The European Central Bank Changes Its Spots

The ECB is now a lender of last resort not only to the commercial banks in its club but to governments in its area

By Pedro Schwart

Almost from the start, the single currency was seen as a necessary ingredient of a unified Europe. The Treaty of Rome that launched the Common Market was signed in 1957; the Werner Report outlining the path towards full economic and monetary union was commissioned in 1969 and made official in 1970. Despite this relatively early start, the creation of a solid euro is taking time; from the beginning it was beset with incident. It was not finally launched until the year 2000. The honeymoon lasted until 2007. Since then, progress has become less than smooth, to say the least.

The original euro

The intention was to make the euro a special kind of currency, a sort of European Deutschemark with no need for a government to back it. Monetary sovereignty would reside in a fully independent European Central Bank. Its remit according to the Maastricht Treaty (1992) was strictly reduced to issuing the euro, to managing an area-wide interest rate, and to leading the old national central banks in the oversight of the Eurozone banks. The ECB was to be a rule-bound institution. Its only obligation was to maintain the purchasing power of its currency. Knowing that repeated budget deficits and continuous accumulation of sovereign debt sooner or later lead the issuer of the currency to print excessive amounts of money, a parallel document, the Stability and Growth Pact (1998) put a limit to member states' deficits and debt. This transfer of monetary sovereignty to the ECB and the limiting rules accompanying it meant that neither member states nor the European Union could use the euro as an instrument of discretionary economic management. In practice, no devaluation and no inflation imposed a harsh discipline on the Ministers of Finance of the Euro area—a welcome brake on democratic profligacy.

This well-meaning project had its failings, as experience has shown. Some small instrumental changes, especially regarding the over-lenient interest rate policy, would have given the new currency greater stability. But nobody made clear from the start its possible costs in terms of budgetary discipline, structural reform and reduction of entitlements. A pampered electorate should have been told the price to be paid for the great advantage of a stable currency. In sum, the euro could have been a sort of pale replica of the gold standard, aspiring to the solidity of gold but free of gold's automatic rigidity. Better that than nothing.

An 'American' euro

The current crisis has led the European authorities and the Bank to throw away the monetary ideal of rule-bound action, independence from politics and attention to the long run. The ECB is now a lender of last resort not only to the commercial banks in its club but to governments in its area. Far from being independent of politics, it is in continuous consultation and collaboration with European and national authorities. The current president of the ECB has gone so far as to says that the Bank will "do whatever it takes" to save the euro, which markets have understood as creating all the liquidity necessary to stop speculators. Thus, the ECB is now turning itself into a traditional government banker, ready to aid and abet in counter-cyclical monetary management, protectionist exchange rate policy, and 'controlled' inflationism.

The Rich Get Richer and Everyone Else Poorer Under Socialism

Socialism puts power over the lives of the many into the hands of the few

"Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Other look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful sees it for what it really is – the strong horse that pulls the whole cart."

by Benedict D. LaRosa

When President Clinton unveiled his national health care plan in 1993, known as HillaryCare, Republicans opposed the details, but not the concept of a government controlled health care system. The same is true with the Obama health care plan of 2010. The Republican establishment promises to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with something else. Regardless of the details, the very concept of government imposed health care represents a giant step toward socialism.

But don't wait for the President or members of Congress who favor such government intervention in the marketplace to refer to their philosophy of government as socialism, for that would alienate their targeted constituency. Norman Thomas, the head of the Socialist Party of the United States until his death, said:

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name of Liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until one day America will be a Socialist nation without knowing how it happened.

The well known writer and Fabian socialist, H.G. Wells, predicted in his 1908 book New Worlds for Old:

Socialism would cease to be an open revolution, and would instead become a subtle plot. Functions were to be shifted from the elected representative, to the appointed official; . . . a scientific bureaucracy appointed by representative bodies which would have diminishing activity and importance. . . . The replacement of individual action by a public organization could achieve socialism without public support.

(The much maligned term liberal, when applied to socialists is a misnomer, for classical liberalism holds that the government which governs least governs best, and attempts to maximize freedom.)

Socialists argue that capitalism exacerbates the problems of poverty, environmental degradation, expensive health care, alienating work, racial inequality, inadequate housing, and a host of other ills. They are correct in that our present economic system fosters these ills. Where they go amiss is in calling this system free market capitalism. What we have developed in recent history is not free-market capitalism, but the socialism critics find so attractive.

Americans began flirting with socialism as early as the Civil War when both the U.S. and Confederate governments intervened in the economic lives of their respective citizens to a previously unheard of degree. Well-intended Americans advanced the socialist cause in a populist revolt against the monopolists and crony capitalists of the late 19th century known as Robber Barons. The pace quickened with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act and the income tax in 1913. With America's entry into World War I in 1917 came increased regulation of commerce and industry. Franklin Roosevelt, who promised lower taxes and less government during the 1932 campaign, spent his four terms as President poking the heavy hand of government into everything he could. H.G. Wells was so impressed with Roosevelt's policies that during his 1934 visit to the Soviet Union, he "tried to persuade Stalin that Roosevelt's New Deal was the beginning in America of a movement toward socialism." (H.G. Wells in Russia, Martin Gardner, THE FREEMAN, May 1995, p.287). The pace has quickened since then under both Democrat and Republican administrations.

There are two ways to obtain goods and services: through force (slavery and plunder) or free exchange (cooperation).

The Bitcoin Money Myth

Bitcoin is not money but rather a new way of employing existent money in transactions

by Frank Shostak

Many economists and financial commentators believe that in the unregulated market of the internet economy, new forms of money can be created that bypass central-bank and government supervision. The latest development is the emergence of a new electronic means of exchange, Bitcoin (BTC). Bitcoin was launched on January 3 2009 by its inventor, a programmer called Satoshi Nakamote.

The basic idea behind Bitcoin is to create, by means of a mathematical algorithm, a digital good that is scarce and fungible.

Nakamote devised a software system that enabled people to obtain bitcoins as a reward for solving complex mathematical puzzles. The resulting coins are then used for online trading. Nakamote also arranged that the number of bitcoins can never exceed 21 million.

Some experts maintain that Bitcoin will displace the existent fiat money and will usher in a new era of free banking, which will finally put to rest the menace of inflation.

Unfortunately, this is a pipe dream. Electronic money will not replace fiat paper money. The belief that it can stems from a failure to understand the nature and function of money and how it emerges on the market.

To see where this view goes wrong, let's first see how money comes about. Money emerges out of barter conditions that permit more complex forms of trade and economic calculation. The distinguishing characteristic of money is that it is the general medium of exchange, evolved from private enterprise from the most marketable commodity. On this Mises wrote,

There would be an inevitable tendency for the less marketable of the series of goods used as media of exchange to be one by one rejected until at last only a single commodity remained, which was universally employed as a medium of exchange; in a word, money. (The Theory of Money and Credit,pp. 32-33)

In short, money is the thing for which all other goods and services are traded. Furthermore, money must emerge as a commodity. An object cannot be used as money unless it already possesses an exchange value based on some other use. The object must have a pre-existing price for it to be accepted as money.

Why? Demand for a good arises from its perceived benefit. For instance people demand food because of the nourishment it offers. With regard to money, people demand it not for direct use in consumption, but in order to exchange it for other goods and services. Money is not useful in itself, but because it has an exchange value, it is exchangeable in terms of other goods and services.

The benefit money offers is its purchasing power, i.e. its price in terms of goods and services. Consequently for something to be accepted as money, it must have a pre-existing purchasing power: a price. This price could have only emerged if it had an exchange value established in barter.

Once a thing becomes accepted as the medium of exchange, it will continue to be accepted even if its non-monetary usefulness disappears. The reason for this acceptance is that people now possess previous information about its purchasing power. This in turn enables them to form the demand for money.

How Empires Fall

How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower

The imperial tree falls not because the challenges are too great but because the core of the tree has been weakened by the gradual loss of surplus, purpose, institutional effectiveness, intellectual vigor and productive investment.

by Charles Hugh-Smith

Comparing the American Empire with the Roman Empire in its terminal decline is a popular intellectual parlor game. The comparison is inexact on a number of fronts, starting with the nature of empire: Rome ruled a territorial empire, while the U.S. is a hegemony that doesn't need to hold territory (other than key overseas military bases); its dominance is based on the global projection of hard and soft power, diplomacy, finance and the monetary regime of the reserve currency.

Despite the apparent difference, the two empires share the key characteristic of all enduring empires: they extract the cost of maintaining the empire from client states and/or allies.

The mechanisms differ, but the results are the same: the empire's cost is distributed to those who benefit from its secure trade routes.

Two of the key characteristics of an empire in terminal decline are complacency and intellectual sclerosis, what I have termed a failure of imagination.

Michael Grant described these causes of decline in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a short book I have been recommending since 2009:

There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. (The Status Quo) attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.

This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.

This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all.

In other words, if our idea of intellectual rigor and honesty is Paul Krugman dancing around the Neo-Keynesian Cargo Cult campfire waving dead chickens and mumbling nonsensical claims of grand success, we are well and truly doomed.

The Islamic Emirate of Syriastan

Τhe next stage is set for a civil war, Syria-style, in Iraq

By Pepe Escobar 

And now some breaking news coming from the Islamic Emirate of Syriastan. This program is brought to you by the NATOGCC corporation. Please also tune in for a word from our individual sponsors, the United States government, Britain, France, Turkey, the House of Saud and the Emir of Qatar. 

It all started early this week, with a proclamation by the elusive leader of al-Qaeda Central, Ayman "The Doctor" al-Zawahiri, hidden somewhere in the Pakistani tribal areas; how come Double O Bama with his license to kill (list) and prime drone fleet cannot find him? 

Al-Zawahiri called for all the Islamist brigades in the Jihad Inc business fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al- Assad to found an Islamic emirate, the passport du jour leading to an Islamic caliphate.

Two days later, the Islamic State of Iraq - for all practical purposes al-Qaeda in Iraq - announced, via a video starring its leader Abu Bakr al-Husseini al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi, a mergers and acquisition spectacular; from now on, it would be united with the Syrian jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra, and be referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. 

But then, the next day, the head of Jabhat al-Nusra, the shady Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, said that yes, we do pledge our allegiance to al-Qaeda Sheikh, Doctor al-Zawahiri; but there has been no M&A business whatsoever with al-Qaeda in Iraq. 

Puzzled infidels from Washington to Beijing may be entitled to believe this is straight from Monty Python - but it's actually deadly serious; especially as the House of Saud, the Emir of Qatar, the neo-Ottoman Erdogan in Turkey and King Playstation from Jordan - vastly supported by Washington - continue to weaponize the Syrian "rebels" to Kingdom Come. And one of the top beneficiaries of this weaponizing orgy has been - who else - the M&A gang now known as the Islamic State of the Iraq and Levant.

Every grain of sand in the Syrian-Iraqi desert knows that the "rebels" who really matter in fighting terms in Syria are from Jabhat al-Nusra - hundreds of transnationals fond of beheading and suicide bombings. 

They control, for instance, a few important suburbs of Aleppo. They've perpetrated scores of kidnappings, torture and summary executions. Crucially, they killed a lot of civilians. And they want to impose no-compromise, hardcore Sharia law. No wonder middle-class, educated Syrians fear them more than anything lethal the government might resort to. 

Al-Baghdadi admitted the obvious: Syrian jihadis are an annex to Iraqi jihadis, from whom, crucially, they have been receiving on-the-ground battle experience. After all, it was these hardcore Iraqis who fought the Americans, especially from 2004 to 2007. The plum tomato in the kebab is that al-Nusra itself was founded by Sunni Syrians fighting alongside Sunni Iraqis in Iraq. 

Then there's what the House of Saud is up to. The Saudis are competing in a regional marathon against al-Qaeda to see who enrolls more Sunni fanatics to fight those apostate Iranians, both in Iraq and the northern Levant. The House of Saud loves any jihadi, local or transnational, as long as he does not raise hell inside Saudi Arabia.

The New Old Fascism?

Egan-Jones Downgrades Germany From A+ To A, Outlook Negative

by Stephen Green

Now that Europe’s decades-long experiment with socialism is unraveling, what keeps me up at night is when the people will get upset enough that they’ll start demanding (and getting) a little nationalism to go with their socialism. It’s kind of the national sport over there, once they eventually run out of other people’s money. Not that EU governments have given up looking under the sofa cushions, which they apparently also hope to use as floatation devices:

Senior advisers to Chancellor Angela Merkel are pushing for better-off households to pay towards the cost of any future bail-outs for the weaker members of the single currency.

The proposals, from members of Germany’s council of economic experts, raise the prospect of taxes being imposed on property in a country like Spain if its government was forced to seek a bail-out.

The council, known as the “Five Wise Men”, is often used to test new policies that are later adopted officially.

Might as well call them the Five Wise Guys, as in, “F— you, pay me.” Government by goodfellas is the inescapable consequence of government by best intentions. The Beast must be fed.

And notice please that this “wealth tax” proposal would fall on “better-off households” in Germany. Which, compared to Spain or Greece, is pretty much all of them. Or at least, pretty much all of them in the former West part of Germany. Keep in mind that Germans have been paying a 5.5% income tax surcharge since reunification, to pay for bringing the former East up to the standards and wealth of the former West. It’s expected to remain in play until at least 2019. That’s a lot of spreading the wealth around already, but at least the Deutschmarks — excuse me, euros — have all stayed inside the family, so to speak.

How much is it going to cost mittelklasse Germans to bring up 47 million Spaniards, when 20-plus years of subsidies still haven’t brought up 17 million Ossies?

That’s a good question. Another good question is: What the hell is Merkel thinking?

This kind of proposal doesn’t just give pause to German taxpayers. It also gives a leg up to German nationalist groups. So far, the skinheads and whatnot have been mostly confined to frustrated young men in the former East. What happens when similar (and more reasonable) grievances become commonplace among middle-aged Germans along the Rhine?

Despite what the vile progs would have you believe, Evil Fascist Heavy Industry did not sweep Hitler into power. Nazism was largely a middle class phenomenon, with big business eventually coming along for the only ride in town.

So, yeah, I worry about what might happen to German domestic politics, if all of southern Europe is eventually yoked to the back of the German taxpayer. Merkel, an Ossie herself, ought to realize this.

And, no, I don’t think Panzer divisions will be breaking out of the Ardennes on their way to occupying Paris — as much farcical fun as that might be to watch on CNN.

But we are watching Merkel destroy her CDU party in a vain effort to save a doomed currency. The left-wing (lefter-wing?) SPD might be the beneficiary, but fringe parties could very well become Germany’s new power brokers. And given that the SPD is no more likely to succeed at saving this fiction called “Europe,” both major mainstream German parties could see major erosion in their support.

Then the German fringes would become less fringey, which didn’t exactly work out very well for the Continent the last time around. 

Don’t Worry About the Yuan

Since 1995 the Chinese currency has either stayed the same or strengthened against the dollar

by ROBERT P. MURPHY

Especially during dismal economic times, many Americans—goaded by media figures and politicians—look with suspicion on foreigners. This tendency is most obvious in anti-immigrant sentiment, but also manifests itself in a drive for protective tariffs and other trade restrictions.

Over the past few years China’s “currency manipulation” has been a particularly hot-button issue. Pundits claim the Chinese government, by artificially suppressing the value of its currency, unfairly subsidizes Chinese exporters while destroying American jobs. Although there is truth to this claim it overlooks the benefits to American consumers from the Chinese policy. Americans should stop fretting about the Chinese currency.

To get a sense of the accusations leveled at the Chinese, we don’t need to scour letters to the editor written by economic illiterates. We can turn to Paul Krugman, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on international trade theory. Krugman has been leading the charge for punitive action against China—including retaliatory tariffs unless its government changes its ways. In a particularly bellicose column last year, “Taking on China,” Krugman wrote:

China’s policy of keeping its currency undervalued has become a significant drag on global economic recovery. Something must be done. . . . This is the most distortionary exchange rate policy any major nation has ever followed. . . . [I]f sweet reason won’t work, what’s the alternative? In 1971 the United States dealt with a similar but much less severe problem of foreign undervaluation by imposing a temporary 10 percent surcharge on imports, which was removed a few months later after Germany, Japan and other nations raised the dollar value of their currencies. At this point, it’s hard to see China changing its policies unless faced with the threat of similar action—except that this time the surcharge would have to be much larger, say 25 percent.

Before continuing we should clarify Krugman’s charges: The Chinese government uses some of its revenues in its own currency (collected from taxation, State-owned enterprises, and so on) to augment its stockpile of foreign currency reserves. In other words, in addition to spending its (yuan-denominated) revenues on tanks, bombers, and infrastructure, the Chinese government also spends some on acquiring more dollars, euros, and other currencies.

Just as the Chinese government’s purchases of, say, gasoline for its military equipment would tend to push up the yuan-price of gasoline, its efforts to buy dollars with yuan will push up the yuan-price of a dollar. By having more yuan chase U.S. dollars in the foreign-exchange market, the Chinese government’s purchases tend to make the dollar appreciate against the yuan.

Because China’s currency is weaker than it otherwise would be, Chinese exports are cheaper: The stronger dollar allows Americans to buy more Chinese goods, and so they will favor Chinese over domestic producers. On the other hand, Chinese consumers will view American goods as more expensive because they ultimately are priced in dollars and it takes more yuan to buy one dollar at the (allegedly) distorted exchange rate.

China’s Dream World

This time the honeymoon will be short

By Minxin Pei

Ruling elites almost everywhere – whether in democracies or in authoritarian regimes – believe that clever sloganeering can inspire their people and legitimize their power. There are, of course, crucial differences. In functioning democracies, government leaders can be held accountable for their promises: the press can scrutinize their policies, opposition parties are motivated to show that the party in power lies and cheats. As a result, incumbents are frequently forced to carry out at least some of their promises.

Autocratic rulers, by contrast, face no such pressures. Press censorship, repression of dissent, and the absence of organized opposition allow rulers the luxury of promising whatever they want, with no political consequences for failing to deliver. The result is government of the sloganeers, by the sloganeers, and for the sloganeers.

China appears to have perfected this form of government over the last decade. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in response to rising public demand for social justice, has devised numerous slogans, such as “governing for the people,” “building a harmonious society,” “balanced development,” “scientific development,” and so on.

Whenever the top leadership in Beijing uttered such slogans, they became the rallying cry of the bureaucracy. The party’s massive propaganda machine went into overdrive and blanketed the country with a publicity blitz that would make the most extravagant Madison Avenue advertising campaign look like child’s play.

But government by slogan, whether in China or in other autocracies, seldom achieves its declared goals. In the last decade, GDP growth soared, but most indices of social justice, governance performance, and public welfare deteriorated. Macroeconomic imbalances worsened as economic growth became excessively dependent on investment and exports. Inequality worsened. Official corruption escalated. Social mobility declined. Environmental degradation reached a crisis point.

Today, it is the responsibility of China’s new leadership, headed by President Xi Jinping, to avert another decade of missed opportunities. Without missing a beat, Xi, like his predecessors, rolled out a new slogan to inspire popular confidence in his leadership. As a catchphrase for his administration’s objective, “the great renaissance of the Chinese nation” is bit long, but it has lately morphed into the simpler “China Dream.”

The substance of the China Dream remains difficult to determine. When Xi first unveiled his slogan after being selected as the CCP’s new general secretary, he defined it in simple, accessible, but nonetheless generic terms: The “Chinese people dream of living the same good life as all other people in the world.”

The economics of American militarism

The Great Deformation

by Justin Raimondo

David Stockman rocketed to fame as Ronald Reagan’s chief of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), his name loosely associated with the "trickle down economics" of the supply-siders, but his recent book, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, will correct the record: Stockman is not only a libertarian critic of the Milton Friedman school of monetarism and supply side economics, he is also a principled opponent of American militarism. His new book is a massive 700 pages-plus, but don’t let that deter you: inside you will find a scintillating analysis of where, why, and how America went wrong, starting with the New Deal and ending with the Great Recession of ’08 and the subsequent Obama-Bernanke attempts to re-inflate the bubble of America’s debt-driven "prosperity."

His basic thesis is that the Federal Reserve, starting with Richard Nixon’s decouplingof the dollar from gold, has acted as the central planner of the American economy, blowing up the bubble of a false prosperity. This mostly served to fatten the wallets of the One Percent, giving Wall Street a blank check while looting the savings and aspirations of Main Street.

His is a complex argument, and it assumes a knowledge of economic theory that I fear many – including myself – do not possess, but his analysis is clear and forthright: the Fed, instead of acting as a neutral arbiter and manager of the money supply, has engaged in "prosperity management," as he terms it, implanting a "borrow, spend, gamble, and get-rich-quick regimen" that poisoned and deformed the economy and the culture. The decoupling of gold from the value of money led to the financialization – and bifurcation – of the American economy, so that the financial manipulations of Wall Street increasingly had little to do with the production of actual things, and the real performance and value of the financial "assets" they were dealing in, but instead were based on the "free" money being printed hand over heels by the all-powerful Federal Reserve. The hedge funds, the wild speculations of Wall Street’s most distended-from-reality "assets" – like those sliced-and-diced toxic mortgages that led to the housing bust – are all products of the Fed’s central planning: "They consume," says Stockman, "vast resources without adding to society’s output or wealth, and flush income and net worth to the very top rungs of the economic ladder." Although the free market is getting the blame for this, the reality, says Stockman, is that these deformations of capitalism were made possible by massive State intervention via the Fed, which enabled politicians to spend without taxing – and the militarism of the alleged "conservatives" was a key factor in all this.

100 Years Old & Still Killing Us

America Was Much Better Off Before The Income Tax

by Michael Snyder

Did you know that the greatest period of economic growth in American history was during a time when there was absolutely no federal income tax?  Between the end of the Civil War and 1913, there was an explosion of economic activity in the United States unlike anything ever seen before or since.  Unfortunately, a federal income tax was instituted in 1913, and this year it turned 100 years old.  But there was no fanfare, was there?  There was no celebration because the federal income tax is universally hated. 

Sadly, most Americans just assume that there is no other option to an income tax.  Most Americans just assume that it has always been with us and that it will always be with us.  This year, the American people will shell out approximately $4.22 trillion in state and federal income taxes.  That amount is equivalent to approximately 29.4 percent of all income that Americans will bring in this year, and that does not even take into account the dozens of other taxes that Americans pay each year. 

At this point, the U.S. tax code is about 13 miles long, and those that are honest and pay their taxes every year are being absolutely shredded by this system.  But wouldn't the federal government go broke if we didn't have a federal income tax?  No, actually the truth is that the federal government did just fine before there was an income tax.  In fact, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger since the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve were created by Congress back in 1913. 

As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve system was actually designed to trap the United States in a debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape, and the federal income tax was needed to greatly expand the size of the federal government and to soak the American people of the funds necessary to service that debt.  But it doesn't have to be this way.  America was once much better off before the income tax and the Federal Reserve were created, and we could easily go to such a system again.

What we desperately need to do is to teach the American people a little history lesson.  The truth is that the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was between the Civil War and 1913 when there was no federal income tax at all.  The following is from Wikipedia...

 The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real GDP and 4.5% for real GDP per capita, despite the panic of 1873.  The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled.

Sticking it to Thatcher’s corpse

The political necrophiliacs dancing at ‘death parties’ disrespect the British people as much as Thatcher

by Patrick Hayes 

It is apt that ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’ became the soundtrack to the sad troupe of left-wingers who took to the streets, champagne glasses in hand, to toast the death of Baroness Thatcher last week. They will, doubtless, chant it again during her funeral procession today. It is apt not because there really was something of the wicked witch about Thatcher, but rather because such a characterisation speaks volumes about the frankly medieval attitude now adopted by what remains of the radical left.

Those supposedly ‘braving the rain’ last Saturday to don party hats and do the conga in Trafalgar Square, and, earlier in the week, those bravely holding Thatcher-death parties in Brixton and Glasgow, were actually demonstrating extraordinary cowardice. Here were people incapable of taking on the Wicked Witch and defeating her ideas in life, who were only to happy to cheer her death. It was as if the mere fact that an 89-year-old woman had gone to meet her maker was some kind of political achievement they had helped bring about. One man at the Trafalgar Square party on Saturday even wore a homemade t-shirt bearing a drawing of Thatcher alongside the words ‘Gotcha’ – referring to the famous Sun front page celebrating the sinking of the Belgrano warship during the Falklands War.

Such celebrations amount to political necrophilia, with the protesters sticking it to Maggie’s corpse in a way they never could to the woman at the height her political powers. The fact that the date of the Trafalgar Square party was organised decades ago – the sole legacy of the now-defunct organisation Class War – with chants of ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Die!, Die!, Die!’ having long since become commonplace on left-wing and even student demonstrations shows the duration and appeal of the left’s Maggie-death fetish.

The weekend parade had a deeply medieval feel. It was as if those present really believed Thatcher had cast a spell over modern Britain which can now finally be broken. The witch is dead, we are free at last! All will have milk! The individualist, consumerist scales will fall from our eyes! Rejoice, rejoice as one, erm, Big Society, and embrace the alternative the left has to offer (whatever that may be). 

The Left is dancing on Margaret Thatcher’s grave… So why am I smiling?

Oh Margaret, you really were the gift that just keeps on giving

By Perry de Havilland

Every time I read of drunken noisy celebrations from assorted people following Margaret Thatcher’s death… every time I read of someone spewing vitriol and spitting on her memory… every time I read “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead“… my smile grows ever so slightly wider.

Why? Well I think I may have given a clue why I was likely to think this way a few days ago when I wrote this:

I would not have described myself as a libertarian back then even though I more or less was (and indeed I was only vaguely aware of the term, preferring ‘Classical Liberal’ in the non-debased non-US sense). And I still do not call myself one really, even though I more or less am. But for more than a decade I did indeed take delight in calling myself a Thatcherite (even though I only ‘kinda’ was), primarily because it was a wonderful shortcut for discovering all I needed to know about whoever I was speaking to at that time, just by watching their reactions.

Maggie Thatcher pissed off all the right people and I swung her name around like a handbag with a brick in it.

Before Margaret Thatcher took power, we had a Tory party lead by Edward Health… a man who was frankly so indistinguishable from the people he purported to oppose that his ‘conservative’ government nationalised several businesses. The broad statist political consensus amongst the Great and the Good (try not to spit when you read those words) was that the only thing to argue about was the rate at which the state took over, well, everything.

The Flat Caps and Beer Party and the Champagne and Barbour Party carried on a wonderful pantomime show of how they disdained each other and how they were like chalk and cheese, much as they do now, but in truth, it disguised just how much they had in common. Free(er) Markets were a talking point amongst some Tories but in truth they loved to intervene “before breakfast, dinner and tea”.

Pro Death Progressives and the Born Alive Act

Killing babies is the ultimate progressive 'right'

By Noemie Emery

Liberals' view of rights is that they are and they ought to be ever-expanding, and so they are proving to be.

First, the Declaration of Independence spoke of the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," for women (and others). Then Roe v. Wade gave them the right to abortion, then the right to late-term abortion, and then, the right to a dead baby afterward.

This last was asserted by then-Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama, who opposed the Born Alive Act, which would have mandated medical treatment for abortion survivors on the grounds it would have negated the intent of Roe. v. Wade.

The idea was when a woman chose an abortion, she signaled her wish to have a dead baby, and so it should be.

Later, brave souls made attempts to expand this still further, with Barbara Boxer saying a baby had rights when it came "home from the hospital," and bioethicist Peter Singer proposing a right to abort one's postnatal children.

In this sense, Kermit Gosnell, now on trial on multiple charges of homicide, was perhaps the ultimate civil rights activist, pushing women's rights up to the ultimate level, beyond even feminists' dreams.

In the spirit of Boxer, Obama and Singer, Gosnell excelled in helping women so that, when inspectors finally arrived at his clinic, they found fetal parts everywhere, clogging the toilets, hands and feet saved as tokens, in boxes, in jars.

Europe’s moment of truth

“Nothing beats the truth.”

By Ann Mettler

These were the passionate words of Enda Kenny, Prime Minister of Ireland, when asked last week about the spring European Council on 14-15 March. He was talking about a moment of reckoning for the continent’s leaders as they confront increasingly hostile electorates – most recently exhibited in Italy, where voters sent a clear signal against austerity.
Now it’s payback time for the years – even decades – of denial, of make-believe that the prosperity that Europe enjoyed was somehow divorced from economic realities, be they ballooning debt, declining competitiveness or dysfunctional insider-outsider labour markets. In the name of social justice – and long before the real crisis hit in 2008 – opportunistic political leaders devised loyal corporatist systems in which a growing set of vested interests divided power and spoils among themselves. Rather than embracing meritocracy, social mobility, creative destruction and innovation, entire countries became slow-moving, inward-looking, defensive and elite-driven juggernauts. Against this backdrop, it is not entirely surprising that a growing number of Italians have said “basta” to the current system – but perhaps without really considering the way forward.

Neither Silvio Berlusconi with his pledge of tax cuts the country cannot afford, nor Beppe Grillo, the political novice who has promised to suspend the national debt, is a solution. The fact that over 50% of the country gave them their vote is a stark reminder of the challenge the country – and Europe – faces. And that is why it is time to speak the truth: to tell Italians – and Europeans – that there is no easy way out of the crisis; that it will take years – even decades – of hard work to repair public finances, build a new foundation for prosperity and embrace the fact that, today, the countries with the highest levels of social cohesion are precisely the ones that implemented far-reaching reforms early on.

Soft Fascism

Fascism kept the appearance of private property, but Communists went and nationalized everything outright

By Stephen Green 

Forget for a moment everything you think you know about fascism.

Forget Mussolini’s silly wars in Africa and Greece. Forget the horrible splendor of the Nuremburg rallies. Forget, if for only a moment, the Holocaust.

Instead, remember how fascism worked as a political system – not just the wartime atrocities we all know so well.

First off, there was only one Party. Whether it went by the name of Italy’s Fascists, or Germany’s National Socialist Worker’s Party, the Party ran the country, and the Duce, or Fuehrer, ran the Party. One man didn’t truly have complete control – there are always different factions to please, or cajole, or threaten, or play off one another – but his word was still the final one.

Businesses were seen as semi-private cogs in the government machine – useful for producing jobs, handing out tax dollars to favored individuals, earning kickbacks to favored politicians, and making the tools of war. Business was at once a means of getting and distributing money, and media businesses were useful and tolerated so long as they spewed propaganda, or at least hewed to the Party line.

Companies that weren’t useful didn’t get the juiciest government contracts, and they might just find they had serious labor issues coming up. Further recalcitrance could lead to more severe means of correction, best left to the imagination.

In other words, fascism was just like Communism (which worked a lot like the mafia). The only difference between the two as systems, was that Fascism kept the appearance of private property, but Communists went and nationalized everything outright. In neither system was business free to go about its business. In both systems, all labor unions (or just the one big union, with everyone required to join) reported to the State.

A Vile Bunch of Hypocrites

Children of the Nanny State

By Johnathan Pearce

I wonder how many of those on what is broadly “the left”, who are crying crocodile tears over the fate of coal miners who lost their jobs from unprofitable, subsidised mines in the 1980s, are the same people who want, in the name of global warming alarmism, to shut down profitable mines today? It would be good to ask the current crop of Labour MPs, LibDems and Cameroonian Tories as to whether they think it right to repeal the UK’s various climate change measures that have, among other things, led to the recent closure of UK coal-fired power stations.

Of course, such a question reminds me, when thinking of the nonsense about that has been spouted since the death of Margaret Thatcher, of how illogical and hypocritical people, both politicians, and voters, are on such matters. Not a comforting thought. But I guess it is hardly something that is confined to the UK.