STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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June 23, 2014
Leviathan's bold policy makers are busy launching a whole new rationale for perfervid market interference: Central banking policy is evolutionary and thus regulatory policy needs to be as well. You read that right. Regulations should be written so that they can ...
June 23, 2014
We've been continually predicting this evolution ever since recent elections showed more and more "Europeans" are rejecting both the euro and the European Union. Eurocrats believed that implementing the euro would eventually prove economically destructive but t ...
June 23, 2014
Oklahoma recently took action to protect the state's children from the federal education bureaucracy by withdrawing from Common Core. Common Core is the latest attempt to bribe states, with money taken from the American people, into adopting a curriculum develo ...
June 22, 2014
I think the most important thing is education, spreading the message, which is where we're having success, and getting people to understand free-market economics – why it's good and why it's beneficial to the largest number of people and the reason we had a l ...
June 21, 2014
The drums of war are beating, as Paul Craig Roberts pointed out in a recent, controversial column posted at The Daily Bell. Certainly, he has a point. In this article, I'll review his arguments in light of the continued evolution of military and political tensi ...
June 20, 2014
This editorial is startling because it marries strong rhetoric to a simplistic view of the US South and its apparently irredeemable backwardness. The putative reason to write this editorial is because of the publication of a new book that argues that Northern d ...
June 20, 2014
It's happening throughout the US: Entrepreneurs are finding niches to exploit the coming marijuana legalization. There are an increasing number of media reports about various ventures. This article mentions two of them. The first is a company that delivers mari ...
June 20, 2014
The essential economic problem we confront today is that our dominant Keynesian intellectuals have abandoned reality. They do not grasp what they have wrought with the mountainous loads of debt and malinvestment that are overwhelming us. Much of this burden mus ...
June 19, 2014
The Federal Reserve has cut its growth forecast but we know that such conclusions are bound to be faulty because the numbers being used are inaccurate and the assumptions behind Fed pronouncements are illogical. It is hard to constantly remind oneself of the es ...
June 19, 2014
Milton Friedman is for the most part considered a great man by free-marketers. But when one looks at his work dispassionately several questions arise. How could someone so motivated to enhance marketplace freedom come up with the idea of "income-tax withholding ...
June 19, 2014
Murray Rothbard used the "lone crazy" theory to describe the individual who comes out of nowhere and dramatically alters the course of history; perhaps he assassinates a president. The lone crazy could also be an event, such as 9/11. Its essence is surprise, im ...
June 18, 2014
For many years, we've been writing that Western stock markets are pushed upwards via central bank money printing. So the idea that central banks are directly holding equities is no surprise. What is slightly surprising is that the OMFIF is being allowed to publ ...
June 18, 2014
We offer this analysis as further proof that the meme we've discerned regarding the legalization of drugs – all drugs – remains in play. Context is important, and so we note that Rand Paul's perspective on drug legalization founds its way into the Huffingto ...
June 18, 2014
Arms are weapons with which to physically overpower others. There are justified and unjustified cases of overpowering others. Self-defense is clearly a case of the former. Aggressing upon another, robbing, murdering, raping, assaulting or kidnapping another wou ...
June 18, 2014
I wish I had only good news to bring to readers, or even one item of good news. Alas, goodness has ceased to be a feature of US policy and simply cannot be found in any words or deeds emanating from Washington or the capitals of its European vassal states. The ...
June 17, 2014
Another article about the lifestyles of the rich and famous provides yet more evidence of growing asset bubbles. The biggest bubble of all is in equity markets, especially US equity markets; for those who want further proof of how central bank economies work, t ...
June 17, 2014
This is a tough article about Homeland Security and what it is doing to what's left of US freedoms. The author is John Whitehead. Here, from his bio: John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of consti ...
June 17, 2014
For more than two hundred years, practically all of the leading advocates of individual liberty and free markets have assumed that money and banking were different from other types of goods and markets. From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, the presumption has be ...
June 16, 2014
This is a good example of the deteriorating level of US government behavior. It's disturbing because it seems to shows an escalating level of recklessness. We last wrote about this here: When It Comes to Lawlessness in the US, Preparation Is the Essence of Fore ...
June 16, 2014
Western officials are increasingly willing to make threats in support of elite dominant social themes. Not surprisingly, we're seeing this sort of behavior as regards global warming. There is no doubt that warmist sentiment is waning in the West but this does n ...
June 16, 2014
In 2006, I invited the late General Bill Odom to address my Thursday Congressional luncheon group. Gen. Odom, a former NSA director, called the Iraq war "the greatest strategic disaster in American history," and told the surprised audience that he could not und ...
June 14, 2014
European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs László Andor has delivered a historic speech calling for a deeper union. It is at least in part a response to recent Euro-elections that showed the EU electorate is fed up with "Europe." In "European Com ...
June 13, 2014
We didn't intend to comment on the Cantor defeat again, having just written about it yesterday. But our attention was drawn to this article in the National Review because of the description of the Tea Party as "radical, anti-institutional, anti-leadership, anti ...
June 13, 2014
Do you work for the DEA on issues related to the continued criminalization of marijuana? Better have your resume handy ... As we've pointed out many times before, increasingly the "marijuana meme" is not up for discussion. There are powerful forces at work supp ...
June 13, 2014
Dave Brat, a professor of economics at Virginia's Randolph-Macon College, is a marked man. Professor Brat defeated Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a prime trophy of the Israel Lobby. I doubt that Eric Cantor ever lost an opportunity to place Israe ...
June 12, 2014
From a UK Telegraph article we learn that, "Authorities are about to funnel large sums into Japanese stocks openly and deliberately under the next phase of Abenomics, both by regulatory fiat and by purchasing the Nikkei index directly with printed money." Does ...
June 12, 2014
Cantor wasn't tough enough on immigration, and that's why he lost. This "explanation" fits in with a larger meme that we've presented in the past: There's no stopping the Tea Party, at least at a personal, non-organizational, level. Of course, parts of the poli ...
June 12, 2014
"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." – Henry David Thoreau Evidence that something is wrong with a theory is rarely as obvious as a trout in the milk. This is particularly true when a belief is deeply-held or in ...
June 11, 2014
Just yesterday we criticized the movement to create a universal basic income. This movement to repudiate public debt makes us uneasy as well, unless it is accompanied by a rollback of the fundamental building blocks of the modern state: corporate personhood and ...
June 11, 2014
The Indian media, like the Indian government, has been "talking down" gold for quite a while now. This is unusual in a country where so many people buy gold, especially gold jewelry, on a regular basis. But it is symptomatic of a larger "bankers' war" being wag ...
June 11, 2014
To begin with, I want to make it clear that human beings have a moral nature. That is the kind of individuals they are. This is controversial because a good many people in the social sciences and in society in general have some problems with the idea that we ar ...
June 10, 2014
The world grows more lawless. It is especially obvious in the US, where bold, public displays of lawlessness have been not been a common occurrence in the past ... These days, there seems to be a steady stream of questionable activities taking place. Obamacare ...
June 10, 2014
Again the market climbs. And this is why ... A nearby comet made of salt has focused certain gravitational flows by seasoning the appropriate neurons. This has created higher stock prices by acting on the Big Board the way the moon acts on the tides. We can do ...
June 10, 2014
The advocates of the "thin" version of a defense of liberty argue that the primary and essential issue concerns the principle and logic of "non-aggression." That is, the classical liberal or libertarian basically should be concerned with one, and only one, issu ...
June 09, 2014
If Britain's economy is improving, it's due to monetary stimulation not natural causes. Ms. Christine Lagarde ought to comment on the mechanism of "economic improvement," but she won't. She should comment on it because the kind of low-interest, high-money print ...
June 09, 2014
The libertarian media has been extraordinarily successful in this era of the Internet because freedom is the default preference of most people. Ask individuals if they want to pay high taxes, have their movements restricted by a plethora of passports and visas, ...
June 09, 2014
President Obama's recent foreign policy speech, delivered at this year's West Point graduation ceremony, was a disappointment to anyone who hoped the president might be changing course. The failure of each US intervention thus far in the 21st century might have ...
June 08, 2014
I believe that it is an inappropriate use of state power to infringe upon the liberties of an individual simply based upon what he or she puts in their body. And nowhere do I believe this infringement upon the individual's liberty is more egregious than in situ ...
June 07, 2014
The Christian Science Monitor has published an attack on marijuana legalization entitled, "The real marijuana story." The cut line explains, "The common assumption that it's a harmless drug is challenged in a prominent medical journal." That medical journal is ...
June 06, 2014
Read the above explanation for why stocks have "made a new record," and one can come away with the idea that the market is being driven by fundamentals like "employment" ... along with necessary strategies involving deeply discounted interest rates. The overwhe ...
June 06, 2014
Excuse us for being cynical, but this is not the way real change occurs. This is kinda ... Hollywood change, where large groups get together spurred on by "leaders" and society evolves in ways that are admirable and well-intentioned but ultimately ineffective. ...
June 06, 2014
It began in the early 1940s. FDR had launched the New Deal's collectivization of America, and a small but prescient group of libertarian and conservative intellectuals were in rebellion – such thinkers as Richard Weaver, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Joh ...
June 05, 2014
Is the gold bull market really over? Bloomberg says it is. We see the world a little differently, of course. We don't see any real lessening of demand for gold, or for silver for that matter. But Bloomberg has a narrative and they're sticking to it. Here's more ...
June 05, 2014
Let the good times roll. Once again, monetary inflation is being confused with high-end entrepreneurialism. If there was any question about our Wall Street Party meme, this article should help dispel it. Always, these sorts of articles show up when the stock ma ...
June 05, 2014
Can a libertarian support or engage in war? Some libertarians point to the right of self-defense to justify going to war. An individual has the right to defend himself with deadly force, if necessary, against an aggressor. If you multiply the justified individu ...
June 05, 2014
What are we to make of this? http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/03/justice/wisconsin-girl-stabbed/index.html Two 12 year-old white American girls who look perfectly normal stabbed their 12-year old friend 19 times in a murder attempt. By murdering their friend the ...
June 04, 2014
Many now know about the security overreach in the West and especially in the United States, thanks to Edward Snowden's exposes. We are not so sure about the Snowden narrative, believing that it at least partially served the interests of a Western intelligence t ...
June 04, 2014
We believe equity marts are headed higher still. But we are not so certain about the direction of the larger economy, either in the US or overseas. However, this article, excerpted above, seems to take it as a given that the US economy is headed up. In the long ...
June 04, 2014
A great many theories of government and social organization rest on consideration of man's perfection. From the time of Plato, philosophers and political theorists have formulated much of their thinking about political communities in line with some view about t ...
June 03, 2014
In keeping with one of our newer dominant social themes, we present the above excerpt on the possibility of a near-term stock market crash and how investors seem to be ignoring it. We call this meme the "Wall Street Party." Now ,why would there be a party durin ...
