Freedom To Leave May Stop Oppressive Government

"When they persecute you in this city, flee into another"

By Lawrence Hunter

The United States of America is in the early stages of a government-induced crack up.  Stress has begun to create structural failures in the interstices but, as yet, has produced only surface cracks on the social facade.

As the stress of oppressive and tyrannical government increases, however, and as its destructive by-products corrode the social edifice—abusive government actions mount, profligate and destructive policies bring economic ruin on the country, corruption becomes endemic, imperial war abroad, class warfare and civil upheaval at home plague the nation, cities decay—structural cracks will appear and become visible even to the most stupefied American.  More and more people will become aware of the extensive damage that oppressive, albeit democratically elected government has inflicted on American society.  At that point, people will be roused from their stupor to ask, “What happened” but by then, it will be too late.

The Danger of External Debts

Large trade and government deficits often go hand in hand

by Philipp Bagus

Economists and journalists often point to the danger of external public debts — in contrast to internal debts, which are regarded as less troublesome. Japan is a case in point. Japan has an enormous public-debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 200 percent. It is argued that the high ratio is not a problem, because the Japanese save a lot and government bonds are held mostly by Japanese citizens; it is internal debt.

In contrast, Spain with a much lower public-debt-to-GDP ratio (expected to be at 80 percent at the end of this year) is regarded as more unstable by many investors. One reason given for the Spanish fragility is that about half of Spanish government bonds are held by foreigners.[1]

At first sight, one may doubt this line of reasoning. In fact, as an individual living in Spain, I do not care if I get a loan from a Spanish or a German friend. Why would the Spanish government be different? Why care if loans come from Spaniards or from Germans?

We All Prefer Growth to Austerity

Making Growth or Letting It Grow?

By Anthony de Jasay

Galactic Happiness Consultants L.P. have just released the results of a survey of ten thousand adults in 27 European countries who were asked to rank chocolate cake and thin gruel in order of preference. 72.6 per cent chose chocolate cake, 4.3 thin gruel, 23.1 thought the question was daft. The Scientific Advisory Board recommended that the latter be considered as preferring chocolate cake.

EU: neither the destroyer nor saviour of Europe

The cause of and the solution to all of life’s problems 

As the Euro crisis intensifies, it’s becoming clear that both Europhiles and Eurosceptics are driven by the same responsibility-shirking instinct.

by Brendan O’Neill 

Over the past year, as the Euro crisis has intensified, there has been a really interesting revelation – which is that Europhiles and Eurosceptics are not that different from each other. In fact, Europhiles and Eurosceptics are driven by very similar impulses, by similar anti-democratic instincts.

Both of these groups seem keen to absolve national governments of responsibility, to absolve nation states of responsibility for political and economic chaos.

The Europhile does it by kowtowing to Brussels, calling upon EU institutions to do more to save Europe. And the Eurosceptic does it by blaming the EU for almost everything that goes wrong, treating Brussels as a kind of Death Star that has sucked decency from every inch of Europe.

Gimme more

Give-and-Take

By Mark Steyn

Some years ago in this space, I cited a famous Gerald Ford line he liked to use when trying to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." And I posited an alternative thesis: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn't big enough to get you to give any of it back.

That's what the political class of Europe's cradle-to-grave welfare states have spent the last three years doing: trying to persuade their electorates to give some of it back. Not a lot, just a bit. In France, President Sarkozy raised the retirement age from 60 to 62. French life expectancy is 80.7, so you still get to enjoy a quarter of your entire human existence as one long holiday weekend. In Greece, where those in officially designated "hazardous" professions such as hairdressing and TV-announcing get to retire at 50, the government raised the possibility of ending the agreeable arrangement by which public-sector employees receive 14 monthly paychecks per annum. They didn't actually do it but the mere suggestion that Greeks should, like lesser mortals, be bound by temporal reality was enough for the voters to rebel.

The Truth About Europe

There Is No Solution

By Raul Ilargi

Whatever data we can look at, past, present and future, none of it will make an essential difference. The title stands: There Is No Solution For Europe. Period. All I can do is keep pointing to news and stats and data that confirm that. All of them do, so that should make it a lot easier, even if most voices out there never tire from pointing out the opposite.

Nor is it limited to Europe; it's not as if the US, or Australia, or any other industrialized country, has any other fate to look forward to. This global debt deflation is truly global, the only thing that differs is the exact time the hammer comes down. Maybe those people are best off who never had much, though they will be sure to be squeezed ever harder by us, the declining rich.

The Restaurant At The End Of The Eurozone

It’s Just Lunch

                           “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

                                                    -Douglas Adams

By Mark Grant

Imagine if you will a very large and diverse restaurant. It is not the Restaurant at the End of the Universe of Douglas Adam’s fame but the biggest one on this world and it is known as  "Investeros." Here there is a group of people that have been dining together for the past thirteen years. 

For most of the time the food was good, the service polite and paying the bill was never an issue. Then Don Grekko got into trouble and then Don Paddy and also Don Portugesse. They still went to lunch, of course, everyone being good friends but the other diners had to pick up their bill and this was getting tiresome. There was huffing and puffing and each of them said, in turn, that it was not their fault. There was the usual polite finger pointing and these three gentleman ate, but what they could order was severely curtailed because of the prices. This caused some issues but everyone still dined and the world went on albeit not quite as pleasantly as before.

We

Brainwashing Starts With This Two-Letter Word

by Simon Black

The big news out of New York City these days is Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s proposed ban on the sale of soda drinks over 16-ounces (about 1/2 liter) at restaurants, movie theaters, sports stadia, street carts, fast food chains, etc.

Bloomberg stressed that we have a responsibility to combat obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and that the government must consequently regulate what people can/cannot put in their bodies. Michelle Obama even came down to applaud the idea.

Last night I was out with a group of friends at a chic Soho restaurant called the Dutch, and we started talking about the soda ban.

The magical money-growing trees

As France Lowers Retirement Age, Germany Better Be Ready To Pay For Austerity's Unwind

By Tyler Durden

As noted earlier, Europe has been so obviously crippled by years of brutal austerity (which, as we pointed out before never actually happened), that it has had to experience the supreme indignity - a miserable two years of plunging flat GDP growth. Because under the old normal, it appears that unless one is issuing massive debt, pardon "growing", society grinds to a halt. 

Well, it appears that France has finally had enough, and as of today, "the French government approved a measure Wednesday that will lower the retirement age to 60 from 62 for a narrow group of workers, partly reversing unpopular pension reforms made by former President Nicolas Sarkozy as he sought to improve France's public finances." Obviously, this means that more welfare funding will have to be sourced as all else equal, this means less money will be produced by the country's workforce, and more money will be consumed by its retirees.

Immoral Beyond Redemption

When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good

by Walter E. Williams

Benjamin Franklin, statesman and signer of our Declaration of Independence, said: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." John Adams, another signer, echoed a similar statement: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Are today's Americans virtuous and moral, or have we become corrupt and vicious? Let's think it through with a few questions.

Suppose I saw an elderly woman painfully huddled on a heating grate in the dead of winter. She's hungry and in need of shelter and medical attention. To help the woman, I walk up to you using intimidation and threats and demand that you give me $200. Having taken your money, I then purchase food, shelter and medical assistance for the woman. Would I be guilty of a crime? A moral person would answer in the affirmative. I've committed theft by taking the property of one person to give to another.

Conspiracies and How to Defeat Them

Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else

By Jeffrey Tucker

Someone asked me the other day if I believe in conspiracies. Well, sure. Here’s one. It is called the political system. It is nothing if not a giant conspiracy to rob, trick and subjugate the population.

People participate in the hope of making our lives better, or at least curbing the damage government does. Yet look at the results: exactly the opposite. No matter who is selected as temporary front men to “reform” the system, the regime thrives and the population withers.

It should be obvious by now that reform doesn’t happen by drawing ever more people into the ranks of the oppressor class. But somehow, people keep getting pulled in. What’s more, the regime is fully aware of this, even if the population is not. So, yes, I would call it a conspiracy.

Why This Time IS Different

The EU’s Systemic Risk

Europe will collapse before the end of the year and very likely before the end of the summer. When this Crisis hits it will be worse than 2008. And the world Central Banks will not be able to control the damage.

What makes this time different?

Several items:

1)   The Crisis coming from Europe will be far, far larger in scope than anything the Fed has dealt with before.

2)   The Fed is now politically toxic and cannot engage in aggressive monetary policy without experiencing severe political backlash (this is an election year).

3)   The Fed’s resources are spent to the point that the only thing the Fed could do would be to announce an ENORMOUS monetary program which would cause a Crisis in of itself.

Let me walk through each of these one at a time.

Why We'll Never Run Out of Oil

It is not as much a question of physics as it is one of economics

 The notion that world oil production had reached its summit and would soon begin a decline was in great vogue not so long ago.

By A. Barton Hinkle

Remember the term “peak oil”? Whatever happened to it?

The notion that world oil production had reached its summit and would soon begin a decline—bringing with it shortages, economic collapse, resource wars, and general ruination—was in great vogue not so long ago.

"Is global oil production reaching a peak?” asked the BBC in 2005. “We are approaching peak oil sooner than many people would have guessed,” said The Houston Chronicle three years later. Two years after that, The New York Times reported on a group of environmentalists who “argue that oil supplies peaked as early as 2008 and will decline rapidly, taking the economy with them.”

Is Greece European?

From the point of geography and geopolitics, Greece will be in play for years to come

By Robert D. Kaplan

Greece is where the West both begins and ends. The West -- as a humanist ideal -- began in ancient Athens where compassion for the individual began to replace the crushing brutality of the nearby civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The war that Herodotus chronicles between Greece and Persia in the 5th century B.C. established a contrast between West and East that has persisted for millennia. Greece is Christian, but it is also Eastern Orthodox, as spiritually close to Russia as it is to the West, and geographically equidistant between Brussels and Moscow. Greece may have invented the West with the democratic innovations of the Age of Pericles, but for more than a thousand years it was a child of Byzantine and Turkish despotism. And while Greece was the northwestern bastion of the anciently civilized Near East, ever since history moved north into colder climates following the collapse of Rome, the inhabitants of Peninsular Greece have found themselves at the poor, southeastern extremity of Europe.

Spain Capitulates

The Reign In Spain Is Over

By Mark Grant

Spain has now officially asked the European Union for aid for its banks. The markets seem to be responding as if the bank issue is isolated. It is not isolated. We are following the same schematic as we did with Ireland; first it was the banks and then it was the country and then the “Men in Black” showed up to take over. Spain says it is a 50 billion Euro problem and the reality is probably more like a 400 billion Euro problem. 


There is all kinds of cross lending between the banks in Spain and while Spain’s largest two banks have tried everything they could to isolate themselves; I predict there will be no escape for anyone. Now that Spain has asked for a bailout of their banks the European auditors will show up and I would bet large money that the values of many loans and the value of Real Estate and the securitizations tied to it will be found to have been vastly overstated. Then it will be the regional governments and their debts and the house of cards will implode. The Spanish Finance Minister kicked off the first domino this morning and we can all just stand by now and watch the rest fall.

The We-Fixed-Nothing Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost

Paying interest on debt that wasn't invested in productive assets and that has no collateral to back it is a fiscal black hole

When the real problems are masked with fake "solutions," the chickens eventually come home to roost, and we wake up to the reality that the fake "solutions" have only made things much worse.

by Charles Hugh Smith

The reality that the global Status Quo has fixed absolutely nothing in four years is finally coming to roost in the global economy. Though there is an endless array of complexity to snare the unwary, the source of instability is both visible and easily understood: too much debt that will never be paid back. Making matters much worse, much of the money that was borrowed--by sovereign governments, local governments, households and private enterprises--was squandered on consumption or malinvestments, and so there are precious few assets or collateral underlying the debt.

Even when there is an asset--for example, a vacant house in a vacant development in Spain, or a Greek bond--the market value is considerably lower than the purchase price.

The essence of our values is the rule of law, not the rule of presidents.

Obama's Secret Kill List

By Andrew Napolitano 

The leader of the government regularly sits down with his senior generals and spies and advisers and reviews a list of the people they want him to authorize their agents to kill. They do this every Tuesday morning when the leader is in town. The leader once condemned any practice even close to this, but now relishes the killing because he has convinced himself that it is a sane and sterile way to keep his country safe and himself in power. The leader, who is running for re-election, even invited his campaign manager to join the group that decides whom to kill.

Capitalist haven

British traditions boost the de facto state of Somaliland

By Lawrence Solomon

It’s the only African country that doesn’t rely on foreign aid from the world’s rich governments. It’s a Muslim country in Africa that has had a functioning democracy for two decades. It’s an oasis of relative peace in one of the most vicious regions of the world, with a growing free-market economy, low inflation and a currency that has been appreciating against the U.S. dollar.

This anomaly of a country, Somaliland, is unrecognized by any other country in the world, even though the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa touts it as a “success story” and the World Bank itself doesn’t formally recognize it. Somaliland’s story is all the more astonishing given that it is officially part of Somalia, a failed state best known for its piracy at sea and al-Shabaab terrorists on land, and given that it declared independence in 1991 after surviving a brutal repression by Somalia’s Marxist dictator that dispersed much of its population to the U.K., Canada and other safe havens.

The Ugly Truth About Social Security Is Revealed

The money is no longer yours. Deal with it

By John Tamny

A recent front page USA Today story inadvertently exposed the lie that is Social Security. Though the article was ostensibly about budget deficits, and how unfunded liabilities of the Social Security variety were not properly being accounted for in deficit calculations (they quadruple taxpayer liability), a staff expert at a liberal think tank shed light on why.

Sure enough, and despite the protests for years from big government apologists that our Social Security funds are secure, it turns out they’re not. We know this now not because we’re logical, or because some libertarian said so, but because Jim Horney at the liberal Center on Budget Priorities told us exactly that.

An amazing example of why this country is headed in the wrong direction

Honor student placed in jail for tardiness and truancy at school

By Simon Black

This past Friday, Barack Obama was at a Minneapolis-area Honeywell plant touting his economic recovery credentials to cheering disciples. One of the excited faithful was a young boy, fifth-grader Tyler Sullivan, who took the day off from school to hear the President speak.

The President was full of the usual bombast about how Congress needs to work with him to 'build a strong economy', and how he wants to get $3,000 to everyone in the American middle class so that people can go out and buy 'thingamajigs'.