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Reuters: Business News
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Original Articles -
Jacobine, Kenn
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Written by Kenn Jacobine
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Tuesday, 30 June 2009 19:48 |
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Cap and Trade is Obama’s Smoot-Hawley
History repeats itself. It is amazing how similar the 1920s and 2000s have become. First, were the unsustainable economic booms; then came the busts. Of course the easy money policies of the Federal Reserve caused both busts. Then there is the government’s response to both crises – public works programs, lots of stimulus spending, more easy money by the Fed, and tax hikes on the rich. For sure, these policies did not cure what was ailing the economy in the late 1920s and they are not curing our economic ills today in the late 2000s. Really, the only dreadful piece of the government’s response to the crisis in the 1920s that is missing from today’s response is trade protectionism.
Hold on one minute. The House this past week passed the president’s cap and trade legislation. Now, I know that cap and trade has nothing to do with trade between countries and protectionism. It is not legislation intended to protect domestic products against foreign competition like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was intended to do in 1929. Instead, cap and trade is intended to protect the environment against foreign substances. On the surface, to compare the two measures is a stretch. However, the consequences of cap and trade if passed by the Senate will be very similar to those of Smoot Hawley during the Great Depression.
Read the remainder of the article.
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Original Articles -
Jacobine, Kenn
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Written by Kenn Jacobine
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Sunday, 14 June 2009 18:50 |
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HR 1207 Must Become Law!
Contacting your congressperson to ask them to cosponsor legislation you believe in does work. Oh, we are always told that members of Congress care about the views of the folks back home. But, being a libertarian, I am usually on the other side of every political decision that is made. I mean, I haven’t voted for a presidential winner or even the runner up in that contest since 1988. It is lonely in the political wilderness. That is why this week was special. HR. 1207 Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 would “amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States.” In other words, the legislation would force the Fed for the first time in its 95 year history to come clean and submit to an audit similar to the ones carried out against other private banks. |
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Original Articles -
Jacobine, Kenn
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Written by Kenn Jacobine
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Monday, 08 June 2009 05:52 |
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House Republicans Must Be Joking
Thomas Jefferson said, “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” Certainly, our current unhappiness as a nation can be partially attributed to the fact that for at least the last 38 years we have allowed government at all levels in the United States to rack up enormous debt in the name of providing for the needs of the American people. The $400 billion national debt in 1971 has ballooned to well over $11 trillion today. Our national debt as a nation has gotten so bad that the ratio between debt and GDP will soon be one to one. Most sane Americans agree that the lunacy must end. The President, however, doesn’t see things quite the same way. He has proposed a $3.5 trillion budget for fiscal year 2010. Besides being the largest budget proposal in the history of the republic, it is filled with items the President claims the American people need. You know the same kinds of expenditures which have traditionally produced huge deficits and sent our total debt into the stratosphere – more for college loans, worker retraining, nutrition, health and housing programs.
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What we are about to tell you may be the most important information that we have imparted in almost 50 years.
Something very bad is looming – we don’t know the exact configuration yet, but we think the key is the collapse of the dollar, which will send gold and silver to considerably higher prices.
Read more...
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Original Articles -
Jacobine, Kenn
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Written by Kenn Jacobine
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Saturday, 30 May 2009 07:03 |
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Could Fed Style Banking Save California?
As was mentioned in this column last week, given the defeat of tax hike propositions in California, the state is in a real quandary to find $24 billion dollars by July to close its budget gap. Without those funds or new debt guaranteed by the federal government, California will face insolvency by mid-summer. Unlike Washington, Sacramento cannot just print money out of thin air to put off paying its bills indefinitely. Even that technique of monetary policy is about to catch up with the entire country soon when people begin spending and prices hit the roof. No, it seems the only way for the Gold Plated State to settle its fiscal woes is to cut payrolls and services.
Not so fast you doomsayers, Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt, and blogger on the leftist Huffington Post believes she has come up with a scheme to keep the socialistic gravy train in the state rolling without interruption. She admits California cannot print its own money, but it can open a state owned bank that can create money through credit entries on its books. To explain how it would work she quotes the webpage for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: “Banks actually create money when they lend it. Here's how it works: Most of a bank's loans are made to its own customers and are deposited in their checking accounts. Because the loan becomes a new deposit, just like a paycheck does, the bank...holds a small percentage of that new amount in reserve and again lends the remainder to someone else, repeating the money-creation process many times.”
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Original Articles -
Jacobine, Kenn
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Written by Kenn Jacobine
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Sunday, 24 May 2009 17:18 |
Let California Fail
It is ironic that the federal government is substantially meddling in the financial affairs of other entities given the dilapidated state of Washington’s own finances. First, there were the banks, investment houses and insurance companies – the most notorious being AIG. Then the auto companies weighed in getting their piece of bailout funds from Uncle Sam. Now, it seems the states will be next to tap the national treasury for funds that do not exist.
There is a saying, “As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation.” How true these words have become since both are completely bankrupt. With the defeat this week by voters in the Golden State of ballot initiatives that would have drastically raised taxes to close a $24 billion budget gap, the state is on course for a complete financial collapse by July. Unlike the national government, California can’t print money to buy more time either – no pun intended. It must find a way to raise the funds otherwise millions of Californians will not receive checks.
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Financial Markets
NYMEX Light Sweet Crude
LIBOR USD 3 Month
Unsure of What's Happening in the Economy?
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system,
for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford
What Is "The Fed"?
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Original Articles -
Oberholster, Sarel
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Written by Sarel Oberholster
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Saturday, 23 May 2009 13:07 |
Twin Peaks – The Past, the Future?
Reckless monetary policies of the past gave rise to predictable outcomes. The reckless fiscal policies which follow the reckless monetary policies are a matter of global historical record. The most recent modern example of the consequences of reckless monetary policy going sour in a developed economy is the tale of Japan. We take up the tale in the behaviour of the stock exchanges. The Nikkei 225 peaked on 29 December 1989 at 38913.
That is the recent historical lesson. The second tale is being written. It is the tale of the USA’s experience with reckless monetary policy following in the footsteps of Japan. The DJII peaked on 9 October 2007 at 14165.
Are these peaks twins? Yes, but they are not identical twins. Each will write its own tale while both walk a similar road. Perhaps you would question why they should be twins, as I have done many times. The inevitability of the outcome is in the political process. The leaders act as the voters want and the voters’ expectations give rise to an inevitability in behavioural patterns which favours extreme monetary and fiscal policies. Thus we travel on the same road.
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Read more...
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Written by Jordan
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 21:49 |
It's Obama's War Now
Michael Schwartz : Huffington Post
By replacing his commanding general in Afghanistan, President Obama has taken authorship of the two-front war in the Middle East.
This was not an orderly succession, but a rare event fraught with historical significance. The firing of battlefield commanding General David D. McKiernan -- and his replacement by his former subordinate Lt. General Stanley A. McChrystal -- is the first since President Truman famously removed General Douglas A. MacArthur from the Korean command. And before that headline producing event, Lincoln's replacement of McClellan with Grant stands as its most noteworthy precedent.
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Original Articles -
Jacobine, Kenn
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Written by Kenn Jacobine
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Saturday, 16 May 2009 09:25 |
Rothbard as Prophet Part 2
As documented in Rothbard’s classic piece America’s Great Depression, the similarities of the 1920s and 2000s did not end with the beginnings of each crisis in 1929 and 2008 respectively. It gets much scarier than that. Washington responded in very similar ways to both crises. As we know, Hoover/Roosevelt policies made the recession of 1929 into a depression and prolonged recover for at least a decade. Time will only tell how bad Bush/Obama policies will make our current economic depression.
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Original Articles -
Brown, Jordan
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Written by Jordan
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Friday, 15 May 2009 23:56 |
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When Idealists Fall
Sometimes I wonder if the best way to achieve a more free society might be to spend the majority of our time and money ensuring that every American reads the political news each day, particularly any official Congressional or White House press releases. Forget the pro-liberty commentary, just let the hypocritical, self-serving "servants of the people" talk long enough and we might have a real revolution on our hands.
Today was the perfect example of why such a course of action deserves more than a dismissive laugh. Barack Obama, alleged champion of civil liberties and opponent of all that George W. Bush and company stood for, has resumed the military trials of terror suspects. Campaign promises, Constitutional provisions, and consistency be damned, Obama thinks that we need an American Star Chamber after all.
This isn't a deviation from the Obama norm. While he is only a few months into his first term, Obama has done little to change the majority of the Bush policies that he campaigned against, and quite a lot to reinforce many of those policies. Military spending has increased. The war in Afghanistan has been ramped up while the occupation of Iraq drags on. Due process has been officially ignored, privacy trampled, the 'people's right to know' conveniently forgotten. Corporatism still flourishes in D.C.
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