Thursday, April 30, 2009

Jim Rogers: Government can't fix the crisis

The Jimster tells it like it is:

The idea that you can solve a problem of too much debt and too much consumption with more debt and more consumption is ludicrous on its face. What they should have done is just let everybody go bankrupt, let the bankruptcy courts reorganize everything. The Japanese tried this approach of propping up zombie banks and zombie companies; it did not work.

Jim Rogers
Read more.

Pandemic of panic - After salmonella, bird flu, the Millennium Bug... should we actually be scared this time?

The splendid Christopher Booker on the Swine Flu panic.

Love cheat MPs on 'suicide watch' as expense claims threaten to expose affairs

Oh dear.

Affairs of the human heart are difficult beasts at the best of times.

But if you're going to make the beast with two backs, behind the back of someone else for whom you profess the deepest love, then please don't expect other people, such as me, to be forced to pay for it.

So calling all MPs, who cheat on their partners - Pay for your own hotel rooms, you dirty rotten scoundrels.

Swine flu: 'All of humanity under threat', WHO warns

Quaking under your bed yet? Well, you ought to be.

Because it is only because of a world government body that you will not die, so I want you to be grateful as well as afraid.

Which is why we need a world government, to continually save us from the following - take your pick:

1. Plagues
2. Wars
3. Famines
4. Asteroids
5. Global Warmings
6. Global Coolings
7. Global Staying-Exactly-the-Sames
8. Hobgoblins
9. Monkey Nuts
10. Uncle Tom Cobbley and all

All of humanity under threat? Yes, it will be, if there is nowhere to run to, because the world government will be everywhere you go. Even in the Roman Empire you could always escape across The Rhine or The Danube, to evade the taxes, military service, inflation, corruption, jobbery, and servitude of serfdom and slavery. (I don't think there's much surprise in that most of the liberty of the modern western world mainly arose from the Germanic peoples, including the English, because as well as possessing an innate love of liberty in and of itself, the early Germans will have been host to thousands of Roman Empire refugees and lovers of liberty, escaping north-eastwards into Germania to escape the thralldom of Rome.)

However, with a world government there will be absolutely nowhere to run to, except perhaps one day the Moon, though even that will be heavily dominated by the nascent world government, in the way that North America was dominated by European powers, once they had crossed the Atlantic.

No, a world government would be absolutely terrible.

I postulated the other day that being a citizen of a state was like being a player in a Monopoly game, in which the state is also playing, but where the state plays the banker, writes the rules, can change the rules during the game, and can fine you or throw you into jail at any time for breaking any of these rules, whether new or not.

Why does the game continue, and why does the state not become a terrible monster indeed? Because, currently, we can still, with some difficulty, walk away from the game and go and join another game somewhere else. The banker needs someone to steal resources from, to avoid having to be productive, so although they are evil, twisted, and despicable, they are generally just about tolerable enough to stick in the game with, at least in some countries (usually those ones that refugees try to flock to).

But can you imagine what this Monopoly game would be like if you couldn't walk away from it, and where the only way out was to die?

Welcome to the planned World Government Gulag of the 21st century. They won't need fences or an iron curtain, as their prototype did in Russia and Eastern Europe. Just supplication and grateful serfdom.

It is our duty, to our children, to stop this creeping monster of world government before it is too late to stop its juggernaut. Yes, I concede that any putative world government would collapse and end in the future, in the same way that the Roman Empire (and all other empires) ended, as the Soviets themselves did, under the weight of crime-encrusted state corruption, death, slavery, theft, and inflation, but that could take a couple of hundred years, leading to a second dark age that might last a few hundred years more.

Unfortunately, because many of us have had our brains washed in democracy, the need for government, and socialism (in all of its various guises), it will be hard for the rest of us to maintain the barricade in this ideological fight, but maintain it we must, if we are to avoid the horrible scenario I have painted above.

We can do it, and end their dreams, by taking our world back down to micro-states, and finally back down to the liberty and freedom of seeing the state wither completely, though I admit this will a hard fight and the road will be long, but we can do it if we first start ignoring them, then laughing at them, then fighting them.

That is why I hold such great hope for the United States, despite its being the home of one of most lethal variants of the World Government Hydra. Can Texas really not exist as an independent micro-state? (Some micro!) Can Alaska really not go it alone? Or Florida? Or California? To even question that these four states cannot exist as independent entities is to reveal just how far socialism, nationalism, and national socialism, have taken your brain.

Yes, I will admit that this road of secession and independence is a hard road to take because the enemy are unscrupulous in their weapons they choose to defeat us with, whereas we are hamstrung by individuality and morality.

They use the ratcheting effects of intervention after intervention, to proclaim the necessity of yet more of their interventions, from larger and larger world government bodies, the heads of this Hydra are then 'inevitably' planned to come together into a single United State.

The only real battle they envisage is the Orwellian struggle of working out whether it will be Oceania, Eurasia, or Eastasia, running the final United State body, with the Eurasian place at the table sub-contested by Moscow and Brussels - Beijing and Washington have already booked their seats!

These still individual heads of the Hydra have caused a world financial crisis by inflating their fiat currencies. What will their solution be? A single world fiat currency (The 'Bancor'), to be administered by a single world government body - thus several central bank heads of the final Hydra will coalesce into one, probably to be run by 'The World Bank'.

These individual Hydra also run state health and welfare systems, rendering many populations physically and mentally weak and with high time preferences, thereby choosing poor long-term behaviours likely to lead to disease or death because they take little account of consequences. The solution? Even bigger and 'better' state health and welfare systems.

They create crime and fear by disarming populations and removing the power to defend themselves. The solution? Even stronger police states to chain everyone down in and even less ability to defend yourself.

So you won't mind me saying then, after all of that, that when the 'World Health Organisation' hysterically says "All of humanity is under threat", I will say, "Boo!" They really must be getting desperate to gain our attention, if they have to resort to language like that, so this gives me hope - though I haven't ruled out in the future that the proto-United State would deliberately release military-grade pathogens, to keep pricking us into fear, in the same way that many movies currently postulate that some governments might be tempted to 'create' terrorist incidents for the same reason.

Anyhow, now I've got that off my chest, I think I'll go for a swim. Yes, I know this is terribly reprehensible behaviour, because swimming pools are festooned with viruses and other pathogens, and I'm taking the risk of both being infected and infecting hundreds in my turn.

But hey, I'll take that chance. Call me Mr Irresponsible. I am a risk taker. I live on the edge.

Well, it usually feels like that by the time I've done a few lengths. I better go and enjoy it before Gordon Brown orders the closure of all British swimming pools, to 'save us' from dreadful people like me.

Oh, how glad I am to have the wondrous Gordon in charge of this 'crisis', here in the UK. It means I can sleep at night.

And here's the thing, of course. I bet Gordon Brown is glad that this 'crisis' has hit. It gives him something to do and something to say other than what a financial Klutz he is.

And if that rings true, that Gordon is actually pleased to have this 'crisis' to manage, then doesn't that tell you everything you need to know about the need for government?

A plague on all of their houses.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H. L. Mencken

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Woohoo!

Guess what has just reached Number One on Gordon Brown's very own web site, with a current total of 29,683?

Yep, you guessed it, the following petition has steamed to the top of the pile:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resign

Submitted by Kalvis Jansons
Well done Mr Jansons. You are a gentleman and a patriot.

Yes, I know it makes no real difference to anything in the real world. But just imagine the fun and games civil servants will currently be having in Downing Street trying to avoid letting 'The Boss' know, to avoid being hospitalised at the end of a flung Nokia.

And perhaps, just perhaps, if Gordon does actually get to hear about it, if one of these tax eating schleppers draws the short straw and actually tells the myopic idiot what his own web site says, then the final shoe could drop, the final blood vessel might burst, and the men in the white coats could then be called to take away the gibbering gurgling wreck on the floor.

Perchance to dream.

No doubt someone at the BBC is also, as we speak, figuring out a way of not reporting this. What fun! ;-)

PS> Whaddya mean, you haven't signed it yet? That's not the spirit now, is it? (Though only sign it once, and only sign it if eligible to do so. We'll get maximum points for needling Gordon Stalin McBrown if they can't foist the "it's a bogus result" ploy on us.)

PPS> More on this, including lots of newspaper links, from Mr Fawkes.

The price of a polling card

I received my 'ticket for democracy' today, a voting card, which enables me to take part in voting for which hood I want to run the local mafia. This reminded me of a few years ago when Margaret Thatcher (Gawd Bless 'Er) introduced the poll tax. Up and down the land many people, especially those renting for cash, had (and took advantage of) the following choice:

1. Accept your voting card and pay thousands of pounds per year to the mafia protection racket (a.k.a. local government property taxes)

2. Shred your card, move, fail to register for your voting card in the new house, lose the 'right' to vote for whichever hood you want to run the local mafia, and thereby save thousands by avoiding the local mafia's protection racket, by disappearing off their turf radar.

Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of people disappeared overnight from the electoral rolls, losing the local and national state mafias millions, perhaps billions, in protection racket fees. (Many of these people were of course hypocritical socialists, but let's not get into that.) I still think it was this loss of mafia income that prompted the revocation of the poll tax, rather than the infamous poll tax riots.

But I digress.

What I wanted to know today, was whether a law could be instituted whereby if you send back your 'voter registration card' to the mafia, and waive your 'right' to vote, you could get all of your tax money back, and get exempted from all state taxes.

Wouldn't that be wonderful! :-)

I also wonder if anybody but tax eaters would fail to take up this offer, once again putting paid to the Big Lie that tax eaters pay taxes.

BTW, I've already shredded the polling card, seeing as I can't take the option above. Doesn't stop me from wishful thinking though.

Lew Rockwell podcast roundup

The Lew Rockwell podcast series is an excellent resource for maintaining one's sanity in a world gone Goldman Sachs.

What, you mean you haven't subscribed yet?

Particularly good ones in the last week or so include:

=> 114. Guido Hülsmann: What Should Geithner and Bernanke Do?

The urbane Guido guides us through what the market would have done to correct this recession, and how it would have all been over in 18 months. Splendid.

=> 117. Gerald Celente: The Fed Has Wounded You

More dire predictions from Mr Celente, all of which possess the absolute ring of authenticity and virtual certainty, from one of the world's experts on (correctly) predicting the future. Does that depress you and make you not want to listen? Don't worry. As well as telling us what he thinks is going to happen, Mr Celente gives us excellent advice on what to do to prepare for the worst, and how to prosper (or at least not go under) when/if this worst happens.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Stephen Byers? Hero?

Crikey.

Has Stephen Byers become the only voice of reason in the House of Commons?

The former useless slimy Blairite minister has dared to say the unsayable, which Hapless Dave and Gormless George can't even whisper to their own shadowy reflections in basement mirrors:

=> "It [the new 50% income tax rate] breaks a key manifesto pledge which the party will regret for many years to come."

Fascinating. As Mr Spock might say.

Bonkers Brown loses it in Poland

The Mincing McMentalist became a national embarrassment, yet again, when he lost it in Poland after being asked about MPs' expenses.

It's a wonder the Polish press didn't have Nokias launched at their temples.

Can no-one offer this clown the usual bottle of fine malt whisky and the Luger with a single bullet?

Please. Can you hear me in Westminster? Just get rid of this idiot before he takes us all over the edge.

Without Damien McBride to shelter his madness, the lunacy becomes ever more apparent.

The Rise of the Jerk Chicken Inspectors

You may remember a piece I wrote about a hundred years ago on 'The Rise of the Chocolate Orange Inspectors'?

Well, it seems real life has finally caught up. Lew Rockwell cites the case of a 'killer' jerk chicken shop, which dared to open within walking distance of a UK school:

The hit squad had prepared their raid long in advance.

At 10am eight police officers, some in anti-stab vests, joined three council employees on the doorstep of the Bamboo Joint takeaway.

Their mission? To stamp out the practice of selling jerk chicken within 400 metres of a secondary school.
Diese Kapitalisten Schweinen should be taken out und shot, Nicht War, meine Freunden?

Or, in the famous words of Mr Richard Littlejohn, you really couldn't make it up.

Oh well. Only another British business ruined, people sacked in the middle of a recession, and the pleasures of eating jerk chicken denied to thousands, all done by an organisation which compulsorily forces all of the above people to fund its crazy small-minded activities. And no, they probably weren't able to think of anything better to do.

How much longer will the British people put up with tolerating all of this state-gone-mad nonsense? Or has democracy and state education so ruined us that we are now totally incapable of resisting this ongoing diet of 'Little Hitler' stupidity? What a banana.

(Well done Tom H, for getting this preposterous tax wasting news to Karen DeCoster.)

The swines use flu to pump themselves up again

Due to reasons beyond my control, I endured about 25 minutes of Newsnight, last night, sitting through an endless monologue about 'Swine Flu' (with the unspoken sub-text being that world government is necessary to deal with such terrible plagues).

Did it really need 25 minutes? Wouldn't five minutes have been more adequate, or even 10, at the outside? Yes, this is a terrible problem in Mexico, but other natural disasters in Mexico never rate more than five minutes, so what gives this story a weighting of 25 minutes (well, it actually seemed like about 95 minutes), when the economy is collapsing and the government is falling apart?

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H. L. Mencken
Yes, I'll be laughing on the other side of my face if (which is highly unlikely), this 'Swine Flu' panic actually turns into anything significant in the UK - in the same way that SARS and Bird Flu failed to materialise into anything significant, certainly compared to the 'real' flu epidemic of 1918.

Maturin prediction? The flu vaccines used to 'treat' this scare in the UK will cause more damage than the actual flu virus, certainly in terms of triggering Alzheimer's disease, and other ailments the pharmaceutical flu vaccine lobby would rather you didn't hear about.

Did I hear the Health Secretary Alan Johnson claim the NHS had stocked itself up with 33 million anti-viral flu treatments (plus several million flu shots)? That's a helluva lot of money for whichever pharmaceutical company supplied it all. I wonder if the same pharmaceutical company has donated any funds to the Labour party in the last ten years? Please, I won't die of shock if that turns out to be the case!

No doubt millions of vulnerable older and younger people will be harangued by the state's Big Pharma medics to take these cash-cow flu vaccine injections, further exacerbating the growing problem of Alzheimer's disease caused by such vaccines. Oh well, so long as it all looks good in tomorrow morning's newspaper headlines, then that's all that matters; the small matter of injecting cocktails of organomercury neurotoxic compounds, combined with aluminium and formaldehyde, to kill and suspend the active viral components, can be safely ignored.

If you want another prediction, it is that we will at some point be hit by some kind of virulent plague in the next few years, but it will come completely from 'out of left field', as the Americans say, and the vast worldwide UN-based bureaucracy designed to deal with such things will be completely caught out and completely unprepared for it (whatever it is), despite billions in ongoing funding.

Yes, there will be plagues every now and again. This is the nature of 'Black Swans'. But let's just deal with them on an individual basis, country by country, as and when they occur, rather than equipping and powering a vast worldwide bureaucracy to 'deal' with these supposed continual crises - a bureaucracy which will know it will only continue to exist if it keeps scaring the heebie jeebies out of us every six months.

Meanwhile, I'll be following Dr Miller's advice about taking Vitamin 'D' and avoiding flu shots, just in case.

(As well as Vitamin 'D', to counteract flu viruses, for more by Dr Miller on maintaining a good nutritional balance, try this splendid article: Nutritional Supplements for Optimum Health.)

Peter Schiff mentions this 'scare', at 5:55+:


Ron Paul gives us the history on US government manipulation of 'Swine Flu' scares and how to react sensibly to such things:


UPDATE: Chilling, yet hysterically funny 'Swine Flu Fever' scare video from the 1976 US Federal government:

Why are the bond markets holding up?

If you listen to Peter Schiff, you could be forgiven for wondering what it is exactly that is holding up the US bond markets. But then, perhaps you were under the illusion that the US bond market was a fair and level playing field for all concerned.

This forgets, of course, that the entity running the rules and contracts enforcement process in the US financial markets is also a major player within the same markets.

Imagine playing Monopoly against someone who is not only the banker, but who also writes the rules beforehand and can amend them at any time during the game, including rule changes in their favour and against everyone else. Oh, and can 'Send you to Jail' at virtually any time, for anything they can make up, and who can fine you similarly, any amount, at any time, for any reason.

Welcome to government-controlled 'capital markets'.

If that all seems a bit strong, check out the following article, just to provide some further focus:

=> Falsifying Bank Balance Sheets

Monday, April 27, 2009

Is Daniel Hannan a closet Austrian?

Aside from the usual paean to democracy, which lets most good men down, the man who should be the leader of the Tory party, Daniel "The British Ron Paul" Hannan, speaks brilliantly at the Tory Spring conference, receiving what seems like a spontaneous standing ovation - I bet hapless Dave was spitting with envy and wondering how Hannan had managed to sneak onto the speaking order paper despite the Tory Gestapo efforts to stop this troublesome priest of sense! ;-)

The usual folly about democracy, of course, is that it isn't being subverted by the political process or even by the EU itself. It is democracy that has caused this federal mess, the same way that democracy caused the federal mess in the United States.

But aside from this ideological inexactitude, for which we at Maturin Towers can forgive Mr Hannan, on the basis that there are only seven of us in the country who take this position, then it is another remarkable speech.

Marvellous (especially the hoary old Clement Attlee joke).

Part 1:


Part 2:


UPDATE: Hannan reveals on his blog how he managed to get onto the rostrum, via the machinations of ConservativeHome's Tim Montgomerie.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

And then there were two...

It seems that one of my triumvirate of favourites at the Torygraph/Labourgraph, Iain Martin, has decided to leave, due to the Telegraph's editorial staff getting too close to the Downing Street spin machine.

At least, that's what Guido thinks.

So that leaves Liam Halligan and Jeff Randall as the only two decent journalist left.

Perhaps it may be time for Maturin Towers to move on too, to use another dead tree paper as its patrolling ground.

Are you British?

If the answer to the above question is 'yes', then you MUST read the following story on Guido's website, and then sign the Downing Street petition that it refers to:

=> Will a Million Voters Tell Gordon to Go?

Fantastic.

If this 10 Downing Street petition does go over a million, which we're confident it will do, what is the betting that the BBC somehow fails to report it? :-)

Goodbye Tony

Tony Blair always thought it was only a matter of time before Gordon Brown started increasing the top rates of tax in the UK, once the 'Clunking Fist' managed to oust Blair from 10 Downing Street.

And so it came to pass, this week, when Brown used the excuse of his busting boom to ratchet the top rate up to 50% (plus national insurance).

Tony Blair is said to be furious. But is this because his ZaNu Labour 'legacy' is now being destroyed by Brown, or for more prosaic reasons?

Maturin Towers believes the 'fury' is simpler to explain. As one of the richest men in Britain, earning several million pounds a year in dubious speaking fees, if Tony Blair stays resident in the UK, he's going to have to hand much of this filthy 'hard-earned' lucre back to his old 'chum' in Downing Street.

Which really will become a 'motivational' problem.

Expect Tony Blair to move his tax residence, real soon, certainly as soon as the 50% top rate comes in. This will be to avoid tax. He will claim it is due to his 'pressing' international engagements. Which will be rich!

So where will he go? Well, he's a fluent French speaker so if Maturin Towers contained any gambling men they would be putting their fiat currency money down on Switzerland ("I need to be near Geneva, as it's the headquarters of many international organisation") or Luxembourg ("I need to be closer to the centre of the EU"). French is the main lingua franca in both places, though with catholicism being very strong in Geneva, that may give it the edge.

(Although, of course, if he was being honest - Ha! - he would choose Monaco.)

Yes, it will be laughingly ironic if one of the first tax emigrés to escape these shores to evade the tax-robbing reach of Godfather Gordon Brown, is former Labour premier, Tony Blair.

Remember, that when this happens, you read it here first.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Gone with the wind

Uncle Gary tells us why we must put our trust in gold:

=> Trust Mises and Gold, Not Keynes, Bernanke, and Fiat Money

The Marx Brothers land in Duck Soup

After virtually universal derision in the press, Alistair Darling's latest budget will probably go down in history as perhaps one of the worst ever delivered, which is some feat, given the budgets of Labour governments' past. For instance, check out this excellent piece by the Jeffster:

=> Now we are all up to our ears in it

But if you think that's a bit predictable, being from one of my usual favourite trio in the Torygraph, then how about this from the Gramscian Grauniad:

=> Deepest budget cuts since 70s to fill '£45bn hole'

Or even this, from the multi-cultural hegemonists at The Independent:

=> Britain's new age of austerity

With actual real-term increases in government spending still planned, despite the worst recession since 1926, it's hard to imagine how anyone with the slightest sense of pride or morality could have written or delivered this budget. However, I suppose that if you have been a Scottish Marxist since childhood, as the two clowns above have been, then what better legacy can you leave the children of the English, than to have raped and pillaged their land for a decade, and then to have left it on its knees for three decades trying to repair the damage (assuming it is repairable).

Having been accused myself of being delusional, for daring to suggest that tax eaters eat tax, one can only wonder what delusions live within the minds of men who think they can get away with claiming that the British economy will be expanding by 3.5% in just two years time.

However, it would appear that the mainstream British media have failed to fall for it. Which is excellent news. Even the formerly Brownite Sun has seen through the mirage:

=> Darling's quick debt away

If you have played a part in this, in constantly harrying mainstream economics commentators in newspapers, putting them on the back foot, or defending the views of maverick writers such as Liam Halligan or Jeff Randall, allowing them to retain the support of their editors, then I salute you.

I claimed in a post a few months ago that things are different now than they were in the 1930s. Back then, only a small handful of isolated men knew what was going on, which allowed the politicians of the world to mire us in Keynesianism for 20 years.

But it is with with a sense of relief that it really does appear that there is now enough economic sense about to constantly shoot such idiocy down in flames. Check out this piece in the Daily Mail, a newspaper which Brown has spent years trying to court:

=> Darling's secret tax bombshell: Black hole to cost families £2,800 a year for TEN years

Let us hope and pray that enough of this sense still exists in fourteen months time when Brown is finally forced to the polls and Cameron gets his (probable) go with the train set.

Like George Osborne, I still haven't ruled out Gordon Brown's outside chance of winning this election; there are still plenty of client-state voters out there who know who their paymaster is. However, judging from the reaction of the British press to this budget, my fears of a gullible electorate have receded somewhat. Only knucklehead stooges such as Kevin Maguire and Mary Riddell seem to have kept the Labour faith, by producing feeble attempts to suck up to Brown, with remarkably similar titles to their Brown-nosing pieces. However, you can tell their hearts aren't really in it:

=> Kevin Maguire's verdict on the Robin Hood budget: Chancellor aimed a few well-placed arrows

=> At long last, a Robin Hood budget

(BTW, well done to anyone who can ever find the necessary energy to comment on Mary Riddell pieces, to keep this socialist muppet in her box. These days I can never summon up the will, and usually barely make it to the end of one of her pieces without wanting to throw myself under a train.)

But the third and second best pieces have to be from my usual pair of favourites, Iain Martin and Liam Halligan:

=> The country is exhausted with Labour, but help is on the way

=> The lesson from Budget 2009 is that our politicians are blind to Britain's financial risks

If we all keep up enough pressure on all of these newspaper columnists, particularly the out-and-out Keynesians, then even David Cameron may realise that he must do the right thing, if he wishes to succeed, rather than the politically expedient thing, should he get the nod in fourteen months' time.

I think this attitude is best summed up by an excellent piece by Matthew Parris, in The Times, which is perhaps a much better read than any more pontification from me, so if you haven't already read it, I heartily recommend that you do. I really have saved the best budget story newspaper link for last:

=> This is a fight the Tories cannot afford to duck

Well done, Mr Parris. Who would have thought it? He was a Thatcherite, all along. Remarkable.

Obviously, as an anarcho-capitalist myself, I think all politicians are hopeless clowns. But even we anarcho-capitalists have to occasionally come down from the delusional cloud-cuckoo land we normally occupy and live in the real world. And if forced to choose between another five years of Gordon Brown or a government which actually dares to cut government spending, as a matter of principle, then I'll take option two please.

The trick will be to actually make them do it. That's why none of us must relent in pushing forward the ideas of Rothbard, Mises, and Hayek, wherever and whenever we can summon up the energy and the will to do so.

Every little helps.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Instant intelligent budget reaction

Liam Halligan:

=> The lesson from Budget 2009 is that our politicians are blind to Britain's financial risks

Iain Martin:

=> Disgraceful budget will impede recovery
=> David Cameron flattens Brown and Darling

One Day in the Life of a UK Tax Serf

Jack Maturin, Yesterday

So what do you do to get away from having to look at Gordon Brown's fat corrupt face?

Obviously, you go down to the gym to hit the treadmill, iPod in hand.

So what's that up on the huge gym screen staring down at you, just over your treadmill? Yes, it's Gordon Brown's fat corrupt face on Sky News Live, his mouth hanging open in that bizarre way as he listens to his Darling puppet read out his prepared lines in the Budget, a.k.a. the Mafia's exposition of how much it is going to rob from you this year.

Ahhhhhhh!!!

Oh well, I had my revenge. I listened to a splendid talk by Tom Di Lorenzo instead, on the socialist recipe of how to create a Great Depression. While listening to this, and watching the mute Darling puppet, I read the Sky headlines as they scrolled by about higher taxes for people with good accountants who will avoid them, thereby breaking a manifesto pledge, and higher taxes for everyone else on fuel, alcohol, and tobacco. Except of course for all 'public sector' people, and all other tax eaters, none of whom pay any kinds of tax on anything at all.

And some footling loose-change nonsense about 'the environment'.

Funnily enough, everything Professor Di Lorenzo said you should do to create a Great Depression was included in these Sky highlights covering the main points from Darling's speech! Remarkable.

No doubt those few genuinely wealthy people who are actually affected by the new 50% tax rate will up sticks and leave the UK, taking their wealth, ingenuity, and industry with them, as Professor Di Lorenzo predicts, but so long as the tax eater muppets in the Labour heartlands have their envious urges fulfilled, 'So What?', as Ed Balls might say.

As I approached my third mile, I did succumb to the temptation to listen to Cameron's response, and I thought it was quite good, as these things go, with some nice digs at Gordon, almost entirely ignoring Darling - which is quite reasonable, seeing as Darling will have only been handed his speech five minutes before he delivered it.

Apparently, there's going to be economic growth of something like 3.5% per annum, in two year's time, which will mean the UK government 'only' having to borrow £160 billion.

But as Jeff Randall said on Sky News, when the chancellor predicted a 1% contraction this year, only six months ago, to then announce a contraction figure of 3.5% today, makes talk of massive growth in two years' time pretty rich beer. Unless of course it's all purely nominal values he's talking about, with a massive explosion in price inflation causing nominal GDP figures to rise.

Got any pounds left in your wallet? You soon won't have. Or possibly you'll have lots of them, but none of them will be worth anything. Get out of the Pound. Do it now.

The best we can hope for, following this pathetic budget, is Japanese style stagflation, with zero growth rates year on year, for at least five years. Maturin Towers predicts it will be much worse than this, with small real-term declines each year, until someone finally gets a grip on the tax eating spending monster, or the markets stop supplying the government with borrowed money, to force them to cut tax eater spending, whichever comes first.

I'm hoping that the markets stop lending them the money, and stop lending it to them real soon. I mean, would you lend money to Iceland? So why will they lend to our miserable government. No doubt the printing press will then be used to fill the gap, when the borrowing gap hits.

And God alone only knows what destruction this will wreak upon Britain. Argentina anyone?

What an utter shower.

UK inflation rate falls to 17.6%

The latest M4 money supply inflation figures are out.

In a move which shocked Maturin Towers this morning, the UK inflation rate actually fell from 18.6% in February to a (provisional) 17.6%, in March, despite our prediction a month ago that it would go over 20%. And this follows the month in which quantitative easing (QE) began!

Remarkable.

So where has all of the newly counterfeited QE money gone? The money supply is only up by £0.9 billion, at £15 pounds per person, but the Bank of England directly created approximately £25 billion from out of thin air in March, which in the fullness of time will multiply to £250 billion due to the effects of fractional reserve banking, and this doesn't even count any other open market operations shenanigans they have been playing with, or discount window lending. So where is the money?

Well, the guess from Maturin Towers is that this tsunami of cash is building up in the banks' reserves, behind a dam of fear, in the same way that the tide recedes just before a tsunami hits the shore, with all of the water sucked up into a gargantuan wave of destruction. But this cash is still there, friends, waiting to keep the bubble expanded. Have no fear of that, especially with a UK government in place which has an election in 12 months time in which to re-secure its ministerial cars and where this week's budget is the first plank in that election campaign.

Even with all their current problems, if the Burghers of Downing Street time their fiat currency deluge correctly, they could still win that election. Let's face it, they're only up against hapless Dave and gormless George.

Yes, all Gordon will need to do is to persuade enough sheeple that borrowing and spending are the routes out of the trouble caused by borrowing and spending, and he will have it in the bag, so long as this mountain of bank reserve cash can be released with exactly the right leverage.

And who controls the banks' levers, either through direct ownership or threats to ownership, after having spent half a trillion pounds on the process? Yes, step forward folks, it's Gordon Brown.

So don't rule Gordon out just yet. He is a cunning devil and he knows just how stupid people can be; after all, they did vote his party in three times previously, despite his obvious evil crookedness. Even now you'll still find some Russians praising the evil monster Stalin for his deviousness and for his iron political will.

Brown is a creature cast from the same mould as Uncle Joe Gulag and we have not seen the last of him yet, unless Guido can somehow nail Brown into the history books.

He controls the money supply, the tax system, the mainstream media, the legal system, the banks, the army, the street police, the secret police, the education system, the health system, the transport system, the energy infrastructure, and all of the other tendrils of the political power system. So I'm confident that with that little lot at his disposal, he'll do more than whimper off into the footnotes of history, just because the Daily Mail has had a bout of fickleness over him.

Expect that same newspaper to be singing his praises again in a few months time, when all of this cash is washing all over us, prior to the next stage in the depression, of course, caused by this fiat currency folly. But that may be after the next election, so who cares?

At least there do seem to be more mainstream opinions out there which will question this 'happy green shoots recovery', when it starts to bear the sick malinvested fruit of bubbleland:

=> There are just two options remaining for Labour: austerity or inflation

So let us see what Gordon gets up to with the budget, via his puppet Darling, both on its announcement, and when the real measures trickle through in supplementary papers over the next few days.

Hang onto your wallets, folks. Because they are in for a heck of a ride.

The provisional figures for April will be available here on the 21st of May, at 9:30am.

Link to February 2009 M4 Chart.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Chris Clancy's Chinese adventure - The Final Curtain (For the Moment)

With a title reminiscent of Robert Graves' book, Good-Bye to All That, or even perhaps to Spike Milligan's Goodbye Soldier,Lew Rockwell blogger and English Austrian, Chris Clancy, finally gets his Beagle to the Galapagos, in this concluding piece on his first year in China:

=> Goodbye DJK

In my very best Chinese, which is pretty appalling as any Mandarin speaker will attest to: 谢你因你的工!

(Link to previous episodes)

Damn, the serfs have slowed down

The mafia crooks that run Britain have decided to lower the national speed limit from 60mph to 50mph:

=> A-road speed limits to be reduced to 50mph

Hmmm...

I wonder why?

It couldn't be to do with raising more highwayman revenue could it, in these times of envisaged government spending problems? No, surely not.

Let's envisage the appropriate mafia meeting in the Treasury:

Underboss: It's the plebs, boss, they know where all the speed cameras are.
Bagman: So what? Surely they're still stupid enough to be caught out by them?
Underboss: But only enough of them, sir, to just about cover the collection costs. Even that would be good enough, to pay for our soldiers out in the field, but the projections are that soon they'll all be driving at or under the speed limits. The revenue streams are dying.
Bagman: Bugger! So what do we do now?
Soldier: We could always lower the speed limits even more. It'll only work for a couple of years, and screw the economy even more as everyone crawls around the country, but what the hell. It'll be two more years of gravy before we have to think of another wheeze to screw the idiots.
Bagman: Done.
Soldier: Yes, sir. They will be.

And thus life in Britain rolls ever on, with the mafia thieves and hangers on who rule the land, laughing all the way to their private bank accounts in Luxembourg.

The green shoots keep coming

Hey, have you noticed how coincidental it is that all of these 'green shoots' stories have popped up in Britain, just before the state's annual announcement of how much it is going to be robbing from us all, in the coming year?

=> Economists hail first green shoots in housing market
=> Do the 'green shoots' in Britain's economy amount to much?

Don't believe a word of these stories. They are all being caused by massive money printing. This is the partially successful re-inflation of the bubble, which will become obvious when M4 comes out on April 22nd.

But just like a whisky drinker with a terrible hangover drinking themselves into another drunken stupour to kill the pain, the results are going to be much worse than if the hangover was just accepted and lived through.

While you're thinking about that, try Uncle Gary's latest piece on the gold price:

=> Why Gold Owners Are Targets of the Government

Friday, April 10, 2009

Bank of England speeds up quantitative easing

Jesus H. Christ.

It's obviously been working so well that they've decided to have even more of it.

You will of course witness 'good news' stories like this one, which are being fed by all of this extra counterfeit cash. No doubt Gordon will be on the blower every day, hungry for such 'good news', and will be urging his sinecured hamsters at the Bank of England to keep spinning those treadmill wheels to pump out even more of this paper confetti rubbish to steal even more wealth from the British people, in order to win the next election.

You never know. It may even work.

Expect inflationary Armageddon when the hangover from this money drug finally does hit.

Get out of Pound Sterling denominated assets now, while you can. Hard assets with intrinsic value in and of themselves are the only place to be. Gold, gold mining stocks, Chinese stocks in good Chinese companies which service the Chinese economy, and stocks in good commodity companies in commodity-rich countries such as Australia and Canada. Plus, anything else you or Peter Schiff can think of.

But do, for the love of God, get all of your spare wealth out of the Pound Sterling, shortly to be renamed 'The Zimbabwe'. If you don't, Gordon Brown will have no mercy in taking this wealth from you, via his inflation machine, and destroying it, in order to win the next election.

Or do you think he's supposed to serve you, rather than himself and his chums in the client state?

Peter Schiff Vlog Report 09 Apr 2009

Der SchiffMeister discusses the latest bear market rally affecting world stock markets, which he believes is simply a reaction to all the inflating being carried out by the world's central banks.

Although he believes that most markets will probably not achieve new nominal lows, because of these inflationary effects pushing up nominal fiat currency prices, they have all yet to achieve new lows when priced in gold.

Conclusion? Go on, guess, before you watch the video! ;-)

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Daniel Hannan on Freedom Watch

Daniel Hannan speaks to Judge Napolitano on 'Freedom Watch'. Listen out for some great quotes, such as:

"The British State exists purely for the benefit of those employed by the British State."

What's really strange, of course, is that millions of Americans know who Daniel Hannan is, including the good Judge, whereas because of the Iron Curtain of non-coverage placed around him in this country by the tax eaters in the British media, he can walk down a British street entirely unmolested and unrecognised.

Very strange indeed.



Edmund Conway still shilling for Keynes

Edmund Conway, despite all of the Murray Rothbard books I keep asking him to read, is still shilling for Keynes. So I thought I better just write out the full history lesson myself, after his latest dreadful shill.

Jack Maturin on April 09, 2009 at 10:30 AM

Edmund, Edmund, Edmund.

What are we to do with you?

We will stay in this depression for as long as the governments of the world keep going with their interventions. We will come out of this depression, the "Bernanke Bubble", only when governments stop intervening.

They will do this for two reasons. The first, is that a very brave politician stands up with enough conviction to fight off the concerted interests of the bankers and the debtors in British society, and to convince enough voters that the only way out of this is to stop intervening. (I can only think of Daniel Hannan being able to do this. David Cameron is far too much of a coward.)

The second far more likely scenario is that the British government will run out of the means of intervening, because nobody will lend it any more money and the people will no longer be able to stand the stagflation caused by the Bank of England's printing press, or the new taxes lining up inside the Treasury, straining at the leash to wreck our lives even more.

Yes, if the government stopped intervening and stopped bailing everyone out with borrowed, taxed, or printed money, the subsequent economic cold turkey crash would be appalling. No-one is denying that. Because when you clear out ten year's worth of malinvestments in one fell swoop, then the anti-heroin spike will be really intense.

But then, relatively quickly, within one to two years, the pain will be over. The analogy is this. If we stop intervening, we will pull the plaster off really quickly. And yes, the instantaneous pain will be intense.

However, if we keep going with these utterly stupid government methadone interventions, based upon borrowing, regulating, and inflating, to be followed by taxing to pay for all of the borrowing, then we will drag the plaster off slowly, for a decade or more, with no great huge spikes of pain, but the patient enduring unbearable long-term agony, flecked with brief moments of respite.

If Gordon Brown is to claim any kind of mantle from history what he should do is this. Stand up and admit that he has been wrong about everything. Then to announce that he is going to sacrifice the next election, and not even personally stand himself, and then spend the next two years doing absolutely nothing while the spike of pain kicks in. To ease this pain, he can also throw his legions of Labour client-state voters onto the dole by sacking whole swathes of these parasites, who are supposed to be our servants rather than our masters, and giving the rest of us the money saved as tax cuts, so we can use this as a cushion for the two years of pain. The parasites will then be employed again, this time doing something useful in the productive sector of private business.

Once all of the bad businesses, built upon false premises caused by money held artificially cheap by the central banks, have been cleared out of the system, we can then start building again from a cleaned out base instead of, as now, continually wasting good money after bad by propping these businesses up, which are producing products nobody now wants, and which only produced those products in the first place because of the Bernanke Bubble, which induced a mistaken sense of financial euphoria in most of the population, causing them to splash out on needless luxuries.

One only needs think of the example of Jaguar, making huge powerful gas-guzzling cars, to think of those companies which made particularly poor choices and bad malinvestments over the last decade.

Nobody wants these cars in sufficient numbers to keep this operation going in its current form. So what is the miserable government plan to cure this malinvestment? To strip resources from those successful companies, who do make things people want, to continue pumping it into Jaguar et al, so they can waste even more money making things people don't really want.

This is why we will stay in depression. The mechanism is clear. We will continually throw good money after bad, into loss-making operations, until the money runs out. Then everybody will go bust and we really will have a proper depression on our hands.
Governments will then relish this opportunity, by destroying what little remains of our liberty by imposing military dictatorship upon us, as "the only way out".

We have been here before. And it is the Keynesians who have led us into both holes.

Once again, may I remind you of the Great American “Depression” of 1920-21. It started off worse than in 1929, with a worse unemployment spike, a worse downward spike in production, and worse GDP figures. And yet it was all over in a year, because Woodrow Wilson was too ill to start intervening and because President Warren Harding refused to do anything about it at all, once he was inaugurated, except cut taxes and US government spending.

Harding's lieutenant at the time, Hoover, insisted upon intervention, but Harding simply ignored him. (Not surprisingly, for these failures to intervene to "save" the US economy, Harding was savaged by the intellectuals and proto-Keynesians of his time, a battle which the economically illiterate historians also took up after Harding's death.)

And so we get to 1929. The lieutenant has become the President, and this time he intervenes with a vengeance (even though the Keynesians later fabricated the myth that Hoover hadn't). The depression lingered. So Roosevelt came in to do even more of the same. The depression endured. And endured. And endured, with stupid government intervention, after stupid government intervention.

Only in 1946, with Roosevelt out of the way, did the US economy finally begin to recover, with most of Roosevelt's controls being scrapped in the post-war period.

Read the history books, Edmund. It's all there. Yes, it's been muddied by the Keynesians and all of the other fellow-travelling socialists, including even Doctor Who scriptwriters at the BBC, but if you dig hard enough you will find out about Warren Harding's "depression" and how he dealt with it by doing nothing except cutting government spending and taxes. And how it was all over in one year flat.

That is what we need to do now. Will it happen? Of course not. Because Brown is determined to buy the next election with the taxes of our children, if any of us decide to stay in this country. However, in five years time when we are still in this mess, I want you to remember that a way out was known to you and not acted upon.

And this way out it did not involve your precious Keynesianism. All that benighted economic religion of voodoo has given us has been the depression of the 1930s, the stagflation of the 1970s, the twenty year recession in Japan, and the Bernanke Bubble depression of the 21st century, plus endless cohorts of government-employed court economists telling us that Keynesianism is the only way forward, despite its clear and obvious continuing failures.

The bust is the cure, not the problem. The problem was the boom. The only way to burst a bubble is with a pin. The more we keep inflating this bubble, to avoid the bust, the bigger will be the burst when it finally pops of its own accord.

The choice is clear. Put the pin in now and then clean up the smaller resulting mess. Or your shilled Keynesian solution, which is to keep inflating, until it really does burst into a gigantic mess.

If we do take that second path, and it all pans out as I have described, then you and Paul Krugman may have some explaining to do, when all of this is finally all over, when all of the money has eventually run out.

Good luck.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Police kill man for no reason


So what do you do in Britain these days if you're walking along the road and some angry British police officers come up behind you?

If you run like hell, they'll shoot you in the head 10 times and then fabricate a story that you acted like a terrorist.

If you turn and confront them, then they'll beat you to the ground and then fabricate a story that you acted like a terrorist.

If you walk slowly away from them, with your hands in your pockets, then they will assault you from behind with batons and then fabricate a story that you acted like a terrorist.

Whichever way you cut it, just make sure that you're never anywhere where there might be some angry policemen about.

Not that Britain is turning into a fascist police state, or anything, where the police can kill anyone at will with absolutely no come back to any of them, at any time, for any reason. No. It's nothing like that, at all.

Thanks Gordon, and all the other 'libertarian socialists' who gave us ZaNuLabour.

NB: Your Maturin Towers correspondent was about 300 yards from this incident, a couple of hours earlier, going about his business. Fortunately for him, although he did come across a lot of riot police, they were all in vans having a breather.

Tom Woods to adapt British version of Meltdown

Historian, Scholar, and Senior Fellow at the Von Mises Institute, Thomas E. Woods is to adapt his phenomenal Meltdown to include British Bank of England-type figures whereas the current version uses American Federal Reserve-type figures, with other British examples sprinkled throughout.

This is most excellent, as a beach dude from Santa Monica might say. Sorry. Strike that out. As a beach dude from Newquay might say!

BTW, Tom tells me that he will be in the UK promoting the book sometime this year, so watch out for further posts on AngloAustria detailing these events, plus keep half an eye on his website. I have ordered my Von Mises Institute bow-tie, specially, for any of these events held in the London area.

Perhaps this book could become a focal point for British Austrians to gather around? Whatever the case, make sure you get a copy to keep up the good work of slapping down socialists everywhere you encounter them.

Rule Britannia.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Hannan hits 2 million!

Crazy! Daniel Hannan's outstanding speaking of truth to power has crossed the two million views hurdle. Amazing! (Though I must admit that at least 10 of those views were mine.)

Anyway, in case you missed it, here it is again:


2,082,441 views


This is getting to be like that famous photo of Andrew Neil in Private Eye, which they re-print at the merest excuse. But heck, it was a helluva speech.

Brown sends more troops to their deaths in Afghanistan

Speaking of government-induced death, over the weekend we had that fat simpering fool, Gordon Brown, whipping off more British troops to Afghanistan, to impose democracy onto that unhappy land and to impress his new crush, Barack Obama.

So, that's more men and women who signed up to defend Britain, to die in thin-skinned Land Rovers in a remote land, where their job is to kill anyone who opposes democracy and to help the American government get oil pipelines down from Central Asia, to avoid the US government being reliant on the Russian government for future oil supplies.

Oh yeah, and some other fascist stuff about a 'New World Order'.

We should bring back all of our troops from Afghanistan, right now. It is a disgrace that their lives are being used in Gordon Brown's games of personal aggrandisement for himself, after he is kicked out of Downing Street.

And let's face it. Unless they are prepared to wipe everyone out in Afghanistan, these troops will be coming home eventually whether the British government wants them to or not. Because they are foreign aggressors who are unwelcome in someone else's country, and there are only two routes out of that. The decimation of everyone there, or retreat, due to an increasing body bag count.

The rest is just the pompous posturing of politicians.

The bleedin' obvious


The BBC program, Newsnight, tonight ran a special program on why cancer treatment in the UK is so much worse than everywhere else in Europe.

They questioned patient attitudes, analysed polls, questioned medical training diagnosis techniques, and in fact covered everything except the bleedin' obvious, in a tedious long-winded skip around the central answer that nobody in the tax consuming sector wants to hear.

Let's see that question again:

"Why is cancer treatment in the UK so much poorer than everywhere else in Europe?"

Here is the very simple anser:

"Because the government is more closely involved in running the health system, than any other country in Europe."

That's it. The more government involvement there is in anything, the worse that thing is than it would otherwise be. So why does the BBC need to waste yet more taxpayers' money spending hours skipping around this obvious answer?

Because more and more people in this country are realising the truth that they would be better off without government interference in their lives, so the tax consumers in the BBC need to protect their masters in government by blaming everything else except the inevitable consequence of government failure in everything that this 'force-based' criminal system touches.

Government = Death

More Government = More Deaths from Cancer

Less Government = Less Deaths from Cancer

It really is a very simple equation. Unfortunately, the Oxbridge minds that the BBC hires seem unable to understand it, despite their hyper-intelligence. Which seems strange. Because John Cleese was an Oxbridge man and he seemed to understand the bleedin' obvious well enough.

Hubris, hoopla and claims that were false, cynical and very, very dangerous

Peter Oborne, the very last Fleet Street scribbler to rip up his love letters from Gordon, has written the bitter posting of a man who has woken up to see the woman that he was once obsessed with in the cold clear light of day.

Ouch!

It would appear that the lies of Wormtongue Brown are falling on increasingly deaf ears. Whereas it used to take two or three years for their falsity to become clear, it is now taking merely days and sometimes hours, before everyone is wretched with themselves for once again being taken in by these manufactured deceits.

He really must believe that we are all idiots. Unfortunately, for over ten years, in most cases he was right. But there is nothing angrier than a man or a woman who knows they have been deceived and laughed at by the man who deceived them.

Let us hope it quickly reaches the point where absolutely nobody believes a single word Gordon says, from the moment each crooked syllable falls from his crooked pursed lips.

So what is the difference between the Mafia and the State?

Damned if I know.

Let's work through the senior posts in British government:

Chancellor of Exchequer: Embezzler and Crook

Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury: Fabricator, Counterfeiter, and Crook

Home Secretary: Liar, Porn Supplier, and Crook

Foreign Secretary: Cover-Up Artist, Liar, and Torturer

God forbid we should work our way down to Peter Mandelson, the biggest Crook of all.

I wonder if he's been clearing out his Luxemburg bank accounts recently, now that they're going to be opened up Gordon?

Obviously, if you're a Hoppeian like me, the only difference you recognise between the Mafia and the State is that states are usually older. Though of course, in Northern Ireland's case, virtually the entire government is made up of former terrorist mafiosi, so even that doesn't hold entirely true.

The State is nothing but a band of robbers writ large.

It is extremely interesting that this is not now only the viewpoint of Rothbardian 'extremists' like me, but also of an increasingly wider public.

So homage must be given to Guido Fawkes and all of the other journalists who scoop their exclusives from his site, for exposing this crookery.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Schiff: The British are court jesters for the Americans

Another excellent Peter Schiff radio program/podcast this week (April 1st).

Starting off with a swipe at Britain and US in the G20 meeting, and how this has been a stage-managed farce, he really starts laying into the forthcoming demise of the dollar and how he thinks the Chinese are starting a pump-and-dump operation on their holdings of US Treasury securities.

The program is better than most, because Der SchiffMeister gets asked less really stupid questions than he normally receives (e.g. Why is gold worth more intrinsically than paper money?), so he spends more time explaining difficult Austrian-related concepts and why he thinks Texas and Alaska may attempt to leave the Federal Union (in the manner suggested by Igor Panarin.)

Excellent. Let us hope that Connecticutt's finest stands for the US Senate, soon, to give Ron Paul some support in Congress.

Schiff video log on April 2nd:


Schiff video log on April 3rd:

Jim Rogers: Britain is bankrupt



A superb interview with Lord Rogers of Alabama.

Listen out for the quote about Gordon Brown.

Friday, April 03, 2009

The Cassandra Complex

It is with a mounting sense of horror that the Maturin Towers collective has watched many of its more outrageous predictions begin to come true, as this 'correction' has bitten deep into the socialist waste of western government.

Most of our predictions take a few years, a few months, or even a few weeks, to start coming true.

However, this morning we made the speculative comment that Gordon Brown had used the G20 meeting to get the rest of the world to give the IMF a trillion dollars, so that he could then later take that money to prop up his own rotten empire.

You may have read this prediction. You may have thought it was outlandish and hopelessly naive, particularly given Gordon Brown's denial that he would ever ask the IMF for this money.

And yet, this evening, we have one of his useful idiot senior cabinet ministers saying Britain should not be afraid or ashamed of taking some of this money from the International Monetary Fund, thus flying a kite and preparing the ground should the measure prove necessary.

It would thus appear that Peter Schiff is once again bang on the money. It may prove that because of Gordon Brown's appalling stewardship of the Treasury, for 11 years, and his one year as Prime Minister, Britain really will be coming off worst in this correction, out of all the world's (once) major economies.

I think I better have that third Bombay Sapphire, after all, before all of the drinks run out.

Events are beginning to gather an accelerated pace which even we at Maturin Towers are surprised by.

And all we have to go on is what is in the papers and what we can guess. Senior cabinet ministers have access to all sorts of private and secret government information, including tax receipts, unemployment trends, and other flows and figures which never make the light of day.

If they are panicking, then what should we be doing?

Bombay Sapphire: The spice of life


At this time on a Friday evening, this is what any self respecting gentleman ought to be doing:

=> Toss that ol' glass of tall crystal into the freezer for a short sojourn, while you make love to a beautiful woman, along with a few tins of Schweppes full-sugared tonic water

=> Now take four or five tonic water ice cubes out from the freezer, and deposit them into your frosted chilled glass - use proper sugared tonic water to make your tonic water ice cubes with, because aspartame is both bad for the body and bad for the soul

=> Add about three ounces of Bombay Sapphire into your glass, or to taste, though avoid overdoing it, you lush (the square bottle shape of the ol' Bombay makes it really easy to keep in the freezer, where the alcohol acts as anti-freeze)

=> Add about four ounces of Schweppes tonic water, or to taste

=> Take a slice off half a lime and then squeeze the remaining half into the glass

=> Stir tenderly, with the swizzle stick of your choice, as if making love to a beautiful woman (this is why you have to do this earlier, to get your technique right)

=> Twist the lime slice and add to the glass as you fancy

=> Drink immediately

And keep it to one. Ok, two. But no more than that! Alright, three. But only if it has been a really rough week.

Afterwards, a fine New Zealand Pinot Noir can be sampled, but purely for its medicinal resveratrol life-enhancing nutraceutical effects, obviously.

Cheesey biscuits and nibbles, as required.

Cheers!

Jim Rogers response to G20: Get yourself a tractor!

G20: A 'new world order' is simply fantasy

Simon Heffer delivers the usual two very satisfactory barrels.

Schiff: I think the British economy is in the worst shape of all

Cripes!

Der SchiffMeister speaks to HardAssetsInvestor.com:

=> Outlook For Currencies, Commodities & Gold

BTW, if Mr Schiff is right about the Pound, then thanks, Gordon!

Igor Panarin's New World Order

Speaking of a 'New World Order', that ominous phrase that Gordon Brown has just lifted from Hitler's Mein Kampf, check out the map of North America, above. This is how it could look by 2010, at least according to Igor Panarin.

So who the heck is he? Well, he's the Dean of the Faculty of International Relations of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Moscow, Russia; that's who! :-)

Check out this recent quote from the Dean:

"The dollar isn’t secured by anything...The country’s foreign debt has grown like an avalanche; this is a pyramid, which has to collapse."
He must have been listening to Peter Schiff's radio program! Panarin further predicts that a "New World Order" will be formed, after the collapse of the US, which will be centred upon Russia and China.

For more, see the Panarin entry on Wikipedia, which contains many useful links to recent stories involving the thoughts of the Good Dean.

With other stories emerging about a possible Gold Rouble and a Gold Yuan, a pattern is beginning to emerge, where future historians may regard the recently concluded G20 conference as "historic" for reasons other than for Gordon Brown's obvious greatness. Has it actually marked the end of the United States' world financial and military hegemony, and that of its Mini-Me helper, the United Kingdom?

Interesting, Miss Moneypenny; very interesting indeed!

BTW, the above Panarin map reminds me very much of an older map I first saw on Lew Rockwell, which postulated what the territory of the modern United States would have looked like if the Constitutional Congress hadn't been rammed down the throats of the independent American colonies by the Hamiltonians, and every subsequent separatist movement had succeeded without the usual suppression from either Washington or London:

Perhaps Marx was right? Perhaps history is inevitable! Perhaps with the Dean's plan, history is trying to reassert itself from what it once could have been, to what it really ought to become!

Let us see if the Good Dean is right. As the Chinese say, we live in remarkably interesting times.

G20 summit: Gordon Brown strikes historic $1 trillion deal

Gordon Brown has managed to cajole the beginnings of an ominous 'New World Order' out of his fellow wretches at the G20 conference. He's done this by getting them to promise to give the IMF $1 trillion dollars of other people's money.

This is about £750 billion pounds.

Which rather serendipitously is about the same amount of money Gordon Brown recently committed to the failed British banking system, to insure its inevitable forthcoming losses on toxic debt.

He then claimed that he would not be applying to the IMF for any of this money.

Using the Maturin Tower's Law about always believing the absolute opposite of what any politician ever says about anything, particularly Gordon Brown, this means that he has just constructed his rope out the back, for when the bad men come.

When he does apply to the IMF for a 'loan', to get away from these bad men, his argument will be that the British economy is 'too big to fail'.

In the meantime, expect more debt, more taxation, more inflation, more regulation, and more spending, to solve the problems caused by too much debt, taxation, inflation, regulation, and spending.

Don't worry if this doesn't make any sense. It's too complicated for mere peasants to understand.

Peter Schiff on the G20 bailout, China, gold, and GM

Labour ministers relieve themselves after G20 ends

Thursday, April 02, 2009