Jim's Blog

Ireland has started to issue its own Euros, or rather counterfeit its own Euros, since it has no legal authority to issue Euros – not that anyone worries about legal authority these days.

If any one country of Europe can get away with issuing Euros, then the political benefit is captured by the one country issuing Euros, while the inflationary effect is experience by all of Europe.  This guarantees over issue of Euros.

The proposed cure for this problem is more central authority, a United States of Europe – but there was already central authority to stop people from issuing their own Euros.  Irish issue of Euros is illegal, but the European Central Bank lacks the balls to say so, and forming a United States Of Europe would not give the European central bank a testosterone infusion.

The two most powerful democratically elected people in Europe, Ms. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy, have, under pressure from their voters, prescribed a solution:  The Deauville pact.

The Deauville pact if implemented would mean that Greece and Ireland would  go broke.  Irishmen would go the ATM, attempt to withdraw cash from their bank accounts, and no cash would come out.  Pensions and doles issued by the Irish and Greek governments would bounce – that is to say, solvent banks would turn them down, and while insolvent banks would cheerfully accept them, the insolvent banks would be unable to give cash for them.

The European Central Bank is, however, reluctant to go along with this plan.  But if they are reluctant to stop people spending Euros they do not have, or unable to stop people spending Euros they do not have, Euros will, in the end, be worthless.

The more solvent countries of Europe could save themselves from this shipwreck by issuing their own currencies – franks and marks.  Of course, that would be easier if they actually were solvent.  That Europe is drifting into a system that makes financial collapse unavoidable is more of a symptom than a cause.  Genuinely solvent nations would unhesitatingly cut the wastrels off without a penny, to teach them thrift, which is what the the Deauville pact proposed.  The problem is that every bureaucrat fears that if one government goes broke, people will doubt the next.  Big spending governments fear to let bigger spending governments go broke, lest their own solvency be doubted.

The Deauville pact was more the politicians of France and Germany assuring each other and the voters that they were indeed solvent and could act in the macho manner that solvent enterprises can act, than it was any real intent to act.

Mc Cain is horrified when a bunch of progressive lawyers demand that banks have their paperwork in order before foreclosing. He does not realize that he has implicitly conceded everything that matters to those progressive lawyers.

He complains that this will have a detrimental effect on the availability of credit:

this action could have a catastrophic impact on home values and mortgage lending …

… lenders are discouraged from offering mortgages except to the most affluent and credit-worthy buyers.

Surely, after recent events, lenders should not be offering mortgages except to the most affluent and credit-worthy buyers.

The problem is not that a bunch of lefty liberal lawyers demand that banks have their paperwork in order. The problem is that the government intervened to make mortgages easily available any deadbeat, and that this necessitated taking a few short cuts with the paperwork, indeed necessitated taking a lot of quite drastic shortcuts with the paperwork.

And now the government is demanding both that mortgages continue to be easily available to any drunken unemployed deadbeat wetback, and that the banks keep their paperwork in order.

The remedy is not that the government should refrain from demanding clear, simple, straightforward and accurate paperwork before foreclosure. The remedy is that the government refrain from demanding that mortgages continue to be easily available to any drunken unemployed broke deadbeat wetback,

Two down for the price of one!

I should have seen that he was a lefty from the fact he made no effort to escape.  A rightist assassin would have attempted to cover his own ass.

He seems to have been an antisemite of Jewish descent – classic left wing crazy.

Right wing rhetoric probably contributed.  The left’s self hating identity crisis certainly contributed.  But the root cause of rising tensions is the approaching Cloward–Piven crisis.

The root cause of the approaching Cloward–Piven crisis is that the government has purchased itself a left wing electorate, which electorate daily gets more expensive, and purchased left wing unity, which daily gets more expensive.  A shakeout approaches.  During that shakeout, some part of the left will be thrown overboard.  The Cloward Piven strategy is that there will be a violent self coup in which that part of the left which is deemed insufficiently left wing will be thrown overboard – thus as little of the left as possible will be thrown overboard.

I would, of course, prefer a solution in which the established left was purged from government and quasi governmental institutions in the way that Germany was denazified.  Check the resumes sent to every institution that is governmental or government backed.  If some substantial proportion of the resumes give left wing credentials, then the institution should be suspected of being government sponsored leftism.  If hiring practices favor those with left wing credentials, as for example the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the NEA, the State Department, and so on and so forth, then the institution is a government sponsored leftist wing organization.  The organization should be abolished, and membership of that organization should be treated the way membership of a Nazi organization was treated in postwar Germany.

The British government is trying something moderate, something in the middle between these revolutionary extremes, muddling through.  It does not appear to be working, though early days yet, to soon to tell what the outcome will be.

To avoid or resolve the Cloward Piven crisis by normal constitutional and democratic means is going to look at least a little bit like the revolutionary de-leftification strategy I outlined above, modeled on de-nazification, for the basic problem is that a left wing electorate, and left wing unity, costs too much.  Even the ultra leftist Cloward–Piven strategy, of resolving the crisis with a left wing self coup, has a little bit of de-leftification in it.   After the Cloward–Piven self coup, some leftists who are at present the recipients of large amounts of government largess, are going to find themselves re-defined as rightists and cease being recipients of government largess.

The crisis is about one third theft by banksters, one third theft by rude, arrogant, and uncivil civil servants, and one third theft by the bastard spawn of welfare moms.

The split is not between rich and poor, but between tax consumers and tax payers.

I have emphasized the role of affirmative action loans in this crisis, and on the evidence, the great majority of the American dud loans were made to Hispanics  – though it was highly profitable for the wealthy banksters to arrange these dud loans, take the fees, and pass the loans onto someone else, and it was highly profitable for middle class loan offices to fill out the loan documents with whatever story would get the loan made, and then have the applicant sign a pack of lies that he was quite incapable of reading.

To which people reply by pointing at the crisis in Europe, where affirmative action lending is not a big problem.  So in Europe, the problem is supposedly all banksters.

No it is not all banksters:  The breakdown on the latest Irish bailout is thirty five billion to bail out the banks, and fifty billion “to shore up the public finances and allow the government to keep making welfare payments and cover other expenses such as health and education.”

So the stupid violent bastard spawn of Irish welfare mums are getting a major chunk of the loot, even though by a different mechanism to the way the stupid violent bastard spawn of American welfare mums got a major share of the loot.

The underlying mechanism of the crisis is that the regnant left (the Cathedral) buys as many votes as it needs to stay in power. As its internal discipline breaks down, it becomes more and more corrupt, hence more and more expensive, requiring ever greater expenditures on vote buying. To buy votes as cheaply as possible, it prefers low intelligence semi criminal immigrants and bastard welfare spawn, since their votes cost less, so sets about flooding society with low intelligence immigrants and bastard welfare spawn.

This does not mean there is any possibility that elections could fix the problem – there was no daylight visible between Bush and Obama, and very little daylight visible between Obama and Palin. Rather, what it means is that the measures that are taken to ensure that elections cannot fix the problem are becoming increasingly drastic.

Nobel prize winning economist Krugman tells us we need stimulus, that is to say, more deficit spending.  Government needs to spend more to stimulate the economy, he tells us.

Government spending puts money in peoples pockets.  Then they spend stuff, so people get hired to produce stuff, so the newly employed get money too.  Being employed rather than unemployed, they will produce and spend.  So when the economy is in recession, government spending on pretty much anything is the best investment there can be – or so Keynesians tell us, so Nobel Prize winning economist Krugman tells us.

Despite the government vigorously applying the remedy that Krugman so enthusiastically recommended, the US economy is still in obviously in recession, not withstanding official government statistics that assure us that everything is coming up roses.  Krugman tells us this is because the government did not spend enough.  It needed to spend more.  Spending cuts are destructive, they are economic illiteracy.  That some republicans suggest spending cuts when unemployment is so high shows us that they are ignorant cavemen, unlike the highly sophisticated and knowledgeable Nobel Prize winning economist Krugman

But if a Keynesian believes in Keynesianism, should not he believe that tax cuts are better than spending increases?  There is after all no such thing as a shovel ready project.  Government spending programs take many years to get moving, and once moving tend to grow unstoppably.  If the government has to manage the total level of demand, stimulating it in recession, cutting in booms (though somehow Keynesians never seem to think that a cut is necessary in booms) then taxes, which can be swiftly and easily raised and lowered, are the instrument to do it, rather than spending which cannot be quickly increased, and once increased, can never be cut.

If spending cuts in times of high unemployment are economic illiteracy, should not tax rises in times of high unemployment also be economic illiteracy?

Apparently not.  According to Nobel Prize winning economist Krugman Republicans are economic illiterates for proposing cuts and they are economic illiterates for opposing tax rises.

If Keynesians actually believed Keynesianism was true, they would advocate tax cuts whenever unemployment was too high – and since a Keynesian never thinks unemployment is too low, they would advocate tax cuts day in and day out.

Business Insider tells us:

• Post Raisin Bran goes from 2.50 to 3.00 per box at Walmart.
• My favorite yogurt goes from .50 to .58 each at Walmart.
• Cherry tomatoes go from 4.98 to 5.98 per package.
• Walnuts go from 9.98 to 13.98 per bag at Sam’s.
• Bottom round goes from 2.48 to 2.68 per pound at Sam’s.

Al Dente tells us

What was once purchased for weekly meals at the supermarket for under $100, now exceeds $120. We have cut back on many items and we still pay more for our weekly food bill.

Econbrowser, however, tells us everything is coming up roses:

If the expectations hypothesis of the term structure (EHTS) holds, then these movements imply that as of 11/8, the average inflation rate over the next five years will be a breathtaking 1.6%!

Here is a free clue for Econbrowser: The tips market does not predict what the inflation rate will be. It predicts what the government will report the inflation rate to be – and indeed, the government is going to report near zero inflation during the next five years – because the government thinks you are stupid.