Barbie Relic’s latest:
Updated Wednesday, July 28, 2010
When Will the U.S. Go the Way of Rome? by Bill Frezza
“A society that consumes more than it produces, rewarding the former and punishing the latter, is not sustainable. A society that feels entitled to the good life without understanding where it comes from is delusional, rendering itself incapable of solving problems. A society sapped of vigor, constantly apologizing for its way of life while extending moral equivalence to medievalism, cannot compete.”
Economic Warnings From Two Respected Analysts by Gary North
“Two widely respected economic commentators, Harvard's Niall Ferguson and Nassim ‘black swan’ Taleb, have offered highly pessimistic assessments of what lies ahead for the American economy.” Quoting Taleb:
“The problem is getting runaway. It's becoming a pure Ponzi scheme. It's very nonlinear: You need more and more debt just to stay where you are. And what broke [convicted financier Bernard] Madoff is going to break governments. They need to find new suckers all the time. And unfortunately the world has run out of suckers.”
Money, Sound and Unsound (PDF) by Joseph T. Salerno
Twenty-six essays written over the last three decades by one of the leading Austrian school economists. In broadest terms, the theme of the book is “Sound money” as defined by Ludwig von Mises (PDF, pp. 414-416): “[T]he sound money principle has two aspects. It is affirmative in approving the market’s choice of a commonly used medium of exchange. It is negative in obstructing the government’s propensity to meddle with the currency system... Sound money meant a metallic standard... The excellence of the gold standard is to be seen in the fact that it renders the determination of the monetary unit’s purchasing power independent of governments and political parties.”
Economics Is … Easy by Sterling T. Terrell
“The truth is that economics is so hard for Kartik Athreya [of the Richmond Fed] because he is trying to do the impossible. He still feels ill at ease in his profession, after seventeen years, because he is trying to explain the economic aggregates of entire states and nations with the tools he learned in Calculus III, Econometrics II, and Linear Algebra I.”
Historian warns of sudden collapse of American ‘empire’ by Brent Gardner-Smith
“Harvard professor and prolific author Niall Ferguson opened the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival Monday with a stark warning about the increasing prospect of the American ‘empire’ suddenly collapsing due to the country’s rising debt level.” Ferguson said, ““I know you’re not comfortable with the word ‘empire,’ especially just after the Fourth of July, but you are the Redcoats now.”
Fiat Money in Death Throes by Antal E. Fekete
“The London Times published a jubilant piece as recently as early 2007 with the title ‘The Great Moderation’ which began with the line: ‘History will marvel at the stability of our era.’ It was not meant to be a joke.”
The G-20 Power Grab Accelerates by Gary North
“What the G-20 is all about is the creation of a new international order. Our best hope is that they will not trust each other enough to pull off their plan. That has been true in the past. Let us hope that it will be true in the future. But let us not be naïve about what they are planning.”
Combating Annuities With Gold, Silver and Oil by Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru
Quoting from Gold Newsletter by Brien Lundin of Jefferson Financial, MG writes: “As it turns out, when you use the historical CPI that was actually in effect during the 1980s, that $850 gold price record in 1980 is equal to $7,576 in 2010 dollars.”
Parallel Lives: Liberty or Power? by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
“The legacy we will leave on this earth comes down to the principles by which we lived. It is the ideas we hold and the way we pursued them that is the source of our immortality.
Greenspan will leave an economy in shambles and a lifetime of pandering. Rothbard left a grand vision of liberty united with science, and example of what it means to truly think long term.”
Weak economic data, market volatility, China by Peter Schiff (video)
Housing and car sales are at historic lows. Why? Government stimulus has ended. Look for Obama to stimulate again before the November elections. China has raised the minimum wage by 30% in many provinces because of inflation. China holds 60% of its GDP in foreign reserves. Dollar peg will be abandoned, Chinese currency will rise, Chinese workers will be more affluent, Chinese savings will help Chinese, not the U.S. government.
Gold and the Flight to Safety by Moses Kim
“As we approach the final resolution of the global debt crisis, panic-driven capital will flow into bonds, the U.S. dollar, and gold. This is a temporary trend. Eventually bonds and the U.S. dollar will crater while gold rises to new highs. This is the long-term trend.”
ATM Salvation by George F. Smith
“Why would people buy gold from a vending machine when all they could do is hoard it or give it away? To Austrians, the answer is the same for buying gold anywhere: to prepare for the ultimate rainy day . . .”
The new ideological divide by Peter Schiff
Krugman and the “Stimulators” versus Greenspan and the “Austereians.” “Both warn that a worldwide depression will ensue if governments now make the wrong choices: the Stimulators say the danger lies in spending too little and the Austereians from spending too much.”
No One's Capital Is Safe in Obama's America by Claude Sandroff
“[Russian] President Medvedev promises Cisco a capital gains tax rate of zero; President Obama promises to retire the evil George Bush capital gains rate of 15% and increase it to 20% in 2011. Cisco is merely telecasting to anyone who wants to tune in that Russia is taking advantage of Obama's lurch towards socialism (or worse). While Russia is portraying itself as a stable bastion for capitalists, America is increasingly seen as the land that mauled Chrysler and GM bondholders. While erstwhile command economies are liberalizing, America under Obama is nationalizing.”
HR 1207 Hall of Shame by Campaign for Liberty
If you vote, make sure these people are not re-elected. Each was a cosponsor of H.R. 1207 to Audit the Fed but voted against returning the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform bill to committee to have the through audit reinstated.
The Social Function of Credit-Default Swaps by Philipp Bagus
“CDSs are powerful corrective instruments that discipline banks. CDSs are not weapons of mass destruction but instruments of providing discipline and order.”
Why Friedrich Hayek Is Making a Comeback by Russ Roberts
“Hayek pointed out that powerful bureaucracies don't attract angels—they attract people who enjoy running the lives of others. They tend to take care of their friends before taking care of others. And they find increasing that power attractive. Crony capitalism shouldn't be confused with the real thing.”
An Economy of Liars by Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr.
“Distorted prices and interest rates no longer serve as accurate indicators of the relative importance of goods. Crony capitalism ensures the special access of protected firms and industries to capital. Businesses that stumble in the process of doing what is politically favored are bailed out. That leads to moral hazard and more bailouts in the future.”
Keeping Interest Rates Low by Robert Jackson Smith
“As long as governments are allowed to manipulate the price of money (interest rates), they will control it, use it to further their own means, expand their roles in our lives, and misallocate resources away from productive purposes, businesses, consumers, and profitable sustainable job-producing ventures and in to make-work projects, wars, and increased infringement of individual rights.”
Suiting Up for a Post-Dollar World by John Browne
“More than half of central bank officials surveyed by UBS didn't think the dollar would be the world's reserve in 2035. Among the predicted replacements were Asian currencies and the euro, but - by far - the favorite was gold.”
Is the Fed Too Big To Fail? by Gary North
“The Federal Reserve System is universally regarded as too big to fail. Put another way, it is beyond negative sanctions. It therefore possesses what was once called divine right. It is beyond legal constraints. It is beyond market constraints. It answers to no one. It is autonomous.”
VIDEO: World's first gold bar vending machine by Mona Ibellini
Mona interviews Thomas Geissler, whose company installed a gold ATM in the three-billion-dollar Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi last month.
Inflation Update by Steve Saville
“When proper measures are used . . . it becomes apparent that the US money supply is growing more slowly now than it was six months ago, but is still growing. Not only that, based on TMS2 it is still growing at a double-digit pace.” Energy might benefit short-term, “but the only long-term upward trend in which we have a lot of confidence at this time is in the gold market.”
Markets, Ron Paul, Roubini, BP by Peter Schiff (video)
Oil prices will continue to rise, due in part to BP and downward pressure on the dollar. Oil will be a drag on growth expectations for the economy. The Dow/gold ratio will fall below 8:1. Ron Insana of CNBC calls Ron Paul a simpleton because he doesn’t understand basic economics. Ron Paul has roughly 50% of his investments in gold and silver.
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In memory of
Evelyn O. Smith, 1915-2010
and
George P. Smith, 1912-1998
