Did I Imagine the Anthrax Attacks?

As President Bush bids farewell to the nation, he appears to be using the reductio ad absurdum arguement to prove that his decisions have made America safer though I have my doubts as to whether he put any thought into his logic selection. The arguement implies several assumptions that the sorry excuses for journalists seem unwilling to challenge: 1) Americans do not travel outside of our borders so attacks on our embassies do not count. 2) Domestic terrorism does not count. 3) Natural disasters should be managed by local authorities (the same people who are evacuating their families). 4) The fact that we have an all volunteer military (not counting stop loss) means that the life of an American soldier, sailor, marine, airmen, or even a coastie is worth less than an American civilian unless the Iraq war saved more than four thousand American civilian lives. Even if we assume that there would have been another equally successful attack equivelant to the September 11th attacks, the Iraq war has still resulted in more Americans dead and we have not prevented the threat of the same attack in the future. I certainly feel safer, but of course I am still alive.

Re: Money as Debt

I find it particularly frustrating that people assume that this information is hidden because it is not spoon fed to them. The basics of the monetary system are explained in the second year of most business and economic college curriculums. People can even take the class as an elective or, God forbid, go to the library and read a book about it. The fact that a large portion of America remains willfully ignorant makes presentations like these appear to be informative rather than be recognized as propaganda. Arguements on the accessablibity of a college education will fall on deaf ears here since I owe my own education to tuition assistance available to any American willing to work for four years. The two solutions to asymptotic monetary growth proposed in the video suffer from a complete lack of forethought on implementation. First, the proposal to link monetary growth to labor assumes that everyone’s labor productivity is equal. I assume that anyone that believes this has never asked for a raise or more vacation because that would imply they believe that their labor is worth more that the guy who was just hired. It would also imply that the value of education is negative since college takes four years to complete during which time you cannot work a full time job and therefor can exchange lass labor hours for goods and services than the guy who flunked out of high school. Second, the proposal for a government that prints money and charges no taxes seems to place an abundance of confidence in the fidelity and skills of the lawyers who run government agencies not to mention the rather dubvious assumption that Congress will forever keep the budget balanced for fear of printing too much moneywhich causes inflation and results in ever increasing taxes on the purchasing power of the country. While we are living in this fantasy world, we can also assume that international trade will be balanced because all that stuff you bought for Christmas probably wasn’t made in the USA.  If you thought your Nikes were expensive now, just wait until they are made by uneducated Americans.

Energy Security

Does anyone actually believe that the Pickens Plan that relies on natural gas powered vehicles will provide energy security for the U.S.? After all, I’m sure that America will have no problems securing cheap natural gas when European demand increases due to Russian supply issues.

Will IDC Determine taxpayer losses under the TARP?

According to a Bloomberg article regarding the Fed’s use of TARP funds, the Fed is using IDC pricing to determine the value of assets it will accept as collateral in exchange for U.S. treasury bonds. Bloomberg is suing the Fed under the Freedom of Information Act however; the Fed is refusing to comply under the theory that diclosing details of the TARP would violate trade secrets with respect the involved banks. The fact that a single firm is determining prices that do not need to be disclosed to the public should set off massive alarm bells throughout the country but fear has so permeated the country that we seem willing to borrow any amount of money from future generations in order to protect our own retirement savings. After all, no one should have to sacrifice the co-pay on their Viagra prescription for their children’s future. If people really believe that government is capable of policing itself, we should shut down all the regulatory agencies and cut the taxes that support their budgets. If not, why don’t they get off their asses and show us a transparent government that uses our taxes to add value to the country rather than destroying it.

Bagehot is (still) dead

Fed Head Ben Bernanke has stated that he agrees with Bagehot in principle but that the high interest rate was only to discourage unnecessary lending that would strain England’s limited resources. Under Bernanke’s theory, the U.S. now has nearly unlimited resources therefore the interest rate should be more reasonable. This argument has several assumptions. First, inflation is not a concern. In dealing with a financial crisis, short term goals are driven by irrational fear leading to poor decisions such as those made by the patron saint of unintended consequences, Alan Greenspan. Inflation should not be the priority but it should be a factor. Second, increasing the national debt is not a concern. We cannot continue to believe that the U.S. will be capable of growing its way out of debt since we are unlikely to be the economic beneficiaries of another few world wars. As a taxpayer watching the baby boomers spending my future social security benefits, no one seems interested in a plan that would not be either the mother of all tax increases or the elimination of social benefits before I reach retirement. Third, if GE and Goldman are willing to pay a 10% dividend on preferred stock with warrants to boot in order to access capital from Berkshire, why should we accept losing money on ANY deal. Even assuming government workers are incapable of securing comparable agreements due to incompetence or the mistaken assumption that businesses need to be incentivized to save their sorry asses, we should at the very least demand that if the government is going to nationalize the financial system, it needs to be more profitable than the system it replaced. Otherwise, what the hell is the point.