Will the economic world end in 2012?

I agree with Martin Hutchinson (below) that the present financial situation in Europe, the UK and the USA is headed for disaster but I have a somewhat different view of what governments will do about it. All three are already hurtling down the path of Weimar Germany, with big money-printing operations happening sporadically. There will be a lot more of that -- as it is the only way all the debts can be paid. The debts will be paid with freshly-created money.

Because the supply of goods and services will remain fairly constant while the amount of money representing those goods and services expands greatly, each dollar will soon buy a lot less and could easily drop to the point where it needs a hundred dollars to buy what one dollar now buys. All savings will buy so little that they become virtually worthless. So our "betters" will rob everybody's savings to pay for their extravagance

So if savers get a knockout blow, what will happen to others? Holders of blue-chip company shares will be OK; Real Estate owners will probably gain; debtors will be laughing; Gold bugs will finally have their day and China will be right royally stiffed. They hold trillions of U.S. dollars which are set to lose most of their value. They might even drop a big one on San Francisco "accidentally" to show their displeasure.

I'm glad I live in Australia, which has very little Federal debt and a good relationship with China -- JR

According to the Mayan calendar, the Great Cycle will end on December 21, 2012, at which point the current Fourth World founded on August 11, 3114 BC will come to an end, leading us into a Fifth World of greater enlightenment. Economically, this is beginning to seem like a remarkably accurate prediction. There are a number of signs in today’s market that a world-changing crisis is approaching, after which our economic environment will never be the same.

The approach of a market apocalypse can be gauged by considering the relative valuations the market is currently putting on assets. Considered rationally, the most attractive asset today should be equity participations in the world’s fastest growing economy, China – yet Chinese equities are at 33-month lows, and many small Chinese companies are trading on earnings multiples not seen since the Great Depression. Considered rationally, among the least attractive assets today should be the long-term debt of two countries with unsustainable budget deficits and governments that have made very little effort to close them – yet British and U.S. government bonds are trading at yields close to all-time historic lows and far below the rates of inflation in their respective countries.

Extreme market irrationality of this kind is a pretty good warning signal of coming market collapse. Just as the Emperor’s Palace grounds being worth more than the state of California signaled the end of Japan’s real estate bubble in 1989, so current valuations of British and U.S. government debt signal that we are very close to a massive reversal, in which probably for several decades it becomes impossible for those governments to sell new debt except at very high cost. Bank balance sheets worldwide, which have loaded up on government debt because of the foolish Basel banking regulations and the attractiveness of “gapping” income between short-term and long-term rates, will collapse into insolvency. The early part of this collapse will be marked by a rapid reversal of “mark-to-market” regulations, so that banks are not forced to mark down their debt holdings to deflated market prices, but even if this accounting chicanery works in the short run, it will prove no solution in the long run, as short term rates rise above the meager long term yields on their government bond portfolios.

The First Pennsylvania Bank failed in 1980 through precisely this problem, at a time when there was thought to be no risk whatever of a U.S. government default or delay in payment. Adding the default possibility into the equation will simply make the problem all the more insoluble. Banks will attempt to hedge themselves through interest rate swaps and credit default swaps, but that will only cause a collapse in swap markets as well; the depth of those markets will prove completely inadequate to solve their problems. Naturally as in 2008 there will be a few sharp operators, like John Paulson and Goldman Sachs in that year, who make money out of the collapse, but their ability to do so will merely worsen the burden on the rest of the system and the costs of any attempted rescues.

There is thus considerable danger, probably in the latter half of 2012 as the Mayans predicted, of a banking system collapse dwarfing that of 2008. Value distortions such as those prevalent currently are necessarily of short duration. The eurozone problem seems certain either to find a solution or to cause a major upheaval in 2012, with the balance of probability being on the latter outcome. In the United States also, 2012 seems the period of maximum near-term danger for the budgetary problem; solutions are impossible in an election year and exacerbation of the problem by foolish handouts only too likely. Maybe the U.S. budget mess can avoid collapsing before 2013, but any market shock, for example from Europe, is likely to push it over the edge. Japan, too, is nearing the point at which its government debt to GDP ratio moves above the level at which it is unsustainable; again a market shock in 2012 could push it over the edge. To use a chemical analogy, the market solution is super-saturated, and any tiny crystal dropped into it will cause precipitation. A trivial event, such as a repetition of May 2010’s stock market “flash crash,” could be the trigger for a market collapse.

Given the extent to which banks have loaded up on “risk-free” government debt, a collapse of the government debt market will cause a collapse of the banking system. I have written before how the world economy would work rather better if government debt were not considered the universal risk-free investment, and were instead considered the doubtfully solid security it actually is. However there is no question that the transition, with the collapse of global government debt markets and banking systems, will be extremely painful. Since government debt market collapse will cause banking system collapse, there will be no rescue available.

Central banks worldwide will of course attempt to alleviate (or rather, postpone) the problem, by an endless array of gimcrack money-printing schemes. Since their credibility, already dented, will be at an all-time low as evidence of world systemic collapse emerges, they will doubtless attempt to devise money-printing schemes with a populist appeal. Thus Ben Bernanke, whose 2002 “thought experiment” of dropping $100 bills from helicopters was intended as a snobbish academic joke against the bourgeoisie, will end up doing just this. TV cameras will be lined up, the world’s financial bloggers will be prepared, and a Bernanke-bearing helicopter will appear hovering over some carefully chosen demographically balanced slum, dropping roll after roll of greenbacks to a Secret Service-prescreened crowd of adoring populace. Of course the real money will still zip by wire transfer to the vaults of the nation’s largest banks and embezzling government securities dealers, but the production values of a benign Bernanke rewarding a faithful underclass will be thought well worth creating.

It won’t work. Far from obeying Walter Bagehot’s famous advice for a financial crisis, of lending freely against top quality security at very high rates, Bernanke and his chums will as in 2008 throw money around like confetti, taking little account of the quality of the security nominally tendered, and lending it at rates that allow the banks to make yet more illicit billions by on-lending their subsidized finance. The European Central Bank’s handout last week, where it lent $600 billion of 3-year money to the banks at 1%, in the hope that they would re-lend it to tottering Eurozone governments at a spread of some 500-600 basis points, is typical of current central bank thinking.

Lend money to the banking system by all means, if you think there is a liquidity problem, and lend it for 3 years if you want to stabilize their financial position. However the money should be lent at a stiff interest rate of around 7%. At that rate, only those banks that really needed the money would have borrowed it, so the bailout would have been limited to $100 billion or so. The remainder of the rescue of banks’ balance sheets would have been achieved by them rushing to sell all their assets that yielded less than 7%. This would notably not include consumer loans and productive small-business loans, which generally yield considerably more than 7%, but it would include all the miscellaneous government junk with which the banks had been playing “gapping” games, hoping to borrow at short term rates and lend at long-term rates, capturing the spread between short-term and long-term interest rates. With their marginal funding cost 7% for 3 years, this would no longer be profitable.

Of course, many Eurozone banks, a simple lot, have not incorporated marginal pricing into their Treasury operations, so will happily borrow at 7% and lend through a different department at 3%, puzzling why their profits are less than they were. But frankly, a little Darwinian selection against stupidity in the European banking system would do no harm at all!

The chance of a system-destroying financial breakdown in 2012 is thus substantial, and December 21 is as good a day as any other on which it might occur. With government credit and banks both collapsing, the old financial world as we have known it since the Bank of England’s foundation in 1694 would indeed have ended. The good news is that this would not shove us back to 1694’s living standards. As for my Great-Aunt Nan, who put her savings in British government War Loan when she retired in 1947 and found inflation and interest rate rises eroded more than 90% of their value before she died in 1974, the disappearance of government bonds, bank stocks and many bank deposits from our assets would cause great hardship. However the central function of banks as a payment mechanism would not disappear and commercial, manufacturing and service-providing activity would continue.

The disruption would be huge, but human civilization would carry on, even the affluent Western civilization many of us have grown used to. It would not be necessary to invest our assets in gold, canned goods and a shotgun; those of us with our savings in non-financial sector stocks would find their long-term value would recover, after what would doubtless be the mother of all stock market crashes.

There would be a Fifth World for us as the Mayans predicted. In it we will finally have achieved enlightenment – about the folly of fiat money, over-powerful central banks and “risk-free” government paper. Achieving this enlightenment will be painful, but it will be worth it!

SOURCE

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The Federal Reserve's Covert Bailout of Europe

America's central bank, the Federal Reserve, is engaged in a bailout of European banks. Surprisingly, its operation is largely unnoticed here.

The Fed is using what is termed a "temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangement" with the European Central Bank (ECB). There are similar arrangements with the central banks of Canada, England, Switzerland and Japan. Simply put, the Fed trades or "swaps" dollars for euros. The Fed is compensated by payment of an interest rate (currently 50 basis points, or one-half of 1%) above the overnight index swap rate. The ECB, which guarantees to return the dollars at an exchange rate fixed at the time the original swap is made, then lends the dollars to European banks of its choosing.

Why are the Fed and the ECB doing this? The Fed could, after all, lend directly to U.S. branches of foreign banks. It did a great deal of lending to foreign banks under various special credit facilities in the aftermath of Lehman's collapse in the fall of 2008. Or, the ECB could lend euros to banks and they could purchase dollars in foreign-exchange markets. The world is, after all, awash in dollars.

The two central banks are engaging in this roundabout procedure because each needs a fig leaf. The Fed was embarrassed by the revelations of its prior largess with foreign banks. It does not want the debt of foreign banks on its books. A currency swap with the ECB is not technically a loan.

The ECB is entangled in an even bigger legal and political mess. What the heads of many European governments want is for the ECB to bail them out. The central bank and some European governments say that it cannot constitutionally do that. The ECB would also prefer not to create boatloads of new euros, since it wants to keep its reputation as an inflation-fighter intact. To mitigate its euro lending, it borrows dollars to lend them to its banks. That keeps the supply of new euros down. This lending replaces dollar funding from U.S. banks and money-market institutions that are curtailing their lending to European banks — which need the dollars to finance trade, among other activities. Meanwhile, European governments pressure the banks to purchase still more sovereign debt.

The Fed's support is in addition to the ECB's €489 billion ($638 billion) low-interest loans to 523 euro-zone banks last week. And if 2008 is any guide, the dollar swaps will again balloon to supplement the ECB's euro lending.

This Byzantine financial arrangement could hardly be better designed to confuse observers, and it has largely succeeded on this side of the Atlantic, where press coverage has been light. Reporting in Europe is on the mark. On Dec. 21 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted on its website that European banks took three-month credits worth $33 billion, which was financed by a swap between the ECB and the Fed. When it first came out in 2009 that the Greek government was much more heavily indebted than previously known, currency swaps reportedly arranged by Goldman Sachs were one subterfuge employed to hide its debts.

The Fed had more than $600 billion of currency swaps on its books in the fall of 2008. Those draws were largely paid down by January 2010. As recently as a few weeks ago, the amount under the swap renewal agreement announced last summer was $2.4 billion. For the week ending Dec. 14, however, the amount jumped to $54 billion. For the week ending Dec. 21, the total went up by a little more than $8 billion. The aforementioned $33 billion three-month loan was not picked up because it was only booked by the ECB on Dec. 22, falling outside the Fed's reporting week. Notably, the Bank of Japan drew almost $5 billion in the most recent week. Could a bailout of Japanese banks be afoot? (All data come from the Federal Reserve Board H.4.1. release, the New York Fed's Swap Operations report, and the ECB website.)

No matter the legalistic interpretation, the Fed is, working through the ECB, bailing out European banks and, indirectly, spendthrift European governments. It is difficult to count the number of things wrong with this arrangement.

First, the Fed has no authority for a bailout of Europe. My source for that judgment? Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke met with Republican senators on Dec. 14 to brief them on the European situation. After the meeting, Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters that Mr. Bernanke himself said the Fed did not have "the intention or the authority" to bail out Europe. The week Mr. Bernanke promised no bailout, however, the size of the swap lines to the ECB ballooned by around $52 billion.

Second, these Federal Reserve swap arrangements foster the moral hazards and distortions that government credit allocation entails. Allowing the ECB to do the initial credit allocation — to favored banks and then, some hope, through further lending to spendthrift EU governments — does not make the problem better.

Third, the nontransparency of the swap arrangements is troublesome in a democracy. To his credit, Mr. Bernanke has promised more openness and better communication of the Fed's monetary policy goals. The swap arrangements are at odds with his promise. It is time for the Fed chairman to provide an honest accounting to Congress of what is going on.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Pentagon: US Navy will remain in Persian Gulf: "The Pentagon on Tuesday answered an Iranian warning to keep U.S. aircraft carriers out of the Persian Gulf by declaring that American warships will continue regularly scheduled deployments to the strategic waterway. George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, said the Navy operates in the Gulf in accordance with international law and to maintain 'a constant state of high vigilance' to ensure the flow of sea commerce"

We are all evil un-American terrorists now: "According to government officials, you may be a terrorist if you: are a Tea Party activist, an Occupy activist, store seven days of food, have missing fingers, buy flashlights, pay cash at hotels, are a Ron Paul supporter, are a libertarian, believe in conspiracies, own precious metals, guns and ammo. It's getting very difficult to keep up with."

Obama has learned nothing from mortgage meltdown mess: "Just days before Christmas, the Obama administration gave Bank of America a big lump of coal, levying a hefty $335 million dollar fine on the company for discriminating against minorities in its lending practices. Supposedly Countrywide, a mortgage company bought by Bank of America in 2008, had not given out enough low interest rate loans to minorities from 2004 to 2008. What the large fine reveals is that President Obama hasn’t learned anything from the recent financial crisis."

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Time for Reagan's American Optimism

Terry Paulson

Happy New Year! Welcome to one of the most critical years in America's history. The economy continues to limp along. Many citizens are unemployed or underemployed; even more are at the end of their financial rope. Polls indicate that both the president and congress have lost the trust of most Americans. Many are equally frustrated with the slate of Republican candidates who are emerging in the primaries. But in 2012, we will elect a president to lead us into an uncertain future fraught with both challenges and opportunities. Will the coming years be the new "good old days" for America or is America destined for decline?

While President Obama and his potential challengers try to convince us to put our confidence in them, it may be time to take inspiration from one of America's most beloved presidents.

On a recent trip to the Reagan Presidential Library I was struck over and over again by the confidence President Ronald Reagan had in Americans--in American workers, leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, the young and the old. Quote after quote leaped off the walls and from the video clips. Any candidate today would do well to embrace and adopt his unflappable American optimism.

Though adapted from many disconnected quotes, here is a New Year's letter true to his words that he might write to us today...

My Fellow Americans,

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day you will spend your sunset years telling your children and your children’s children what it was once like in the United States when you were free.

Once again America faces difficult times and an important election. May I remind you that “status quo" is Latin for “the mess we are in.” A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. Recovery is when President Obama loses his.

Now, I’m not taking your time to ask you to trust me or any leader. Instead, I ask you to trust yourself. That is what America is all about. It’s the power of millions of people like you who will determine what will make America great again.

For the solutions America seeks must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price. All must contribute to the turnaround, but don't fear. You still have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that you’re in a time when there are no heroes, they just don’t know where to look. They’re the individuals and families whose taxes support the government and those whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art and education. Their patriotism is deep, and their values sustain our national life.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. You must have the courage to do what you know is morally right. You have a rendezvous with destiny. In 2012, you will make a choice that will preserve for your children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or you will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.

But who among you would trade America’s future for that of any other country in the world? And who could possibly have so little faith in the American people that they would trade your tomorrow’s for your yesterdays?

When I was your president, I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence not your doubts. I implore you not to put your confidence in big government or any leader; have confidence in yourself. That's what has always made America strong, and, God willing, you will do so again.

Humbly Yours,

Ronald Reagan

SOURCE

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Ron Paul, Reagan, and Republican Youth

Star Parker

In the twenty plus years that I have worked as a conservative activist, I’ve spoken on almost 200 university campuses. Usually these are talks to campus Republican and conservative groups.

Over time I have observed changes in attitude among many young Republicans and I believe the shifts in attitude I see help explain the rise of Ron Paul.

When I first started lecturing early in the 1990’s, leading heroes of Republican youth were Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley, Jr.

Individual freedom, respect for constitutional limitations on government, and traditional values was the message. There was a sense of purpose. America as a “shining city on a hill,” quoted so often by Reagan, taken from the Puritan pilgrim John Winthrop, captured the picture.

Now, increasing numbers of my campus hosts ask that I not talk about “values.” Leave out the stuff about marriage, family, and abortion, please, and just talk about the economy.

The materialism and moral relativism that created our left wing culture is now infecting our youth on the right. Young Republicans may be pushing back on government, but too often now their motivation is like their left wing contemporaries. A sense of entitlement and an interest in claiming rights with little interest in corresponding personal responsibilities.

David Yepsen, who directs the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, recently described Ron Paul's success as a "resurgence of the libertarian and isolationist wings of the Republican Party," resulting from "hard times and unpopular wars."

But overlooked is the important role of youth. Of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents that support Paul, 67 percent are under 34, compared to 37 percent of Romney’s and 20 percent of Gingrich’s support.

This youthful surge has helped Paul’s very successful fundraising, heavily driven by small contributions on the internet. Compared to Republicans who have raised the most funds, 48 percent of Paul’s is from small donors, compared to 10 percent of Romney’s and 4 percent of Rick Perry’s.

And youth have been critical in Paul’s on the ground organization. I watched this play out when Paul won the straw poll at the Values Voters Summit in Washington where I spoke last October.

Busloads of youthful Paul supporters arrived only to hear his speech and to pay and register so that they could vote. They put him over the top.

They have little interest in a Reagan-like “shining city on a hill” message, or talk about a threatening “evil empire” abroad. To the contrary, they are excited by the “leave me alone” candidate who thinks the rest of the world is not our business. Apparently they share Paul’s indifference to the looming threat of a nuclear Iran or the almost complete absence of the freedom they think is so important in most Islamic nations.

Chicago Sun Times columnist Steve Huntley reports one estimate of over 200,000 persecuted Coptic Christians leaving Egypt by year end. He reports a dramatic drop in the presence of Christians throughout the Middle East (the Christian population of Bethlehem is now a third of what it was 35 years ago).

The only exception is Israel, where the Christian population has more than quadrupled since 1948. But Ron Paul sees no distinction between Israel and its neighbors nor does he think Americans should care.

Self centered materialism that leads our youth to support such indifference to global realities is also driving collapse of the American family.

Census Bureau statistics show that today 20 percent of America’s population between ages 18 and 29 is married. This compared to 59 percent fifty years ago.

In his farewell speech, Reagan issued a warning to the nation: “…are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?”

I doubt that Ron Paul’s vision of America is what Reagan had in mind.

SOURCE

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Ominous parallels between Obama, Roosevelt grow

By Walter Williams

People are beginning to compare Barack Obama's administration to the failed administration of Jimmy Carter, but a better comparison is to the Roosevelt administration of the 1930s and '40s.

Let's look at it with the help of a publication from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Foundation for Economic Education titled "Great Myths of the Great Depression," by Lawrence Reed.

During the first year of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, he called for increasing federal spending to $10 billion while revenues were only $3 billion.

Between 1933 and 1936, government expenditures rose by more than 83 percent. Federal debt skyrocketed by 73 percent. Roosevelt signed off on legislation that raised the top income tax rate to 79 percent and then later to 90 percent.

Hillsdale College economics historian and professor Burt Folsom -- author of "New Deal or Raw Deal?" -- notes that in 1941, Roosevelt even proposed a 99.5 percent marginal tax rate on all incomes more than $100,000. When a top adviser questioned the idea, Roosevelt replied, "Why not?"

Roosevelt had other ideas for the economy, including the National Recovery Act. Reed says:

"The economic impact of the NRA was immediate and powerful. In the five months leading up to the act's passage, signs of recovery were evident: Factory employment and payrolls had increased by 23 and 35 percent, respectively.

"Then came the NRA, shortening hours of work, raising wages arbitrarily and imposing other new costs on enterprise. In the six months after the law took effect, industrial production dropped 25 percent."

Blacks were especially hard hit by the NRA. Black spokesmen and the black press often referred to the NRA as the "Negro Run Around," Negroes Rarely Allowed," "Negroes Ruined Again," "Negroes Robbed Again," "No Roosevelt Again" and the "Negro Removal Act."

Fortunately, the courts ruled the NRA unconstitutional. As a result, unemployment fell to 14 percent in 1936 and lower by 1937.

Roosevelt had more plans for the economy, namely the National Labor Relations Act, better known as the "Wagner Act." This was a payoff to labor unions, and with these new powers, labor unions went on a militant organizing frenzy that included threats, boycotts, strikes, seizures of plants, widespread violence and other acts that pushed productivity down sharply and unemployment up dramatically.

In 1938, Roosevelt's New Deal produced the nation's first depression within a depression. The stock market crashed again, losing nearly 50 percent of its value between August 1937 and March 1938, and unemployment climbed back to 20 percent.

Columnist Walter Lippmann wrote in March 1938 that "with almost no important exception every measure [Roosevelt] has been interested in for the past five months has been to reduce or discourage the production of wealth."

Roosevelt's agenda was not without its international admirers. The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised "Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies," and "the development toward an authoritarian state" based on the "demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest."

Roosevelt himself called Benito Mussolini "admirable" and professed that he was "deeply impressed by what he [had] accomplished."

FDR's very own Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, saw the folly of the New Deal, writing: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ... We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt to boot!"

The bottom line is that Roosevelt's New Deal policies turned what would have been a three- or four-year sharp downturn into a 16-year affair.

The 1930s depression was caused by and aggravated by acts of government, and so was the current financial mess that we're in. Do we want to repeat history by listening to those who created the calamity? That's like calling on an arsonist to help put out a fire.

SOURCE

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A book for our times

One small American town offers lessons that the whole of America needs at the moment.

REVIEW of "The JOB Messiahs" a history of the Port of Coos Bay in Oregon

There has been a lot of space dedicated on this blog documenting the failed economic development efforts in Coos County paid for at taxpayer expense and much of that directed specifically at the Port of Coos Bay but it seems I have barely scratched the surface of a decades long system that plunders state and federal treasuries all in the name of government sponsored economic development.

Local author, Wim de Vriend has compiled a long history that proves Einstein’s oft quoted axiom, “You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.”

The JOB Messiahs, How government destroys our prosperity and our freedoms to “create jobs” is a twenty year effort by the author to chronicling from the 1970s when the Port of Coos Bay decided to become an economic development agency and the series of follies that followed: “…the Crosline Ferry, the unused T-Dock, money losing fish plants in Charleston, an obnoxious fish-waste plant that went broke, the unused barge-slip on the North Spit, and many more.”

It belies the local myth that “if you build it, they will come”, so commonly employed by the economic development crowd. De Vriend’s effort is a vivid reminder of the past promotional schemes, eerily similar to those we see today, like a coal export terminal in the eighties promising JOBS, JOBS, JOBS, and proudly trumpeted by the local press.

He makes the compelling argument that the Port policies thwart small business development, the real engine behind job creation. The title of his book describes people known as Industrial Recruiters, or as Economic Development Specialists, or maybe, he adds with a wink, “the Executive Director of the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay.” So why call them JOB-Messiahs? “. . . because small towns hungry for JOBS see them as saviors, and they are delighted to play the part. But they are no saviors, and what few JOBS they cause to appear are not worth the expense.”

SOURCE

Order inquiries: costacoosta@coosnet.com

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Obama’s Osawatomie speech is a gift to the American People

In a recent blog, investment strategist Ed Yardeni (yardeni.com) referred to Gallup Poll results finding that a landslide of the U.S. public (64%) regards big government as the country's biggest threat, not big business (26%) or big labor (8%).

The results of the poll are all the more dramatic considering that today 48% of Democrats are worried about the harmful consequences of big government, a number that was 32% just two years ago.

Having presented Gallup's findings, Yardeni turned to the speech President Obama gave December 6th in Osawatomie, Kansas, and found its purpose as "channeling" Teddy Roosevelt (TR), who gave his "New Nationalism" speech in the same town.

In its totality, the Osawatomie speech represents a hugely important gift to the American people for the following reasons.

First, together with Obama's record, which includes his big, corrupt, government-as-usual stimulus bill and his '60s-welfare-style, no real reform healthcare law, the speech reminds the public of the enormous disconnect between same old worn out politics President Obama and the illusion of "post everything" candidate Obama of limitless hope and change.

Yes, the speech shows Obama for the big government liberal he is at heart, even as Main Street Americans have plain had it with being told the best of all possible governmental worlds has them playing the role of sheep to their elitist shepherd betters.

To be precise, the American people are damn sick and tired of being told to subjugate themselves to the alleged deep learning and far sighted wisdom of people such as those who freed banks to become subsidized casinos and encouraged mortgage markets to become venues for social experimentation, a corrupt, bi-partisan mob that includes the likes of Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, George Bush, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and (how could I neglect him and his superbly elitist credentials?) Jon Corzine, one-time CEO of Goldman Sachs, U.S. Senator, New Jersey governor, and, until recently, honcho of MF Global.

Second, in its vagueness and childishly silly contradictions, the speech informs every open-minded citizen that despite the nation's crying out for real solutions to real problems, Obama intends to run his re-election campaign with the same shameless vacuity he exhibited in '08.

This arrogance despite the reality that the public is in no mood to suffer the kind of insulting generalities Demagogue Obama dumped on the people of Osawatomie.

In no mood to hear old, rotten, insufferably reeking political garbage whereby a president pompously pronounces that "We should be known for creating and selling products all around the world that are stamped with the proud words: Made in America" without admitting he has done absolutely nothing to reform the nation's trade policies.

In no mood to hear a president running for re-election complain that "We should be a country where everyone has a chance to go to college [without incurring] $100,000 of debt" and yet fail to be honest about the perniciously ironic truth that for decades big government involvement has caused college costs to significantly outpace inflation even as it has promoted the lie that every student is better off going to college.

Yes, as the Gallup poll shows, the county is in no mood to hear that the way to fix its problems is to further fatten the repulsively obese, wasteful sow that is Washington.

That's why the speech in Osawatomie in which Barack Obama reveals himself as in love with her every insatiable whim ("Let's hire 15,000 additional IRS agents to enforce Obamacare!") was the best present he could give the nation as it closes out yet another agonizing year.

SOURCE

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Camel noses in tents

Walter E. Williams

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman has called for states to mandate a total ban on cellphone usage while driving. She has also encouraged electronics manufacturers -- via recommendations to the CTIA-The Wireless Association and the Consumer Electronics Association -- to develop features that "disable the functions of portable electronic devices within reach of the driver when a vehicle is in motion." That means she wants to be able to turn off your cellphone while you're driving.

With very little evidence, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration claims that there were some 3,092 roadway fatalities last year that involved distracted drivers. Americans ought to totally reject Hersman's agenda. It's the camel's nose into the tent. Down the road, we might expect mandates against talking to passengers while driving or putting on lipstick. They may even mandate the shutdown of drive-in restaurants as a contributory factor to driver distraction through eating while driving. You say, "Come on, Williams, you're paranoid. There are already laws against distracted driving, and it would never come to that!" Let's look at some other camels' noses into tents.

During the legislative debate before enactment of the 16th Amendment, Republican President William Taft and congressional supporters argued that only the rich would ever pay federal income taxes. In fact, in 1913, only one-half of 1 percent of income earners were affected. Those earning $250,000 a year in today's dollars paid 1 percent, and those earning $6 million in today's dollars paid 7 percent. The 16th Amendment never would have been enacted had Americans not been duped into believing that only the rich would pay income taxes. It was simply a lie to exploit American gullibility and envy.

The fact of the matter is that the founders of our nation so feared the imposition of direct taxes, such as an income tax, that Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution says, "No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken." It was not until the Abraham Lincoln administration that an income tax was imposed on Americans. Its stated purpose was to finance the war, but it took until 1872 for it to be repealed. During the Grover Cleveland administration, Congress enacted the Income Tax Act of 1894. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1895. It took the 16th Amendment (1913) to make permanent what the founders feared.

Another camel's nose in the tent lie that's threatening the economic collapse of our country is the Medicare lie. At its beginning, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee, along with President Lyndon Johnson, estimated that Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion by 1990. In 1990, Medicare topped $107 billion. That's nine times Congress' prediction. Today's Medicare tab comes to $523 billion and shows no signs of leveling off. The 2009 Medicare trustees report put the unfunded Medicare liability at $89 trillion. The 1966 Medicare cost estimate was simply a congressional and White House lie to get the American people to buy into their agenda. But not to worry; the real Medicare crisis won't hit the nation until today's beneficiaries and political supporters are dead. It's today's children who'll bear the burden of our profligacy.

But back to the proposed cellphone ban. NTSB Chairwoman Hersman said: "It's going to be very unpopular with some people. We're not here to win a popularity contest. We're here to do the right thing." C.S. Lewis warned us about people like Hersman, saying: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

SOURCE

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Downsizing and Weakening the U.S. Military

Unless you follow writers such as Bill Gertz and others, you probably don’t have much of a feel for just how extensive the downsizing of the U.S. military, especially the Air Force, has been over the past twelve years. Yes, that includes the entire Bush II administration. It’s not just the personnel numbers involved, it’s also the reduction/delay/cancellation of procurement contracts, closing of bases and shipyards, awarding contracts to overseas suppliers rather than domestic manufacturers, et cetera, so on and so forth.

Also part of the scheme are practices such as the directed persecution of American combatants, as is exemplified by the prosecution of the Marines involved in the Haditha killings and the Lt. Pantano witch hunt. When all was said and done, charges against the Lieutenant were dropped after the long-sought physical evidence was finally unearthed and examined. But there’s no need to go to that much trouble to kill esprit de corps and combat effectiveness. Just RIF some officers close to the 20-year mark and screw them out of retirement and medical benefits. That’s how you fill officer ranks in the future.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Forced terminations with no pensions or benefits is no way to reward airmen after years of faithful service

During the holiday season, Americans especially remember our servicemen and women deployed to faraway lands, serving in harm’s way. We send packages abroad, light candles in their honor, and donate toys for military tots. However, what really matters is how we treat them when they come home. Sadly, we don’t always treat them well.

A case in point: This holiday season, the Air Force has “separated” (that is, fired) 157 officers on the eve of their retirement, including pilots flying dangerous missions, to avoid paying their pensions. According to Department of Defense Instructions, those within six years of their 20-year retirement (with no disciplinary blemishes on their record) have the option to remain in service. Nevertheless, the Air Force is committing terminations of airmen a few years away from retirement en masse, citing budget constraints.

Maj. Kale Mosley is one example. He is an Air Force Academy graduate and a pilot who has flown more than 250 combat missions. He deployed to Libya this summer with 30 hours notice. When he returned, the military immediately sent him to Iraq. Just as he was boarding the plane for Iraq, the Air Force gave him his walking papers, effective Nov. 30. Maj. Mosley will not receive a pension or long-term health-care benefits for his family. He is the father of a toddler and a newborn.

More HERE

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The Supreme Court's judgment isn't final

by Jeff Jacoby

NEWT GINGRICH'S PRESIDENTIAL AMBITIONS may be heading for the exits -- opinion polls suggest that the former House speaker's hour has come and gone -- but his critique of judicial supremacy deserves to taken seriously no matter what happens in Iowa or New Hampshire.

Contrary to popular belief, their judgments were never meant to be revered "almost as if God has spoken."

In a 54-page position paper, Gingrich challenges the widely held belief that the Supreme Court is the final authority on the meaning of the Constitution. Though nothing in the Constitution says so, there is now an entrenched presumption that once the court has decided a constitutional question, no power on earth short of a constitutional amendment -- or a later reversal by the court itself -- can alter that decision.

Thus, when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was asked for her reaction to the Supreme Court's notorious eminent-domain ruling in Kelo v. New London, she replied as though a new tablet had been handed down from Sinai: "It is a decision of the Supreme Court. If Congress wants to change it, it will require legislation of a level of a constitutional amendment. So this is almost as if God has spoken."

But judges are not divine and their opinions are not holy writ. As every American schoolchild learns, the judiciary is intended to be a co-equal branch of government, not a paramount one. If the Supreme Court wrongly decides a constitutional case, nothing obliges Congress or the president -- or the states or the people, for that matter -- to simply bow and accept it.

Naturally this isn't something the courts have been eager to concede. Judges are no more immune to the lure of power than anybody else, and their assertion of judicial supremacy -- plus what Gingrich calls "the passive acquiescence of the executive and legislative branches" -- has won them an extraordinary degree of clout and authority. That aggrandizement, in turn, they have attempted to cast as historically unassailable. In Cooper v. Aaron, the 1958 Little Rock desegregation case, all nine justices famously declared "that the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution" -- a principle, they asserted, that has "been respected by this court and the country as a permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional system."

That wasn't really true. In the words of Larry Kramer, dean of Stanford's Law School (and a former clerk for Justice William Brennan, one of the court's liberal lions), "The justices in Cooper were not reporting a fact so much as trying to manufacture one." It worked. In recent decades, the claim of judicial supremacy has clearly prevailed. Look at the way it's taken for granted, for example, that whatever the Supreme Court decides next spring about the constitutionality of the ObamaCare insurance mandate will settle the issue once and for all.

"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1820, is "a very dangerous doctrine indeed."

Gingrich argues that this is unhealthy, and that the elected branches have an obligation to check and balance the judiciary. "The courts have become grotesquely dictatorial, far too powerful and, I think, frankly arrogant," he said in Iowa last month. From the unhinged reaction his words provoked -- "this attempt to turn the courts into his personal lightning rod of crazy is simply Gingrich proving yet again that he needs to be boss of everything," railed Dahlia Lithwick in Slate -- you'd think he had declared war on the heart and soul of American democracy.

But the heart and soul of American democracy is that power derives from the consent of the governed, and that no branch of government -- executive, legislative, or judicial -- rules by unchallenged fiat. Gingrich is far from the first to say so.

"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1820, is "a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy." Abraham Lincoln -- revolted by the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott that blacks "had no rights a white man was bound to respect" -- rejected the claim that the justices' word was final. "If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court the instant they are made," he warned in his first inaugural address, "the people will have ceased to be their own rulers."

Not all of Gingrich's proposals for reining in the courts, such as summoning judges before congressional committees to explain their rulings, may be wise or useful. But his larger point is legitimate and important. Judicial supremacy is eroding America's democratic values. For the sake of our system of self-government, the balance of federal power needs to be restored.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Abolish driving licences now!: "The various States of Mexico found that bribery was impossible to avoid when attempting to gain a licence. So, to varying degrees, they changed their issuance system, some deciding simply not to have them any more. So, of course, death rates from car accidents went up, didn't they? Erm, actually, no, they didn't."

So what’s wrong with that?: "Reporters who express shock with Ron Paul’s positions should realize that in a democracy innumerable matters are up for debate, including the right to an abortion, to assisted suicide, minimum wage laws, undeclared wars in Libya or elsewhere. Ron Paul, just as any other candidate, may be open to criticism for the side he takes on any of these issues but it is a complete misunderstanding of the nature of political debate to consider simply holding views with which others disagree as something objectionable."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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2011 - Not the Best Year for America

Comment by Dr. Ileana Johnson-Paugh, who grew up under communism in Romania so knows it when she sees it

This year was not a good year for America, for freedom, for democracy, for law and order. We watched the accelerated disintegration and reshaping of every local, state, and federal institution to the detriment of the American people.

We allowed the leftist minority to push their communist agenda to the point of dismantling traditions dear to generations of Americans who have fought hard to establish the most successful society on the planet.

We watched young people debase themselves publicly. Morality reached a new low of depravity on television, in the streets, on YouTube. Every narcissist and self-indulged egoist looked for his/her fifteen minutes of dubious fame. Our children emulated the depraved Hollywood.

We witnessed the useful idiots, filthy Occupiers of Wall Street, so-called defenders of the ninety-nine percenters, destroy and foul our streets, parks, and monuments with the support of some Democrat Congressmen and the White House. Police looked the other way in the face of millions of dollars worth of property destruction during months of squatting on private or public property. Millions in damages were paid by bankrupt cities and states, by citizens who diligently worked, supported their families, and paid taxes. Occupiers closed down ports in California, interfering with international trade, domestic trade, and the flow of goods while Homeland Security did nothing to prevent the closure.

We watched the mainstream media shill for the communist party and communist dictators across the world, while telling American people lies and giving deceptive statistics and falsehoods to support the anti-American agenda of adoring “progressives” in this country.

I never understood why socialists/Marxists called themselves progressive; “regressive” seemed a more appropriate description of their goals. Destroying progress and the capitalist economy is not exactly progressive. Adopting the blue color for socialism-loving Democrats seems like a misnomer since communism by any other name is red, coached in “green” on the outside, fiery red on the inside.

We witnessed the “environmentalist green” proponents weave their “smart-growth” plans to de-develop the United States to the Middle Ages and reduce population growth through crafty health care rationing, outlandish eugenics, and sterilization proposals in order to punish U.S. for the perceived social injustice to third world nations run by tin pot dictators.

We gave developing nations trillions of dollars towards economic development, progress, and to fight poverty, yet we seem to have lost this war since third world nations are just as poor now as they were in the beginning, kept so by the corruption of their leaders and their immediate supervisor, the United Nations.

We saw the end of the expensive war in Iraq that cost us at least $1.5 trillion and thousands of dead and maimed on both sides. After ten years of supposed liberation, nation and democracy building, we are watching the slow takeover of Iraq by Iran, and the certainty of civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Not only were we not reimbursed for the war effort, we did not buy much oil from Iraq; it was sold to China.

A head of state was deposed while another was assassinated without due process; his pleas for mercy and a trial were ignored. The touted Arab Spring turned into an Arab Winter with the Muslim Brotherhood the victors.

A minority of atheists, agnostics, and Islamists objected to our Christian symbols and traditions dear to all of us - mangers, crosses, and the Bible. Forbidding Christmas displays, Merry Christmas, carols, displaying crosses in public places, and displacing Bibles at Walter Reed Hospital gave fodder to our enemies to push on with the “radical transformation” of America.

Disagreeing with the current regime became hate speech and racism. Following in the footsteps of U.K.’s intrusive citizen control by a government that knows best did not seem like a farfetched possibility.

We heard the news media glorify the death of the North Korean tyrant. Reporters and political pundits made the murderer of millions into an eccentric saint. The MSM ignored the true hero and patriot, Vaclav Havel, who helped bring the peaceful end to the communist dictatorship. He freed millions of his own people who suffered 45 years of communist oppression. Vaclav had died within days of the butcher Kim Jong Il. Millions shed heartfelt tears for the passing of Vaclav Havel. North Koreans hired professional mourners. North Koreans sighed perhaps in relief but were too frightened, weak, and hungry to show any emotion.

We watched CNN and Anderson Cooper stir up the youth in Egypt into Twitter frenzy under the false pretense of democracy and freedom from Mubarak. Every free thinker knew that the Muslim Brotherhood extremists were waiting in the wings to take over the country while oil rich nations were providing money and weapons.

Congress, the Fed, and the White House spent trillions of dollars on schemes, bailouts, and stimuli that benefited foreign governments, domestic and foreign banks, AIG, Goldman Sachs, and created no jobs in America. On the contrary, the jobs czar shipped the GE imaging department overseas. Jobs were created in countries like Brazil, Mexico, and Norway with taxpayer money.

The debt-ceiling crisis pointed out the failure of this administration to lead the nation and its success in plunging our economy into insurmountable national debt, a massive threat to our national security.

Corruption had become so rampant, Americans wondered if the famous checks and balances that prevented any one entity from acquiring unbridled power and control over our nation still exist.

Congressional representatives on both sides of the isle legislated against the wishes of the American people, passing law after law in the dead of night, chipping away at our freedoms. Legislators were bribed in order to garner necessary votes.

The Democrat-controlled Senate had not passed a budget in almost three years, funding government in piecemeal increments with much fanfare and political posturing on the part of the Obama White House and the Democrats. Republicans caved every time, in spite of the fact that voters had given them mandate in the November elections for lesser government and less spending. As Mark Steyn said, the recent two-month payroll tax cut was the biggest cave since Tora Bora.

Elections were defrauded by ACORN and voter intimidation remains unpunished to this day. The Justice Department sued state after state that tried to pass laws to protect its borders and financial integrity from illegal immigrants’ free buffet of rights, demanded through organized street protests by La Raza and its many affiliates. Trampling and burning our flag, booing our national anthem, and waving foreign flags at national events and football games became accepted and mundane.

Dropping anchor babies, accepting social welfare, and demanding equal rights with Americans, illegal aliens brought an array of bankruptcies, hospital closings, school closings, unchecked diseases, increased gang violence, gang membership, and drug cartel murders at the border with Mexico. ACLU filed lawsuits against defenseless American citizens whose rights and safety were violated.

The leftist “social justice” movement and the “green” movement pushed by United Nations’ Agenda 21 and EPA brought us closer and closer to a Marxist dictatorship by a few oligarchs who pull the strings of our politicians. Lavish union donations kept the campaign coffers of the Democrat party well stocked.

Education became more and more politicized by the left, indoctrinating students into the “global citizen” and the “evil capitalists who are destroying the planet” mentality. Busy and ignorant parents looked the other way, implicitly accepting this indoctrination. Vigilant parents home-schooled their children. Textbooks rewrote history and morality to suit the leftist agenda.

We experienced more and more censorship on line, in life, in academia, and in print. We became more of a police state, under surveillance for our views, our patriotism, and our military service. TSA received increased powers and authority to strip-search us of our dignity and molest us in the name of public safety.

More and more non-elected bureaucrats gained fiat power over our freedom, our energy, our industry, our speech, assembly, our health care, choice of schools, banking, finance, land use, water use, and home ownership.

What will 2012 bring? We have high hopes and expectations. Next year will be the defining moment of our nation – whether we continue to exist as free men and women or we cease to exist as a constitutional republic and become another tin pot banana republic dictatorship ruled by a handful of oligarchs.

SOURCE

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Obama signs compromise defence bill

In its final form the bill does seem to leave open the possibility of challenging military detentions of U.S. citizens in American courts but Obama's signing statement would appear to strengthen that

US President Barack Obama signed a huge defence Bill today, despite having "serious reservations'' that it seeks to force his hand on Guantanamo Bay and military trials for terror suspects.

Mr Obama, who is holidaying in Hawaii, added a signing statement to the $662 billion law, laying out objections to its clauses on detaining and prosecuting suspects, and directing government agencies on how to interpret them.

"I have signed this Bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists,'' Mr Obama said.

The measure, which passed by wide majorities in Congress, says the US military has the power to detain terror suspects without trial for as long as the US global anti-terror campaign is waged.

Mr Obama was particularly troubled by a section of the Bill which appears to leave open the option that a US citizen who is considered a terror suspect could be detained indefinitely in military custody. "I want to clarify that my administration will not authorise the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens,'' Mr Obama said. "Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.''

However, the President said he believed the Bill did grant him sufficient latitude to interpret its provisions in compliance with the US Constitution and the laws of war.

The White House had initially threatened to veto the Bill because of the detainee measures, but backed off when a compromise version was agreed with lawmakers.

A signing statement lays out what the president's understanding is of a measure he is signing into law and tells government officials and agencies exactly how the new legislation should be implemented.

SOURCE

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Why the Left Is Losing the Argument over the Financial Crisis

Fair-minded people are persuaded by facts, not invective

To the extent that we have had any success in challenging the conventional narrative about the causes of the crisis, it is because fair-minded people are persuaded by facts, not invective. Our argument is and has been that the financial crisis would not have occurred but for government housing policy implemented principally through Fannie and Freddie and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Although there were a number of such policies, the most important were the affordable housing requirements first imposed on Fannie and Freddie in 1992 and expanded and tightened by HUD through 2007.

Summarized below are the original numbers we relied on, taken from Fannie and Freddie’s own data and from the views of bank regulators—and now supplemented with additional data from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent complaints against certain officers of Fannie and Freddie. Of particular interest are Fannie and Freddie’s non-prosecution agreements with the SEC, in which they agree with facts that confirm—and in many cases go beyond—our original research concerning the scope of the GSEs’ subprime and Alt-A exposure. These are facts, and Nocera and others who might wish it otherwise should become familiar with them.

For example, in its non-prosecution agreement Freddie agreed that as of June 30, 2008, it had $244 billion in subprime loans, comprising 14 percent of its credit guaranty portfolio, rather than the $6 billion it had previously disclosed. Freddie also agreed that it had $541 billion in reduced documentation loans alone, vastly more than the $190 billion in previously disclosed Alt-A loans which Freddie had said included loans with reduced documentation.

While the SEC documents about $1.03 trillion in previously undisclosed subprime and Alt-A loans in Fannie and Freddie’s credit guaranty portfolios, an estimated $812.8 billion, or about 80 percent, were already accounted for in the totals of Fannie and Freddie subprime and Alt-A exposures included in Pinto’s Forensic Study and Wallison’s Dissent from the majority report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

The SEC findings add $219 billion and 1.43 million loans to our original Fannie and Freddie subprime and Alt-A totals, bringing the combined subprime and Alt-A total to $2.041 trillion and 13.37 million loans.

All told, after adding the SEC’s new data to our original estimates, there were approximately 28 million subprime and Alt-A loans outstanding on June 30, 2008, before the financial crisis, with a value of approximately $4.8 trillion. This was half of all mortgages in the United States. Of these loans, over 74 percent were on the books of U.S. government agencies and firms subject to government housing finance policies. This shows where the demand for these low quality loans came from. Fannie and Freddie were themselves exposed to more than 13 million subprime or Alt-A loans, or 65 percent of the government total.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

There is an article here that gives substance to the old accusation that Wall St runs America -- and Obama and the Democrats are up to their necks in it. Because it is an old accusation, the article is very long. It has to give chapter and verse about the people involved. So I will not attempt to excerpt or summarize but rather say something I seldom say: Read the whole thing.

In defense of bourgeois civilization: "The real danger of the Dawson piece is its erudition in big things and its deep disengagement with the small things that make life good, like clean clothes, medical care, running water, job opportunities, access to food to feed the children, and the like. He cares nothing for these things. He is content to simply praise the past for its Michelangos and Berninis and condemn the present for its Lady Gagas and Justin Beibers. It’s really a cheap trick and an obvious one: pick the best of the past and the worst of the present and you can paint a picture of relentless decline."

Public property killed Christmas: "When schools and institutions are government run they are captive to whoever runs government. When Christians ran things Christianity was everywhere. Now that secularists run the show its secularism that dominates. Had America gone libertarian from its founding all schools and institutions would be private along with virtually all other property in the country."

NYT selloff: "The New York Times Co. said Tuesday that it will sell its group of 16 small, regional newspapers to Halifax Media Holdings LLC for $143 million. The newspapers being sold include The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif.; the News Chief in Winter Haven, Fla.; and The Tuscaloosa News in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Halifax Media is based in Daytona Beach, Fla., and owns the Daytona Beach News-Journal. “The sale of our Regional Media Group will enable The New York Times Company to continue our transformation to a digitally focused, multiplatform media company,” said New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger. Last year, the group accounted for 11 percent of The Times Co.’s $2.4 billion in annual revenue, according to the company’s annual report. The Times Co., like many newspaper publishers, has struggled in recent years"

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Blind to their Liberal Biases

David Limbaugh

I think it's very difficult for any of us to be objective about any subject, especially something we care deeply about, but my objective observation is that liberals tend to be less aware of and less willing to admit their biases.

We see this often, which I'll get to, but first, let me relate how this phenomenon most recently came to my attention.

In a conversation with a saleswoman for online college courses, I expressed my disappointment that the professor of a religion course I was considering for purchase is an avowed atheist. I said that if I were going to spend time studying the subject, I'd prefer the professor share my Christian worldview.

Don't misunderstand. I think it can be profitable to learn what nonbelieving "scholars" teach about the Bible, but the point I want to discuss here is the woman's response.

She maintained that it is preferable, for this largely secular course on the Bible, to have a professor who can approach the subject from an objective, critical and historical perspective, as if a believing professor would be incapable of that approach. But is that true?

Her error is assuming that nonbelief equates to objectivity. In fact, every human being -- and thus every professor -- has a worldview, and that worldview will inevitably influence his perception of the material. Every professor will have made critical intellectual decisions on a multitude of issues in the material, all of which will be influenced by his worldview.

For example, if you don't believe in miracles, you'd be more inclined to discount those verses of Scripture describing miraculous events, from the Virgin Birth to Jesus' converting water into wine to the bedrock Christian belief: the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Nonbelievers might be more receptive to "higher criticism" and the "documentary hypothesis" and thus less skeptical of the theory that Moses didn't write the first five books of the Old Testament. They might be quicker to focus on apparent contradictions in Scripture that critical examination often reveals are not contradictions at all.

A believer in the divine inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture will certainly bring his biases into biblical exegesis, but so will a nonbeliever. We cannot escape our biases.

But the woman insisted the secular professor is only interested in presenting the material from a critical and historical perspective. A noble aspiration, I concede, should the professor actually possess it, but nevertheless unattainable. Historians and critical readers have biases, too. They can't help it.

It's just wrong to assume that a nonbelieving worldview is more objective than a believing one. We are all blessed (or burdened) with our presuppositions, and they accompany us wherever we go.

It occurred to me that the woman's argument is analogous to the political liberals' legendary denial of bias. Indeed, many liberals don't even view themselves as liberals. Rather, they are reality- and fact-based creatures. Only conservatives allow their biases to taint their objectivity. Liberals will admit that some conservatives are rational, but to be both rational and conservative, they must be evil. They know the policies they support are wrong, objectively, but they choose to do so anyway -- or something like that.

Evidence abounds: Scholarly studies show that mainstream journalists are overwhelmingly liberal, yet many deny it, and many honestly don't even see the biases they bring to their selection and reporting of the "news." ABC's Christiane Amanpour, for example, denies her liberal biases, saying she "remains in the realm of fact." The Bush haters who deceived themselves about Bush's alleged WMD lies claimed they were reality-based when in "reality" their hatred made them stark-raving mad on the subject. A liberal college professor touting open academic inquiry banned "conservative" materials from class because she refused "to tolerate the intolerable." Members of the man-made global warming cult dogmatically proclaim a consensus despite strong dissent. Environmentalists extrapolate this mindset in their approach to scores of issues, traveling utterly quixotic paths and pursuing devastatingly expensive larks while dismissing skeptics as flat-earthers. Obama constantly refers to his ideas as self-evidently reasonable and Republicans' as driven solely by partisanship, because how could they possibly oppose his reality-based proposals?

As a conservative, I believe that many liberals proceed from good intentions, though I think their consistently horrendous results entitle us to some skepticism after a while even as to their intentions -- or at least to their ability to see past their oppressive biases. I don't believe, for example, that they are racists because their policies harm minorities, though they often do. I don't believe they automatically lack compassion just because their policies spread misery.

Yet many liberals do believe that conservatives are evil, uncompassionate racists because our policies don't fit their self-serving, narrow, shallow parameters of "good intentions." Many leftists are so possessed by a need to be morally superior that they can't abide the possibility that conservatives also have noble intentions. So it is that many who believe they are objective, fair and reality-based are far less so than the objects of their scorn.

SOURCE

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The Wrong Kind of Minority

Leftists hate successful minorities. It's part of their compulsion to level everyone else down

Mona Charen

The Washington Post proclaimed in a recent headline another historic "first" for the United States -- the first female usher-in-chief at the White House. Stop the presses! The accompanying story reveals that the nominee hails from Jamaica, so it's probably a two-fer. Oh, boy.

The Post and other liberal organs are obsessed with firsts. The first female letter carrier to handle the Capitol Hill route will get a mention in the press. The first African-American anything is guaranteed at least a nod. You don't even have to be first to get "first" treatment. The last two Supreme Court nominees have been women, joining a court that had already seated two women (one retired). Nevertheless, the femininity of the candidates was cheerily chatted up. When Barack Obama became the first black nominee of a major party and then the elected president, dignified notice of an historical milestone would have been appropriate. But you know what happened -- the media went on an inebriated, extravagant first binge.

Funny how the first-effect only works for some. If Mitt Romney is nominated and elected, he will be the first member of a highly persecuted American minority group to be so honored. Yet no one is celebrating the possibility of the first Mormon president. Anti-Mormon bias, which has proved remarkably persistent over decades, is scarcely ever condemned.

It isn't that Mormons have not suffered. Following the religion's founding in upstate New York in 1830, the Mormons faced immediate hostility from their neighbors. Hounded by New Yorkers, the growing community moved west to Ohio, Missouri and Kansas. In Jackson County, Missouri, Mormon leaders were tarred and feathered, Mormon homes torched and Mormon property brazenly stolen.

County after county drove the Mormons out, sometimes threatening to kill even the children if they did not evacuate, culminating, in 1838, in an "extermination order" issued by Gov. Lilburn Boggs. Instructing the state militia, Boggs wrote, "The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace--their outrages are beyond all description." Thousands of Mormons were forced to flee, some with just the clothes on their backs, in the dead of winter. Illinois offered sanctuary for a time, but it was in that state that the religion's founder, Joseph Smith, was imprisoned and murdered by a mob.

The Mormons attempted to defend themselves and committed an atrocity of their own, the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 (for which the militia leader in charge was tried and executed by the Mormons). But most of the time, the group was on the defensive. Throughout its first seven decades, the sect was harried, persecuted, expelled, reviled and chased across a continent.

The practice of polygamy stirred hostility. As a Jew though, I cannot help noticing that Mormons were also hated because they seemed to prosper economically, because they rose to the top of organizations they joined and because they were so loyal to one another.

Outsiders can surely be fair-minded enough to acknowledge that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gets results. Utah has the nation's lowest levels of welfare dependency, child poverty and single parent homes. Its students are among the top scorers in the nation, despite relatively low levels of education spending. It ranks highest for contributions to charity by the wealthy and among the lowest for incarceration and cancer rates. Prominent Mormons established the Marriott hotel chain, Jet Blue and Bain Capital (of course). Mormon Americans invented the television, word processing and the hearing aid, among other things. Mormons have distinguished themselves in entertainment, sports and politics -- where they have risen to prominence in both parties.

Polygamy having long since been discarded, anti-Mormon bias today, ironically, often focuses on the LDS Church's opposition to same sex marriage. During the contest over California's Proposition 8, which limited marriage to the bond between men and women, opponents sought to intimidate Mormons who contributed financially or otherwise to the initiative. While there has been speculation that Mitt Romney's faith might suppress support among Republicans, a recent Gallup survey found that Democrats(27 percent) were more likely than Republicans (18 percent) to say they would not vote for a Mormon candidate for president.

Mormons are obviously the wrong kind of minority. Oh, they've been persecuted. But through a strong work ethic, self-discipline, traditional morality (Yes, there's an irony there, but get over it) and group cohesion, they have triumphed for themselves and for the country. The first Mormon president would be a milestone. But don't hold your breath for the applause.

SOURCE

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Recess Appointments To NLRB Tantamount To Declaration Of War Against Employers

While President Obama is taking a break in Hawaii, the conversation in Washington, D.C. has not stopped regarding his National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Business is furious with a purported new rule ushered in just days before Christmas with labor radical Craig Becker at the helm that allows Big Labor to ambush employers with rushed elections and forcibly unionize workers who will be denied an informed choice.

Next, there is growing concern that Obama will once again bypass Congress and recess appoint Richard Griffin and Sharon Block to the board as he did Craig Becker after his nomination was the subject of bipartisan opposition for views considered outside the mainstream. Griffin would have the distinction of being the second nominee in history to be nominated for a full term on the NLRB who came directly from a labor union, with Becker being the first. Griffin is the general counsel for International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) and serves on the board of directors for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Lawyers Coordinating Committee. He would not be a neutral arbitrator of labor-management disputes, but would continue in the mold of Craig Becker.

The AFL-CIO has been at the forefront of efforts to politicize the NLRB and use it as a vehicle to gain payback from government bureaucrats. Stewart Acuff, an official with the AFL-CIO wrote in 2010, “It [sic] we aren’t able to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, we will work with President Obama and Vice President Biden and their appointees to the National Labor Relations Board to change the rules governing forming a union through administrative action...”

Sharon Block’s nomination raises independent concerns. Most recently, Block has served as deputy assistant secretary for Congressional affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor. She reports to former Congresswoman and current Secretary Hilda Solis who is one of the fiercest partisans in Big Labor’s camp in the nation’s capital.

Solis has supported the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act which would have done away with the secret ballot election and has gone out of her way to cater to the union bosses who have been given free rein in the Obama Administration.

Under her direction, the Labor Department is considering a rule change on “persuader” activity that would change the public disclosure requirements for employers, law firms, consultants and trade associations that provide services regarding labor relations and union organizing. Current law requires reporting by employers, consultants and law firms, when they directly “persuade” or interact with employees. The law provides an exemption; however, when a law firm or consultant simply provides advice without directly interacting with employees. The proposed change virtually eliminates this “advice exemption,” so that businesses would have to provide detailed and confidential data, including possibly proprietary information about business operations and details about contracts for services with their attorneys and outside consultants.

The effect of the rule will be to restrict business’ ability to secure legal and other advice during a union organizing campaign which will be detrimental to employers who want to fairly address the issue of unionization with their employees and to employees who would be not be provided necessary information on the pros and cons of unionization before they vote....

And this brings us to the end of 2011 with widespread anticipation that this President, who has demonstrated little care for orderly process and the rule of law, could recess appoint new labor allies to the NLRB. This would enable that agency to continue its assault on workers and small businesses while rewarding the President’s largest campaign supporters, Big Labor bosses who spent nearly half a billion dollars to put him in the White House.

As Politico reported recently in an article titled, “It’s World War III at the NLRB,” the American business community would view NLRB recess appointments as tantamount to a declaration of war. It would be the end to any Obama legislative agenda for 2012 and put to rest any argument that he wants to bring Americans together to overcome the severe economic challenges we are confronting.

More here

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Only One Candidate Is Right on The Two Most Important Issues

Ann Coulter below relaxes most of her usual acerbic tone and makes a serious argument that Romney is the only candidate who can deliver for conservatives. I think she is right. There is much in Romney's past that conservatives dislike but his turn to the Right could be solid. Most people drift Rightwards as they get older. Remember that both Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan started out as liberals

In the upcoming presidential election, two issues are more important than any others: repealing Obamacare and halting illegal immigration. If we fail at either one, the country will be changed permanently.

Taxes can be raised and lowered. Regulations can be removed (though they rarely are). Attorneys general and Cabinet members can be fired. Laws can be repealed. Even Supreme Court justices eventually die. But capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California. There will be no turning back.

Similarly, if Obamacare isn't repealed in the next few years, it never will be. America will begin its ineluctable descent into becoming a worthless Western European country, with rotten health care, no money for defense and ever-increasing federal taxes to support the nanny state.

So let's consider which of the Republican candidates are most likely to succeed at these objectives.

In order to allow Democrats to indignantly denounce Republicans who said Obamacare would add to the deficit, the bill was structured so that no goodies get paid out immediately. That way, when the Congressional Budget Office was asked to determine if Obamacare was "revenue neutral" over its first 10 years, government accountants were looking at a bill that collected taxes for 10 years, but only distributed treats in the later years.

Starting at year 11, those accountants will be in for a big surprise when the government starts paying out Obamacare benefits without interruption. Because of this accounting fraud, Obamacare can still be repealed. But as soon as all Americans have been thrown off their employer-provided insurance plans and are forced to start depending on the government for health care, Republicans will never be able to repeal it.

The vast complex of unionized government workers managing our health care from Washington will fight to keep their jobs (for more on this topic, see the Department of Education), voters will want their "free" government treats (for more on this topic, see Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) -- and even if they don't, there won't be a private insurance market for them to go back to (for more on this topic, see IRS rules favoring employer-provided health care).

The only way to stop Obamacare is to beat Obama in 2012, and repeal it before the health care Leviathan is born. Otherwise, starting in 2016, Republicans will run for office promising only to improve Obamacare. Newt Gingrich will be calling plans to reform it "right-wing social engineering."

All current Republican presidential candidates say they will overturn Obamacare. The question for Republican primary voters should be: Who is most likely to win?

2012 is not a year for a wild card. It's not a year for any candidate who will end up being the issue, instead of making Obama the issue. It's not a year for one wing of the Republican Party to be making a point with another wing. (And there are no Rockefeller Republicans left, anyway.) It's not a year to be gambling that America will vote for its first woman president, or that the country is ready for a nut-bar libertarian.

Running against an incumbent president in a make-or-break election, Republicans need a candidate with a track record of winning elections with voters similar to the entire American electorate.

Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich have never had to win votes beyond small, majority-Republican congressional districts.

Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have won statewide elections, but Huntsman and Perry ran in extremely red states that don't resemble the American electorate. Only Romney and Santorum have won a statewide election in a blue state, making them our surest-bets in a general election.

But if Santorum wins, we lose on the second most important issue -- illegal immigration -- and he'll be the last Republican ever to win a general election in America.

Just as Americans ought to be able to learn the perils of a welfare state by looking at Greece, we ought to be able to learn the perils of illegal immigration by looking at California.

Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate that no Republican can be elected statewide anymore. Not so long ago, this was a state that produced great Republican governors and senators like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, S.I. Hayakawa and Pete Wilson.

If even Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, two bright, attractive, successful female business executives -- one pro-life and one pro-choice -- can't win a statewide election in California spending millions of their own dollars in the middle of the 2010 Republican sweep, it's buenas noches, muchachos.

And yet, almost all Republican presidential candidates support some form of amnesty for illegals in order to appeal to the business lobby.

Among the most effective measures against illegal immigration is E-Verify, the Homeland Security program that gives employers the ability to instantly confirm that their employees' Social Security numbers are legitimate. It is more than 99 percent accurate, and no employee is denied a job without an opportunity to challenge the records.

Although wildly popular with Americans -- including Hispanic Americans -- the business lobby hates E-Verify. Employers like hiring non-Americans because they can pay illegal aliens less and ignore state and federal employment laws. Any candidate who opposes E-Verify is not serious about illegal immigration. If anything, E-Verify ought to be made mandatory to get a job, to get welfare and to vote.

Kowtowing to business (while pretending to kowtow to Hispanics), Paul, Perry and Santorum oppose E-Verify. As a senator, Rick Santorum voted against even the voluntary use of E-Verify.

Jon Huntsman claims to support E-Verify, but also wants to give illegals amnesty as soon as the border is sealed -- as determined by someone other than us. Also, he gave driver's identification cards to illegal aliens in Utah. (You'd think a guy no one has ever heard of would be more careful about ID cards.)

Following his latest guru, Helen Krieble, Newt Gingrich is for amnesty, combined with second-class status for illegals. Instead of giving illegal aliens green cards, Newt proposes giving them "red cards" so they can stay, take American jobs, have children, receive welfare benefits, attend public schools -- and eventually be granted amnesty. The Republican primaries will be over before most voters realize what Newt's "red card" scheme entails.

Only Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney aren't trying to sneak through amnesty for illegal aliens. Both support E-Verify.

Numbers USA, one of the leading groups opposed to our current insane immigration policies, gives Republican presidential candidates the following grades on immigration: Paul, F; Gingrich, D-minus; Huntsman, D-minus; Santorum, D-minus; Perry, D; Romney, C-minus; and Bachmann, B-minus.

And that was before Romney said last week that Obama's drunk-driving, illegal alien uncle should be deported!

That leaves us with Romney and Bachmann as the candidates with the strongest, most conservative positions on illegal immigration. As wonderful as Michele Bachmann is, 2012 isn't the year to be trying to make a congresswoman the first woman president.

SOURCE

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'Things Happened'

The year's highlights in shifting responsibility

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network last March, shortly before he announced that he was running for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich reflected on his sins, which include cheating on his first two wives with women he would later marry. "At times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country," he said, "I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."

You might have thought that Gingrich's serial adultery reflected a different sort of passion and that his inability to control it reflected poorly on his self-discipline, not to mention his truthfulness, his loyalty, and the reliability of his promises. But how can you fault him for loving his country so much that he forgot he was married?

Gingrich's depiction of his infidelity as a testament to his patriotism was one of the year's most memorable exercises in responsibility deflection. Some more highlights:

Gotta Light? In February the Justice Department, as part of its lawsuit against the major tobacco companies, demanded a "corrective statement" saying, "We falsely marketed low tar and light cigarettes as less harmful than regular cigarettes." It did not mention that the federal government, which approved the machine-based method for determining "tar" yields and pressured cigarette manufacturers to advertise those numbers, was complicit from the beginning in marketing practices it now deems fraudulent.

Bird Shot. "Will Toucan Sam go the way of Joe Camel?" The New York Times wondered after the Federal Trade Commission proposed guidelines for marketing food to children in April. "By explicitly tying advertising to childhood obesity," the Times said, the FTC was indicting "cuddly figures like Cap'n Crunch, the Keebler elves, [and] Ronald McDonald." How can food-hawking characters introduced in the 1960s be blamed for weight trends that began in the 1980s?

Poker Choker. In September federal prosecutors accused Full Tilt Poker of defrauding customers by failing to keep enough money on hand to cash them out at a time when "the company faced a growing shortfall….related to its inability to collect funds from U.S. players." The federal government deliberately created that shortfall by threatening to prosecute people for processing payments related to online poker.

Cannabis Capitulator. When she blocked implementation of Arizona's new medical marijuana law last May, Gov. Jan Brewer, a self-proclaimed champion of the 10th Amendment, blamed the Justice Department, claiming she was afraid, despite assurances from the state's U.S. attorney, that regulators overseeing dispensaries would face federal prosecution. Seven months later, Brewer, who opposed the ballot initiative that legalized the medical use of marijuana, finally admitted she was determined to thwart the will of Arizona's voters, asking a federal judge to overturn the policy they approved.

Super Zero. Last summer Congress, which had shown no signs of fiscal restraint even though it had several committees dedicated to spending, decided the solution was another committee: the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. The "super committee" was supposed to relieve Congress of responsibility for making hard budgetary decisions. And even if it failed, it would succeed, because then spending cuts would kick in "automatically" (assuming Congress let them), insulating legislators from blame. Washington's best minds are still trying to figure out how it all fell apart.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Romney takes an easy lead in Republican race: "Mitt Romney has surged into the lead in Iowa just days before the state kicks off voting to decide the Republican presidential nominee, a new poll shows. The CNN/Time/ORC survey also confirmed Mr Romney's dominance in New Hampshire, the second state to vote, leaving the 64-year-old former Massachusetts governor eyeing a possible romp to the nomination. But in a sign the Republican race remains volatile, the staunch conservative Rick Santorum tripled his showing from a month ago to finish third in the latest survey on 16 per cent. Mr Romney, who was reluctant to make a big play for Iowa after losing out to Mike Huckabee in 2008, now finds himself in pole position as his main rival Newt Gingrich falters."

That’s government for you -- by Milton Friedman: "When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else’s money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn’t care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else’s money on someone else, he does’t care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that’s government for you."

Who should control the world?: "In the market economy, the buyer is the decision maker. He or she determines what gets produced, how much, and directs the pattern of change. The supposedly powerful fat cats of the corporate world are daily submitting to the wishes of the little guy with a computer and a credit card. Any company in a market can be shut down in a matter of weeks if the consumers switch loyalties. This happens every day. Nothing like this system exists in our dealings with the state."

Boom and bust madness: An empirical look at the Fed’s dollar binge: "Given the Fed’s continued actions to keep interest rates low and its reported plans to keep them that way beyond 2014, now seems a good time to revisit the deleterious effects that monetary expansion has on the economy. The data makes all too apparent the relevance of the Austrian Business Cycle in explaining the results of years of easy money."

Food fights and free enterprise: "It is sometimes said, following Milton Friedman’s insight, that business is not a friend to the free market, and the truth of this is no more evident than in recent battles between established restaurateurs and operators of mobile eateries. Once a business becomes established and enjoys a measure of success, a narrow view of its own interests can lead its principals to thwart innovation by others, and this is usually done by influencing the way laws are enacted or enforced."

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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