Just Smart Enough To Be Stupid…

The Fuzzy Logic Of Useful Idiots

By Giordano Bruno

It hurts to be wrong. Not just emotionally, but physically, especially when it’s public, like swimming headfirst into a school of very ill-tempered jellyfish…..or maybe piranha. The horror of it is almost cinematic. The more artificially pumped your ego, or the more brainwashed with academic pretension, the more terrifying that moment of realization is, that moment when all your assumptions are dashed aside like a three-year-old’s alphabet blocks. To a certain point, it is understandable why so many people live in such violent denial, however, this does not detract from the perils of that denial…

Three European crises feeding each other

The European “crisis” is back

By Robert J. Samuelson

Actually, it never went away — and won’t for many years. The problems are so deep and pervasive that there is no easy or obvious solution. Government debt and deficits in many countries are not sustainable, but the usual remedies of cutting spending and raising taxes — a.k.a. “austerity” — may make matters worse by deepening already severe recessions. Europe is caught in a trap that promises more political and social unrest.

The wonder is that, for a few months, there was a sense of complacency. Interest rates on vulnerable debtor countries Spain and Italy declined. Fears about European banks eased. Some commentators said “the worst is over.”

The case against Bernanke on the Gold Standard

The Eternal Confusion of a Statist Mind

by Frank Shostak

In his lecture at George Washington University on March 20, 2012, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said that under a gold standard the authorities' ability to address economic conditions is significantly curtailed. The Fed chairman holds that the gold standard prevents the central bank from engaging in policies aimed at stabilizing the economy after sudden shocks. This in turn, holds the Fed chairman, could lead to severe economic upheavals. According to Bernanke,

"Since the gold standard determines the money supply, there's not much scope for the central bank to use monetary policy to stabilize the economy.… Because you had a gold standard which tied the money supply to gold, there was no flexibility for the central bank to lower interest rates in recession or raise interest rates in an inflation."

Modernist architecture and aesthetic judgment

Architecture’s Ugly Ducklings May Not Get Time to Be Swans

By ROBIN POGREBIN

GOSHEN, N.Y. — As Modernist buildings reach middle age, many of the stark structures that once represented the architectural vanguard are showing signs of wear, setting off debates around the country between preservationists, who see them as historic landmarks, and the many people who just see them as eyesores.

The conflict has come in recent months to this quaint village 60 miles north of New York City — with its historic harness-racing track, picturesque Main Street and Greek Revival, Federal and Victorian houses — where the blocky concrete county government center designed by the celebrated Modernist architect Paul Rudolph has always been something of a misfit.

The Rise and Fall of Financial "Capitalism"

It never was the “end of history”, rather a path to the end of civilization.

"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

Remember that “financial capitalism” isn’t really capitalism at all. It is financial fraud and economic oppression of the average Joe, to benefit the politically connected.

Diocletian's Lessons In Central Planning

How medieval serfdom began

By Art Cashin

Historians, Will and Ariel Durant, quote on the decline of the Roman Empire:

“Rome had its socialist interlude under Diocletian. Faced with increasing poverty and restlessness among the masses, and with the imminent danger of barbarian invasion, he issued in A.D. 283 an edictum de pretiis, which denounced monopolists for keeping goods from the market to raise prices, and set maximum prices and wages for all important articles and services. Extensive public works were undertaken to put the unemployed to work, and food was distributed gratis, or at reduced prices, to the poor.

The Poverty of Equality

A society that puts equality ahead of freedom and prosperity in the end will have neither

"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."

By Stephen Moore & Peter Ferrara

So began Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 short story "Harrison Bergeron." In that brave new world, the government forced each individual to wear "handicaps" to offset any advantage he had, so everyone could be truly and fully equal. Beautiful people had to wear ugly masks to hide their good looks. The strong had to wear compensating weights to slow them down. Graceful dancers were burdened with bags of bird shot. Those with above-average intelligence had to wear government transmitters in their ears that would emit sharp noises every 20 seconds, shattering their thoughts "to keep them…from taking unfair advantage of their brains."

Growing Out of Poverty

A World Bank report makes clear how free markets have led millions out of poverty

By Guy Sorman

The most significant events often escape media attention. How many would know from reading their daily newspaper or watching television that we live in an unprecedented economic period when the number of people living in extreme poverty is declining fast? According to a just-published World Bank report, the percentage of people living on less than $1.25 per day—or its local equivalent—has plummeted from 52 percent of the global population in 1981 to 22 percent in 2008. The World Bank doesn’t provide more recent data, but other indices show that the 2008 financial crisis did not interrupt this trend. For millions of households, crossing the symbolic $1.25 threshold means leaving destitution behind and moving toward a more dignified life—no trivial achievement. Moreover, this escape from poverty happens while the global population continues to grow. Doomsday prophets who warned about a ticking “population bomb” have not been vindicated, to say the least. Global warming messiahs, beware: human ingenuity proves able to cope with the predicaments of Mother Nature.

Has US Forgotten Lessons Of its First War With Iran?

Leap into the Void

By Bruce Riedel

In the late 1980s, President Ronald Reagan intervened in the Iran-Iraq war on the side of Saddam Hussein to tilt the conflict to an Iraqi victory. America engaged in a bloody if undeclared naval and air war against Iran, while Iraq fought a brutal land war. The lessons of our first war with Iran should be carefully considered before we embark on a second.

The Iran-Iraq War was devastating — one of the largest and longest conventional interstate wars since the Korean conflict ended in 1953. A half-million lives were lost, perhaps another million injured and the economic cost was over $1 trillion. Yet the battle lines at the end were almost exactly where they were at the beginning. It was also the only war in modern times in which chemical weapons were used on a massive scale.

Can Pigs Fly?

They may start flapping their baby wings pretty soon 

By 36 South Advisors

We understand that when building a house in Spain a substantial part of the cost now involves paying people “off-grid” or “under the table”. This seems endemic and we imagine is partially historic but IF it is increasing in extent as a result of the financial crisis it is an important trend. Extrapolating this trend out to the whole population, one suddenly realizes that the private sector could be slowly going “off-grid”, further starving governments of revenue and thus the means of the economy’s and therefore the government’s recovery.

As more and more private transactions go “off-grid”, which will inevitably happen as taxes go up or the cost of living goes up, less revenue will flow to the governments in question, which will force them in turn to borrow to make up the shortfall or make more bureaucrats redundant. The latter will further stress the economies in question which will make private investors even keener on moving their business “off-grid”.

Are We Heading For Another 2008?

Keep Doing More of What Has Failed Spectacularly

By Chris Martenson

We all know that central banks and governments have been actively intervening in markets since the 2007 subprime mortgage meltdown destabilized the leveraged-debt-dependent global economy. We also know that unprecedented intervention is now the de facto institutionalized policy of central banks and governments. In some cases, the financial authorities have explicitly stated their intention to “stabilize markets” (translation: reinflate credit-driven speculative bubbles) by whatever means are necessary, while in others the interventions are performed by proxies so the policy remains implicit. 

Liberté, égalité, austérité

Economically Inept France Crawls Toward An Election Disaster

By Kyle Smith

Liberté, égalité, austérité isn’t catching on as a campaign slogan in France, and the spring’s election season is becoming a mad scramble to the left at a moment when France’s battered bond rating, and the European project in general, can ill afford it.

Widely disliked center-right incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy is losing in polls to his Socialist challenger François Hollande, whom he faces in a free-for-all election on April 22. The top two finishers in that race will then face off in the general election two weeks later. Sarkozy and Hollande are almost certain to be the finalists, but polls say Sarkozy is behind Hollande by a substantial margin. Meanwhile, Hollande, who has soared in popularity as he has made increasingly ludicrous promises to the French people about reversing austerity and opening the floodgates of government spending, is getting pressure from his left in the person of a comically retro figure named Jean-Luc Melenchon, who wants to party like it’s 1789. 

The Politics of Failure

Spain Is Headed For a Major Economic Crash

By Louis Woodhill

On June 1, 2009, Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people aboard. The disaster was caused by human error. With the plane already in a stall, the pilots pointed the nose upward, which was the exact opposite of what the situation required. When recovered, the cockpit voice recorder revealed that, before they hit the water, the pilots knew that they were going to crash.

With Spain’s economy already in a stall, the conservative government that was elected on November 30, 2011 first raised the top personal income tax rate from 45% to 52%. Then, on March 30, 2012 it announced corporate tax increases. In other words, Spain pointed their tax rates up in a situation where they should have pointed them down. Thus far, the response from the financial markets amounts to, “She’s going in!”

The Ideology Of Catastrophe

An instrument of political and philosophical resignation

A time-honored strategy of cataclysmic discourse, whether performed by preachers or by propagandists, is the retroactive correction. This technique consists of accumulating a staggering amount of horrifying news and then—at the end—tempering it with a slim ray of hope. First you break down all resistance; then you offer an escape route to your stunned audience.

By Pascal Bruckner

As an asteroid hurtles toward Earth, terrified citizens pour into the streets of Brussels to stare at the mammoth object growing before their eyes. Soon, it will pass harmlessly by—but first, a strange old man, Professor Philippulus, dressed in a white sheet and wearing a long beard, appears, beating a gong and crying: "This is a punishment; repent, for the world is ending!"

Random Thoughts

Evolution, creationism and government

By Thomas Sowell

How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on, and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?

Why should being in a professional sport exempt anyone from prosecution for advocating deliberate violence? Recent revelations of such advocacy of violence by an NFL coach should lead to his banishment for life by the NFL, and criminal prosecution by the authorities. If you are serious about reducing violence, you have to be serious about punishing those who advocate it.

The Afghan Syndrome

After Vietnam, there is a new syndrome on the block

By Tom Engelhardt

Take off your hat. Taps is playing. Almost four decades late, the Vietnam War and its post-war spawn, the Vietnam Syndrome, are finally heading for their American grave. It may qualify as the longest attempted burial in history. Last words — both eulogies and curses — have been offered too many times to mention, and yet no American administration found the silver bullet that would put that war away for keeps.

Richard Nixon tried to get rid of it while it was still going on by “Vietnamizing ^[2]” it. Seven years after it ended, Ronald Reagan tried to praise it into the dustbin of history, hailing it as “a noble cause ^[3].” Instead, it morphed from a defeat in the imperium into a “syndrome,” an unhealthy aversion ^[4] to war-making believed to afflict the American people to their core.

The good midwife of Sichuan

Private health providers, won’t make a killing

By The economist

The scene at the women’s and children’s hospital in Chengdu could be in any well-appointed modern maternity unit. Doting fathers stare at newborns dozing on crisp bedding as masked cleaners keep the corridors spotless. The Angel hospital in Sichuan’s capital is part of a wave of privately owned hospitals, catering to patients fleeing crowded state clinics.

The patients here are well-off locals, paying from 20,000 yuan ($3,200) for a Caesarean delivery and the latest drugs. Rooms cost extra, including suites for families to host postnatal banquets.

The roots of private health care in Communist China go back to clinics that treated venereal disease. In other respects, the taint of private care has gone, and foreign investment is encouraged. Over 30 joint ventures have been approved; many more are in the pipeline. The country’s new five-year plan endorses private-sector investors as part of the solution to the country’s shortage of affordable health care. Health spending has soared in recent years and is set to top 700 billion yuan by 2015.

Media Dishonesty and Race Hustlers

Liberal's Risky Investment

by Walter E. Williams

When NBC's "Today" show played the audio of George Zimmerman's call to a Sanford, Fla., police dispatcher about Trayvon Martin, the editors made him appear to be a racist who says: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black." What Zimmerman actually said was: "This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. It's raining, and he's just walking around, looking about." The 911 officer responded by asking, "OK, and this guy – is he black, white or Hispanic?" Zimmerman replied, "He looks black." NBC says it's investigating the doctoring of the audio, but there's nothing to investigate; its objective was to inflame passions.

In his Associated Press article titled "Old photos may be deceptive in Fla. shooting case," Matt Sedensky pointed out that the photos carried by the major media were several years old and showed Zimmerman looking fat and mean and Martin looking like a sweet young kid.

The "Shadow" Government of USA

Leviathan

By Iain Murray

How many Americans work in government? That’s a difficult question to answer. Officially, as of 2009, the federal government employed 2.8 million individuals out of a total U.S. workforce of 236 million — just over 1 percent of the workforce. But it’s not quite as simple as that. Add in uniformed military personnel, and the figure goes up to just under 4.4 million. There are also 66,000 people who work in the legislative branch and for federal courts. That makes the figure around 2 percent of the workforce.

Yet even that doesn’t tell the full story. A lot of government work is done by contractors or grantees — from arms manufacturers to local charities, from environmental-advocacy groups to university researchers. A lot of the work they do is funded nearly entirely by taxpayers, so they should count as part of the federal government. Unfortunately, we can’t ask the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) how many government contractors and grantees there are. They don’t keep such records.

You Are No Better Than A Racist

If You Don’t Believe In Man-Made Global Warming

Kari Norgaard claims that she is not plauged by any  "aberrant sociological behavior"

by James E. Miller

Oregon University professor Kari Norgaard has made headlines with a controversial paper claiming that global warming skeptics are plagued by an “aberrant sociological behavior.”  From the Daily Mail:

Sociology and environmental studies professor Kari Norgaard wrote a paper criticising non-believers, suggesting that doubters need to be have a ‘sickness’.

The professor, who holds a B.S. in biology and a master’s and PhD in sociology, argued that ‘cultural resistance’ to accepting humans as being responsible for climate change ‘must be recognised and treated’ as an aberrant sociological behaviour.

Resolving skepticism about climate change alarmists, she added, is a challenge equitable to overcoming ‘racism or slavery in the U.S. South’.

Norgaard added that effective international action on climate change is being hampered by ‘weak’ responses to the crisis by both individuals and societies.