Should Black People Continue To Tolerate Black-On-Black Crime?

A True Epidemic

By WALTER E. WILLIAMS

Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94% figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks. Though blacks are 13% of the nation's population, they account for more than 50% of homicide victims.

Nationally, black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites. Coupled with being most of the nation's homicide victims, blacks are most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery.

Paralyzing Vice Or Inventive Social Self-Defense?

Looking into Corruption

By George Handlery

It is elementary, that when you write about a term you should give its definition. In the case of corruption, we all know what is meant. This agreement does not help to get closer to a precise meaning that satisfies everybody at all times. Those that admit this and persist to give a definition are either fools or they write a weekly column. It is quite likely that the “or” can be omitted. 

Its omnipresence is what makes “corruption” as slippery as a freshly caught fish. We often become unaware participants because an innocent aspect is implied. This can make actions that open privileged opportunities not legally actionable and these are therefore not criminal. When I got my Swiss citizenship an official had to determine whether I am integrated. Due to assumptions he had reason to make in the light of my training, he skipped the obligatory questions about society and politics. Once he found out that I am a member of a local pistol club, being a participant himself, he visibly concluded that I “belong”. The case gets more complicated once other shared interests are exploited to pull the cart of a firm. For good reason, retired politicians are in demand as lobbyists. For the same reason, many countries limit their lobbying.

The Fraud Of Austerity

The collective memory loss

By Richard Rahn

Denial is leading to collective economic suicide in Europe and the United States. The French elected a socialist president who wants to raise taxes on those elusive rich and keep spending as if there is no tomorrow. 

Many on the left, including European socialists in tandem with the New York Times and its economist Paul Krugman, are falsely claiming that Europe and even the United States are being saddled with "austerity." Their claim is that governments are not spending enough to reduce unemployment. They want higher taxes on the most productive plus bigger government. 

The Seeds of the EU’s Crisis Were Sown 60 Years Ago

Can there be a fiscal without a political union?

By Clive Crook

The arc of Europe’s postwar history is turning toward tragedy. It isn’t just that much of the continent has fallen into a new Great Depression, or that in some countries things will get worse before they get better. It isn’t even that the whole mess was avoidable. It’s that the crisis is dividing Europe along the very lines the European project was intended to erase.

Decades of cliches about European solidarity and the European idea are being held up to ridicule. The argument that Britons, Germans, Greeks, Italians and Spaniards are instinctive cultural partners whose commonalities transcend their obvious differences and historical enmities -- that “Europe” is a real community, not just a heavily worked-over Brussels blueprint -- turns out to be, let’s say, disputable.

Ancient stereotypes frame conversation about the crisis. Germans are bossy and severe. Italians are idle. Greeks are corrupt. Brits are arrogant. The French are vain. So much for 60 years of European unification.

The Autism-Welfare Nexus

Another cycle of government dependency and poverty

By PAUL SPERRY

If Steve Jobs were a child today, his school no doubt would drag his parents into the office and tell them he was so difficult and disruptive he needed to be examined by a doctor.

His chastened parents, in turn, would take him to a pediatrician who more than likely would diagnose him with high-functioning autism and prescribe a daily regimen of Prozac or Ritalin.

Prescriptions in hand, his working-class parents could then apply for federal disability benefits. And his school could qualify for more federal aid.

Europe: The World’s Worst Dentist With the World’s Dullest Drill

Frightened and bored at the same time

By WALTER RUSSELL MEAD

The European monetary crisis is like a botched root canal: painful, expensive, interminable. Weeks, months and even years go by and the world helplessly sits in the chair as the incompetent dentists poke, scrape, bicker and endlessly, endlessly drill.  From time to time there are shots of Novocaine—usually in the form of liquidity injections from the ECB—that reduce the pain to a dull throb, but there are no signs of improvement, no signs that the long and futile European process is coming to any kind of successful conclusion.

We are frightened and bored at the same time: we can’t look away but we can’t bear to master the intricate details of this most tedious of world crises.

The Two Europes

Neither the long- or short-term futures look terribly bright

by FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

The Greek election on Sunday was a predictable disaster: the two mainstream parties, the socialist PASOK and the center-right New Democracy (ND), were displaced by new extremist parties that appeared on their right and left, including the left-wing Syriza and KKE (Communist) parties which won a quarter of the vote between them, and the right-wing Independent Greeks and Golden Dawn parties getting almost 18 percent.

The main issues in the campaign revolved around whether Greece should fulfill the terms of the pact that had been negotiated with the EU and IMF and continue the austerity that implied. None of the parties, however, was willing to take up what from the beginning was the source of Greece’s problems, and the reason it got into such trouble with its public debt in the first place, which is the country’s pervasive clientelism.

In Defense of Bank Runs

“Money is what the government says it is.”

By Detlev Schlichter

One with a liberal view might ask:

Is it really true that we have too-much state involvement in finance? Do we really have some form of monetary central planning? Does this view not completely underestimate the power of the big private banks?

When one looks at the gigantic positions these private banks have on their balance sheets (and the even bigger positions they have ‘off balance sheet’), and when one looks at the outsized bonuses the bankers pay themselves, and when one furthermore considers that most money-creation is done by the private banks, then it appears as if ‘central planning’ or ‘the power of the bureaucracy’ appear inaccurate descriptions of the present system.

After all, J.P. Morgan just admitted to losing $2 billion and counting on complicated derivative positions. How can that be the fault of central bankers or imaginary monetary ‘central planners’? Isn’t this the opposite of central planning? Is this not capitalism running amok?

Half Of Detroit’s Streetlights May Go Out As City Shrinks

A socialist experiment gone terribly wrong

By Chris Christoff

Detroit, whose 139 square miles contain 60 percent fewer residents than in 1950, will try to nudge them into a smaller living space by eliminating almost half its streetlights.

As it is, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are broken and the city, whose finances are to be overseen by an appointed board, can’t afford to fix them. Mayor Dave Bing’s plan would create an authority to borrow $160 million to upgrade and reduce the number of streetlights to 46,000. Maintenance would be contracted out, saving the city $10 million a year.

The Best Way To Get A University Level Education For Free

How do you get and maintain lifelong learning?

By Tina Sieber

The idea that you are never done learning has never been more true than today. The Internet has revolutionized the way we access information and knowledge – formerly a luxury accessible only to the rich and highly gifted – which is now freely available to anyone with Internet access.

Education and learning should be a lifelong process and the Internet is your chance to get a university level education for free, regardless of where you are in life. This article introduces you to the three best websites to get started.

Unemployment Insurance Schemes

The Dependency Of Welfare

by James Miller

In the Garden of Eden there is no scarcity.  Food, clothing, and shelter are in abundance.  Resources merely fall from the heavens upon command.  It is economic paradise precisely because economics does not exist.  The universal laws that hold in the world of scarce goods vanquish in the land of the plenty.

The vision of Eden is the politician’s main source of employment.  That is, promising to lead the suffering masses toward utopia by government decree makes for great electoral results.  The voting fodder ignorant of economics falls in line to cast a ballot to grant themselves other people’s money.  But of course many voters don’t see it this way.  Their vision of the state is that of Eden.  They see the bureaucrats and enforcers capable of tapping an infinite pot of wealth to pass along prosperity to those subservient enough to put them in office.  This in turn has lead to the establishment of the welfare state and its plethora of entitlement programs.

The importance of "Middle Land"

A Ravening Justice

By Mark Steyn

To get the obvious out of the way: I loathe John Edwards. I loathe him as a slick ambulance-chasing trial lawyer, as a preening poseur of a presidential candidate, as a multi-bazillionaire "advocate" for "the poor," as a third-rate sob sister peddling faux-Dickensian guff about entirely mythical "coatless girls" lying in their beds shivering at night because their father was laid off at the mill. I loathe everything about him except his angled nape, which I must concede, having been pressed up against it in a campaign crush in New Hampshire, is a thing of beauty, and well worth every penny of whatever Rachel Mellon paid for it.

Double trouble

Bipartisanship Is Behind Government's Worst Programs

By GEORGE F. WILL

Bipartisanship, the supposed scarcity of which so distresses the high-minded, actually is disastrously prevalent.

Since 2001, it has produced No Child Left Behind, a counterproductive federal intrusion in primary and secondary education; the McCain-Feingold speech rationing law (the Bipartisan) Campaign Reform Act); an unfunded prescription drug entitlement; troublemaking by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; government-directed capitalism from the Export-Import Bank; crony capitalism from energy subsidies; unseemly agriculture and transportation bills; bailouts of an unreformed Postal Service; housing subsidies; subsidies for state and local governments; and many other bipartisan deeds.

“Fascism, n. A supreme belief in the superiority of action over thought.”

It is very easy to call for grand, magical, all-resolving action when one is in opposition

By Tim Price

“Working at my desk today was somewhat surreal. Global risk markets were closing out a dreadful week. Newswires were full of disconcerting articles – J.P. Morgan, Greece, Spain, Italy, China, etc. Meanwhile, CNBC was in the midst of blanket coverage of the Facebook initial public offering. Mark Zuckerberg rang the bell to open NASDAQ trading, while helicopters provided live video of the employee gathering at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters. Insiders are now worth billions, the “average” employee millions. Even U2’s Bono pocketed $1.2bn (with a “B”). I noted above how I see J.P. Morgan’s predicament as a microcosm of global financial woes. Well, it is difficult for me today not to see Facebook as emblematic of the incredible transfer of wealth associated with Credit Bubbles. It’s almost as if this historic Bubble has been waiting to end with just such an exclamation point.”                 

                         — From “The Jig is Up‟, by Doug Noland.

Birds of a Different Feather

The Austrians And The Swan

By Mark Spitznagel

What is a black swan event, or tail event, in the stock market?

✓ It depends on who’s asking.

✓ To those familiar with Austrian capital theory, the impending U.S. stock market plunge (of even well over 40%)—like pretty much all that came before in the past century—will certainly not be a Black Swan, nor even a tail event.

✓ Nonetheless, the black swan notion is paramount—in perception: Market participants’ failure to expect a perfectly expected event—that is, they price in only Anglo swans despite the Viennese bird lurking conspicuously in the weeds—much like what is happening today, brings tremendous opportunity.

I. On Induction: If it looks like a swan, swims like a swan, …

By now, everyone knows what a tail is. The concept has become rather ubiquitous, even to many for whom tails were considered inconsequential just over a few years ago. But do we really know one when we see one?

The Yankee Comandante

A story of love, revolution, and betrayal

William Alexander Morgan being applauded by Fidel Castro, in Havana in 1959. Morgan said that he had joined the Cuban Revolution because “the most important thing for free men to do is to protect the freedom of others.”

by David Grann

For a moment, he was obscured by the Havana night. It was as if he were invisible, as he had been before coming to Cuba, in the midst of revolution. Then a burst of floodlights illuminated him: William Alexander Morgan, the great Yankee comandante. He was standing, with his back against a bullet-pocked wall, in an empty moat surrounding La Cabaña—an eighteenth-century stone fortress, on a cliff overlooking Havana Harbor, that had been converted into a prison. Flecks of blood were drying on the patch of ground where Morgan’s friend had been shot, moments earlier. Morgan, who was thirty-two, blinked into the lights. He faced a firing squad.

Flirting with fascism

Why Europe can’t shake its weakness for Nazism

by Peter Goodspeed

Like vermin in a time of pestilence, neo-Nazi groups appear to be enjoying a resurgence in a Europe plagued by increasing financial chaos and uncertainty. As Europe celebrated the 67th anniversary of V.E. Day and the defeat of Hitler’s Nazis this week, it also reeled in disbelief as an angry Greek electorate gave 7% of their votes to the neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant Golden Dawn party.

One Nation (under Germany)

European Union will become, finally, a federal state

By Ben Laurance 

Where does it all end? What will be the outcome of the financial storm battering Europe and its single currency? Can the euro be saved? And if so, what will be the long­term consequences?

The financial historian Niall Ferguson, visiting London from his self­imposed exile in America to promote the paperback version of his most recent book, is typically confident that he has the answers to these difficult questions — and they are not what you might expect from this tireless proponent of free markets.

A Greek Exit Could Make the Euro Area Stronger

The Long Goodbye

By Jacob Kirkegaard

A Greek exit from the euro area would inflict heavy damage in Greece and throughout Europe. It could also be one of the best things that ever happened to the currency union.

Greece’s repeat parliamentary election next month will serve as a referendum on whether the country should end its 12- year membership in the common currency. An affirmative answer would trigger a cardiac arrest of the Greek economy, as the banking system collapsed and foreign suppliers refused payment in drachmas. The financial system of the euro area, by far Greece’s biggest international creditor, would suffer hundreds of billions of euros in losses.

Forgive Us Our Debts?

The war between lenders and borrowers

by Irwin M. Stelzer
Debtors of the world, unite—you have nothing to lose but your IOUs!

That seems to be what the Greeks are discovering—that they have less to lose by default, with all of its consequences, than by trying to be Germans.

One of the most surprising aspects of the financial crises being played out around the world is the failure of policymakers to concede perhaps the most important underlying fact: This is a war by creditors, in control of the institutions of power, to saddle debtors with the cost of the errors in which both borrowers and lenders are complicit. It is in its way very much like some past debtor-creditor brawls: farmers vs. mortgage lenders, hard money financiers vs. those who wanted to avoid crucifying mankind on a cross of gold, Latin American dictators vs. foreign bankers.