EDITORIAL Showing 3651 - 2 of 2
In Praise of Working People
January 29, 2015
A prominent difference between the 19th-century libertarian movement and the contemporary one lies in their attitudes toward working people. These are people who are not primarily interested in reading economic or political theory, but who focus their energies ...
Bloomberg: 'That Horrible First Decade Is Over Now' … Or Is It?
January 28, 2015
We find this analysis questionable, indeed. Our favorite Bloomberg columnist, Noah Smith, has decided that the first 10 years of the century were hell, but apparently the five thereafter registered significant improvements. In other words, things are getting be ...
'Organic' Taking Its Place in the Elite Dialectic?
January 28, 2015
This article at CNN makes the point that organic foods are increasingly preferable because of the amount of herbicides the EPA is allowing in and on food-crops. We are beginning to see a dialectic here between "organic" and "Big Ag" crops. Big Ag uses herbicide ...
Handcuffs, Leg Shackles and Tasers: The New Face of Punishment in the Public Schools
January 28, 2015
Roughly 1500 kids are tied up or locked down every day by school officials in the United States. At least 500 students are locked up in some form of solitary confinement every day, whether it be a padded room, a closet or a duffel bag. In many cases, parents ar ...
Shock: CNN Editorial Calls for a North American Union
January 27, 2015
Is the campaign for a North American Union officially underway with this editorial appearing in CNN? Certainly conspiracy theorists might be justified in thinking so. For years, more than a decade, some have suspected that powerful bureaucracies in North Americ ...
Legal Marijuana: This Powerful Trend Is Your Friend
January 27, 2015
Over a year ago, we reported that the cannabis industry was poised for a powerful industrial takeoff, and now this article – and others like it – confirm what we believed. This is no aberration. Over the next months and years there will be considerable addi ...
Europe's Move in the Direction of More Monetary Mischief
January 27, 2015
The European Central Bank has announced its intention to create out of thin air over one trillion new euros from March 2015 to September 2016. The rationale, the monetary central planners say, is to prevent price deflation and "stimulate" the European economy i ...
Draghi Plays His Part in Europe's 'Long War'
January 26, 2015
Every mainstream endorsement can be followed by an alternative point of view, carefully crafted. We call this the dialectic, and sometimes the points of view surprise us with their accuracy. Economics writer Liam Halligan provides us, above, with a counterpoint ...
India a 'Trusted' Nation?
January 26, 2015
Is this for real? India is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, as well as one of the most populous. If India is the second most trusted nation in the world, then God help the others. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about India: A study conducted by ...
Education is Too Important Not to Leave to the Marketplace
January 26, 2015
This week, events around the country will highlight the importance of parental control of education as part of National School Choice Week. This year's events should attract more attention than prior years because of the growing rebellion against centralized ed ...
Freedom, Where Are You?
January 26, 2015
Not in America or Europe - When the former Goldman Sachs executive who runs the European Central Bank (ECB) announced that he was going to print 720 billion euros annually with which to purchase bad debts from the politically connected big banks, the euro sank ...
Peter Boettke: The Transformative Rise of Austrian Economics
January 25, 2015
Economic policy determines the wealth and poverty of nations … The fundamental cause of a nation's economic fate is not to be found in geography, or resource abundance, but in the ideas and institutions that define that system. Private property, freedom of tr ...
The Great Davos Echo Chamber
January 24, 2015
We've been covering the Economic Forum in Davos from the standpoint of its "mood" ... which is said to be distinctly downbeat this time around. But I want to comment on notable speeches being presented by various august personages. First up is Bill Gates who ac ...
Uneasy Dawn in Davos as Elite Sacrifices Its Own
January 23, 2015
The "big brains" gathered in Davos are mostly successful in material terms and powerful from the standpoint of our modern economic system. But in the early 21st century, these attributes may prove ephemeral. And that's probably the reason for the gloom that is ...
The Mess in Ukraine Bears Watching
January 23, 2015
The drumbeat advocating additional sanctions against Putin and Russia is evident in this Bloomberg "editors" editorial. It is this attitude that will support a continuance of the Ukraine standoff. From what we can tell, the episode was initiated by the West to ...
Safe Haven 101: For Investors Concerned About the Future
January 23, 2015
Dictionaries broadly define a safe haven as a place of refuge or sanctuary. I'm using the term to describe a hoped for place of security if a future catastrophe should take place. Possibilities include a major natural disaster, the coming end of the forced petr ...
More Central Bank Communication Is Good If It Tells the Truth
January 22, 2015
We never believed the Fed would tighten. And we don't. Not really. We've regularly made statements to that effect. If Fed officials do "tighten" – we figure they'll find some other way to loosen. The money printing goes on. And now here come reports to the ef ...
As Prohibition Unravels this Time, Hard Questions May Be Asked
January 22, 2015
A judge is about to rule on the dangers of cannabis and the ruling may well contradict the federal DEA when it comes to sustaining the position that it is as dangerously addictive as heroin. But there is a larger issue here, which is how fedgov arrived at such ...
America's Growth Industry: Probation and Parole
January 22, 2015
The true and staggering rate of incarceration in America is masked by the unconventional cages that are rarely factored into the head count. Many people are caged in an unconventional manner for trivial and nonviolent offenses such as driving without a license ...
The Dire State of Our Nation (What You Won't Hear from the Politicians)
January 22, 2015
No matter what the politicians might say about how great America is, the fact is that the nation seems to be imploding. Consider the following facts: Our government is massively in debt. Currently, the national debt is somewhere in the vicinity of $18 trillion. ...
Why Are Central Bankers Surprised by Monetary Disasters?
January 21, 2015
Again we see the adoption of a dialectical position. The mainstream media has been in full cry over the necessity for money printing and central bank bond purchases. Now, comes a BIS former official – apparently someone with considerable clout – who says ex ...
Rickards: Gold Is Being Manipulated for China's Benefit
January 21, 2015
Jim Rickards's column has created a stir among alternative media commentators. GATA's Chris Powell posted a column of his own, commenting on it favorably. Of course, GATA has devoted many years to exposing gold (and silver) manipulation, so Rickards's column at ...
The Unraveling of the US Middle Class Is Monetary and Corporate
January 20, 2015
The West's economic system, we know now, regularly strips people of wealth. Monopoly central banks debase the currency via money printing and large corporations make entrepreneurialism difficult. If Obama wanted to revive the middle class in the US, he would ha ...
Finding Farmland: Global Maps Help Fight Hunger
January 20, 2015
Is this sudden interest in mapping farmland a back-door justification for the advancement of Big Agriculture? Will it justify as well a sudden drop in food production and rising farmland prices across the board? The idea of this article is that farmland must no ...
Global Free Trade Makes for Mutual Prosperity and World Peace
January 20, 2015
The recent brutal events in France have reminded us how small the world is that we all share. Violence and conflicts that have their origin in one part of the globe shows itself in another part of our planet. And mass media immediately shares those events with ...
ECB Stimulation: The Trap Closes
January 19, 2015
So now it begins. Last week the EU Court of Justice advocate general ruled that the central bank could purchase sovereign debt. One by one, the hurdles are toppling and the reality of ECB market purchases grows closer. Of course, last year the German constituti ...
Davos Will Focus on Loss of Trust Regarding Big Business and Big Finance
January 19, 2015
This article features a mainstream newspaper reporting clearly what we already know but have rarely seen admitted in the mainstream: Big business and big finance equally have lost the "trust" battle. The paradigm is no longer believable. Having made the admissi ...
If the Fed Has Nothing to Hide, It Has Nothing to Fear
January 19, 2015
Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the dollar has lost over 97 percent of its purchasing power, the US economy has been subjected to a series of painful Federal Reserve-created recessions and depressions, and government has grown to dangerous le ...
William J. Watkins Jr.: Our Patent Mess and the Misery of Its ‘Trolls’
January 18, 2015
We have this issue now with patent law where we have a number of entities out there that aren't making any products, don't want to make a product but what they want to do is acquire dated patents, older patents, and then come up with a legal claim that some oth ...
Alarmism Goes Global: Now Comes the 'Tipping Point' Meme
January 17, 2015
Common Dreams has posted an article entitled, "In Just 60 Years, Neoliberal Capitalism Has Nearly Broken Planet Earth ..." The idea according to researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Centre is that "four of nine planetary boundaries have now been crossed as a ...
Deflation! … The Swiss Surrender
January 16, 2015
The meme is strong in this one, apologies to Star Wars. Every time we turn around, we're seeing more mainstream reports about the dangers of deflation. Now, having rejected their gold referendum, the Swiss have de-pegged their currency from the floundering euro ...
Forbes Says 'Consider Colombia' … We Agree
January 16, 2015
Over and over magazines churn out reports on the best places for retirement. The suspects are usually much the same names from year to year. But we are never to know all the variables, or why the countries place where they do in these rankings. In the case of C ...
Read the Alternative Media to Understand Bitcoin … and Money Generally
January 15, 2015
Bitcoin is not worth what it used to be mostly in our view because of various "raids" by authorities that have tied the crypto-currency to bad actors and "drug dealers." But we want to make another point. This Economist article shows us once more how one can wr ...
Should the Fed Stop Paying Interest to Banks on Reserves?
January 15, 2015
Why is inflation good? Why is disinflation or deflation bad? We know what Murray Rothbard believed because he told us: In a free-market economy, there would be gentle deflation because technology constantly made goods and services less expensive. He had no prob ...
The Proofiness of the Politically Correct Rape
January 15, 2015
A legion of the politically correct who make a living from the alleged oppression of women were gleeful and almost goofy with proofiness this week. The incident is a window into how statistical myths are created. Charles Seife, a journalist and a professor at N ...
British Sobs of Deflation
January 14, 2015
The deflation meme remains in full cry in Western media. Europe is in a deflationary morass and only Mario Draghi and a Brussels QE can save Europe from appreciating currency. Japan is printing as hard as it can and China is revving up the presses once again. B ...
Getting Excited About Properties Abroad
January 14, 2015
Actually, we are not surprised by this sort of article. It is a bubble article and bubbles are blowing up everywhere – East and West. Central banks are printing and rates are lowering despite the doom and gloom regarding inflation. The asset bubbles are right ...
Oil Wars Heating Up
January 13, 2015
In our view, there is a kind of cold war going on between the US and Russia. The US worked to destabilize Ukraine from what we can tell and now along with Saudi Arabia has caused the price of oil to plummet. Low prices for oil put pressure on Russia's economy a ...
Monsanto's Bad Year Just Beginning?
January 13, 2015
Years of protesting Monsanto's business practices may be having an effect. Monsanto is well known for various questionable business practices that result in lawsuits and often put significant burdens on small farmers who cannot afford continued litigation. But ...
Lessons for Winning Liberty in a World of Statism
January 13, 2015
Friends of freedom often become despondent when it seems that every day brings another growth and intrusion of government over people's lives. But there is no reason to be disheartened, because there are lessons for winning liberty – from the opponents of fre ...
Lessons from Paris
January 13, 2015
After the tragic shooting at a provocative magazine in Paris last week, I pointed out that given the foreign policy positions of France we must consider blowback as a factor. Those who do not understand blowback made the ridiculous claim that I was excusing the ...
Students Rip Open the Economic Dialectic Around the World
January 12, 2015
The Internet Reformation continues. The point of this article is that the Crash of 2008-2009 has given rise to an academic confrontation between professors and students regarding how economics is taught. But for us, the Internet as well must play a role in this ...
A Global Wall Street Party?
January 12, 2015
We are always on the verge of a recovery and then rates will have to move up. That seems to be a fairly consistent mainstream meme. But in the meantime, of course, rates are NOT going up. And this fits into our larger perspective that in a monopoly-fiat central ...
The Police Threat Is Too High
January 12, 2015
The hypocrisy of American police is beginning to bother even law and order conservatives. The New York Police Department is rivaling the black community in Ferguson in keeping alive the murders of their community members. We are constantly reminded of how dange ...
Dr. Antal Fekete: Blowing Up Modern Austrian Economics … in a Good Way
January 11, 2015
Gold coins are the most marketable instruments known to man. Its holder can trade on the best terms possible. Gold bills are the second most marketable instruments. Demand for them is virtually unlimited. Banks overflowing with gold coins scramble to expel them ...
Top Speculator Peter Thiel Makes a Big Bet on the Cannabis Industry
January 10, 2015
As we predicted long ago, cannabis is gradually emerging as an industry. Those of us who saw the opportunity knew the large money would be made as the market gradually developed venture-capital and IPO participation. That's what is occurring now. Ultimately, th ...
Does This Just-Floated Interest-Rate Meme Prepare Us for Higher Highs?
January 09, 2015
This is a continuation of the Wall Street Party meme. We don't believe the Fed has any intention of disinflating, let alone deflating (not seriously anyway) but just in case something happens … here comes Bloomberg to inform us that it doesn't matter. Not to ...
In the Race to 'Medicalize' Cannabis, Big Pharma Stumbles
January 09, 2015
The big problem with modern Western medicine is that everything has to be turned into a chemical before it can be marketed. No chemical, no profit, as no one can patent a plant. But if you can mimic the effects of that plant, without using the plant, or use the ...
Inner City Turmoil and Other Crises: My Predictions for 2015
January 09, 2015
If Americans were honest with themselves they would acknowledge that the Republic is no more. We now live in a police state. If we do not recognize and resist this development, freedom and prosperity for all Americans will continue to deteriorate. All liberties ...
Some May Want Merkel to Be the Euro-Queen, But That Seems Problematic
January 08, 2015
This article is a good example of an EU "leadership" meme. This is actually two themes in one. The first, oft promoted meme is that the EU has devolved into Germany's back yard. It is Germany's union to run as it wishes. The second meme is that leaders like Ms. ...
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