November 2009
10 posts
Dubai threatens British and other banks all over...
British banks were teetering on the brink of a fresh meltdown today after it emerged they had invested heavily in crisis-hit Dubai.An $80billion debt default in the emirate has already reawakened the spectre of a global ‘double dip’ – that the first shoots of recovery could be wiped out by a second wave of recession. But the level of exposure that the crippled British banking sector...
Can Obama force you to buy health insurance?
Many liberals lambasted the Bush administration on detention policy and warrantless surveillance, often arguing that they violated the Constitution. Now the Obama administration is pushing ahead with plans to require every American to purchase health insurance. Doesn’t that also violate the Constitution? The Constitution created a federal government limited to its enumerated powers....
Our Financial Dependence on China
During President Obama’s high profile visit to China this week, the most frequently discussed, yet least understood, topic was how currency valuations are affecting the economic relationship between the United States and China. The focal problem is the Chinese government’s policy of fixing the value of the renminbi against the U.S. dollar. While many correctly perceive that this...
What Is Money?
The crisis of 2008 has led to a revival of interest in the Austrian School’s theory of the business cycle. Why? Because several Austrian School economists and newsletter writers warned of the looming crisis. They did so two years before it hit. These predictions were dismissed as radical and out of touch. The most widely viewed debate over this matter – after the fact – took place on CNBC in...
Job losses continue to mount amid 'recovery'.
As the unemployment rate crossed the double digit barrier for the first time since Michael Jackson learned to moonwalk, President Obama announced that he will convene a “jobs summit” to finally bring the problem under control. Using all the analytic skill that his administration can muster, the President is determined to figure out why so many people are losing their jobs and then formulate a...
Did the Stimulus stop the Recession?
An economy is not a “blob” into which people pour money, the Keynesian view. It is an intricate combination of factors of production which individuals harness to meet the real needs of real people. It is a process constrained by the law of scarcity, which means that the workings of an economy — if individuals are permitted the freedom necessary to make it work — are going...
The End of America, in the Middle of the Night
While normal everyday oblivious Americans were preparing their beds to sleep Saturday night their elected officials quietly passed H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Indeed, the passage of this act deals one of the final death blows to the Constitution and with it our liberties. As I ponder upon this momentously horrid occurrence it is as if I have just woken up from a...
In Afghanistan, the Pentagon Digs in
In our day, the American way of war, especially against lightly armed guerrillas, insurgents, and terrorists, has proved remarkably heavy. Elephantine might be the appropriate word. The Pentagon likes to talk about its “footprint” on the geopolitical landscape. In terms of the infrastructure it’s built in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps “crater” would be a more...
Be Prepared for the Worst
Any number of pundits claim that we have now passed the worst of the recession. Green shoots of recovery are supposedly popping up all around the country, and the economy is expected to resume growing soon at an annual rate of 3% to 4%. Many of these are the same people who insisted that the economy would continue growing last year, even while it was clear that we were already in the beginning...
Cash for Clunkers: Taxpayers Paid $24,000 Per Car
According to this article by David M. Burd (link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl/looting-for-clunkers.html), cash for clunkers didn’t help the economy at all, but did just the opposite and will hurt it even more. A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer, but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway, according...
October 2009
8 posts
Bernanke's Lip Service
An article by Joseph Gauthier at Young Americans for Liberty (link: http://www.yaliberty.org/posts/bernankes-lip-service) points out how consistently Ben Bernanke is wrong time and time again. According to the Wall Street Journal, “in a speech Friday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave new emphasis to the idea of charging the financial industry for the costs of any bailout.” ...
Your dollars are steadily buying less and less
An important article by Peter Schiff titled “Dollar Forced to Abdicate” (link: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=298) points out why our dollar continues to lose purchasing power and the steps that are needed to reverse this trend. So, as the dollar index makes fresh 52-week lows on a nearly daily basis, discussion on the greenback is heating up. And while real insight on the...
The ever expanding powers of the Presidency
An excellent article by Tom Engelhardt and David Swanson entitled “Will You Love Every Future President?” at www.lewrockwell.com points out the problem of a soon to be all powerful president and what it means for us down the road. Presidential power has been on a pathway of expansion far beyond what the Constitution outlined. That expansion, which hit the highway after World War II, got a turbo...
Is the economy really growing?
Well no not really according to an article by Bill Bonner on www.lewrockwell.com. His article entitled ‘Is the Real Economy Growing, Expanding, and Making Money?’ points out that even though the Dow has hit 10,000 recently and countless pundits are calling the recession to be over its all just a farce. Let’s take the firm JPMorgan who receive massive bailout funds from the government a year ago. ...
The comeback of the Taliban, part 2
A recent assessment by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, identified the Taliban as the most important part of the insurgency, coordinating “loosely” with groups led by two prominent warlords. He concluded that “the insurgents currently have the initiative” and “the overall situation is deteriorating.” The statement from Mullah Omar, one of a series issued in...
The comeback of the Taliban
It’s a historical fact: no foreign army has ever won a war in or successfully occupied Afghanistan. Most recently was the 10 year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979-1989. How did it end? You guessed it: miserable failure. How does this tie in with current day Afghanistan? Well history just seems to be repeating itself and this is supported by an article by Scott Shane from The New...
Entering the Greatest Depression in History
Here are excerpts from an article (link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/marshall1.1.1.html) by Andrew Gavin Marshall.
While there is much talk of a recovery on the horizon, commentators are forgetting some crucial aspects of the financial crisis. The crisis is not simply composed of one bubble, the housing real estate bubble, which has already burst. The crisis has many bubbles, all of which...
Economic recovery my ass
Well here we go again; the government is prattling on about how were now in an economic recovery despite massive job losses and continued shrinkage of the job market amid an ever growing national debt. Saying that we can have a ‘jobless recovery’ is just about akin to saying that were not in a recession to begin with. The sense of panic that prevailed in 2008 seems to be subsiding amid promising...
September 2009
8 posts
Why Obamacare will fail
In this excerpt from an excellent article by Dr. Ron Paul, (link: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=236) he really shows why Obamacare is, was, and never can be an option and what will really fix the problem.
1.) No one has a right to medical care. If one assumes such a right, it endorses the notion that some individuals have a right to someone else’s life and property. This...
G20 hypocrisy
An article by Peter Schiff at www.campaignforliberty.com shows us what really happens inside a meeting of the world’s most powerful countries: A G20 meeting. His in depth analysis of this meeting really shows us what no news show or newspaper will ever dare to touch base on. As this G20 meeting rolls around, but this time on home soil, the time comes once again for the economically curious but...
The ugly truth about our 2 party system
An article by Michael Gaddy entitled ‘Nowhere Else To Go’ at www.lewrockwell.com brings up some very interesting points about our current political system and why it consistently fails. On November 4th 2008, millions of Americans went to the polls believing the “change” they were voting for included a scaling down and the eventual end of the wars of empire in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...
College Public Financing 101
An article by Don Rasmussen at Young Americans for Liberty (http://www.yaliberty.org/posts/understanding-college-public-financing) really does show why college has gotten so expensive and why the price will just keep rising. It seems that when the government dumps lots of cheap dollars into the system and the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates artificially low (encouraging private lenders to do...
Gun Control and why it's never an option
Terence Gillespie at www.lewrockwell.com has published a very interesting article on why gun control is bad and actually only makes crimes worse. He points out that if anyone were to put a sign in their front yard that says “Gun-Free Zone” then according to gun control folks that house will be safest house on the block. But of course this is nonsense. Criminals ignore the law....
Whats to come by 2012
An excellent article from MSN Money’s Paul B. Farrell really hits the nail on the head. All we’re seeing in the markets right now is a new bubble being inflated by a short term bull market. People really think that we’re coming out of the recession but in reality ladies and gentlemen it’s not even close to over. All this roaring new bull market will lead to is yet another bigger, badder,...
Obama to address nations schoolchildren
So the latest news as of yet is Obama’s plan to deliver a speech to all the nations children who are in school to apparently give them encouragement and let them know the president cares. Oh really? Is stepping over Constitutional bound sand driving a political agenda into school rooms a good idea? To begin with, having the federal government be involved in education is a violation of the...
We'll be out of the recession in no time...right?
Actually no that’s completely wrong. As a matter of fact we’re just charging head first into another Great Depression. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are still being cut every month, almost 100 banks have failed this year, and the Federal Reserve is still printing more and more to try to inflate our way out of this. Printing money to keep this bubble of failed banks and institutions...
August 2009
2 posts
The next quagmire: Afghanistan
According to an article by Philip Giraldi at one of my favorite sites, www.campaignforliberty.com, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz predicted in 2003 that the cost of the Iraq war would be covered by Iraqi oil revenue, which would also pay for reconstruction. Well actually the Iraq war has cost the U.S. more than $900 billion which includes more than $145 billion US and Iraqi dollars...
About me
Hello to all readers, my name is Nick and I’m a freshman at Ball State University. As a senior in high school, I became infatuated with the 2008 presidential election. It came time for the republican debates and I was completely open to whomever at that point in time. I wasn’t really sure what my political views were and I wanted to see if any of the republican candidates would ring a bell with...