STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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July 15, 2013
One of the sadder developments of modernity is the resoluteness with which the public sector expands. There is almost nothing that an expanding bureaucracy envisions as beyond its reach. Bureaucratic rigor always insists on more and more control. Government run ...
July 12, 2013
So it begins. Having created Frankenstein's monetary monster, those attending to it now gather at the gurney peering down at the misshapen and deadly creature and ... palaver. There is not much else they can do. Their tools are limited or useless and the creatu ...
July 12, 2013
We see similarities between what we observed in today's lead article and the ongoing European crisis. Increasingly, it does not seem as if the powers-that-be are engaged in a rescue operation so much as enmeshed in a purposeful metaphor. The metaphor is not enu ...
July 12, 2013
This article makes the point that privatizing the monopoly services of regulatory democracies is actually dangerous and unworkable. We've made the same point. The article doesn't go far enough, however, in terms of nomenclature. The article calls what is going ...
July 12, 2013
There is a sort of gloating quality to this article that is not usually seen in BusinessWeek. But perhaps that is because hedge funds have come to represent free-market capitalism and are therefore fair game for criticism by the mainstream media, which tends to ...
July 12, 2013
This article is posted over at TooBigHasFailed.org, a website that parallels official positions such as those taken by Elizabeth Warren (see above) and Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas M. Hoenig, who has written a white paper entitled "Too Big ...
July 11, 2013
We recently posted an article on the confusion between inflation and price inflation and this article posted at The Atlantic is further evidence of this purposeful confusion. Why is it purposeful? Because almost everything these days is an argument between thos ...
July 11, 2013
Monetary authorities have been working overtime to reinflate Western economies without much success, as this International Monetary Fund report shows us. Money printing can only go so far and when it comes to the Eurozone and even to the US, the results of macr ...
July 11, 2013
So now it becomes clearer. If one grants that social control is a process of Hegelian interactions – thesis, antithesis and then synthesis – then one also grants its implementation. Can we not see the growing chaos around the world, especially in Africa and ...
July 11, 2013
We agree that Egypt is in for a long period of upheaval and bloodshed now, but we disagree with Reuters on the reason. As experienced meme watchers, we've observed the unfolding of the current Egyptian political standoff and we don't have any reason to believe ...
July 10, 2013
If a central banker wanted to take a nap he would describe it as a "prone reversion to the mean." These fellows are always coming up with fancy ways to describe what we would humbly characterize as simplistic and even financially illiterate economic policies. O ...
July 10, 2013
What planet does Wonkblog live on? This article is the result of Federal Reserve compilation of debt data throughout the US and is a good example of the old adage "garbage in/garbage out." There are, of course, lots of reasons why consumer credit could be incre ...
July 10, 2013
One can make a case that both UKIP and the US Tea Party movement are the "managed opposition," at this point any way. But at the same time, their emergence obviously indicates that there is a larger social movement that has taken shape. If one feels the need to ...
July 10, 2013
This article takes a position of shock regarding Latvia's joining the EU. In fact, it states that such a situation has never taken place before. We would beg to differ. The populations of various countries have been indicating their dissatisfaction for years wi ...
July 09, 2013
We are not so sure that China and the United States are "mirror opposites." We do believe that private interests run political systems around the world and always have. And that goes for China, too. We don't believe Chinese politicians are fully in charge of Ch ...
July 09, 2013
For us, asking the direction of gold prices relative to the dollar in the immediate future is perhaps the wrong question. The right question to ask for many is probably whether one has an investment plan – or even a survivalist strategy – and whether it inc ...
July 09, 2013
Just as in the 1970s, the 2000s have offered a resurgence of interest in alternative forms of energy and transportation. And the results for the most part have been predictable. Solar panel companies have raised lots of money and then gone out of business. Elec ...
July 09, 2013
Is it fair to write about Ms. Carney and her preoccupations, given that she is a private citizen and not one of the most powerful people on the planet – like her husband Mark Carney, head of the Bank of England? Our answer is obviously a qualified yes because ...
July 09, 2013
The Greek austerity package has been disastrous, trapping millions in a further cycle of poverty while stripping them of assets and promised retirement benefits. So what has the point of austerity been? We would argue it is simply to assert the primacy of a cer ...
July 08, 2013
This is a revealing editorial in Business Insider because it shows more clearly than most what the deeper issues are surrounding Bernanke – and the worldwide discussion regarding his strategies and preferences. The discussion is really about the efficiency of ...
July 08, 2013
We were tipped to what was in store for the Bank of England's new head Mark Carney when former top banker Mervyn King described him as the "best central banker" of his generation. This was a phenomenally unusual description and seemed to us to have been a descr ...
July 08, 2013
In our initial analysis of the Egyptian political mess, we wondered if the Anglosphere, in particular Foggy Bottom and Washington DC, hadn't been dealt one of the most significant setbacks of recent imperialism. While we confessed we didn't know, it is beginnin ...
July 08, 2013
War. Somewhere. Regrettable but necessary. This is what Tony Blair is telling us in this lengthy and merciless article that recently appeared in the (increasingly schizophrenic) UK Guardian newspaper. We call the article merciless not because of its bellicosity ...
July 05, 2013
We return to the ongoing saga of China because we remember only a few years ago that China was the darling of Western investment and Wall Street. We didn't understand how any economy could generate 10 percent growth per year for literally decades, but others se ...
July 05, 2013
There are so many complicated terms surrounding central bank policy. Every time central bankers print more money in different ways, they have to give it a fancy name to make it sound scientific. Quantitative easing is just the latest term. It's just another way ...
July 05, 2013
Paul Krugman is obviously gratified that world trade is growing though in this little article, he hastens to say there is "no moral" to the point he is making. But globalists are always happy when global trade expands. And Krugman is nothing if not a globalist. ...
July 05, 2013
Western law is a plaything in the hands of the powerful. The libertarian think tank Cato makes this point powerfully, above. Here's more: The IRS's unilateral decision to delay the employer mandate is the latest indication that we do not live under a Rule of La ...
July 05, 2013
But we don't. We live in a world increasingly afflicted by determined globalism and wanton lawlessness, in part generated by regulatory democracy itself. "The more laws, the more criminals," the Japanese tell us. And the West has long since departed from the gr ...
July 04, 2013
So perhaps it will be ElBaradei after all ... He's been waiting in the wings and the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood's regime may now bring him to the fore. Here is what we wrote about ElBaradei way back in 2011 in an article entitled "Middle East Dreamtime": ...
July 04, 2013
What the hell is going on? Mohamed Morsi's removal constitutes one of the greatest reversals of US diplomacy and intelligence operations in the modern era? Wasn't Morsi Washington's man? We've stayed away from commenting because there are no "elves" on the grou ...
July 04, 2013
So we can see from this article provided by the AP to the Wall Street Journal that influential economists are apparently all of a socialist strain. Here's the list: 2013 1. Paul Krugman 2. Joseph Stiglitz 3. Bill Gates 4. Michael Porter 5. Thomas Friedman 6. Er ...
July 04, 2013
We've been chronicling the arrival of the "most powerful" central banker of his era, the new head of the Bank of England, Mark Carney ... and this latest news squib is certainly worthy of mention. It provides yet one more example of how those involved with cent ...
July 04, 2013
We've learned a lot about Mark Carney's style, but there is a good deal of substance to the newest and most important central banker of them all. Or so the Guardian tells us. There has been much talk in the UK about the recovery being strong enough for the Bank ...
July 04, 2013
We were struck by this commentary about "World War Z" over at top libertarian website LewRockwell.com because it parallels some commentary that appeared in these pages a while back. Here's what Anthony Wile wrote in an opinion piece on December 12, 2012: A movi ...
July 03, 2013
Now comes the test! Will Carney vote for more monetary debasement or less? Will the price-fixing of money be compounded by hyperactivity or will it be slightly lessened? The proposition is equivalent to asking someone if he has ceased to beat his wife so often. ...
July 03, 2013
PCWorld is owned by IDG, a huge conglomerate that solicits advertising from the entire spectrum of Silicon Valley tech companies. These companies have been cooperating intimately with US intel for a decade or more. We are supposed to believe that these same com ...
July 03, 2013
There are a variety of problems with the public administration of private funds, and this article mentions the latest outbreak of Anglo-American difficulties centering on the BBC. Apparently, the BBC had been paying off disgruntled managers with huge cash settl ...
July 03, 2013
Why does Wonkbook call for this? It is surely a dominant social theme that if US citizens want to do well, Congress has to do better. For US society to do well, Congress ought to work hard at one thing: repeals. The main legislation to be turned back has to do ...
July 03, 2013
Milton Friedman is seen as the dominant free-market thinker of his age. And yet during his lifetime he created withholding for the graduated income tax, called for a "steady state" central bank and now, it turns out, was behind the myth that corporations should ...
July 03, 2013
Ms. Couric once anchored one of the most important news programs in the US, and thus in all the world. She is a reporter of consequence, even if she is not consequential at all. She rose to prominence as "perky" Katie on the "Today Show," first as a second fidd ...
July 02, 2013
The question haunts many an investor and economist: Will China experience a soft landing? To us the answer to the question is obvious: China is destined, sooner or later, to land "hard." How can it be otherwise? The Chinese central bank has been extraordinarily ...
July 02, 2013
In a series of articles, we've tried to explain that Africa is likely next on the menu when it comes to the Westernization of the global economy. First came Japan and then China. And if you go back far enough, you will come to the Marshall Plan, which industria ...
July 02, 2013
Yesterday, we pointed out that the media was considerably more interested in examining the question of US surveillance and its necessity, or lack thereof, than in reviewing the many questions lingering around 9/11. Today, we bear witness to an object lesson reg ...
July 02, 2013
Those who are waiting for the "navel of the world" to calm down – for a reduction in hostilities, in other words – may have a longer wait than expected. While the Taliban have made noises about negotiating an end to the current episode of the West's century ...
July 02, 2013
The puzzling thing about the decline in the price of gold relative to dollars is that there is demand for the physical stuff, and now that physical demand may be translating into higher prices generally ... as Bloomberg notes. Certainly, the physical demand has ...
July 01, 2013
This article makes good points, but why does it begin with the idea that inflation is by definition a rise in prices? Inflation is monetary and must precede a rise in prices. One is an instigator, the other a result. Not for the author of this article, though. ...
July 01, 2013
We've been tracking the fulsome articles about Mark Carney in the UK Telegraph, which is an influential royalist newspaper in Britain. This is the best one yet. While the Telegraph publishes many interesting articles that debunk mainstream verities, when it com ...
July 01, 2013
Paul Krugman has decided, as he does in almost every column, that if he were in charge of monetary policy, the world would be a better place, especially the US. For Krugman, who is a winner of the "fake" Nobel Prize in economics, money is paper printed by a mon ...
July 01, 2013
A conversation was recently leaked in the Irish press that might seem to confirm the worst fears about evil bankers. In the reports circulating first in the Irish media and now throughout the world, two top bankers are heard on the phone agreeing that the estim ...
July 01, 2013
An argument is being made that Britain's nascent freedom movement ought not to receive a reaction because it is unimportant. UKIP, running mainly on the idea of removing Britain from the EU, has received an enthusiastic response from the British public. And tha ...