Good.
Because if he does manage to hang on beyond the June elections, then the Labour Party will be absolutely destroyed next year, perhaps to the point of disappearing in 1920s Liberal fashion, never to really be seen again.
And then we can get on with destroying the Conservative party too, until there are no politicians left standing.
And then, finally, we will be able to free ourselves from their deadly embrace and rebuild western civilisation from the ruins of 150 years of blue, red, green, and yellow socialism, mostly stemming from the political works of James Mill and Karl Marx.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Why are we here? Plastic!
Did the environmentalists assassinate George Carlin?
No, perhaps not. But if you watch the video below you'll realise a lot of them will have felt like it. If you listen carefully to the section where he lays into smug white environmentalist liberals you can hear a few smug white environmentalist liberals in the background, getting their yucca thongs in a twist about it.
Marvellous.
Anyhow, that's enough waffle from me. Put your ear plugs in for the bits with all the bad language, but make sure you listen to the rest, if you haven't seen this video before. What a shame Mr Carlin couldn't be with us to taunt our enemies for a couple more decades:
BTW, if you want to see an excellent description of democracy, get through to about 1:40 of the following YouTube, to see Mr Carlin's thoughts on the subject. When you've checked that, move through to 5:20 for his thoughts on the growth of the world fascist state. Yes, his later thoughts on theft are a little more flimsy, but let's just gloss over that in our appreciation of this American genius:
No, perhaps not. But if you watch the video below you'll realise a lot of them will have felt like it. If you listen carefully to the section where he lays into smug white environmentalist liberals you can hear a few smug white environmentalist liberals in the background, getting their yucca thongs in a twist about it.
Marvellous.
Anyhow, that's enough waffle from me. Put your ear plugs in for the bits with all the bad language, but make sure you listen to the rest, if you haven't seen this video before. What a shame Mr Carlin couldn't be with us to taunt our enemies for a couple more decades:
BTW, if you want to see an excellent description of democracy, get through to about 1:40 of the following YouTube, to see Mr Carlin's thoughts on the subject. When you've checked that, move through to 5:20 for his thoughts on the growth of the world fascist state. Yes, his later thoughts on theft are a little more flimsy, but let's just gloss over that in our appreciation of this American genius:
The lowest of the low
Obviously, no-one who is employed full time by the state pays any tax. Such a person is nothing but a 100% tax eater.But some tax eaters are better than others.
State nurses may be chippy and refuse to clean MRSA off their hands, while state teachers may ruin young people's minds by filling their impressionable heads full of statist and environmentalist trash, but at least none of these people - I hope - would ever claim back from the taxpayer the five pounds they just put into a church charity box (presumably an action carried out to save face in public, rather than because it was meant in spirit).
But a British politician did.
Forget estate agents, journalists, and fractional reserve bankers. Is there any form of human life lower than a politician?
It gets very hard following the Bank of England's M4 figures, because they keep changing them regressively. For instance they claimed an M4 March figure last month of 17.6% but revised that this month to 18.2%. Because they also only release 'seasonally adjusted' figures on a provisional basis, this constant figure juggling makes month-by-month comparisons of what's going on quite tricky; though I do think we can see the general trend - the Pound in your pocket is becoming worth less every day, losing up to a fifth of its value a year, year on year (whereas it only used to lose a tenth of its value a year, a couple of years back).If we can believe them, the latest figures show that inflation last month declined slightly to 17.4%, which combined with a base rate of 0.5% gives us a current UK effective interest rate of -16.82%.
With all the news in the UK press of 'The Pound Booming' (i.e. losing value less quickly than the Dollar) and other spurious 'green shoots' nonsense, it should be interesting to see what happens to M4 over the next few months if the banks start disgorging some of the filthy lucre the UK Treasury and Bank of England have been filling them up with over the last few months.
No doubt Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson will be hoping that the green shoots last for a few months yet, and will be urging the banks to get this money out of the door, before being forced to call an election, hopefully from their point of view before this manufactured quantitative easing bubble bursts even more spectacularly than the credit crunch bubble.
Ah, those happy days of bouncing along the bottom for ten years, with money growth inflation at only 10% a year, to fund the massive boom in house prices. And look at the mess that got us into. With M4 now bouncing around 17%, to get us out of the previous bust, the future bust we are building will be quite spectacular.
Ho hum.
Latest April 2009 M4 figures.
Previous March 2009 figures.
Pound falls in value less quickly than the Dollar, Shock!
Who do you believe?
If you were to have read any British papers, at the tail end of last week, you would have thought that the recession was over and party time was here again.
Well, you can believe that if you want to, with apparently rising house prices (and all the other signs that quantitative easing has worked its inflationary magic.)
Personally, I'm going to follow The Jimster:
=> Markets set to plunge again
If you were to have read any British papers, at the tail end of last week, you would have thought that the recession was over and party time was here again.
Well, you can believe that if you want to, with apparently rising house prices (and all the other signs that quantitative easing has worked its inflationary magic.)
Personally, I'm going to follow The Jimster:
=> Markets set to plunge again
Democracy: The God of Gravy
You may wonder who your MEP is, in the European Parliament. Personally, I have absolutely no idea.
But then it's not surprising that so few of us know who our MEPs are, because except for signing on each morning for their glutinous daily allowances, few MEPs ever bother turning up for work, except to vote on laws they haven't read to stay on their party lists for future elections to this greatest of parasitical gravy train wonder lands.
Yes, Democracy truly is a God that has failed. And increasingly, the people of Europe are beginning to realise it too. Thank the Lord for the nerve of Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe for daring to point out this drastically unpalatable truth.
Christopher Booker has more.
Hitting the target
So, what are you to do as an NHS Health Trust bureaucrat who is failing to hit the government's target to treat all NHS Accident and Emergency patients within four hours?
Simple.
You merely lock everyone out of all of your Accident and Emergency clinics until the queue inside the clinic is under four hours. You then let taxpayers in, one at a time, from the horde outside in the rain, so long as this internal clinic waiting time stays under four hours.
Job done. Bonus collected.
In the apocryphal words of Ed Balls, so what if there are urgent trauma patients lying outdoors on trolleys for hours on end, with their angry and hysterical relatives banging on the windows to get them admitted to the back of the four hour queue? That's their problem.
Welcome to the socialist NHS. The Envy of the world.
AngloAustrian Solution: Privatise the entire NHS right now and remove all government financial and regulatory involvement with health care. Could it really be any worse?
http://mises.org/Books/bureaucracy.pdf
Simple.
You merely lock everyone out of all of your Accident and Emergency clinics until the queue inside the clinic is under four hours. You then let taxpayers in, one at a time, from the horde outside in the rain, so long as this internal clinic waiting time stays under four hours.
Job done. Bonus collected.
In the apocryphal words of Ed Balls, so what if there are urgent trauma patients lying outdoors on trolleys for hours on end, with their angry and hysterical relatives banging on the windows to get them admitted to the back of the four hour queue? That's their problem.
Welcome to the socialist NHS. The Envy of the world.
AngloAustrian Solution: Privatise the entire NHS right now and remove all government financial and regulatory involvement with health care. Could it really be any worse?
Friday, May 29, 2009
What is the Ruling Class?
For a text of the excellent talk given recently by Dr Sean Gabb, at the Property and Freedom Society event in Bodrum, click the link below:
=> What is the Ruling Class?
About 150 years ago the British Communist Party, headed by Karl Marx, consisted of about 50 members. They had a simple labelling technique for targeting the enemy ruling class. Essentially, if you owned any part of the means of production, then you were fair game for the proletariat to attack and destroy.
It is much less easy for the 50 attendees of the Property and Freedom Society to label their own enemy class today, because the modern ruling class is so much more fragmented these days, including people as diverse as Richard Branson, Tony Blair, and Paul Krugman.
What is it that links them all together? Because if we can irrefutably identify them, then our job of running this enemy class out of town will become so much simpler.
My own belief is that if we can directly label these people with an indelible green ink, to make it obvious who is exploiting the rest of us, then we could be as successful as that tiny group of communists were in revolving the entire world order, such that most of the principles of the Communist Manifesto are now established government policy in much of the western world.
Sean Gabb explains all of these difficult issues, and more, in the talk linked to above. It is well worth reading.
=> What is the Ruling Class?
About 150 years ago the British Communist Party, headed by Karl Marx, consisted of about 50 members. They had a simple labelling technique for targeting the enemy ruling class. Essentially, if you owned any part of the means of production, then you were fair game for the proletariat to attack and destroy.
It is much less easy for the 50 attendees of the Property and Freedom Society to label their own enemy class today, because the modern ruling class is so much more fragmented these days, including people as diverse as Richard Branson, Tony Blair, and Paul Krugman.
What is it that links them all together? Because if we can irrefutably identify them, then our job of running this enemy class out of town will become so much simpler.
My own belief is that if we can directly label these people with an indelible green ink, to make it obvious who is exploiting the rest of us, then we could be as successful as that tiny group of communists were in revolving the entire world order, such that most of the principles of the Communist Manifesto are now established government policy in much of the western world.
Sean Gabb explains all of these difficult issues, and more, in the talk linked to above. It is well worth reading.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Marching Orders - The Property and Freedom Society
There are very few 'mainstream' Austrian men or women in England. When I say mainstream, I mean 'Misesian', in the mould of the Mises Institute in Alabama.
Yes, via the Institute for Economic Affairs, and the London School of Economics, there is a large Hayekian presence, particularly in and around London, which is probably due to Hayek's immense intellectual stature. Intellectualism is a very important commodity in the British libertarian tradition and Hayek appears to appeal much more to us Brits, mainly because of his perceived high intellectual stature, as a sort of right-wing equal to Keynes.
But is Hayek really more of an 'intellectual' than Mises? Or is this a mirage caused by the total intransigence of Mises, allied to the much greater conciliation of Hayek? Mises never really minded who disliked him so long as he held his own position in a steadfast manner, whereas Hayek was much more affable and polite, particularly when in the company of those statists who brand themselves 'Minarchists'.
Like many non-British hardcore Austrians, I find this Hayekian conciliatory approach to the state lacks the necessary jolt of caffeine to get me up in the morning. The much more uncompromising Mises is much more my cup of tea.
Unfortunately, this leads to the sad situation where the Mises/Rothbard line in England is very thin, consisting mainly of Anonymous, myself, and perhaps a few others of whom I am completely unaware, and a strong sympathy to the Misesian line from the (smaller) Libertarian Alliance, of which I am a camp-following occasional member.
Virtually everyone else belongs to a myriad of other libertarian positions, mostly statist/minarchist as summarised on the frontispiece of the Samizdata blog site:
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, 'Porcupines', Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.I used to write a long time ago for the Samizdata site, as a wild-eyed anarcho-capitalist under an assumed name, but there was not much toleration for that position, which admittedly was very fluid as I worked out where my end game was going to be on my own long road from socialism.
This wild-eyed anarcho-capitalism, combined with several other factors too boring to mention, eventually forced me to leave. Indeed, here are two Samizdata definitions for the kinds of people who recently attended Professor Hoppe's conference, including my good self [note my italics]:
Barking moonbatGiven that there is such British intellectual hostility to the Paleo-libertarian, Paleo-conservative position, as advanced by the Austrian school, particularly as advanced by Professor Hoppe, my main question to him this week was how I could help advance the Austrian (Misesian) position in England, from my relatively time-constricted position of being an armchair economist?
noun. Someone on the extreme edge of whatever their -ism happens to be.
(coined by Perry de Havilland)
Usage:"Definition of a 'barking moonbat': someone who sacrifices sanity for the sake of consistency"
-Adriana Cronin
Although the term (often rendered simply as 'Moonbat') is very popular with conservative and libertarian bloggers who appropriately use it to describe the Chomskyite Left, it was always intended as a much more ecumenical epithet and has been correctly used to describe certain paleo-conservative and paleo-libertarians views. (also see 'idiotarian').
Idiotarian
noun. A term of abuse for an advocate of what are deemed to be irrationalist and subjectivist values that have very little reference to the workings of the real world. Idiotarians are often socialist (quintessentially Noam Chomsky), but can also be paleo-libertarian or paleo-conservative. The defining phrase of idiotarianism is "it is all the fault of the United States": this is usually applied to geopolitics but is sometimes encountered with regard to cultural issues, economic issues, environmental issues, the weather, socks lost in the laundry etc.
The term is obviously highly partisan but is in quite widespread use by many blogs. However it is not a term used exclusively by the neo-conservative 'right wing' and many well left of centre or libertarian blogs have used it describe the more surrealist wings of their particular branch of political thought.
The answer was interesting; it was to help Dr. Sean Gabb as much as possible and his work with the (larger) Libertarian Alliance. Being a constellational member of the (smaller) Libertarian Alliance, I found this a little difficult to accept at first, but he talked me round.
(If this seems a little strange, then you need simply imagine that you're in the Monty Python film, 'Life of Brian', and that I am a member of the Popular Front of Judea, and that Sean Gabb is the leader of the People's Front of Judea - Who obviously are the real splitters.)
Incidentally, not only was Sean Gabb himself present at the conference, he shared the final speaking platform with the Professor, as a pair, even making the keynote address on the nature of the enemy ruling class. So if Professor Hoppe has this much confidence in the leader of the People's Front of Judea, then the only thing this member of the Popular Front of Judea can do, is to take his marching orders and simply to accept them.
So hopefully, in the next few months or so, you may see me popping up in various places in London, under various assumed names, helping Sean Gabb in his various endeavours, should he so wish me to do so.
Time, obviously, will tell.
What to wear - The Property and Freedom Society
After an absolutely splendid week at the Hotel Karia Princess, where I have put on about a hundred pounds in weight due to being forced, forced I tell you, to live in total luxury, it's all austerity back here at Maturin Towers. The treadmills of my local gym will shortly be taking a ferocious pounding as your rather heftier correspondent knuckles back down to a decent fitness regime, to get his three-mile run time back under the British Army's regulation target of 27 minutes.
That's going to be tough, as I'm starting out from 40 minutes, but I now have an added incentive.
On the final evening of the conference, I thanked Professor Hoppe for his hospitality and for the invitation to this incredible conference, where swapping anecdotes with Professor Robert Higgs or handing a beer to Professor Guido Hülsmann were just par for the course.
Anyhow, back to that incentive. After thanking Professor Hoppe, he appraised me with those steel-rimmed penetrating eyes and said:
"If you come again, perhaps next time you will dress a little better."There was a heavy stress on the word "If", and although the comment was perhaps partially in jest, there was a definite stiletto feel to the words.
I had actually worried about this on the first evening where I turned up at the reception in full casual Englishman mode, to find a room of men and women dressed in summer suits and cocktail dresses, all looking as though they had just stepped off some rather expensive yachts. However, short of nipping out and rustling up an entire wardrobe of clothes in an Aegean holiday town, I was pretty much stuck with what I had in my suitcase.
In my day-job I usually wear the compulsory City garb of a tailored grey or blue suit, Jermyn Street shirts, and ties in various hues of cream, navy blue, and burgundy if visiting a client, plus black leather shoes and black cotton socks - It's generally a relief to cast this armour off, once outside the Metropolis.
However, after having attended my first Austrian-based conference, I will be fore-armed next time with the knowledge of what the civilised Austrian man is supposed to be wearing when he attends such a thing. And if you are going to wear some decent summer suits, you really ought to get your physique in the necessary trim to carry it off properly.
If of course, I ever get invited to another one! :-)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Property and Freedom Society
And so the journey will shortly begin to the Hotel Karia Princess, to attend the annual conference of the Property and Freedom Society.This leaves me with a seventh pilgrimage to Auburn to get the full set of:
=> Ayn Rand's apartment where she wrote Atlas Shrugged
=> Murray Rothbard's New York apartment
=> The site of Ludwig von Mises' Vienna home
=> The quadrangle at Vienna University
=> Ludwig von Mises' New York apartment
=> The annual Property and Freedom Society conference
And don't give me that 'You're simply using Austrianism to fulfil an otherwise empty quasi-religious void in your futile and meaningless life' stuff. I am well aware of the possibility. But still, there are worse hobbies to have.
Wish me luck.
The silver lining...
C'mon you Austro doom and gloom merchants, it ain't all bad.Take the Bank of England, for instance. Their profits have quintupled in the last year, and almost reached the £1 billion pound mark.
This is a splendid achievement, don't you think?
To control and regulate an economy and make money. What fun!
And check this. For presiding over the worst banking crisis in 70 years, Mervyn King is going to get even more money, personally, than he planned for:
Mr King’s pension pot is now worth £5.4m. Both his deputy governors, Paul Tucker and Charlie Bean, have elected to receive smaller salaries and bigger pensions, following an external review of Threadneedle Street’s remuneration policies.It just keeps getting better.
Green shoots? Ha! Says the Sage of Singapore
The Jimster, the Sage of Singapore, the Duke of Alabama, speaks on the Lew Rockwell show about Obama's 'green shoots' economy.
Unmissable.
Unmissable.
Rotten to the core
It is not often that I think kind thoughts about Oliver Cromwell, the murderer of the Irish, the military dictator of the English, and the nepotistic destroyer of religious freedom that served as a spur to create America, but today I think is one of those days. Almost 360 years after this speech was delivered in the House of Commons, with Cromwell dissolving the Rump Parliament, it is amazing to think how little has changed:
“...It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God's help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.
“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”
Oliver Cromwell, Dismissing Parliament, 20th April, 1653
UPDATE: Speaker to go. Announcement at 2:30pm today. It is still unclear whether he is going to go immediately or try to hang on until the next election.
Asia will author its own destruction if it triggers a crisis over US bonds
Imagine, if you will, a thousand peasants sweating in a corn field as they scythe up this year's harvest for their Lord, the Red Baron Obama.In a fit of madness, the Red Baron rides down from his castle and informs his serfs that he is going to withdraw into his castle, lift up his drawbridge, and never open it again.
The Red Baron then disappears within his walls, to a call of triumphant trumpets.
What is to happen to the peasants? Well, if we are to believe Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, of the Daily Labourgraph, they are going to starve to death.
Because they need the Baron to consume the vast bulk of the corn in the field. Without him to do this consuming, they will find no outlet for their production, and therefore they will enter a fatal liquidity trap.
But then, one mad peasant, called Petrus Shipmeister, steps forward from the huddling mass and asks the following daring question in his rough Austrian accent:
"Hey guys, vy don't vee just let that idiot rot? Vy don't vee just eat zis corn ourselves and become the main consumers for our own productive effort?"
"No," cry out two English peasants, Conway and Bootle, who have been receiving a secret stipend from the Baron for years, to preach obedience to the peasants. "Can you not see that without the needs of the Baron's table, the import and export flows will be impaired and the corn multiplier will be destroyed? We must keep working and then throw the corn in sacks over the wall, to keep the Baron going until his madness leaves him."
"No," say the rest of the peasants. So they threw Conway and Bootle over the wall instead and continue to become the wealthiest and happiest peasants for miles around, selling off excess corn to surrounding markets and using the subsequent capital injection of gold to improve their corn output, until within a few years they are the richest, healthiest, and best fed men in the kingdom.
After a few years, one of these new merchant-peasants is standing beside his newly invented mechanical thresher, innovated out of the saved corn capital. He looks up at the forbidding walls and dares to ask the question, "I wonder what happened to the Baron?"
All of the peasants look up at the high walls of the castle. For a few years they had been afraid of the Baron sending out his twelve heavily-armed knights and stealing their corn again, thus sending them back into subsistence. But now they are quite heavily armed themselves, after diverting some of their corn profits into defensive pikes and crossbows.
"Screw him! Der Baron ist ein Loser" says Shipmeister, who is now hailed as a patriot and a hero, despite his rough Austrian accent.
And so they all lived happily ever after.
Except the Baron. Who had long been dead, due to his stupidity and self-imposed isolation.
Hat tip to Matt.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Papieren, bitte! Schnell!
For the first time in my life a government official recently stopped me at a passport checking booth and made me stand aside.
My state passport was then taken away to an office to be examined within.
Ten minutes later, my state passport was then returned, after about another twenty people had been 'processed' past me, all of them looking at me with a mixture of empathy mixed with a feeling of wondering whether I was a terrorist, an illegal immigrant, or a criminal.
No explanation. No apology. No, "I hope we haven't caused you any inconvenience, sir". Nothing. Just a, "you can go through now" dismissal and a call of "next!".
Despite knowing that I had done absolutely nothing wrong and that I was carrying nothing that could in any way be questioned, I was surprised by the amount of adrenaline that was pumping through my veins before I was finally allowed through the passport barrier.
With the amazingly draconian 'terrorist' laws that are now routinely used on people who fail to fill their garbage bins 'correctly', the stupidly imaginative things that can run around your mind in an international airport, surrounded by armed police and mirrored windows, is quite amazing, if you are left to stew long enough.
It is at this kind of point that you realise just how small you are compared to a state, which is supposed to be there to be your servant and which you are forced to pay for, for your own good, and just how fragile your grip on your own life could become if some petty official decided to enjoy themselves by making life unpleasant for you, for "looking at them in a funny way".
Even if, in their own terms, you have done nothing wrong.
I got just a tiny taste of what it must be like in a full-on police state, when the door gets knocked at 3am in the morning.
I also wondered whether the authorities in question are deliberately holding up passport queues in order to smooth the introduction of biometric passports. But that would be a foul and reprehensible thing, wouldn't it, for a government to deliberately cause inconvenience to its citizens to get them to go along with a government policy few of them want?
Oh what a joy it must have been, pre-1914, for an Englishman to have sailed around the world without a passport, an invention which was necessitated by the creation of the modern welfare-warfare state.
We should get back to those times as quickly as possible. That is why I particularly like Michael S. Rozeff's 'Airport Freedom Day', in his brilliant new article.
My state passport was then taken away to an office to be examined within.
Ten minutes later, my state passport was then returned, after about another twenty people had been 'processed' past me, all of them looking at me with a mixture of empathy mixed with a feeling of wondering whether I was a terrorist, an illegal immigrant, or a criminal.
No explanation. No apology. No, "I hope we haven't caused you any inconvenience, sir". Nothing. Just a, "you can go through now" dismissal and a call of "next!".
Despite knowing that I had done absolutely nothing wrong and that I was carrying nothing that could in any way be questioned, I was surprised by the amount of adrenaline that was pumping through my veins before I was finally allowed through the passport barrier.
With the amazingly draconian 'terrorist' laws that are now routinely used on people who fail to fill their garbage bins 'correctly', the stupidly imaginative things that can run around your mind in an international airport, surrounded by armed police and mirrored windows, is quite amazing, if you are left to stew long enough.
It is at this kind of point that you realise just how small you are compared to a state, which is supposed to be there to be your servant and which you are forced to pay for, for your own good, and just how fragile your grip on your own life could become if some petty official decided to enjoy themselves by making life unpleasant for you, for "looking at them in a funny way".
Even if, in their own terms, you have done nothing wrong.
I got just a tiny taste of what it must be like in a full-on police state, when the door gets knocked at 3am in the morning.
I also wondered whether the authorities in question are deliberately holding up passport queues in order to smooth the introduction of biometric passports. But that would be a foul and reprehensible thing, wouldn't it, for a government to deliberately cause inconvenience to its citizens to get them to go along with a government policy few of them want?
Oh what a joy it must have been, pre-1914, for an Englishman to have sailed around the world without a passport, an invention which was necessitated by the creation of the modern welfare-warfare state.
We should get back to those times as quickly as possible. That is why I particularly like Michael S. Rozeff's 'Airport Freedom Day', in his brilliant new article.
Untax Day
The brilliant Michael S. Rozeff stuns Maturin Towers with his amazing ideas for holidays in the free future of humanity, circa 2100.Superb.
The article above is almost, but not quite, as good as one he wrote a while ago on the nature of the state as an organized contractual agency, parts I and II.
In fact, if you ever get any spare time on your hands, you can do a lot worse than to read through the entire Rozeff archive.
Outstanding.
So whatever happened to the deflation bogeyman?
Mr Liam Halligan wonders what happened to the terrors of prices falling, like they did throughout the nineteenth century.
Jeremy Clarkson and smug people
Good old Jezzer. Always there when you need to attack the smug beardies who want to tell all the rest of us how to live our lives.
If you read his latest piece on Honda's latest 'Hybrid' car, you will see that he doesn't like it. A lot.
Of course, he is also right to say that hybrids will go the way of airships, i.e. into the recycle bins of history.
The future of transport is hydrogen, not as they used it in the Hindenburg, but how they use it in liquid form in Honda's very own Clarity.
What I'm wondering though is what excuse governments will use to massively tax liquid hydrogen, when we've all switched across from gasoline (mostly because of the heavy tax)? I suppose they'll worry about that later, as most governments have absolutely no idea how to cope with their burgeoning welfare and pensions super black holes, never mind how to scrape revenue out of future transport solutions.
But it will be amusing to see how once they have forced us all into liquid hydrogen cars, to escape their theft on gasoline duties, they manage to persuade us to also shell out for that, too, without a major war to introduce the initial high taxes, which then never come down afterwards.
Wars are great for taxes and for bossing people about. Which is why as long as we have government, we will continue to have them.
(BTW, check out the comments on Jezzer's piece. It would appear he hit his target when he was talking about smug conceited beardies.)
If you read his latest piece on Honda's latest 'Hybrid' car, you will see that he doesn't like it. A lot.
Of course, he is also right to say that hybrids will go the way of airships, i.e. into the recycle bins of history.
The future of transport is hydrogen, not as they used it in the Hindenburg, but how they use it in liquid form in Honda's very own Clarity.
What I'm wondering though is what excuse governments will use to massively tax liquid hydrogen, when we've all switched across from gasoline (mostly because of the heavy tax)? I suppose they'll worry about that later, as most governments have absolutely no idea how to cope with their burgeoning welfare and pensions super black holes, never mind how to scrape revenue out of future transport solutions.
But it will be amusing to see how once they have forced us all into liquid hydrogen cars, to escape their theft on gasoline duties, they manage to persuade us to also shell out for that, too, without a major war to introduce the initial high taxes, which then never come down afterwards.
Wars are great for taxes and for bossing people about. Which is why as long as we have government, we will continue to have them.
(BTW, check out the comments on Jezzer's piece. It would appear he hit his target when he was talking about smug conceited beardies.)
The Hotel Karia Princess
For some strange reason, which I haven't worked out yet, Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe has invited your humble correspondent to the annual conference of the Property and Freedom Society, held on the Aegean, in Turkey, starting this week, at the Hotel Karia Princess.
The plane flies out on Wednesday, and we'll be out there for seven days.
I have absolutely no idea what to expect, except what I have gathered from Sean Gabb's posts about the experience.
As far as I am aware, Dr Gabb is not a full-time Austrian, yet he treats these annual events as something akin to visiting heaven.
So Lord alone knows what I'll make of it.
I only hope I have at least one thing worth saying, if anyone speaks to me, and that if I do dare to open my mouth in a public debate, that I can ask a question worth asking, I don't embarrass myself, and generally that I don't let the English side down. I am also hoping to meet any other English Austrians there, to see if there's more of us than just me and Anonymous.
Yes, two is better than one, but more would be better!
So, in the meantime, will I get a second invitation next year? Well, who knows. I think the best policy will merely be to enjoy this experience first and foremost, and then to let the Gods (i.e. Professor Hoppe) work that one out later.
Just visiting heaven once in a lifetime ought to be enough for most people.
BTW, if you're going, I'll be travelling under a false name to protect the innocent. However, I will be the one in Istanbul airport wearing the Murray Rothbard T-shirt.
(Although this may be one of those rare occasions outside North America, when more than one person is wearing a Murray Rothbard T-shirt within a 500-mile radius, so if you get confused, I'm the one who also looks just like Tom Cruise.)
The plane flies out on Wednesday, and we'll be out there for seven days.
I have absolutely no idea what to expect, except what I have gathered from Sean Gabb's posts about the experience.
As far as I am aware, Dr Gabb is not a full-time Austrian, yet he treats these annual events as something akin to visiting heaven.
So Lord alone knows what I'll make of it.
I only hope I have at least one thing worth saying, if anyone speaks to me, and that if I do dare to open my mouth in a public debate, that I can ask a question worth asking, I don't embarrass myself, and generally that I don't let the English side down. I am also hoping to meet any other English Austrians there, to see if there's more of us than just me and Anonymous.
Yes, two is better than one, but more would be better!
So, in the meantime, will I get a second invitation next year? Well, who knows. I think the best policy will merely be to enjoy this experience first and foremost, and then to let the Gods (i.e. Professor Hoppe) work that one out later.
Just visiting heaven once in a lifetime ought to be enough for most people.
BTW, if you're going, I'll be travelling under a false name to protect the innocent. However, I will be the one in Istanbul airport wearing the Murray Rothbard T-shirt.
(Although this may be one of those rare occasions outside North America, when more than one person is wearing a Murray Rothbard T-shirt within a 500-mile radius, so if you get confused, I'm the one who also looks just like Tom Cruise.)
Those three suicide MPs - Where are they now?
I was rather hoping that the Torygraph would expose the three Labour MPs said to be on suicide watch, due to their nefarious double-bagging of hotel room expenses so they could, ahem, discuss the Ugandan political situation with each other.
The Torygraph stories appear to be petering out now, with no real knock-out blows delivered to Ed Balls, the Speaker, or anyone else who really deserves to be kicked up Constitution Hill with their pants on fire.
Yes, we've had lots of tittle tattle and the whole lot of them have been generally shamed, and a few minor troughers have been kicked into touch, but we still need a few more 'spectaculars' to really finish these Gravy-Gaters off (at least for another ten years, before they really get at it again).
So what happened to these three Labour MPs? I think we should be told.
I have written to Mr Fawkes to see if he knows.
I thought it was the only decent thing to do.
The Torygraph stories appear to be petering out now, with no real knock-out blows delivered to Ed Balls, the Speaker, or anyone else who really deserves to be kicked up Constitution Hill with their pants on fire.
Yes, we've had lots of tittle tattle and the whole lot of them have been generally shamed, and a few minor troughers have been kicked into touch, but we still need a few more 'spectaculars' to really finish these Gravy-Gaters off (at least for another ten years, before they really get at it again).
So what happened to these three Labour MPs? I think we should be told.
I have written to Mr Fawkes to see if he knows.
I thought it was the only decent thing to do.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
The Curious Case of Mr Edmund Button
Mr Edmund Conway of the Torygraph is spiralling into mystery again, with his hot and cold interpretations of what the Bank of England is up to. With his hot and heavy 10 reasons to be cheerful article, last week, he once again returns to a cold demeanour with the following article, which sails along an almost AngloAustrian line of calling a spade a spade:
=> Mervyn's strangely serene despite our worrying similarities to Zimbabwe
But then, just before I am about to write a comment praising Mr Conway to the skies, he puffs some more Keynesianism smoke telling us the recession is almost over, in the hot article below:
=> Interest rate slides on flood of cash
Just what is Mr Conway up to? He wouldn't be having his cake and eating it now, would he? Just in case either the Austrian or the Keynesian case comes true?
Well let me nail the AngloAustrian colours to the mast. The first story is accurate. We are heading towards Zimbabwe. The second story is make-believe from the land of Dorothy.
As Mr Conway himself reported a few weeks ago, the 1930s depression itself took many strange turns along its path, with several points looking like 'green shoots recoveries', which in fact marked further terrible falls in prosperity.
We are in the same boat. Quantitative easing has 'appeared' to make us feel 'better off' temporarily, because more money is turning up in people's wallets making them feel wealthier. But this does not represent real scarce resources which they can then command, consume, or direct. It merely represents MORE PAPER.
I suppose if we were termites, we could eat this extra paper, but quantitative easing is only going to lead to one of three destinations:
1. Hyperinflation, causing societal destruction, and possibly even war and revolution
2. Huge interest rate hikes (circa 20%), causing total business and housing collapse, and possibly even war and revolution
3. If we are EXTREMELY lucky, a 10-year Japanese-style stagflation
The supposed 'magical middle ground' that Keynesians such as Roger Bootle are predicting, that the Bank of England will somehow manage to fill the nation's pockets with cash without increasing price inflation or without having to put up interest rates to crushing government-destroying street-filling levels, is pure smoke and mirrors. It ain't going to happen.
The longer we keep going with quantitative easing, the worse both of the first two options will become. (The third option is HIGHLY unlikely because Japan may have stupid political leaders but at least its population knows how to save, unlike the profligate credit card consumers in the UK.)
We should therefore stop quantitative easing right now and then allow the free market to set proper interest rates. AngloAustria estimate these would be around the 10% mark, though this figure increases with every week we continue with the current madness.
This level of interest will then kill off the 'green shoots' we are currently seeing and lead to a terrible (but thoroughly cleansing) recession, which would wipe out all of the malinvestments of the previous decade.
But if left alone, this recession would be over in less than 18 months, as we re-position what capital we have left to begin the recovery, rather than mis-directing yet more capital under the heroin blanket of negative interest rates.
As it is, we are looking, at best, at a decade or more of Japanese style stagflation.
To endure this is bad enough. To endure it having seen that the Japanese tried all of the current Keynesian solutions and failed, is unbearable.
What will it take to persuade the Keynesians that they are wrong? Does it really have to be the economic collapse of the entire western world? Or will just the collapse of the US and the UK do it?
I fear not. Even if the entire world economy did utterly collapse, they would still only say the 'stimulus' policy wasn't tried hard or soon enough.
We are being led into the abyss by fools who have not the first clue about what they are doing. But what do we do about it?
=> Mervyn's strangely serene despite our worrying similarities to Zimbabwe
But then, just before I am about to write a comment praising Mr Conway to the skies, he puffs some more Keynesianism smoke telling us the recession is almost over, in the hot article below:
=> Interest rate slides on flood of cash
Just what is Mr Conway up to? He wouldn't be having his cake and eating it now, would he? Just in case either the Austrian or the Keynesian case comes true?
Well let me nail the AngloAustrian colours to the mast. The first story is accurate. We are heading towards Zimbabwe. The second story is make-believe from the land of Dorothy.
As Mr Conway himself reported a few weeks ago, the 1930s depression itself took many strange turns along its path, with several points looking like 'green shoots recoveries', which in fact marked further terrible falls in prosperity.
We are in the same boat. Quantitative easing has 'appeared' to make us feel 'better off' temporarily, because more money is turning up in people's wallets making them feel wealthier. But this does not represent real scarce resources which they can then command, consume, or direct. It merely represents MORE PAPER.
I suppose if we were termites, we could eat this extra paper, but quantitative easing is only going to lead to one of three destinations:
1. Hyperinflation, causing societal destruction, and possibly even war and revolution
2. Huge interest rate hikes (circa 20%), causing total business and housing collapse, and possibly even war and revolution
3. If we are EXTREMELY lucky, a 10-year Japanese-style stagflation
The supposed 'magical middle ground' that Keynesians such as Roger Bootle are predicting, that the Bank of England will somehow manage to fill the nation's pockets with cash without increasing price inflation or without having to put up interest rates to crushing government-destroying street-filling levels, is pure smoke and mirrors. It ain't going to happen.
The longer we keep going with quantitative easing, the worse both of the first two options will become. (The third option is HIGHLY unlikely because Japan may have stupid political leaders but at least its population knows how to save, unlike the profligate credit card consumers in the UK.)
We should therefore stop quantitative easing right now and then allow the free market to set proper interest rates. AngloAustria estimate these would be around the 10% mark, though this figure increases with every week we continue with the current madness.
This level of interest will then kill off the 'green shoots' we are currently seeing and lead to a terrible (but thoroughly cleansing) recession, which would wipe out all of the malinvestments of the previous decade.
But if left alone, this recession would be over in less than 18 months, as we re-position what capital we have left to begin the recovery, rather than mis-directing yet more capital under the heroin blanket of negative interest rates.
As it is, we are looking, at best, at a decade or more of Japanese style stagflation.
To endure this is bad enough. To endure it having seen that the Japanese tried all of the current Keynesian solutions and failed, is unbearable.
What will it take to persuade the Keynesians that they are wrong? Does it really have to be the economic collapse of the entire western world? Or will just the collapse of the US and the UK do it?
I fear not. Even if the entire world economy did utterly collapse, they would still only say the 'stimulus' policy wasn't tried hard or soon enough.
We are being led into the abyss by fools who have not the first clue about what they are doing. But what do we do about it?
Punish Mainstream Politicians, Don’t Vote for Mainstream Parties
Mr Fawkes believes that we should punish UK politicians by not voting for mainstream parties.
The AngloAustrian message is far simpler:
If these parties (such as the Greens and the UK Independence Party) get any more power in the next few years, we will inevitably see them become more corrupt.
This is the nature of politics. All politicians are to some extent corrupt. The more power they hold, the more corrupt they become.
I could be persuaded to believe that very rare exceptions, such as Ron Paul and Daniel Hannan, are not inherently evil, but I also believe that both of these fine men will hardly argue with the statement that "Politics is the business of evil".
Here's my comment, on Guido's thread:
The AngloAustrian message is far simpler:
We should punish UK politicians by not voting for any parties, whatsoever.The only reason 'fringe' parties are not totally corrupt yet, as with their larger brethren, is because they don't hold very great levers of power. Yet.
If these parties (such as the Greens and the UK Independence Party) get any more power in the next few years, we will inevitably see them become more corrupt.
This is the nature of politics. All politicians are to some extent corrupt. The more power they hold, the more corrupt they become.
I could be persuaded to believe that very rare exceptions, such as Ron Paul and Daniel Hannan, are not inherently evil, but I also believe that both of these fine men will hardly argue with the statement that "Politics is the business of evil".
Here's my comment, on Guido's thread:
751 Jack Maturin says: May 17, 2009 at 5:14 pm
> Punish Mainstream Politicians, Don’t Vote for Mainstream Parties
No, Guido.
Punish Mainstream Politicians, Don’t Vote for Any of Them. Period.
Voting for these lizards, any of them, is just a way of legitimizing them.
Imagine if nobody voted in any election. What legitimacy would any of these mafiosoid creeps then have for taxing and regulating the rest of us into propping up the lifestyles of themselves and their friends?
Absolutely none. They would wither and die. And good riddance.
The civil service bureaucracy uses political parties and democratic voting as a fig-leaf for making its tax serfs (i.e. the rest of us) feel like we have some kind of control over our masters.
We must be fools for believing this. There is just one political party. Sometimes its leaders wear red jumpers, sometimes its leaders wear blue jumpers, and conceivably in the future they might wear a mixture of gold or green jumpers. But it makes no real difference which member of the Mafia family we elect. As long as we participate in these Mafia elections, it’s always someone from the Mafia who gets in, and by voting for them, we agree to their rapine and pillage. Why do you think the Soviets and people like Saddam Hussein were so keen to get voters to turn out for them in their sham elections?
And what makes you think that our elections are any less sham?
All politicians are thieves. They are also all immoral, believing that other people can be robbed to the benefit of other people, with the politicians taking a healthy cut of the action. And none of these rats deserve our support. We would all be better off without any of these parasites feeding upon our lives, even the Prince of Light, Daniel Hannan.
Democracy is a God that has failed. The sooner we are rid of it, the better.
But then, as an anarchist, you would expect me to say that! :-)
Monday, May 11, 2009
Money printing starting to work, says Bank of England
I don't even know to begin with this article, conflating lies and falsehoods into rationality. I certainly don't know where they get these M4 figures of less than 4% from. Perhaps they are talking about HPRs (Holding Period Returns) over 3 months, rather than 12 months, but the BoE's own released figures, if we can believe them, are currently showing M4 at approximately 18% per annum.
I suppose they are letting everyone assume they are talking about annual rates, when really they mean three monthly rates without clarifying the difference, but if they are, then this just underlines their crookedness.
As to the comments about the government being unable to sell their bonds unless the BoE buys them, I will speak no more, except to recommend that you read the thoughts of Chairman Robert Mugabe, of Zimbabwe, for further reflection.
I suppose they are letting everyone assume they are talking about annual rates, when really they mean three monthly rates without clarifying the difference, but if they are, then this just underlines their crookedness.
As to the comments about the government being unable to sell their bonds unless the BoE buys them, I will speak no more, except to recommend that you read the thoughts of Chairman Robert Mugabe, of Zimbabwe, for further reflection.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
10 reasons to be cheerful about the economy
It's very strange.
In one recent article, Edmund Conway, the chief economics nabob on the Torygraph, quite rightly described 'quantitative easing' as being like a nuclear weapon.
Which means that he must be able to see clearly enough to know the destructive power of the state's counterfeiting of the money supply.
He must know that if they printed a million pounds tomorrow, for every man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom, and then stuffed it into everyone's letter boxes, then it would be true that we would all become millionaires overnight, but it would also be true that a box of matches would cost somewhere approaching a hundred thousand pounds.
In other words, printing money is an illusory solution to the economic problem of there being a scarcity of real resources, due to the mis-management of these resources, and their less than optimal use, due to the wrecking of the monetary pricing system caused by constant production of fiat currency from out of thin air.
He is bright enough to know this.
However, in another recent article, the cheerful Mr Conway seems to have been mentally transfigured by a Damascene conversion, and to have been completely taken in by the magical effects 'quantitative easing' has brought about in the last few months, along with its evil twin brother, the zero percent interest rate - which together combine to create an effective negative cash interest rate - which is why everyone is now trying to get out of cash.
But Mr Conway does not recognise this as possibly the dangerous beginnings of Ludwig von Mises' Die Flucht in die Sachwerte, or The Flight into Real Values.
Instead, everything is now 'green shoots' and Conway appears to believe the buffoonery of Bernanke in claiming that this recession will be over in time for 'Ice Creams in Berlin' by Christmas.
Now, I could have 'Fisked' this article, and written a dreary blow-by-blow account of how Mr Conway is wrong in virtually every way that you could possibly imagine, except perhaps on his thoughts about China, where as a good Jim Rogers man, I follow his optimism. However, that piece would have been incredibly tedious for you to read, and even more incredibly tedious for me to write, so let's come up with a solution a hundred times better than that. Let's just watch a related Peter Schiff video, instead, on the same kind of economic idiocy plaguing the United States.
Just imagine that Edmund Conway is the lady in the dress, and we'll be right on the money:
If that's a little frisky for you, and you prefer things a little more staid, I heartily recommend a more sober description of the flight into real values by the man himself, Ludwig von Mises, as written about in 1946, in his essay, 'The Trade Cycle and Credit Expansion: The Economic Consequences of Cheap Money'.
Just check out the following ScribD book. Go to page 221 and read the essay there (in fact read all five essays in this book). The description of how the flight into real values comes about, due to the inflation of the money and credit supply, could almost be a perfect description of the current phase we are going through in this recession.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. The Great 21st Century Depression hasn't even really begun yet, certainly in the United States and its Anglo-Saxon mini-me clone in the United Kingdom.
On the Manipulation of Money and Credit (1978) - Ludwig Von Mises
In one recent article, Edmund Conway, the chief economics nabob on the Torygraph, quite rightly described 'quantitative easing' as being like a nuclear weapon.
Which means that he must be able to see clearly enough to know the destructive power of the state's counterfeiting of the money supply.
He must know that if they printed a million pounds tomorrow, for every man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom, and then stuffed it into everyone's letter boxes, then it would be true that we would all become millionaires overnight, but it would also be true that a box of matches would cost somewhere approaching a hundred thousand pounds.
In other words, printing money is an illusory solution to the economic problem of there being a scarcity of real resources, due to the mis-management of these resources, and their less than optimal use, due to the wrecking of the monetary pricing system caused by constant production of fiat currency from out of thin air.
He is bright enough to know this.
However, in another recent article, the cheerful Mr Conway seems to have been mentally transfigured by a Damascene conversion, and to have been completely taken in by the magical effects 'quantitative easing' has brought about in the last few months, along with its evil twin brother, the zero percent interest rate - which together combine to create an effective negative cash interest rate - which is why everyone is now trying to get out of cash.
But Mr Conway does not recognise this as possibly the dangerous beginnings of Ludwig von Mises' Die Flucht in die Sachwerte, or The Flight into Real Values.
Instead, everything is now 'green shoots' and Conway appears to believe the buffoonery of Bernanke in claiming that this recession will be over in time for 'Ice Creams in Berlin' by Christmas.
Now, I could have 'Fisked' this article, and written a dreary blow-by-blow account of how Mr Conway is wrong in virtually every way that you could possibly imagine, except perhaps on his thoughts about China, where as a good Jim Rogers man, I follow his optimism. However, that piece would have been incredibly tedious for you to read, and even more incredibly tedious for me to write, so let's come up with a solution a hundred times better than that. Let's just watch a related Peter Schiff video, instead, on the same kind of economic idiocy plaguing the United States.
Just imagine that Edmund Conway is the lady in the dress, and we'll be right on the money:
If that's a little frisky for you, and you prefer things a little more staid, I heartily recommend a more sober description of the flight into real values by the man himself, Ludwig von Mises, as written about in 1946, in his essay, 'The Trade Cycle and Credit Expansion: The Economic Consequences of Cheap Money'.
Just check out the following ScribD book. Go to page 221 and read the essay there (in fact read all five essays in this book). The description of how the flight into real values comes about, due to the inflation of the money and credit supply, could almost be a perfect description of the current phase we are going through in this recession.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. The Great 21st Century Depression hasn't even really begun yet, certainly in the United States and its Anglo-Saxon mini-me clone in the United Kingdom.
On the Manipulation of Money and Credit (1978) - Ludwig Von Mises
Peter Schiff: In top form on Wall St Unplugged
Another excellent 'Wall St Unplugged', from Mr Schiff (April 29th), with the highlights being his condemnation of the US government 'stress tests' and how he thinks America is going to be despised globally, in a few years, for imposing massive worldwide inflation simply to prop up the fantasy lifestyles of 300 million Americans for a few more years of bubble economics.
He sees 'quantitative easing' (a.k.a. counterfeiting), which most of the world's central banks are now engaged in, as a deliberate poisoning and destruction of the monetary system which the world's economic well-being is based upon. The ramifications of this could (will) be calamitous.
It's powerful stuff.
Der SchiffMeister speaks, almost without pause and where the callers play only a peripheral part, for a full hour, though it only seems like about five minutes.
Which is great, if it takes you 40 minutes to 'run' three miles. (And I use the word 'run' there, in the very loosest of senses.)
So for sharpening up both your body and your mind - and all gratis - there really can be no finer radio show than 'Wall St Unplugged'.
Podcast it onto iTunes immediately:
=> http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=292655537
PS> There is a later show, on May 6th, but as I'm living a rather complicated life in various hotel rooms at the moment, I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. Will catch up soon.
PPS> Crowne Plaza hotels. Cheap. Nasty. Always avoid wherever possible. Especially the horrible one in Abu Dhabi. Pay for Internet access? Are you kidding me? I thought quality hotels stopped doing that about five years ago? 15 phone calls to get online? Oh yes. If you're lucky. Crowne Plaza. Rubbish. No non-smoking rooms available, sir. Unless you jump up and down for five minutes, and then we'll give you one of the five non-smoking rooms we are holding for people who have to jump up and down for five minutes to get one. What a load of utter rubbish. Not that I've had a long day with delayed flights, messed up limos, and closed business centres. So check-in receptionists trying to turn me over on complicated packages where my client gets stuffed so long as I sign, is all I need. Did I mention Crowne Plaza? Did I mention how rubbish they are? I would never use my own money to book a Crowne Plaza hotel. Of all the 'main chain' hotels in the world, and I've stayed in all of them, they are quite clearly the worst. By a long margin. Horrible. Nasty. Cheap. Rubbish. I think that about sums it up.
He sees 'quantitative easing' (a.k.a. counterfeiting), which most of the world's central banks are now engaged in, as a deliberate poisoning and destruction of the monetary system which the world's economic well-being is based upon. The ramifications of this could (will) be calamitous.
It's powerful stuff.
Der SchiffMeister speaks, almost without pause and where the callers play only a peripheral part, for a full hour, though it only seems like about five minutes.
Which is great, if it takes you 40 minutes to 'run' three miles. (And I use the word 'run' there, in the very loosest of senses.)
So for sharpening up both your body and your mind - and all gratis - there really can be no finer radio show than 'Wall St Unplugged'.
Podcast it onto iTunes immediately:
=> http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=292655537
PS> There is a later show, on May 6th, but as I'm living a rather complicated life in various hotel rooms at the moment, I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. Will catch up soon.
PPS> Crowne Plaza hotels. Cheap. Nasty. Always avoid wherever possible. Especially the horrible one in Abu Dhabi. Pay for Internet access? Are you kidding me? I thought quality hotels stopped doing that about five years ago? 15 phone calls to get online? Oh yes. If you're lucky. Crowne Plaza. Rubbish. No non-smoking rooms available, sir. Unless you jump up and down for five minutes, and then we'll give you one of the five non-smoking rooms we are holding for people who have to jump up and down for five minutes to get one. What a load of utter rubbish. Not that I've had a long day with delayed flights, messed up limos, and closed business centres. So check-in receptionists trying to turn me over on complicated packages where my client gets stuffed so long as I sign, is all I need. Did I mention Crowne Plaza? Did I mention how rubbish they are? I would never use my own money to book a Crowne Plaza hotel. Of all the 'main chain' hotels in the world, and I've stayed in all of them, they are quite clearly the worst. By a long margin. Horrible. Nasty. Cheap. Rubbish. I think that about sums it up.
Gordon Brown - Benefit Thief
Guido Fawkes claims a cameo role in the excellent video below, which stars the Expense-Claimer-In-Chief herself, the Queen of Downing Street, as the unwitting target of a government investigation:
We've paid for Labour's morality for too long
I've never really been a huge fan of Charles Moore, at the Torygraph, but today he has written a concise and devastating piece on the outrage of British MPs milking the Parliamentay expenses system, at massive cost to the taxpayer.
He gets in all of the key wounding points (e.g. a Chancellor imposing stamp duty on everyone's housing transactions but avoiding it himself by changing his "second home" designation four times in as many years) but does it in a calm rational way that Maturin Towers often struggles to emulate, due to its being flooded by too much raw emotion.
It is an excellent article.
Bravo, sir!
He gets in all of the key wounding points (e.g. a Chancellor imposing stamp duty on everyone's housing transactions but avoiding it himself by changing his "second home" designation four times in as many years) but does it in a calm rational way that Maturin Towers often struggles to emulate, due to its being flooded by too much raw emotion.
It is an excellent article.
Bravo, sir!
Friday, May 08, 2009
Bonson Jorris waxed
Dear Lord, Lew Rockwell reader Bonson Jorris has been waxed at Madame Tussauds. Crumbs.But this surely isn't as funny as the 'Boris Dancers' we had at Henley on the May Fair Bank Holiday.
An Introduction to Revisionism: The Politics of the American Revisionists
Jeff Riggenbach has been narrating too many Murray Rothbard, because not only has he become the modern 'voice' of Uncle Murray, he has imbibed his writing style, too.
In a brilliant essay, Mr Riggenbach analyses the history of the Left and the Right, in European and North American history, and comes to some amazing conclusions about who the modern Left are and who the modern Right are, and where they both came from.
Apparently, I'm still a leftist. A true leftist. Socialists are confused leftists, who have unfortunately succumbed to the methods of the violent collectivist statist right to achieve their original peaceful individualist anarchistic aims of leftism. Which is why they they consider themselves the 'good' guys, but always end up supporting evil (and crooked expense-stealing politicians).
It also explains why former socialists (e.g. Hayek, Block, Hoppe, etc.) become such prominent Austrians, without ever going anywhere near 'nationalism' or 'conservatism'. Austrianism isn't so much moving you in position, but simply clearing your outlook and removing the deadly prism of collectivism from your eyes.
It's certainly an interesting idea.
Superb.
In a brilliant essay, Mr Riggenbach analyses the history of the Left and the Right, in European and North American history, and comes to some amazing conclusions about who the modern Left are and who the modern Right are, and where they both came from.
Apparently, I'm still a leftist. A true leftist. Socialists are confused leftists, who have unfortunately succumbed to the methods of the violent collectivist statist right to achieve their original peaceful individualist anarchistic aims of leftism. Which is why they they consider themselves the 'good' guys, but always end up supporting evil (and crooked expense-stealing politicians).
It also explains why former socialists (e.g. Hayek, Block, Hoppe, etc.) become such prominent Austrians, without ever going anywhere near 'nationalism' or 'conservatism'. Austrianism isn't so much moving you in position, but simply clearing your outlook and removing the deadly prism of collectivism from your eyes.
It's certainly an interesting idea.
Superb.
Brian Micklethwait's list of UK libertarians
Mr Micklethwait has published a semi-definitive list of UK libertarian web sites:
=> UK libertarian bloggers 2.0
This list indicates that there are at least 102 libertarians in the UK, and I know for a fact that at least one of those people is an Austro-Libertarian (though I suspect it could be up to eight).
Fantastic! :-)
This time next year, Rodney, there'll be millions of us.
=> UK libertarian bloggers 2.0
This list indicates that there are at least 102 libertarians in the UK, and I know for a fact that at least one of those people is an Austro-Libertarian (though I suspect it could be up to eight).
Fantastic! :-)
This time next year, Rodney, there'll be millions of us.
Four British soldiers killed in one day in southern Afghanistan
Four more British squaddies killed in a pointless war we're going to lose anyway, thousands of miles from Britain.
Well done, Blair. Well done, Brown.
Let's hope the speaking fees Blair receives from CIA front organisations and the hugely compensated job at the American-controlled World Bank that Brown will get, for playing satrap lap dogs to the American government, will be worth it.
PS> Sorry, I shouldn't have said four 'British' soldiers, there. I should have said three British soldiers, and one foreign Gurkha who would not have deserved a British state passport if he had lived long enough to apply for one, despite having died fighting under the British state flag in a British state war.
Well done, Blair. Well done, Brown.
Let's hope the speaking fees Blair receives from CIA front organisations and the hugely compensated job at the American-controlled World Bank that Brown will get, for playing satrap lap dogs to the American government, will be worth it.
PS> Sorry, I shouldn't have said four 'British' soldiers, there. I should have said three British soldiers, and one foreign Gurkha who would not have deserved a British state passport if he had lived long enough to apply for one, despite having died fighting under the British state flag in a British state war.
Tom Woods: Beware of Obamanomics
Tom Woods writes an excellent Euro Pacific Capital white paper on Obamanomics, and on why it will make the Depression worse, including another mention of the 1921 Depression which never happened:
=> "Beware of Obamanomics" (PDF)
=> "Beware of Obamanomics" (PDF)
They're all at it
It used to be 'sort of accepted' that the odd rogue MP would claim for the odd scurrilous taxi fare but that the numbers of these rogue MPs were countable on the fingers of one hand and were generally kept under check by their Whips' offices.
No longer.
Now the system of corruption, fraud, and embezzlement, is ingrained and runs right to the top.
Take Gordon Brown, for example, the First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
As one of the highest-paid politicians in the land, with a mightily generous pension coming his way, and as a hair-shirted socialist 'Son of the Manse', you might have imagined that he would be spending all night reading Das Kapital or The Bible for inspiration, rather than sitting up with a spreadsheet trying to maximise his claims with fancy pivot tables and goal-seeking 'What If?' analyses.
But no, you would be wrong. Because given his situation, if you had been able to claim a penny more than he has over the last five years, you would have been quite rightly handed an honorary degree in space-time physics from Oxford University, such is the deviousness with which he has maximised his income at our expense.
Thankfully, someone of honour has released all of the expense claims of every MP going back five years, including Gordon Brown's, to let the rest of us know how these tax eaters have been pigging out on money stolen from the rest of us via the criminal taxation machine that they run.
(I don't know who you are, sir (or madam), but thank you.)
The Daily Telegraph is going to be slowly releasing all of these details over the next week or so, in the face of BBC and Labour Party spinning, to make sure that we know the full depths of this petty fraudulent corruption, carried out by crooks who say to themselves that they 'deserve it' for all of the 'hard work' that they do for the rest of us, but who know deep down that they are rattish pick-pockets whose only justification is that 'everyone else is doing it, including the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, so why shouldn't I?'.
Enjoy.
(To follow the fun and games, as AngloAustria is currently based on a plane somewhere over Iran, the best place to follow this will be Guido Fawkes' place.)
PS> Speculation rife on Fawkes' blog that this has been a deliberate 'leak' by the government, to get all the bad news out early, before the June elections, in agreement for having the Tories' dirty linen washed last, just before said elections. If this is the case, then I take back my hat tip to the 'leaker' - i.e. Mandlebum - however, just like all government initiatives, if that was the plan, then this will backfire spectacularly for Brown, because some rogue detail they forgot to think about will make this plan blow up in their faces. If, on the other hand, this remains an unofficial 'leak' (as I suspect), then the hat tip stays in situ.
Government of clowns
Joanna Lumley, the 'Avenging Gurkha Goddess' rang rings around the bamboozled Phil Woolas, yesterday, who apparently is the current immigration minister, though Maturin Towers used to know him once as a former Students Union bed wetter.After last week's House of Commons vote, in which Gordon Brown was defeated and which he chose to ignore with his one good eye, five Gurkha veterans yesterday received official government letters telling them to clear off.
Ms Lumley returned to Westminster to corner Phil Woolas and ask the alleged immigration minister to explain himself, especially after she had told Britain yesterday that she 'trusted' Gordon Brown to sort this mess out.
It seems rather odd that the one group of immigrants most of the people of this country welcome with open arms, the Nepalese Gurkha brigade, is the only group of immigrants whom the government wish to refuse entry to?
Yes, we'll take your Somali pirates, Kosovan drugs smugglers, Russian porn masters, Romanian child smugglers, Nigerian mafiosi, Jamaican gang members, and Pakistani Taliban trash, but family-oriented hard-working English speaking heroes, who have risked their lives fighting for the Queen in all the worst hell holes of the world?
No chance.
No. Apparently we need the flotsam and jetsam of the world to become ghettoized welfare bums and government supporting dependants, rather than flag-waving heroes.
Well, Joanna Lumley begs to differ. As does most of the British population.
And let's face it. Who would you rather have as British Prime Minister? Joanna Lumley or Gordon Brown? If such an election were put before the British people tomorrow, I suspect Gordon Brown would get approximately one vote, with 59,999,999 voting for Ms Lumley.
Even as an anarchist I would be voting myself for the fabulous Ms Lumley.
Marvellous.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Bank of England pledges to pump another £50bn into the economy
The Monopoly game Banker that controls the game board in the UK economy, the Bank of England, will be printing up another £50 billion to buy UK government bonds with, on top of the £75 billion it has already printed up from thin air.
Expect a lot more of this counterfeiting nonsense in the next year, before Gordon Brown's red socialist government finally crumbles, and possibly for many more years after that as the incoming blue socialist government struggles to cope with Brown's enormous legacy of government spending gone mad.
Assuming a fractional reserve ratio of 10%, £125 billion will eventually turn into £1.25 trillion pounds, from out of thin air, or approximately a full year's GDP.
Isn't life grand.
Get out of the Pound. Do it now.
Expect a lot more of this counterfeiting nonsense in the next year, before Gordon Brown's red socialist government finally crumbles, and possibly for many more years after that as the incoming blue socialist government struggles to cope with Brown's enormous legacy of government spending gone mad.
Assuming a fractional reserve ratio of 10%, £125 billion will eventually turn into £1.25 trillion pounds, from out of thin air, or approximately a full year's GDP.
Isn't life grand.
Get out of the Pound. Do it now.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Britons face working until 70 to help bring public debt under control
A respectable financial think tank expects that the retirement age in Britain will be raised to 70, to pay for Gordon Brown's mishandling of the economy.
No doubt this will only apply to tax payers. Every tax eater currently on the government pay roll will still be eligible to:
1. Retire at 60
2. Get a final salary pension
3. Have this pension indexed against inflation
As larger and larger proportions of tax go towards paying off government debt and government tax eater pensions, over time, we will also see less and less being spent on the ramshackle 'services' the state currently provides.
Let's imagine in ten years' time, the government collects £50,000 in tax. What will happen to it?
£5,000 disappears in tax handling enforcement and administration costs
£10,000 disappears in government debt interest and principal repayments
£15,000 disappears in government employee pension payments
£10,000 disappears in welfare pay-offs to favoured government client groups
This leaves about £10,000 pounds in effective funding. Using P.J.O'Rourke's handy guide to government waste and inefficiency (found in Eat the Rich), this will be able to provide 'services' that the private sector would produce for about £3,333 pounds.
You pay £50 quid. You get about £3 quid's worth of goods back that you would actually pay for privately. This will not compute.
There will come a snapping point, where tax payers will be shelling out most of their income over to the British state, and seeing very little in return, except lots of government client-state pensioners driving large cars, going on holiday all of the time, and buying up the choicest cuts of meat in supermarkets.
Meanwhile, 85 year-old taxpayers will be collecting shopping trolleys in the car park, for $10 pounds an hour, while government pensioners drive home to enjoy the fruits of the trolley collectors' labour.
Who knows when that snapping point will be. But it's coming.
The welfare state may not be dead yet. But it's dying.
And good riddance.
No doubt this will only apply to tax payers. Every tax eater currently on the government pay roll will still be eligible to:
1. Retire at 60
2. Get a final salary pension
3. Have this pension indexed against inflation
As larger and larger proportions of tax go towards paying off government debt and government tax eater pensions, over time, we will also see less and less being spent on the ramshackle 'services' the state currently provides.
Let's imagine in ten years' time, the government collects £50,000 in tax. What will happen to it?
£5,000 disappears in tax handling enforcement and administration costs
£10,000 disappears in government debt interest and principal repayments
£15,000 disappears in government employee pension payments
£10,000 disappears in welfare pay-offs to favoured government client groups
This leaves about £10,000 pounds in effective funding. Using P.J.O'Rourke's handy guide to government waste and inefficiency (found in Eat the Rich), this will be able to provide 'services' that the private sector would produce for about £3,333 pounds.
You pay £50 quid. You get about £3 quid's worth of goods back that you would actually pay for privately. This will not compute.
There will come a snapping point, where tax payers will be shelling out most of their income over to the British state, and seeing very little in return, except lots of government client-state pensioners driving large cars, going on holiday all of the time, and buying up the choicest cuts of meat in supermarkets.
Meanwhile, 85 year-old taxpayers will be collecting shopping trolleys in the car park, for $10 pounds an hour, while government pensioners drive home to enjoy the fruits of the trolley collectors' labour.
Who knows when that snapping point will be. But it's coming.
The welfare state may not be dead yet. But it's dying.
And good riddance.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
UK 'least wanted' list published
"I have no desire to make windows into mens souls"Today, for the first time, the UK government published a list of people who are not allowed to enter the UK. This is for allegedly holding views the UK government is intolerant of.
Queen Elizabeth I
How long then before UK citizens themselves are marched to the ports of entry and forced to pay for one-way tickets out? Or marched to a Gulag? Answers on a postcard.
Once that's instituted, how long before people like Guido Fawkes are frogmarched away, for daring to say, or even for being suspected of thinking, the politically unacceptable?
Notice this is not for committing any crimes against person or property, or for having been convicted in a fair trial for anything. Just for being reported for holding views that the government feels are reprehensible. No court. No jury. Just what a minister thinks.
Well, I don't know why they just don't march me away now. Because some of the views I hold about certain Labour party politicians, are entirely reprehensible, if viewed through the socialist lens of political correctness.
Another sad day on the Road to Serfdom. And the sheeple just munch away without even looking up.
Jim Rogers: IMF may push gold price down to $700
The Jimster reckons the IMF is 'looking for permission' to sell its gold holding. When it does, it could push the price down to $700 dollars an ounce. At that point, the Jimster will step into the market to buy more gold.
Read more.
Read more.
Monday, May 04, 2009
The sands of Dubai call again...
Once again, the joys of Heathrow must be faced again, for another business trip to Dubai.Normal service will be intermittent.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Ludwig von Mises: Quote of the Day
"Socialism... is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build; it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created."
Ludwig von Mises, "Socialism"
Why you've never heard of the 1921 Depression
Despite a greater economic meltdown in 1920 than the one seen in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, the Great American Depression of 1921 never happened because the US government of the time did absolutely nothing to 'solve' the problem, except cut its own spending.
The American economy was up and running, with barely a blip, within less than a year.
Do you think this 'lesson of history' might tell us something about what to do now, with our own economic meltdown?
Tom Woods explains.
The American economy was up and running, with barely a blip, within less than a year.
Do you think this 'lesson of history' might tell us something about what to do now, with our own economic meltdown?
Tom Woods explains.
As Gordon Brown founders, no one knows what’s going on
As well as class warrior Labour MPs claiming that saunas should be built at their second homes on expenses, Gordon Brown has a new master plan to revive his plunging fortunes in a plunging economy, or so says Matthew D'Ancona in the Sunday Labourgraph:In the speech on crime, I am told, he will develop the controversial idea of the Community Payback Scheme which enables communities to select the actions which offenders are compelled to take to atone for their anti-social behaviour.Yes, that should have them dancing in the streets: "Hey everyone, I've just lost my job and Labour MPs are being paid to sit in free saunas which will increase their profit when they sell their second homes, but now I'll be able to join a local government committee to approve a deliniated range of actions that will be targeted upon the small percentage of people who the police bother catching for anti-social behaviour, so that when they don't bother turning up for community payback sessions, I'll be able to claim expenses from the council for being a member of the committee that has failed to do anything to them."
Yeah, that's an eye-catching initiative.
Meanwhile, up from the bunker and back here on Planet Earth...
PS> I claimed in a piece below that Gordon Brown would actually be pleased about the potentially lethal existence of Swine Flu fever, to give himself something to crow and posture over (no matter how many people die from it). So what do you make of this quote from D'Ancona's piece:
Those who have spoken to the PM in the past few days report that he is pleased with the Government’s performance on swine flu...Pleased? I'll bet he's absolutely ecstatic, moving around all of his flu tanks on the battle plan map in the basement of Number 10. Surely there's a Downfall video in there, somewhere?
Friday, May 01, 2009
Human Action, the Audio Book!
Human Action, the greatest book on economics ever written, can be a challenging read, in both PDF and hard-copy form; it is certainly not for the faint of heart. However, fear ye not, because Mises.org hero, Jeff Tucker, has released an Audio Book version, as read by Jeff Riggenbach, a man whose voice sounds like Charlton Heston looks:
Fantastic!
And I've discovered this just in the nick of time, because I've run out of Peter Schiff 'Wall Street Unplugged' podcasts to listen to, down on the treadmill in the gym. I cannot face my usual three mile shambles without a little Austrianism to take my mind off the direness of exercise, so this Audio Book release is superb news.
To get 'Human Action' onto your iPod, simply subscribe your iTunes program to:
=> http://mises.org/Feeds/media.ashx?CategoryId=139
Mises.org just keeps getting better!
Thanks to everyone there for giving me the will to live when faced with 'Gym Today' on my calendar.
Now if only someone would invent an underwater iPod with underwater headphones, to take the dreadful boredom out of swimming, then we really would be onto something.
Fantastic!
And I've discovered this just in the nick of time, because I've run out of Peter Schiff 'Wall Street Unplugged' podcasts to listen to, down on the treadmill in the gym. I cannot face my usual three mile shambles without a little Austrianism to take my mind off the direness of exercise, so this Audio Book release is superb news.
To get 'Human Action' onto your iPod, simply subscribe your iTunes program to:
=> http://mises.org/Feeds/media.ashx?CategoryId=139
Mises.org just keeps getting better!
Thanks to everyone there for giving me the will to live when faced with 'Gym Today' on my calendar.
Now if only someone would invent an underwater iPod with underwater headphones, to take the dreadful boredom out of swimming, then we really would be onto something.
Jack Straw - A nation turns its lonely eyes to you
Surely pressure must be mounting now on Jack Straw to do the decent thing and to walk unannounced into Downing Street to 'Ken Clarke' Gordon?Surely it can only be a matter of time? All Straw needs is a decent pair in his trousers, plus a robust cricket helmet to ward off flying Nokias, and he should be there in a jiffy. Surely?
Perhaps that's the problem? Perhaps the Labour Party has been so emasculated by the ZaNu Labour spin machine operation, over the last 15 years, that there is nobody left with enough testosterone in their blood to take the hatchet into Downing Street, to dispatch Gordon Brown, when the hatchet is required?
What a feeble bunch of mincing mendacious muppets.
Perhaps if Straw doesn't have the balls for the job, then Mr John Leslie Prescott can be called down from his holdings in the North, to carry out the job instead?
Surely he's man enough for the task? Surely the "Ceauşescu Moment" is approaching?
In case you missed it...
I haven't laughed so much in years. Check this out:
Gordon Brown - The Dance of the Comedian
(Aside - This brilliant video serves Gordon right for being vain enough to get his teeth whitened, the mincing muppet.)
PS> Richard Littlejohn has worked out who Gordon Brown was trying to emulate in the video above:
Gordon Brown - The Dance of the Comedian
(Aside - This brilliant video serves Gordon right for being vain enough to get his teeth whitened, the mincing muppet.)
PS> Richard Littlejohn has worked out who Gordon Brown was trying to emulate in the video above:
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