Category Archives: Capitalism

Money As the Greater Depression Deepens, by Doug Casey

Own physical gold and silver not as a speculation against increasingly worthless currencies, but because they are real money. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

money

We talk a lot in these pages about what to do with one’s money, but I question whether most subscribers (forget about the public at large) have an adequate grasp of the basics. Without it, much of what we say may seem capricious or outlandish, crazy ideas readers tolerate only because we’ve been so right about the big trends. But the basics in speculating and investing are like the basics in martial arts: Just remembering them isn’t enough; they need to be second nature. That means reviewing and practicing over and over.

It’s not an accident that we usually make good investment calls; the selections arise from a constant awareness of the basics. So I want to briefly review those fundamentals. Let’s start with gold. We’re very gold-oriented around here.

You undoubtedly have a good position in gold. Many of your friends are aware that you’re a gold bug, and more than a few of them question your wisdom. Are you able to give them a succinct and cogent explanation not just for why gold is cyclically a good speculation, but why it’s money? I’ll wager the answer in many cases is, “No.”

I say that because when I give a speech, I often offer a prize to the audience member who can tell me the five classical reasons gold is the best money. Quickly now; what are they? Can’t recall them? Read on, and this time, burn them into your memory.

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Biden’s Jobs Plan: More Government Jobs Won’t Fix the Economy, by Gary Galles

Most government jobs subtract from economic well-being, the jobholder receives pay greater than economic output. Some government jobs, like tax collectors and regulators, actually reduce economic output. From Gary Galles at mises.org:

It seems that every time something adverse happens in the labor market, it restarts the partisan battle between those currently in and out of power as to who is a better steward of the economy.

That was illustrated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s (BLS) release of the job numbers for April, which made headlines when job growth, which was expected to surge, came in “unexpectedly” low. The 266,000 jobs created were only a quarter of some forecasts, which topped 1 million. Further, March job creation was also revised down by 146,000. And unemployment ticked up for the first time since the lockdown, despite a reportedly massive shortage of workers, as illustrated by the 7.4 million unfilled job openings reported for February.

The Biden administration, put on its heels by the poor results and the finger-pointing at its policies that followed (particularly the $300 weekly unemployment bonus), insisted the economy is improving, and tried to claim credit for it (even though the economy was recovering far faster than anticipated before he took office) but that the magnitude of the problems faced means that still more government aid is necessary, almost as if they are trying to introduce quadrillion as a measure in common use when talking about deficits and debt, rather than trillion.

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Will 2020 Prove to Be the Beginning of the End of Modernity? by Daniel J. Boudreaux

For modernity to happen, a lot of historically unprecedented things had to happen. Now many of those things are being reversed. From Daniel J. Boudreaux at aier.org:

Daniel Hannan – Lord Hannan of Kingsclere – is today among Britain’s wisest and most articulate champions of classical liberalism. He’s also today very pessimistic about the future of liberalism. This pessimism is on full display in this recent video. Hannan predicts that the post-Covid-19 world “will be poorer, colder, grayer, more pitched, more authoritarian.”

I ardently wish that I found his stated reasons for pessimism to be unpersuasive, but this wish is not granted. Hannan’s pessimism, to me, seems warranted.

I urge you to watch the entire video. At under seven minutes, it’s short. But I believe that my summary here of Hannan’s point is accurate:

We humans are evolved to put our trust in hierarchy, for hierarchical methods of decision-making were quite effective at protecting the small tribe, as it roamed the countryside, from predators and privation. And our deep past was in fact fraught with dangers that, when not quickly avoided, killed us. In that long-ago era, anyone refusing to follow the leader’s commands was indeed a threat to the survival of the tribe. As a result, fellow tribe members turned on renegades. ‘Renegadeness’ was thus largely drained from the gene pool and replaced with the instinct to conform, especially whenever there was a perception of danger, which there was quite often.

Confidence in hierarchy, hair-trigger alarm, and fear of strangers (who back then usually were sources of real danger) helped our ancestors to survive. And survive they did for 300,000 years, nearly all of which time was spent hunting and gathering in small tribes. But these genetically encoded instincts that are so useful to members of the always-imperiled tribe do not support a liberal, open society of the sort that arose in the West over the past few centuries.

We humans have been around for at least 300,000 years. Nearly all – 97 percent – of this time was spent as hunters-gatherers in a perilous world. Yet only in the past two or three centuries have we stumbled upon a set of beliefs and institutions that suppressed many of our primitive instincts in a way that encouraged the emergence of modernity. By historical standards, the world that we know today is freakishly abnormal.

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Why Modern Monetary Theory Will Destroy Money… by Doug Casey

Modern monetary theory is just another branch of something-for-nothing economics. As such, it won’t work, and the concept behind it is pure evil. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) centers around the notion that the economy in general, and money in particular, should be the creatures of the State.

It’s not a new idea – the meme has been around in one form or another since at least the days of Marx.

MMT basically posits that the wise and incorruptible solons in government should create as much currency as they think is needed, spend it in areas they like, and solve any problems that occur with more laws and regulations.

It’s nothing new. Just a more radical version of the economic fascism that’s dominated the U.S. since at least the days of the New Deal. It’s just another name for an old, and very stupid, set of economic ideas. By stupid I mean, “showing an inability to predict the indirect and delayed consequences of actions.”

Won’t Work

Politicians are now talking about the supposed benefits of MMT. Pseudo-economists are doing their abstruse and incomprehensible mathematical computations about how it might affect the economy.

The public will easily be convinced they’ll get something for nothing.

But what we should be talking about here is moral principle. It’s not a question of whether MMT will work or not work. It won’t. It will work about as well as the economic policies of Venezuela and Zimbabwe, or Argentina.

These schemes have never worked in all of history. They result in a vastly lower standard of living, along with social strife. MMT is about radically increased government control. The argument shouldn’t be over whether MMT will “work” or not. The argument should be about whether it’s moral and proper for people in the government – whether elected or appointed – to print money to change the economy into something that suits them better.

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“The Problem Is That Your Ideas Are Stupid” – Bill Maher Blasts “Gullible” Millennials, by Tyler Durden

Maybe Bill Maher feels liberated with Biden in office, but he’s telling some uncomfortable truths. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Something strange is occurring in the gutter of “liberal comedy”… After four years of constant attacks on anything ‘Trumpian’ and constant ignorance of anything ‘Left’, one man has begun to realize that there is plenty of farce on both sides of the aisle and virtue-signaling to your cocktail party co-conspirators just doesn’t pay the bills anymore (cough CNN cough).

Last week, Comedian Bill Maher used his HBO show to highlight some awkward ‘facts’ and ask some uncomfortable questions about media and politicians approach to COVID.

This week, he has taken aim at the heart of the problem – American Millennials and Gen Z and their total ignorance of history.

“In India, young people touch old people’s feet to show reverence. In Japan, there’s a national ‘respect for the aged’ day.

You know the reason why advertisers in this country love the 18-34 demographic… because it’s the most gullible.

A third of people under 35 say they’re in favor of abolishing the police…not defunding, but doing away with a police force altogether… which is less of a policy position and more of a leg tattoo.

36% of Millennials think it might be a good idea to try Communism… but much of the world did try it… I know most of Millennials think that doesn’t count because they weren’t alive when it happened… but it did happen, and there are people around who remember it. Pining for communism is like pining for BetaMax or MySpace.

So when you say ‘you’re old, you don’t get it’, get what? Abolish the police? …and the Border Patrol? … and Capitalism? … and cancel Lincoln?

No, “I get it”… the problem isn’t that I don’t get what you’re saying or that I’m old. The problem is that your ideas are stupid.

If you say “let’s eat in the bathroom and shit in the kitchen”, yeah, that’s a new idea, but I wouldn’t call it interior design.

You think someone 80 is hopeless because they can’t use an iPhone? Maybe the one who is hopeless is the one who can’t stop using it.

You think I’m out of it because I’m not on Twitch? Well maybe I ‘get Twitch’ but I just think people watching other people play video games is a waste of fucking time.

20% of Gen Z agree with the statement that “society would be better off if all property was owned by the public and managed by the government” and another 29% say ‘they don’t know if that’s a good idea’…

Here’s who does know… anyone who wasn’t born yesterday!”

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The Plutocrats of Wall Street and Silicon Valley Are Scamming America, by Ryan McMaken

Very few ostensible capitalists have any ideological loyalty to capitalism. They’ll crawl into bed with government any time it’s in their interest to do so. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:

In recent years, it seems that the nation’s CEOs and billionaires are increasingly willing to drop the pretense that they are politically neutral entrepreneurs who simply want to go about their business.

Last week, for example, more than a hundred CEOs met to plot ways to punish the people of Georgia by “stopping investments in states” that pass laws unapproved by the billionaire class.

This comes in the wake of a decision by Major League Baseball—a collection of billionaire-owned sports teams—to punish residents of Georgia for the fact a tiny number of politicians there passed legislation designed to lessen voter fraud. In retaliation, MLB decided to move the league’s all-star game so as to deny the residents of Atlanta the economic benefits of hosting the game.

This comes only a few years after Apple CEO Tim Cook led a corporate campaign to boycott Indiana after Cook and Marc Benioff (the CEO of Salesforce) demanded the people of Indiana be punished. This was because the Indiana legislature passed a law which some billionaires decided was insufficiently pro-LGBT.

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From American Dream to American Nightmare, by Jim Quinn

How did America go from the land of opportunity to the land of crybabies, grifters, rampant corruption, fake money, and UBI? From Jim Quinn at theburningplatform.com:

For most of the ninety years since James Truslow Adams coined the term American Dream, most Americans still believed the fairy tale of the American Dream, that no matter how humble your beginnings, everyone had a fair chance to become a success in America, based upon your individual talent, intelligence, work ethic and a society that rewarded those who exceled. Sadly, that dream is no longer achievable for most Americans. Our society has devolved into an oligarchy since The Epic of America was published in 1931, where a powerful few rule over a willfully ignorant many through propaganda, mistruth, fear, and an iron fist.

Amazon.com: The Epic of America eBook: Adams, James Truslow: Kindle Store

“But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position…

The American dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.” – James Truslow Adams – Epic of America – 1931

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Bus Driver Economics, by Jeff Thomas

To turn one job into two jobs, split it in half and have each worker work half-time. Welcome to socialist economics. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

Bus Driver Economics
 

Economics should not be an especially difficult subject to understand. In essence, it’s simply the study of how money functions. However, academics, theoreticians, politicians, and financial leaders all stand to benefit if they can manage to complicate the basic principles and muddy the waters of economic comprehension.

No individual has been manifestly more successful at this than the economist John Maynard Keynes. Educated at Cambridge, a bastion of Socialist thinking, Mister Keynes famously published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936, forever changing the world’s perception of economics.

This was quite an amazing feat, especially as Mister Keynes’s goal was not to explain economics, as had traditionally been the object of the subject; his goal was to distort the study of economics—to confuse economic principles in order to promote socialist concepts.

Socialism had, since its beginnings, been unpopular with many people, as it clearly did not work economically. So, in order to make socialism more broadly acceptable, Mister Keynes, in his book, suggested essentially that, although 2 + 2 = 4, with socialism, 2 + 2 could somehow equal 5.

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Bulls, Bears, and Beyond: In Depth with James Grant, by Kevin Duffy

Since 1983, James Grant has published an outstanding newsletter (Grant’s Interest Rate Observer), focused on economics and finance. Reflecting its value, an annual subscription of 24 issues will set you back $1295. This interview is a rare opportunity to hear what Grant has to say for free. From Kevin Duffy at mises.org:

James Grant is editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, which he founded in 1983. He is the author of nine books, including Money of the Mind, The Trouble with Prosperity, John Adams: Party of One, The Forgotten Depression, and more recently Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian. In 2015 Grant received the prestigious Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award for excellence in business journalism. James Grant is an associated scholar of the Mises Institute.

Kevin Duffy is principal of Bearing Asset Management, which he cofounded in 2002. The firm manages the Bearing Core Fund, a contrarian, macro-themed hedge fund with a flexible mandate. He earned a BS in civil engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology and has a passion for financial history, Austrian economics, and pithy quotes. He also publishes a bimonthly investment letter called the Coffee Can Portfolio. Duffy attended Mises University in 1990 after seeing Lew Rockwell on CNN’s Crossfire in 1989.


Kevin Duffy interviewed James Grant for his newsletter Coffee Can Portfolio. It is reprinted with permission.

KEVIN DUFFY: 2020 has been part dystopian fiction, part tulip mania. How do we reconcile the two?

JAMES GRANT: I’m not sure there’s much distinction. To me, the current form of dystopia is the bubble form, so I think this is the year of the dystopian bubble.

KD: There has been a worship of authorities. For the past thirty-seven years you’ve focused mainly on the Fed, but this year we’ve seen a reverence for medical authorities. Who has done more damage?

JG: The medical authorities remind me of the economic authorities. Both pretend to draw a bead on the future. Let’s compare them both to the meteorological authorities. The National Weather Service spends over a billion dollars a year and takes tens of millions, if not billions, of discrete observations of wind, weather, tide, temperature, what have you. But notice the five- and ten-day forecasts on your trusty iPhone are ever changing. This is the weather. Temperature gradients don’t have feelings, they don’t get jealous of the millionaire next door, they don’t watch CNBC, yet our forecasting ability goes out, maximum, ten days. Even so, the economists think nothing of calling next year’s GDP.

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Making it “Easier” by Eric Peters

There’s a special class of people who feel that whatever they want for the rest of us is what the rest of us should get, at the point of a gun if necessary. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

The best way to force something onto people who don’t want it is to force what they do want off the market.

Examples of this include the forced retirement of the best automotive refrigerant ever developed – Freon – which cools faster and deeper than the replacements that were forced onto the market by forcing Freon off the market – in the name of the “ozone hole” but in actuality because of expiring patents on Freon that meant it would be much cheaper to make it and so cheaper to buy it than the “ozone-friendly” replacements forced onto the market.

D’Lynda Fischer: Portrait of a political psychopath

Another example is gasoline – which has been largely forced off the market in favor of adulterated gasoline. What most Americans are forced to pump into their tanks is actually 10 percent ethanol (ethyl alcohol) and only 90 percent gasoline.

Soon, there may be no gasoline at all.

Not because people don’t want it but rather because they won’t be able to buy it. Because of new laws proliferating  forbidding the selling of it.

As in Petaluma, California – where the city council just voted to prohibit new gas stations from being built and also that existing gas stations may not install new pumps. “The goal here is to move away from fossil fuels and to make it as easy as possible to do that,” says one of the legislation’s main backers, D’Lynda Fischer.

She means her goal; the goal of those forcing their views upon the people of Petaluma. It will be made “easier” for them to not buy gas, in order to make it harder for them to not drive cars that burn gasoline.

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