DB Briefs: Central Banks Rescue the World / Green Jobs Are the Hope of the Future? / US Seeks Worldwide Justice / Libya Turns Islamic?

Central Banks Rescue the World

Global central banks act to help eurozone lenders ... Central banks around the world have joined in a co-ordinated action to make more dollars available to eurozone banks, to ease the funding pressures which have built up in recent weeks. Today's move to boost bank funding has echoes of the co-ordinated action taken by central banks in September 2008 after the Lehman collapse. – Agency Reports

Dominant Social Theme: Thank goodness for central banking.

Free-Market Analysis: The global economy is truly a farce. "Capitalism" is actually corporatism and it is run by a relatively few individuals who report, in our view, to a handful of Anglosphere banking families who control central banks around the world – with all the unimaginable wealth that entails. The global economy is stimulated by low interest rates and central bank money printing into spasms of "prosperity" that lifts large, mainly Western stock markets.

But eventually the phony stimulus wears off, price information becomes distorted and economies crash. This is what is happening now. Today's unraveling crash is a kind of "end game." Western economies – and China's, too – are too distorted to salvage in our view. Something else needs to happen. Additional money printing (liquidity) is not going to make much of a difference at this point. Not many will say this, however. Launching significant criticism at the powers-that-be is risky business, especially if you are an economist or business person. Thus people keep their mouths shut, or mumble polite clichés. You read it here.

Green Jobs Are the Hope of the Future?

Green industry to create thousands of roles ... The green energy industry is regularly touted by the Government as being a huge job creator of the future. Louisa Peacock asks where the future work will come from. How can Britain compete with the likes of Germany and China to develop a renewable energy industry? – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: So many questions! Thank goodness for wind power and solar power. The jobs that are not coming from traditional industry will come from alternative ones.

Free-Market Analysis: Ms. Peacock, in this strange article, has the grace to acknowledge there are 2.5 million people in Britain who are out of work. (Right off the bat you can probably double that or may be even triple it.) Anyway, the reason Ms. Peacock may have been assigned this squib involves a "major report for The Telegraph by the Work Foundation." What is the point of this report? "Looming regulations – including that the UK reduce its carbon emissions 34pc by 2020 – give the Government little choice but to invest in a lowcarbon economy."

OK, that's sensible, even though we're not convinced. We don't see why laws that mandate certain results inevitably create jobs. Those passing the laws may WANT to create certain jobs and they may even have taxpayer dollars at hand to induce such employment. But eventually the market itself must take on the role of a job catalyst. There is no other way.

We are not surprised, however, at Ms. Peacock's analysis. In the 21st Century, Britain and its ruling classes seem to have entirely abandoned the free-market tradition that made England great to begin with. Today's emphasis on serial wars, Green power and supporting failed EU polices with yet more and more money stimulation are a recipe for continued failure.

Come ye O Daughters of Beulah, ... Come & mourn over Albion the White Cliff of the Atlantic ... The Mountain of Giants ... (- William Blake)

US Seeks Worldwide Justice

Salisbury man banned from hunting worldwide ... A Salisbury resident has been banned from hunting anywhere in the world for two years as part of an agreement with federal authorities in Kentucky on charges that he illegally hunted in and took wildlife from that state. Rodney L. Poteat agreed to the ban in U.S. District Court in Kentucky last week, according to a Department of Justice press release. Reached at his Perryman Drive home Wednesday evening, Poteat declined to comment. – Salisbury Post

Dominant Social Theme: There is no place where the finger of US Justice does not point and reach.

Free-Market Analysis: We're not quite sure how the judge in this case intends to enforce a worldwide ban on Poteat's hunting activities. But what impresses us is the stirring ambition of the sentence. It is part of a larger trend we have noticed – a kind of dominant social theme having to do with US ambition to enforce its judiciary ambit worldwide.

One can see this with America's recent determination to demand that banks around the world report the incomes of American citizens. In fact, the IRS wants banks, including non-US banks, to have an affirmative obligation to remove up to one-third of an individual's income and withhold it for tax purposes. Then there are reciprocal agreements that have been made with dictators and thus around the world for purposes of arresting people US authorities deem criminal.

In turn, the US will turn over citizens that these dictators and thugs seek for their own purposes. Canada recently returned a civil rights activist to China on assurances that China would not torture him or otherwise act in an extra-judicial manner. China promised it would not and Canada's top officials put the activist on a plane and sent him back to China. Canadian officials said they were pleased at Chinese reassurances. It is not clear how pleased the civil rights activist was.

Libya Turns Islamic?

Islamists' Growing Sway Raises Questions for Libya ... Most Libyans practice a moderate Islam in which individual liberties are respected ... In the emerging post-Qaddafi Libya, the most influential politician may well be Ali Sallabi, who has no formal title but commands broad respect as an Islamic scholar and populist orator who was instrumental in leading the mass uprising. – NY Times

Dominant Social Theme: OK, we've gotten rid of the dictator. Now we have to make sure these Muslims are up to the task of nation building.

Free-Market Analysis: One of the biggest hoaxes regarding the Libyan war was the nature of the opposition. From what we can tell, many of the rebels might have been labeled "al-Qaeda" in a different context. But as the powers-that-be had decided Muammar Gaddafi had to go, it was inconvenient to explain to the Western public exactly who was doing the shoving.

But now that the rebels have seemingly won – or at least are on their way to victory – explaining just who is taking over Libya is becoming a more pressing question. This is being done in a kind of careful trickle, lest people catch on to whom the West has allied itself to. "The most powerful military leader is now Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former leader of a hard-line group once believed to be aligned with Al Qaeda," the New York Times admits in the article excerpted above.

Wow. Now you tell us, six months too late. Ironic, isn't it, that NATO and the US would ally itself with al-Qaeda and give these "radicals" money and weapons to take over an important country like Libya, gateway to Africa? "The growing influence of Islamists in Libya raises hard questions about the ultimate character of the government and society that will rise in place of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's autocracy," the Times adds.

It's all very hush-hush of course. The Times obviously doesn't want to make a big deal about it. But how can the Pentagon be pursuing wars against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Iraq while simultaneously supporting the same group in Libya? Either al-Qaeda is not the threat it's been built up to be or the officials at the Pentagon are sophisticated enough to support two entirely contradictory notions at the same time.