Commerce

The New New Deal Isn’t As Disastrous As the Old New Deal — It’s Worse!

August 27, 2011
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The New New Deal Isn’t As Disastrous As the Old New Deal — It’s Worse!

The specter of John Maynard (“If you’re stuck in a hole, just keep digging”) Keynes must be a regular sight in the Oval Office, offering posthumous advice in seances, which the current administration follows religiously, thereby postponing — or even canceling — an economic recovery. The first New Dealer also tried the “command and control” approach, back when it was billions and billions (pace Carl Sagan) instead of trillions and trillions: The Great Depression dominated the 1930s, in large part because President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs failed to create jobs. In May 1939, shortly after learning that unemployment stood at 20.7%, Henry Morgenthau, the secretary of the Treasury, exploded: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Morgenthau concluded, “I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot!” Why did Roosevelt’s New Deal fail so miserably? The larger problem is that federal spending can’t create jobs. It merely transfers wealth from taxpayers to central planners. But worse than that, most of FDR’s New Deal was driven by politics.

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A Wall Street Harmonic Convergence

August 27, 2011
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A Wall Street Harmonic Convergence

Events like this one are guaranteed to attract the extremes: communists, anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, fascists — you name it. Who’s generating it? What’s their aim? What sort of “statement” do they intend to make? It’s safe to say that, even if there isn’t a full-scale riot, the police will have their hands full.

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Out of Control — And All the Better for It

August 27, 2011
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Out of Control — And All the Better for It

Bill Bonner goes against the Big Media-Big Government model for prosperity. He responds to a headline — “World economy rests on Bernanke’s shoulders”: Who is this man, Ben Bernanke, and what kind of shoulders does he have? Is he a great deep thinker … a renowned philosopher in whom the world’s people could have confidence? Is he a captain of industry … a man who has proven that he can lead men and run a profitable business? Is he an investment wizard, like Warren Buffett, with billions of dollars as testament to his understanding of the world of money? Is he even a powerful politician or an acclaimed statesmen, who can at least pretend to solve the world’s problems by threats and force? He is none of those things. He is a fellow who studied economics and became a university professor. Now he is a quasi-bureaucrat, working as head of a quasi-bureaucracy, whose main function is to make sure bankers make a profit. Bernanke, like all political technocrats bent on controlling the free market, must convince the world that he knows what he’s doing: An economy functions best with no one in control. Central planning doesn’t work. A little bit

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Is History’s View of Teddy Roosevelt All Wrong?

August 26, 2011
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Is History’s View of Teddy Roosevelt All Wrong?

(This is in response to a comment from S. T. Karnick.) Jim Powell decided to reassess Teddy Roosevelt‘s historical reputation in an article in The Freeman Online. Past presidents and potential future ones like TR a lot: Theodore Roosevelt has been known as “the Good Roosevelt,” “the Republican Roosevelt,” and “the conservative Roosevelt,” as distinguished from his fifth cousin Franklin, who’s credited with ushering in modern American big government. Yet promoters of big government have long recognized TR as one of their own. Biographer Frank Freidel wrote that “While at Groton first fell under the spell of his remote cousin Theodore Roosevelt. . . . Theodore Roosevelt believed in using to the utmost the constitutional power of the president. . . . This strong use of government was for the most part appealing to Franklin.” During the Great Depression, FDR promoted “a program emphasizing national planning in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt.” Freidel noted that “in words reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt, FDR declared ‘the duty rests upon the Government to restrict incomes by very high taxes.’” Historian Eric F. Goldman said that Lyndon Johnson, who simultaneously launched huge domestic entitlement spending programs and escalated the undeclared Vietnam

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Wisdom from Vladimir (!) on the Debt Deal

August 5, 2011
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Wisdom from Vladimir (!) on the Debt Deal

Of all people: “The current deal struck by U.S. lawmakers will not solve the underlying issues. This colossal debt, $14 trillion or more, means that the country has been living on credit, which is really bad for one of the world’s leading economies. They live beyond their means, and put a part of their burden on the entire world’s economy. … The country is … shifting the weight of responsibility on other countries and in a way acting as a parasite. … Good for us that we do not print reserve money.” — Vladimir Putin A bad deal all round: All that the colluding quislings in both chambers have undertaken is a “decrease in the rate of increase in government spending to just equal the increase in the government’s debt …” See more in Ilana Mercer‘s article “Be Afraid: The Proof Is in the Putin” on WND.

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A Tax Is a Tax Is a Tax Is …

July 28, 2011
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A Tax Is a Tax Is a Tax Is …

The awful truth is that this country has been grossly mismanaged for decades. The Great Recession has exposed the mismanagement, casting a cruel light upon our impending insolvency. One might have hoped that in this national emergency, the politicians we elected to serve us would shelve the posturing and insist on doing the right thing instead of the politically palatable thing. If we are to emerge intact from this crisis, we need two things: First, we need to cut spending, drastically, programmatically. I’m not talking about the basket of illusory cuts Congress has so far offered. I mean real cuts. The culture of entitlement must take a long vacation. Second, we need to stimulate economic growth. We do that not by destroying thousands of cars and bailing out two-thirds of the American auto industry (like many Americans, I have sworn never, ever to buy a car made by Chrysler or Government Motors); you don’t do it with fake stimulus programs in which the government spends money it doesn’t have to reward unions and other special interests which in turn contribute to the politicians who have generously taken money out of other peoples’ pockets and lavished it on them. What you

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Graphic Insults: How Regulation Is Strangling the Economy

July 28, 2011
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Graphic Insults: How Regulation Is Strangling the Economy

By Mike Gray — well, the insults to our intelligence from people who have vested political interests in hobbling America’s energy production — which these images confute. (Click on each one to enlarge.) “America needs foreign energy imports,” they claim: “We need a moratorium on offshore oil development to protect the environment,” they say: “The EPA must continue to enforce the Clean Air Act and other draconian measures to save us from choking on pollution,” they aver: “If we’re going to save the polar bears, we must forget about a Trans-Alaska pipeline system,” they cry: “The United States doesn’t have the oil reserves needed to sustain our profligate lifestyle,” they assert: With all of these conflicting interests, it’s no wonder the bottom line is:

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“Sitting on Their Thumbs”: America’s “Fear-Based Economy”

July 21, 2011
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“Sitting on Their Thumbs”: America’s “Fear-Based Economy”

There’s a greater incentive to FIRE than to HIRE: . . . he economy’s most productive participants the businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and investors who drive commerce, create wealth, and create jobs. As long as Barack Obama is president and his apparatchiks remain in control of their expanding bureaucracies and unaccountable czardoms, fear and intimidating uncertainty will reign. . . . . When the economy is sitting on such a dangerous precipice, unless the goals are to deliver a knockout punch and to take the intimidating uncertainty to the level of debility (given this administration’s mindset, these cannot be ruled out), you don’t even think about raising taxes. With a federal budget hopelessly out of balance, all you can do is cut spending, period. You also don’t raise taxes when you know, as anyone with an ounce of perception does, that for the next eighteen months if we’re lucky, or an unthinkable 66 if we’re not, we’re stuck with the current fear-based economy. I could be wrong, but I can’t conceive of anything this administration could do to change the current frightened mindset in the business community before it leaves the stage. Wynn agrees, saying

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Quote of the Day: Victor Davis Hanson on the Collapsing Paradigms Supporting Illegal “Immigration”

July 19, 2011
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Quote of the Day: Victor Davis Hanson on the Collapsing Paradigms Supporting Illegal “Immigration”

he old matrix of how we were to understand illegal immigration is extinct. The concept of a largely white privileged class exploiting poor immigrants who simply wished to be a part of the American dream is now fossilized — dead and buried by new realities: the sheer millions of those entering the U.S. illegally, the cynicism and connivance of the Mexican government, the outflow of nearly $30-40 billion in remittances to Latin America, the rise of the multicultural salad bowl in lieu of the multiracial melting pot, the illiberal nature of the advocacy for open borders, and the rise of a new tribalism and ethnic solidarity on the part of the immigrant community. For the last half-century, the subtext of illegal immigration was racial prejudice — how a hard-working minority struggled against a largely white overlord class for social justice, best emblemized by Caesar Chavez and the farmer worker rights movement. Those divides are now largely gone — or at least have become so problematic and complex to have been rendered irrelevant. . . . . llegal immigration has transmogrified into one of the most illiberal, reactionary phenomena on the current American scene, an ossified concept of racial solidarity and

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As of Today You Owe $246,000 — Please Remit Immediately

July 8, 2011
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As of Today You Owe $246,000 — Please Remit Immediately

According to the Institute for Truth in Accounting: ~ The “official” national debt is $14 trillion 419 billion — whereas they say in reality: ~ The official national debt is $75 trillion 617 billion — or over five times greater. And that amounts to about a quarter of a million dollars for each American. So get out your checkbook.  

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Words Fail Us

July 6, 2011
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Words Fail Us

   

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Political Talk and the Fed’s Hidden Agendas

June 25, 2011
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Political Talk and the Fed’s Hidden Agendas

ON THE AMERICAN ELECTION CYCLE With each turn of the wheel, with each election, people should learn that they fell for the same old trick, one more time. Every election people fall for the same trick. And that trick is, they believe the campaign speeches of the candidates. They don’t realize that the candidates, for the most part, spend a lot of time and money either conducting polls or studying polls very carefully. They do it to find out what people want to hear. And then they hire campaign managers and speechwriters to enable them to deliver to the population what they want to hear. In many cases, politicians are just little recording devices. They have no feelings for what they are saying, they have no connections, they have only one goal and that is to get elected. And it is hard to find a person who you can say does not fit into that category. The only way that you can tell if a candidate is a real genuine person is by looking at their career. See what they have done in the past. Voters, unfortunately, are not too good at that. They just seem to want to hear

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Newswire

In U.S., Nearly Half Identify as Economically Conservative

Bald Eagles Fall to Green Energy

Phillips: Movin' Out

‘American Idol’ Posts Lowest-Rated Finale Ever

Phillip Phillips is the new 'American Idol'

Cooling Global Warm-Mongers

Boy Jesus, Big Screen: Anne Rice's 'Christ the Lord' to be Made into a Movie

Ross Douthat: What Has Jerusalem To Do With Athens?

Is TV Destroying U.S.?

Confessions of an Atheist Darwin-Doubter

Secularization and Christian Institutions

Biggest Religious Lawsuit in U.S. History Launched, Liberal Evening News Shows Ignore It

Government is Force!: Why individual rights demand limited government and constitutional democracy

A New Dark Age

Media Works To Suppress Obama 'Born in Kenya' Bio

"Freedom's Forge" tells the story of how U.S. business leaders were mobilized to build ships, tanks and weapons faster and better than the enemy, to win World War II

How to Enjoy Going to the Movies Again

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