no third solution

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Category Archives: American Politics

Election Day

November 3rd, 2009

Across the U.S. of A., today is Election Day. Do something productive: don’t vote.

Election Day masquerades as a magical opportunity afforded to all freemen, to decide the political direction of a community, locale, state, etc. In the real world, the serfs are merely allowed to “choose” their new masters under the ruse of democracy which, thanks to public-school propaganda, has become to many a near-synonym for freedom.

The candidates for Lordship, of course, have been thoroughly vetted by the incumbent parties and special interests, ensuring that whosoever receives the most tallies by day’s end will toe the proverbial line.

The residents of Detroit are asked to choose from a buffet of candidates in various stages of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and in at least one case, bank fraud and tax evasion. When asked about these discretions, they reply, “There are no perfect candidates.”

Indeed. Which is why there should be no candidates.

Michigan Considers Partial Repeal of Victim Disarmament Law

October 23rd, 2009

The State of Michigan is mulling over a bill that would remove the statewide ban on concealed-carry on college campuses, which sounds like a “Win!” but the bill is rendered practically impotent: it would basically permit you to concealed-carry on the sidewalk, and to keep a firearm in your car. But you can’t have it in dormitories or classrooms or stadiums, etc. Cue the alarmists, anyways:

There are already too many crazy people. Why would anybody need a gun in this city? —Laura Harlow, U-M employee

I don’t know, Laura. Why don’t you ask the residents and students living in Blacksburg, VA.  (Hint: There was only one person who needed to be disarmed on that infamous day.)

There’s a huge number of people who drink in college. It’s absurd to mix alcohol with the right to have a gun. —Unnamed student

I’m willing to wager that the number of individuals who have used a legally permitted concealed weapon in the commission of a crime is exceeded at least 100-fold by the number of individuals who have committed crimes with unlicensed/illegal concealed weapons, but since the bill still prohibits firearms from dormitories and many campus buildings, this is kind of a red herring.

The Brady Center likes to highlight about 130 problem events involving CCWs over the last decade and a half. However, a cursory examination of these events shows that some of them are legitimate accidents (e.g., 56, 97), and many of them involve the failure of the State to properly enforce the CCW statutes and regulations already on the books (e.g., 43, 47, 49, 89, 94). For example, No. 89 highlights about 5,000 violent crimes committed in Texas between 1996 and 2001.

Texas • January 1, 1996 – August 31, 2001. The Violence Policy Center has published four reports on CCW licensees in Texas. They found that Texas CCW licensees were arrested for 5,314 crimes between January 1, 1996 and August 31, 2001, and since Texas’ CCW licensing law went into effect, licensees have been arrested for an average of 2 crimes per day.

This sounds alarming, until you learn that during that same period of time in Texas there were over 700,000 violent crimes committed; so violent crimes involving CCW permit holders numbered less than 1% of all violent crimes.

The overwhelming majority of our campus members, including students, faculty and staff as well as parents of our students, demand a safe and secure campus and would not endorse the idea of having firearms on campus —Ken Magee, University of Michigan Police Chief

This again? Every victim of gun violence represents failure of the State in its most hallowed charge: keeping its citizens safe. Until the gun control advocates recognize that there are times in our lives when the police cannot protect us, I’ll have to keep reminding them that occasionally the need arises for an ordinary citizen to take matters into her own hands.

Economic Optimism: Reading Between The Lines

October 20th, 2009

In the mainstream media, we are peppered with optimistic economic forecasts and reports of any positive changes in leading indicators.  For example suggestions that the U.S. economy is on pace to grow at an annualized rate of 2% or 3% during Q4-2009. This is reported as an “annualized” rate in order to hide the massive contractions[1] of Q1 (-8.6%) and Q2 (-2.3%).

Curiously though, even as the Federal Reserve continues to sustain the Zombieconomy by massive injections of liquidity and/or monetization, The Chairman insists that “The United States must increase its national savings rate.”[2]

I say “curiously” because, if this insistence is meant for the American people at large (i.e., he is urging Americans in the individual capacities to save money and/or pay down outstanding debt), this is at odds with the FOMC’s decision to keep nominal interest rates at or near zero per cent.  All else equal, higher interest rates encourage savings, and lower interest rates encourage debt. When the nominal interest rates are nil, and real inflation is rampant, there is little incentive to save money (other than the precautionary motive, a classic “leakage”), and it is savings in the form of investments that spur real economic growth.

As a matter of policy, if Bernanke wants to reduce or slow the growth of the national debt, he simply needs to put the brakes on the processes which enable the Treasury to sell (i.e., increase) the national debt. The Fed would need to stop buying debt, sovereign or otherwise, and the adjustment and restructuring would probably be quite painful, but hopefully short-lived.

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

But actions speak louder than words ever do, and since the beginning of the year, the Fed has increased its holding of mortgage-backed securities 100-fold [3]—becoming literally the only player in the market. Reining in the national debt will prove exceedingly difficult as long as the FOMC attempts to maintain a Fed Funds rate target of approximately zero (0-25bp) “for an extended period” in order to “boost a week recovery that has yet to create jobs.”[2]

Not only has the “recovery” failed to produce jobs, the unemployment rate has practically doubled in the last year. Consumer prices show no threat of inflation [4] because jobs are being destroyed which means people are cutting back.  Meanwhile, those of us still punching the clock every morning are trying to pay down existing debts.  Taken as a whole, there is less present demand for consumption which keeps prices from rising in the short-run.

Unfortunately the only way the Fed can maintain interest rates at historic lows is to continually increase the money supply, which is inflation by the classical definition of the word. Whenever all that new money makes its way off of the banks’ balance sheets and into the rest of the economy in the form of credit, the inevitable consequence will be rising prices, or “inflation” in newspeak.

Notes:

  1. GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT: SECOND QUARTER 2009 (THIRD ESTIMATE) (BEA) The numbers for Q3 are not available until October 29
  2. Bernanke Says U.S., Asia Should Reduce Distortions (Bloomberg)
  3. A Look Inside Fed’s Balance Sheet — 10/07/09 Update (WSJ)
  4. Fed on Hold as U.S. Consumer Prices Show No Threat of Inflation (Bloomberg)

no third solution

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