| The Fourth of July, 2009 |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|11:18 am] |
Happy Independence Day (yesterday), to all my USA friends!
I'm reminded of the goddess "Liberty," from "Bullwinch's Mythology," by Poul Anderson, from his collection, "Fantasy," first published as "Poulfinch's Mythology" in Galaxy Magazine, 1967. "The goddess of freedom was much loved in the early days of the Republic. Indeed, she is the only one whom we definitely know had a statue erected to her." However, she was repeatedly raped by Brothergood, and eventually even "the practice of shooting fireworks in her honor was forbidden." |
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| Lengthy prison sentences for fraud |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|12:37 pm] |
Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for defrauding investors of $65B ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff ). That's a penal rate of 2.308 years per $B.
Now, google on "graph us money supply" (without the quotes), go to http://www.nowandfutures.com/key_stats.html , and scroll down to the graph of "Fed & Treasury total money supply".
From 2000 to 2008, the George W. Bush administration inflated the US money supply from $1,800B to $5,000B (until the end of 2008, when Bush began accommoding Obama's requests for stimulus), a factor of 2.8, devaluing the original $1,800B to 1800/2.8 = $643B, a loss of 1800-643=$1157B to holders of US dollars. (For example, if the money supply doubles, the value of the original held money is halved -- the value of a unit of currency is inversely proportional to the factor of inflation).
At a rate of 2.308 years in jail per billion, shouldn't George W. Bush, the politicians in office at the time, and the US Federal Reserve officials share a total prison sentence of 1157 X 2.308 = 2,670 years?
From the last part of 2008, the US money supply inflated from $5T to $8.2T, a factor of 1.64, devaluing the original $5T to 5/1.64=$3.0T, a loss of $2T=$2000B. At the same penal rate, how about a prison sentence of 2000 X 2.308 = 4,616 years for Obama and crew?
We could quibble about reducing the penal rate along with the reduced value of the money stolen or defrauded out of peoples' pockets and savings accounts, etc., due to the selfsame inflation...
Still, Madoff is a mere piker by comparison with the big boys.
I was prompted to write this by yesterday's news report in which "the White House [i.e., the Obama administration] said yesterday the judge who sentenced confessed swindler Bernard Madoff to 150 years in prison had sent a strong signal to investors who handle other people's [sic -- that should be peoples'] money."
-there's some staggering, bare-faced, brazen chutzpah for you.
-so don't confess, right?
-HOW strong a signal got sent?
For this inflation, the US deserves to lose its position as provider of the world's reserve currency, according to "Access to Energy". |
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| Inflation led to a bust |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|08:09 pm] |
This stuff about "the myth of the rational market" sounds an awful lot like the wails of "Atlas Shrugged" villains when their policies failed: "The world is not rational!!!" -- Especially on CBC: "Communist Brainwashing of Canada". |
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| Surprising support for the Iranian election results |
[Jun. 20th, 2009|05:15 pm] |
See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757.html?referrer=emailarticle
"Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found simply reflected fearful respondents' reluctance to provide honest answers to pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by the politically risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a host of questions. For instance, nearly four in five Iranians -- including most Ahmadinejad supporters -- said they wanted to change the political system to give them the right to elect Iran's supreme leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote. Similarly, Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the national economy. These were hardly "politically correct" responses to voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society."
And the previous paragraph:
"The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud."
Update: a friend writes:
But then I read this on CNN.com:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/21/iran.vote.survey/index.html
and it says the *are* significant irregularities which call the whole election into question, like districts which had >100% 'participation'. |
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| Hyperinflation destroys civil liberties |
[Jun. 20th, 2009|02:01 pm] |
Double-digit inflation causes the people to throw rotten tomatoes at their leaders when the bust comes (See http://capj.livejournal.com/tag/inflation - March 31, 2009, for an explanation of this). Hyperinflation causes governments to collapse and dictatorships to result -- with the concomitant cancellation of civil liberties. It always happens as a result of bad inflation -- see ancient Rome, post-revolutionary France, the German Weimar Republic of the 1930s, Indonesia, Nicaragua, the USSR, Zimbabwe today, etc., etc., etc.,
Meanwhile, today, the public radio and newspapers are going on and on about "The myth of the rational market," and I hear people literally say "No one understands why this is happening." Nonsense. Cause results in effect: single-to-double-digit inflation results in booms and busts and depletion of peoples' savings. |
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| US Counterfeiting Update |
[Jun. 14th, 2009|12:28 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | 80s, canada, cicpr, economics, george w. bush, heinlein, inflation, libertarianism, money, obama, people, politics, trudeau, usa | ] |
http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/another+counterfeiting+update
"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." -- John Maynard Keynes Source: "The Economic Consequences Of The Peace"
"In May of last year the U.S. money supply stood at roughly $834 billion. Now, a year later, the Federal Reserve has created an additional $941 billion out of thin air.
Think about what this does to the value of your dollars, to your savings, to your paycheck, to your retirement income? "A doubling of the money supply means your money is worth half what it was."
It'll be "The Yankee Peso."
Obviously, a fast boom and another big bust (recession) will occur. About the best we can hope for is that it will happen fast enough so that all of Obama's former supporters will be throwing rotten tomatoes at him before the next US presidential election, and that he will get the boot, and that a Republican president will get in next time. As bad, no, awful, as George W. Bush was in terms of inflation (causing the current big downturn), he wasn't as bad as this.
This reminds me of how Prime Minister Trudeau went from being incredibly popular in Canada, to being reviled in the early 1980s. "Trudeaumania" turned into "Trudeauphobia" when his inflationary policies caused a recession at that time. People were throwing rotten tomatoes at his train-car, as he sat inside, stony-faced, famously giving the people the finger.
A president or prime minister gets elected to do what the people say they want. As Heinlein has pointed out, the people are sovereign... until it comes time to accept responsibility for their sovereign decisions. Then they look for scapegoats to lynch: presidents, prime ministers, the Jews, whoever. |
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| I saw "Star Trek" - "Reboot" |
[May. 24th, 2009|01:26 pm] |
I went to see "Star Trek" - "Reboot" last night. It was good, and worth seeing.
I got there in good time for any normally-attended movie, but this one is still packing 'em in on the third weekend after the second week.
My seat was still nicely centrally-placed due to the row ending at a banister and stairs and there was bare floor in front due to the next row of seats beginning below that platform. The woofers in the sound system were so powerful that the sound wave from some of the low "booms" moved the creases on my lower pants' legs.
Of course the main complaint with "Star Trek" is that the characters break out of their organizational roles; it causes lack of verisimilitude. The Original Series (TOS) was a lot better at verisimilitude in this regard, but even so began to suffer from it: for example, Captain Kirk would solve a lot of the puzzles. We can accept that Kirk is such a talented strategist that he can even give Spock a hard time in a game of Chess, as in "Charlie X", but still, Spock, for one, is supposed to be brilliant. Gene Roddenberry had a great deal of military, aviation and police experience, which showed in "Star Trek".
This drift away from Gene Roddenberry's vision is probably not his fault, as Heinlein wrote about his experience as the original writer for "Destination Moon" in his book "Grumbles From the Grave," "By the end, even the banker's wife was writing dialog." |
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