investors are putting their money into equities and other assets geared towards economic growth rather than havens such as gold.”

     — Jack Farchy, Financial Times, 23^rd March.

 “Growth gloom bolsters government debt"

 “Reminders of the risks to the global growth outlook put equities and commodities on the back foot and helped government bonds in the US, Germany and the UK recoup more of their recent losses.”

     —Dave Shellock, Financial Times, 23rd March.

By Tim Price 

Screenwriter William Goldman famously began his autobiography, Adventures in the Screen Trade, with three telling words: Nobody Knows Anything. The same logic would seem to apply to much conventional reporting of the financial markets. Any investor looking for informed analysis of market developments can therefore save themselves a few minutes every day by choosing to not read any of the “Companies and Markets‟ section of the FT, which typically constitutes a fantastic piece of fiction. If there is a more thankless task in finance than trying to explain why certain markets did what they did yesterday, we don’t know what it is. (Unless it’s working in the PR department at Goldman Sachs.)

NYPD Should Leave Muslims Alone

The 14th Amendment clearly gives equal protection under the laws to all people, no matter their religion or politics 

by Ivan Eland

Attorney General Eric Holder is to be lauded for looking into the constitutionality of the New York City Police Department’s wholesale snooping into the lives of people based purely on their Muslim faith. Because Holder is a busy man, he could save a lot of time by just pulling out the U.S. Constitution and reading it.

Unfortunately, in the hysteria after 9/11, the executive branch, Congress, and the courts have allowed police agencies—federal, state, and local—to conduct extraconstitutional surveillance, search, and seizure. These actions have muddled what spying should be considered clearly unconstitutional.

Saving a little something for Southern European Elites

Berlin's Poor Collect Bottles to Make Ends Meet

By Helen Whittle

Many pensioners and unemployed people in Berlin are turning to an unusual means of supplementing their meager incomes: collecting discarded deposit bottles. They can return them to stores or supermarkets for a few cents per bottle. But as the activity becomes more popular, competition among collectors has intensified.

To see Günther rummaging through trash cans in Berlin, you might assume he was homeless. But the 61-year-old is actually one of a growing number of pensioners looking to earn extra cash through bottle recycling.

Minimum pricing means minimising choice

Squeezing just a little more freedom out of our lives.

by Patrick Hayes 

‘We will put a stop to the easy availability of cheap booze that has blighted Britain for too long. This is a comprehensive strategy to take back our town centres from the drunken thugs and to restore them to the law-abiding majority.’

Abu Qatadas Freedom Might Be the Price We Pay for Ours

A Champion For His Own Human Rights

 

He doesn’t have a hook. He does have a big, bushy beard, and eyes that don’t look all that friendly, but Omar Mahmoud Othman, who’s also known as Abu Qatada, doesn’t have a hook. It’s Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, who’s also known as Abu Hamza, who has a hook instead of a hand.

It’s quite easy to get them confused. Both men live, when they’re not in prison, in big houses, with their wives and children, and both men seem to think that the British taxpayers who pay for those houses, and their children’s food, and their lawyers, and their food in prison, and the specially adapted taps you need in your cell if you have a hook instead of a hand, are infidels who should be slaughtered.

The happiest man in England

Qatadas brother boasts preacher's delight as he is given a more expensive home (funded by the taxpayer, of course)

 

New home has more bedrooms, a bigger garden and more fittings. 51-year-old had requested a move from previous home worth £400,000

By TOM KELLY

Abu Qatada has been upgraded to a larger taxpayer-funded home since his release from jail last month, the Mail can reveal.

The terror suspect has told relatives in his native Jordan that he is the ‘happiest man in England’ after he was rehoused to the more expensive property.

His wife and five children are also said to be ‘delighted’ with the move, because their new home has more bedrooms, a bigger garden and more modern fittings. 

Taming the EPA monster

Supreme Court ruling strikes a blow in ongoing battle

By Robert Knight

Slowly, inexorably, the monster is being driven back to its lair. Its days of terrorizing villagers may soon be over. I wish I were talking about the federal government, but it's the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), better known as the Environmental Protection-or-else Agency.

Superman is unimpressed by what Everyman wants

Weeding Out the "Socially Not Useful"

... a service is profitable if Everyman, the businessman and the final consumer, buys it. Buying it is the one indisputable way he has to show that he wants it. But Superman is unimpressed by what Everyman wants. He wishes Everyman to get what he needs. For only what he needs is "socially useful" ...

by Anthony de Jasay

In his classic essay "What is seen and what is not seen" (written in 1848 and published in July 1850) the shamefully underrated and neglected French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1801- 1850) declares that what distinguishes a bad economist from a good one is that the bad one can only see what is to be seen, while the good one also discerns the as yet unseen consequences that are bound to follow the visible effect of an action. Present benefits must be painfully paid for in future costs, while present sacrifices tend to be generously rewarded in the future. The good economist must, of course, weigh up the merits of a law, a policy or an institution by taking account both of the effects he (and others) can see and the future consequences he foresees (and others do not).

Europe’s bailout bazooka is proving to be a toy gun

Welcome back to the crisis

By Wolfgang Münchau

And it’s set to get worse once the markets discover that the eurozone is about to fudge the increase in the European rescue umbrella. The argument I am hearing is a wonderful example of circular logic: we don’t need a bigger umbrella because market pressure has eased.

Well, the market pressure has gone up again recently. Investors are concerned about Spain. Over the weekend, Angela Merkel was preparing for one of her celebrated U-turns, by letting out a trial balloon in the German press that she would, after all, be ready to accept an increase in the rescue operation.

The Toxic Transition in Venezuela

A narco-state emerges in Venezuela

By Roger Noriega 

Contrary to statements by Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chávez, a cancerous tumor discovered in his colon late last month has not been removed, according to my sources. Heeding the self-serving advice of Cuban doctors, Chávez has rejected surgery so that he can return to his public duties as soon as possible and bolster his regime’s ongoing succession strategy. The Castro brothers need him back on the political stage in Venezuela, not in a hospital bed. Meanwhile, back in Caracas, corrupt military leaders are consolidating their power and plotting their political survival as if Chávez were already dead.

Non-Cuban medical specialists insist that the larger-than-expected tumor must be removed before resuming last-ditch chemotherapy and radiation. They believe that Chávez’s decision to refuse surgery will hasten his death. Members of Chávez’s family and some close friends are furious that the Cubans are manipulating his megalomania to convince him that sustaining his “revolution” is more important than extending his life.

The Italian Tragedy

Once rent-seeking coalitions form and consolidate in a society, it becomes extremely difficult to escape a dysfunctional equilibrium 

Facing strong international pressure and a spiraling crisis, Italy’s new leadership may finally be forced to make long-avoided reforms.

By Alberto Mingardi 

Brought to office after the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi, Mario Monti has been the Italian prime minister for about four months now. It is too soon to judge Monti’s record, but it is distressing that the prime minister has not yet announced any substantial plan to deal with the very issue that makes Italy a great concern for Europe and the world: its huge public debt, which is over €1.9 trillion.

Animal Farm Meets 1984

North Korea: Freedom and grilled meat

“Park told Shin that the giant country next door was called China. Its people were rapidly getting rich. He said that in the south there was another Korea. In South Korea, he said, everyone was already rich. Park explained the concept of money. He told Shin about the existence of television and computers and mobile phones. He explained that the world was round.”

By Jeff Harding

On Jan. 2, 2005, 23-year-old Shin Dong-hyuk squirmed through an electric fence and escaped from Camp 14, a political prison camp in North Korea. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are estimated to be held in the country’s political camps, and Mr. Shin is the only person known to have been born in a camp who has made his way to the West. (His father, Mr. Shin eventually learned, was a prisoner because two of his brothers had defected to the south during the Korean War. Mr. Shin’s crime was being his father’s son.) In this excerpt from Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden details his unlikely escape.

In 1998, when Shin Dong-hyuk turned 16, he became an adult worker. His years of schooling to that point had only served as training for hard labor. 

“I’m Smarter than Everyone Else”

The political "disease."

By Arthur E. Foulkes

“It’s a sickness,” said a friend of mine who until recently was an elected official in our city. “It sets in after you’re elected the first time, or maybe even when you’re running for office.” That sickness is “thinking you’re smarter than everyone else.”

My friend made this statement after reading in our local paper that a newly elected  member of the city council had questioned an entrepreneur’s decision to open a new outdoor multi-unit storage facility in our town. The councilman, a Republican, said that according to his “investigation,” the facility is not needed in that neighborhood.

A Random Walk Through the Data Minefields

Sweden, the Socialist Mecca

"I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare:

and I dare a little more as I grow older."

                      - Michel de Montaigne

By John Mauldin 

I was brought to Stockholm to speak for Swedbank. They arranged for me to meet a wide variety of local people, as well as to have dinner with readers. I talked with a number of people who were in positions of authority during the Swedish credit and debt crisis of the early 1990s. And a crisis it was. The currency was under attack, as the fundamentals were negative. This was at the same time that Soros was attacking the British pound. Interest rates had been rising in Sweden, but the financial environment was being loosened. This meant that Swedish businesses and consumers could borrow in foreign currencies that had much lower interest rates, and borrow they did. The central bank made it very clear that they would protect the value of the currency, and everyone believed them. Remember, this is a relatively small country, and basically everyone knows someone who at least knows someone who was involved with the central bank. The central bank was adamant in its belief that it could protect the value of the currency, and it raised rates by 500% in order to do so.

Scotland’s Choice

The cold shower of economic reality might then unleash Scotland’s substantial creative abilities

Independence could arouse national pride; it might also force self-sufficiency.

By THEODORE DALRYMPLE

The electoral success of the Scottish Nationalist Party has enabled it to demand a referendum on national independence next year, raising the distinct possibility of a break-up of the United Kingdom. The decline of the U.K.’s status and power in the world means that belonging to it is no longer a source of pride, but rather of embarrassment. What better way to extricate yourself from the guilt of the British Empire—to the establishment of which the Scots contributed disproportionately—than to join the ranks of the aggrieved colonized by means of your own nationalism?