EDITORIAL Showing 1751 - 1800 of 1951
The Donkey in the China Shop
September 28, 2010
President Obama has just issued a blackmail to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China: "You immediately revalue the yuan or else..." According to an article of David E. Senger in The New York Times dated September 23, 2010, the two leaders met at the United Nations ...
Why Rip Off The Rich?
September 28, 2010
This fracas about letting the Bush tax cut expire for those making more than the arbitrary amount of $250K per year is bizarre. Never mind for now that the entire system of taxation in a bona fide free country is criminal - not different, in principle, from a s ...
Remobilize Gold to Save the World Economy
September 25, 2010
An open letter to Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, 1979-1987; Chairman of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, presented to him, in person, last year. Dear Paul: In 35 years our paths have crossed for the s ...
State Fundamentalism
September 25, 2010
True, the idea came to me after having read many of Paul Krugman's missives, both his columns in The New York Times and essays in such magazines as The New York Review of Books. In his often very polemical writings - for a Nobel Laureate he does seem to indulge ...
Politicians' Criminal Minds
September 24, 2010
In our time, not entirely unlike in others, the main appeal politicians hold out for millions is that they join them in their resentful bashing of the rich. This is a successful ploy because in the past, of course, most riches came from conquest, from governmen ...
Are Consumers Finally Winning in Washington?
September 23, 2010
This past week the administration announced its choice for the first credit czar at the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This bureau was created as part of the supposed Wall Street reform bill recently passed by Congress. This new bureau, which represe ...
No Way Could I Support Republicans
September 23, 2010
At times I have the impression that maybe there are practicing political allies out there somewhere, ones who are involved with current affairs, and at times it looks like these would be Republicans and especially conservative ones. That's because strictly spea ...
Property Rights and Law
September 21, 2010
Some have been demeaning the right to private property - which is very closely linked to America's political tradition and if sufficiently discredited would also help destroy the country - because such a right is supposedly created by a legal system. If so, the ...
Tony Judt's Last Prevarications
September 20, 2010
As a loyal though reluctant reader of The New York Review of Books – too masochistic an experience at times but in my line of work unavoidable – I have read a lot of essays by the recently deceased public intellectual and NYU professor Tony Judt. A skilled ...
Swiss Institutions Ask: Where's the Gold?
September 18, 2010
Have you ever wondered what would happen if most of the claimed US gold reserves do not really exist? Can Washington continue to operate under its own questionable and often non-existent accounting rules if it doesn't have the gold reserves as promised? Should ...
On More Stimulus Spending
September 17, 2010
Faced with continuing economic decline and an impending election, the administration, predictably, is entertaining the idea of another stimulus package. To explain why the last one didn't work, adherents to the Keynesian economic philosophy are claiming that th ...
Where Krugman Went Wrong
September 15, 2010
Paul Krugman, writing in The New York Times on September 5 under the title "1938 in 2010", chastizes president Obama's economists once more for doing what they have promised not to do: to repeat the mistakes of president Roosevelt's economists in 1937 in pullin ...
Oblivious to the Weight of History
September 14, 2010
Anyone in search of a short yet useful introduction to the life of Sir Winston Churchill will find it in Paul Johnson's biography. Johnson, a long-established historian of the modern age, has penned a readable and informative account of the life, personality, t ...
Does the General Understand Freedom?
September 13, 2010
General Petraeus sadly got it wrong when he wants to shut down the Koran burning on the grounds that some will react to it irrationally. Sure, the burning should not happen because it is a needlessly provocative deed but no one should be forcibly stopped from u ...
The Power of Freedom
September 11, 2010
At this time when most people are clamoring, or at least hoping for, economic revival, the major debate centers around how it could be achieved. One side, mainly the current administration and its supporters in the academy, believe in some variety of stimulus i ...
Let's Talk About Natural Rights
September 09, 2010
When various skeptics question the soundness of the American political system, one of their targets is the idea of human nature. After all, the founders took their political philosophy mainly from John Locke who thought human nature does exist and, based on wha ...
Successful Economic Policies? For Whom?
September 08, 2010
Last week, in the wake of another uptick in the official unemployment rate, the administration continued to claim that their economic policies were working, just not fast enough. This administration inherited an unemployment rate of 7.7% and promised a peak of ...
Here We Go Again
September 08, 2010
Innumerable arguments and research have been produced showing that government stimulus is useless. Despite what President Obama and his cheerleaders in the academy, like Princeton's Paul Krugman, seem to believe (or at least say), there is no evidence that gove ...
The Mind Conspirators
September 04, 2010
More and more Americans today are coming to understand the terrible truth about our Federal Government -- that it seeks to dominate us as citizens, to mold us into a society of dutiful Stepford Wives totally beholden to the wishes of elite politicians, bureaucr ...
Revisiting Wealth Redistribution
September 03, 2010
It is time to bring this ruse to an end. Those people's scam should be shut down. Their phony authority to take from everyone so they can use it as they see fit - in the name that they are the nice guys who redistribute wealth while we the greedy bunch intent o ...
Tempted by One Size Fits All
September 01, 2010
For most of human history it used to be standard practice for parents to insist that their children not only live by principles the parents have found to be sound but also to adopt all sorts of practices of dress, play, work, taste and so forth that they approv ...
Iraq – An End or an Escalation?
August 31, 2010
Amid much fanfare last week, the last supposed "combat" troops left Iraq as the administration touted the beginning of the end of the Iraq War and a change in the role of the United States in that country. Considering the continued public frustration with the w ...
Frank Rich's Prejudice
August 31, 2010
Karl Marx was famous for, among other things, claiming that everyone always promotes his or her economic interest. This is something he actually had in common with non-Marxists classical economists. Most economists, in fact, believe that we are all motivated by ...
Most Americans Just Don't Get It
August 30, 2010
It bothers me to no end that millions of Americans simply don't get just how dangerous this current administration's views are, especially about the nature of our basic rights. I suppose I should not be surprised, given the utterly perverted primary and seconda ...
BIS: Trading With the Enemy – The Whole Story
August 28, 2010
This special report links Switzerland's sometimes regrettable World War Ii activities with specific evidence suggesting a possible revenue trail from the Nazi gold sales to the Bank for International Settlements, located in Basel, Switzerland. This "bankers ban ...
Society's Rules Don't Create Wealth
August 25, 2010
In olden days people were forced to labor for the king and his minions in return for being allowed to live within the realm. This kind of extortion finally got tossed over and people's basic right to their lives became acknowledged - in the political philosophy ...
Let the Housing Market Normalize!
August 24, 2010
Recently there have been some encouraging signs that Congress is finally willing to admit what should have been evident two years ago. Even after a $150 billion bailout, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still bankrupt and should be abolished. Indeed Rep. Barney F ...
Stoning & The Times
August 24, 2010
In this era when major political figures denounce ideological – by which they of course have in mind principled – thinking, why should one be consistent, show integrity? Those are not the virtues of sophisticates. Those are pedestrian ideals. As our preside ...
Principles vs. Pragmatism viz. the Mosque
August 23, 2010
If it is true that men and women in human communities ought not to intrude on their fellow citizens' liberties, then that idea would come in full strength just when it is most tempting to butt in. So, given how strongly millions of Americans feel that those pla ...
Revisiting Natural Rights
August 20, 2010
In response to an essay in which I discuss the difference between Amartya Sen's and the late Peter Bauer's recommendation for how countries can achieve economic development, one in which I touch on the topic of natural rights, someone sent the magazine where my ...
Revisiting Obama's Selective Pragmatism
August 19, 2010
Ironically, pragmatism, the quintessentially unprincipled philosophical movement, was born in America, the one country in human history and around the globe most explicitly tied to certain basic principles of community life – e.g., the existence of unalienabl ...
Infanticide & Instincts
August 18, 2010
As life rolls on for me, with many pluses and some minuses along the way, an issue that keeps propping up in my more academic studies is whether people have instincts like non-human animals supposedly do. Or are we born with what some refer to as a blank slate, ...
Washington's Idea of Fiscal Restraint
August 17, 2010
The truth comes out eventually, however. Much like the recently discovered exemption from Freedom of Information Act requirements for the SEC that was slipped into the equally massive and "urgent" financial reform bill, we are finally seeing what other insidiou ...
The Mosque Fiasco
August 17, 2010
For once I agree with something that President Obama said, if I understood him right: Muslims do have the basic right, one that is legally protected in a free country, to build a mosque anywhere they choose if they own the land (or are leasing it with permissi ...
The Cycle of Violence in Afghanistan
August 11, 2010
Last week the National Bureau of Economic Research published a report on the effect of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq that confirmed what critics of our foreign policy have been saying for years: the killing of civilians, although unintentional, an ...
Mose, My Hero
August 11, 2010
My current reason for deciding to celebrate Mose is a bit odd. He is one of the oldest jazz musicians still making the circuit regularly, having just recently returned from recording live two CDs in London, just as a sample. He is in his early 80s and sings and ...
Does Radical Left Favor Radical Islam?
August 10, 2010
Recently I have been recalling when University of Michigan Professor of Law, Catherine McKinnon used to advocate censoring pornography because she believed it is an assault upon women. She lays out her case in her very prestigiously published slim and readable ...
Beautiful & Bankrupt
August 05, 2010
On a recent visit to Portugal, near Lisbon and right off the Atlantic Coast, I rediscovered that country after having been away from it for 40 years. And it comes across very different now from what it was back then. Most surprisingly it comes across to me like ...
The Trouble With Unconstitutional Wars
August 04, 2010
Our foreign policy was in the spotlight last week, which is exactly where it should be. Almost two years ago many voters elected someone they thought would lead us to a more peaceful, rational co-existence with other countries. However, while attention has been ...
The World Turned Upside Down
August 04, 2010
Tradition says when Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown back in 1781 the British played this tune as they marched out of the fortifications in surrender to the American army. Whether this actually happened is open to debate but the loss suffered by the grea ...
Protecting Your IRA – Part V: An IRA Blessing for Your Heirs
August 01, 2010
An Open Opportunity IRA, however, can be used to control the potential tax bill on your estate, since it easily accommodates what has become a conventional estate planning strategy. With the Open Opportunity structure, your IRA holds just one asset – a limite ...
Protecting Your IRA – Part IV: Your Own Personal Tax Haven
July 31, 2010
An ordinary IRA requires you to be passive. You're not driving the bus, you're a passenger. An Open Opportunity IRA, on the other hand, lets you act. The IRA owns just one asset-a limited liability company (LLC). All the investing and earning happens inside the ...
Protecting Your IRA – Part 3: Saving Big on a Roth Conversion
July 30, 2010
When you withdraw the money, the deductible contributions you made to a traditional IRA and the income that's been earned inside the IRA will be taxed, as ordinary income. But there is an alternative that you can elect. New rules (effective starting in 2010) ma ...
Protecting Your IRA – Part 2: Getting Your IRA Out of Town
July 29, 2010
And investment freedom has not-so-obvious implications for safety. Open Opportunity IRAs make up less than 1% of the IRA universe. So if and when a team of Congressional staffers or a group of Treasury Department bureaucrats get busy drafting up new rules aimed ...
Gold Basis Screwed
July 29, 2010
There are other metrics beside the gold basis that the market has developed in the meantime. One such is GOFO = $ LIBOR – GLR (the gold lease rate). On the face of it, GOFO cannot ever go negative. If it did, it would mean that the risk in borrowing gold is g ...
A Lopsided Warning
July 28, 2010
The president of the AAUP - American Association of University Professors - issued a lengthy declaration warning the membership against getting involved with BP, the giant oil company whose operations have gone awry in the Gulf of Mexico and whose management is ...
Protecting Your IRA – Part 1: The Danger
July 28, 2010
There is now a robust political constituency supporting the generous tax treatment given to IRAs. One element is the 40 million people who have an IRA. A second element is the retail financial industry – banks, brokerage houses, mutual funds and insurance com ...
On the Bloated Intelligence Bureaucracy
July 27, 2010
Recently the Washington Post ran an extensive report by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin on the bloated intelligence community. They found that an estimated 854,000 people hold top-secret security clearances. Just what are all these people up to? By my calculat ...
Cultural Marxism: The Corruption of America
July 27, 2010
We, who were raised in pre-nihilist America, find most of today's movies, TV programs and literary works hideous and depressing. We cringe at the obsessive sexuality of Hollywood's cinematic pretensions, at its love affair with anti-heroes, and the reprehensibl ...
Real Bills Revisited
July 26, 2010
A real bill, as its name suggests, is just a notice of payment due that typically the wholesale merchant sends to the retail merchant along with his shipment of goods demanded most urgently by the consumers. It is useful to think of the bill as a security in th ...
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