Posts filed under 'Economics'
Artus Register
Christine Fernandez, President of Argentina, recently announced that eating grilled pork is more effective than the erectile dysfunction drug Viagr, according to the UK’s The Independent.
Tucking into a pork chop with her husband, [M]s Fernández raised an eyebrow and declared that it was “all good”, adding that rumours of the meat’s aphrodisiac qualities “might be right”.
As an unapologetic socialist, it is doubtful that Ferdandez’ husband, former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, ever needed any help screwing people. His wife, however, seems more comfortable lubricating her horrific ideas with attempted humor and pretended sexiness. The president used the quip about her alleged discovery of the surprising side-effects of grilled pork to soften the announcement that she is supporting government payments to farmers in exchange for not raising pigs. So on the one hand, she is encouraging pork consumption, and on the other, her government is taking action to keep the price of the other white meat artificially elevated.
With the time up for repayment of $13 billion of debt, it may not be the best time for an increasingly unpopular head of state to introduce new spending programs. But it may be a great time for Argentinians to stop electing swine.
January 30th, 2010
Artus Register
9:10 - They’ve introduced the Emperor twice now
9:12 - <Choke> Obama just opened by referencing the U.S. Constitution
9:13 - Casual swipe at the Confederacy
9:14 - Setting the stage for the concept of we’re-all-in-this-together
9:15 - Lies begin about how EVERYONE agreed government “had to act” to save the economy. Announced that “the worst is over.” Those continuing to lose jobs are likely unaware of this..
9:15 - A few short minutes in he channels “for the children” and bi-partisanism.
9:16 - We’re all the same. Second mention of “the children.”
9:17 - He’s “never been more hopeful about America’s future.” <cue applause sign>
9:18 - ‘Division is bad’ (but he’ll spend the rest of the night deliberately being divisive). “People deserve a government that matches their decency” (no word on deserving a government that doesn’t put law abiding people and other non-aggressors in cages over plants and leaves.)
9:19 - He had to shore up the banks, but he HATED to do it. Poor guy. He said it three times.
9:20 - He did what needed to be done and he rescued the economy and made it transparent (though we still have no idea where the “bailout” money went because the Fed is still top secret)
9:20 - ‘We need bank fees’–the Democrats clap enthusiastically over the prospect a new tax!
9:21 - B.O. is suddenly opposed to the bonuses paid to bailed out firms, and they need to pay back “the taxpayers.” Hilarious stuff.
9:22 - “We cut taxes for 95% of working families,” then he named everyone who received one. No mention of the coming enormous tax increase in the form of hyper-inflation.
9:23 - Because of the steps “we took” two million Americans are presently employed who would be out of work. 1.5 million more jobs are on the way thanks to “The Recovery Act, aka the Stimulus Bill.” This is already getting hard to listen to.
9:24 - Stories about the awesomeness of the Recovery Act are unlimited, and things are speeding toward perfection.
9:25 - Despite the sheer awesomeness of the plan and execution, many are out of work. But now a call for a “Jobs Bill?” (Can’t wait.) “The true engine of job creation in this country will always be America’s businesses.” Wow. Really? “But government can create the conditions necessary for businesses to expand and hire more workers.” No word on removing the countless obstacles to business and job creation or the penalties for hiring a domestic worker.
9:27 - Billions more to the banks will create jobs because banks are only lending to big companies. Starved for profits, aren’t banks lending to any person of business that represents a good risk?
9: 29 - Tax credits to businesses (favored one’s, I’m sure). The broken clock finally gets something right: “Let’s eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment, and provide a tax incentive…to invest in new plants and equipment.”
9:31 - Put Americans to work on infrastructure. Referenced light rail plan in Tampa that will only work with subsidies that hide the true cost. The repeated references to ‘infrastructure’ and ‘clean energy’ sound a lot like FDR’s make-work nonsense that EXTENDED the depression. Anyone who doesn’t believe Washington wants to EXTEND this recession/depression must admit the only alternative view: this president is an idiot. There is no other way to look at the deliberate repeating of horrible mistakes.
9:33 - “…it is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas, and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America.” in Reality-Based English:
It’s time to penalize companies government has forced overseas, and put a tariff on their goods raising prices on American citizens who want to buy from American-owner companies. Brilliant.
9:36 - ‘The House has passed a bill granting government the authority to mess up the job situation further, and I encourage the Senate to do the same.’ Awesome.
9:38 - ‘People are out of work and they need our help’ Are you sure they don’t just need your boot off their necks?
Only government can help the unemployment situation that greed and the free market caused.
9:42 - ‘I was told addressing big issues like the economic road ahead was too ambitious. But I can solve any problem with Uncle Sam’s checkbook, and authority I don’t legally have.’
9:43 - Other nations are doing things and we will too, con sarnit! We aren’t going to wait. “As hard as it may be…it’s time to get serious about fixing the problems that are hampering our growth [except reducing the size, cost, and scope of government, those are perpetually good ideas].”
“One place to start is serious financial reform.” [Insert nonsense about what 'nearly brought down our economy]. Here comes the call for uber-regulation.
[Was away from keyboard for 8-10 minutes, but by the sound of my wife's groaning and yelling at the TV, I missed some really good (bad) stuff.]
9:57 - ‘We need to spend more tax payer money on community college.’
9:59 - ‘It is still vital that we socialize medicine. Let’s clear some things up. Here’s the deal (laughter indicates hilarity). The reason I took up this issue is because I’ve heard awful stories. The only way to improve health care is to force companies to do XY and Z. Increased competition that would offer enormous savings and better policies by eliminating the prohibition on companies selling to people in other states is a non-issue. The power of government is what’s important here. And although we have zero authority to do so, we’re going to keep fighting to nationalize medical care and hope the $1.2 trillion dollars it will cost will fall into our laps. Whatever the cost, I’m not walking away from [insert sad story].’
‘If you have a better idea, let me know (so I can pretend I didn’t hear it).’
[vomit break]
10:11 - Repeats the lie: “At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion.” Yawn, then vomit. Refers to prior lie as ‘fact.’ Trillions in debt and the “surplus” fairy tale is still being told.
10:13 - ‘We added to the surplus but we had to because we needed to save the economy from the free market and greed. And remember, the bubble caused by state-mandated easy credit and manufactured wealth had nothing to do with government.’
10:52 - Mr. Obama just suggested that we “try common sense,” after pretending that his administration bears no responsibility for this massive deficit. He also said he hasn’t seated lobbyists in his administration, and has always been opposed to doing so, despite people like Eric Holder, Tom Vilsack, William Lynn, William Corr, David Hayes, Mark Patterson, Ron Klain, Mona Sutphen, Melody Barnes, Cecilia Munoz, Patrick Gaspard, Michael Strautmanis being tapped or seated.
That last blatant lie pushed me over the edge. I can’t hear anymore. There are simply too any blatant lies coming forth from my television, and it is sickening. In fairness, the SOTU Addresses held by the preceding president were equally dishonest and filled with as many infuriating calls for more government. I tire of the correcting the untruths, stomaching the lies, and listening to the poisoned concepts that government trumps freedom, and individualism is secondary to collectivism and statism. I’ve recorded the program and may tackle the remainder when I have recovered.
January 27th, 2010
Artus Register
The concept that John McCain would behave exactly like George W. Bush was terrifying for many Americans, and thus an effective campaign tool for the Obama crowd. There were even popular bumper stickers that admonished the thought of a McCain Administration, warning us: McCain: Bush’s Third Term.
It is safe to assume that exactly zero Obama voters ever considered the possibility of their man playing the same role. They probably don’t see it now, either.
The mainstream media’s excitement over the new Administration’s “reversals” of Bush policy is the stuff of headlines, comedy show monologues, and supporter’s bloviations. But despite the droning on about such decisions, the Obama Administration has–in most major areas–parroted the arrogant and unlawful policies of its predecessor.
In the foreign policy arena, Obama and company have promised to copy the Iraq surge in Afghanistan, spending countless billions more in cash and untold quantities of American blood for increasingly vague objectives. The Afghan theater spilling into Pakistan is almost a foregone conclusion. And despite sincere-sounding rhetoric, we aren’t exactly rushing out of the abortion the U.S. has made of Iraq.
Obamanomics needs no explanation, and can enjoy no justification. But for every right-winger shouting “Marxist!” there are three stubborn examples of Bush 43’s abject socialism, indulgent squandering, and exponential government growth.
So-called conservatives (whatever that word means in the post-Bush era) are vocally, and legitimately, if hypocritically, concerned about Obama’s plans to tax and spend, expand government, and gut the Constitution. But it seems such misdeeds don’t count when political and economic tyranny is perpetuated by a Republican the media’s broken compass has signaled as “a staunch conservative” and “strict constructionist.” To the alleged Right, it is the letter that decides the morality of positions, rather than actions: a (D) apparently means “Damn communist!” while an (R) indicaties, “Right on, man!”
The sad reality is that anyone remotely concerned with a healthy economy, the continued survival of a partially-free market, or the rule of law, should be too hoarse from calling for Bush’s head for the past eight years to say much of anything. Those who didn’t certainly have no room to admonish Obama for sins he has not yet committed.
Fortunately as one who recognized the Bush fraud very early, and who experienced daily blood pressure spikes from continued subjugation to W’s endless stream of lies and shattered promises, I am exercising my reserved right to verbally accost this administration and predict the worst kind of governance–a lot of it. Unlike the denizens of hypocrisy that compose the rank-and-file Republicans, I do not spell tyranny f-r-e-e-d-o-m when a Republican dons the jack boots.
Despite the little Easter eggs of difference that will be played up by the media’s abysmal huger for sensationalism and division, this administration will likely do a great service to the cause of freedom by slaying once and for all the perpetual myth that any true and substantive differences exist between the two major political parties.
March 22nd, 2009
Artus Register
In an apparently attempt to publish important news, the brilliant, thumb-on-the-nation’s-pulse minds at Time have not only constructed an article informing us that some “senior officials” in the new administration drink Coca-Cola products, ut managed to have this dedunged excrement published by allegedly professional news outlets.
Important stuff, that.
This might be forgivable were we in a slow news year with readers tire of hearing about the social and economic utopia, lack of dead Americans, jobs apleanty fed by diminutive taxations, etc. But with a plan at the cliff’s edge that will finish off the dollar, a fresh new “surge” in the works for the abysmal failure that is the Afghan war, and statist policies offering endless kicks to the ribs of Liberty, Time is seriously reporting on governmental soft drink preferences. And it isn’t a two-sentence blurb, either.
Michael Scherer cranked out a detailed nine-paragrapher–The Obama Team’s Drink of Choice? Coke, Not Pepsi–that chronicled his investigative journalistic skills, telling of his exploits in the White House recycle bins, revealing the product of crunched numbers, and gifting faithful readers with in-depth analysis of carbonated beverage choices among those currently sporting the jackboots of power.
It is good to know that is such perilous times, the watch dogs at the world’s last (fairly) free press are doing their jobs. Riveting stuff.
But lest Time be alone relegated to the ninth circle of journalistic hell, this writer would be blissfully ignorant that this steaming pile of irrelevance existed were it not for comanies like Yahoo, whose “news” division thought this tripe to be not only newsworthy, but the sixth most important thing happening in the world as of 2:13 am, February 28th.
February 28th, 2009
admin
The Labor Department–a shameful and disgusting example of government agencies that exist solely for the sake of sounding necessary–surprised no one by stating that a lot of jobs were lost last month, and that it was a lot worse than the previous January
Breaking news like this is made possible with a mere $53.1 billion budget.
No word on whether the bloated, bureaucratic and mostly-unnecessary government the labor Department exists under has any plans to shut off the misery valve opened wide with the endless spend-and-print-athon that the Republicans began and Democrats are eagerly continuing. But it is fairly safe to assume that we will be receiving these multi-billion dollar updates on the worsening job market for some time to come.
February 25th, 2009
admin
There was never much hope among the educated that the Obama administration would do much for the cause of freedom, save for adopting a slightly more sane medical marijuana policy, considering ending the abortion of a war in Iraq, and closing Gitmo. That said, such immediate idiocy of Obama & Co. is a bit of surprise. Both of the nations two remaining fiscal conservatives had predicted that the new President would delay the implementation of Marxist moronity until summer.
There was no time, the then President-elect explained as he readied for phase one of Operation Outspend Bush even as the echoes of his own voice blaming Bush’s spending record for the economic woes America faces were still audible.
In fairness, it takes a brave soul filled with self-confidence, and equally assured of public complacency to even attempt a feat as far-reaching and dangerous as outsquandering Bush the lesser. Mr. Obama, apparently feels up to the task.
Beyond the dual absurdities of calling for abject socialism without limit, and the championing of the heretofore veiled and sanitized concept that government can do limitless good if given limitless power, comrade Obama is now performing his Disaster-is-Necessary trapeze act without a net, making real decisions rather than paper ones. This first of many colossal blunders-in-waiting (as recognized by everyone without a government job) has been relegated to fail-safe by Mr. Obama’s economic advisers, who, judging by their obtuse refusal to accept plain economic realities, likely doubt gravity and a heliocentric galaxy, as well.
Passing billions of newly-printed dollars through the extraordinarily greedy and inefficient hands of the state before watching as the remnants are gifted to companies helmed by those too stupid to turn a profit, we are told will magically “stimulate” an economy choked out of consciousness by government itself. This is the plan conceived by the Godlike agent of change. Excuse me, waiter, I ordered the change.
I loathed Bill Clinton in a way that defied explanation. But George W. Bush made me long for the days of the sexually frustrated and Teflon-coated Bubba. I hated Herr Bush with a passion usually reserved for 20th century tyrants from other hemispheres. But I may miss him yet.
February 18th, 2009
Artus Register
The AP is reporting that in the latest wave of violence eleven men were killed in the eastern Chihuahua state of Mexico. The response is typical of government: use force to “crackdown” on drug trafficking, which will result in arrests, seizures and ultimately higher prices for the increased risk and relative scarcity of product and therefore more profit for dealers. The higher profit will result in more jealously guarded territory which means more violence.
Since the US forced Mexico to abandon its drug decriminalization plan in the spring of 2006, the country has instead engaged in a massive crackdown on drug dealing. The result? 5,300 people were killed in drug-related attacks in 2008 alone, which was more than double the amount from the previous year.
Citizens and politicians alike in many Latin American countries are tiring of the incessant drug-violence and are considering the obvious: wiping away the profits with the stroke of a pen.
In the past few years governments in Mexico, Columbia, and Honduras have either seriously discussed or actually attempted drug decriminalization. Additionally, governments of Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador seem to be tiring of the all-out drug war approach and may be warming to the idea of ending violence by ending prohibition.
Thus far the American government, ever the on-paper proponent of free enterprise, has imagined into being a mystical exception to simple economics for the drug trade, pretending that neither risk and reward, nor supply and demand have any bearing on the economy of drugs.
January 15th, 2009
Artus Register
Despite the singularity of the campaign, president-elect Obama,the man who campaigned on nothing but his desire for change and outsider status appears to already be out of ideas. Thus far his most significant promises have been:
- Spend more money on fascist-style bailouts of failed industry (just like Bush did)
- Send more Americans to die in a foreign war fought for increasing vague objectives (just like Bush did)
- Use the power of government to take money from some and give it to others in an attempt to “stimulate” the economy (just like Bush did)
The only surprising thing about Mr. Obama’s true colors is that he has displayed them so quickly. I would have bet on concealment until at least Valantine’s Day. But it appears that the current straights are too dire, and the economy too important for delay. Government interference and the subsequent worsening of problems must begin right away.
January 15th, 2009
Artus Register
The current administration has no issue with endless cash printing, fractionally reserving the dollar toward Mugabesque inflation, and debt ceilings that reach into the stratosphere. But the automakers cannot fail. Apparently it is actually impossible.
Congress refused an auto bailout, but the WHite House, never an entity to let the chains of legality hold it back, is going to step in and try to force the issue. One can only imagine whether, if things continue, the White House would issue an executive order disallowing a GM bankruptcy filing, or whether it would demand the FBI arrest any bankruptcy judge willing to consider such a filing.
Nero Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino muddled reality as defenders of emperors and despots often do, stating:
A precipitous collapse of this industry would have a severe impact on our economy, and it would be irresponsible to further weaken and destabilize our economy at this time.
And thus the attitude of government is summed up rather succinctly, allowing natural laws to unfold is tantamount to making thing happen. This position is not dissimilar to stating that by Congress failing to ban the sunset, the government caused the next day to appear illuminated on the horizon.
There is no authority this President thinks he lacks, and his god complex is as understandable as the tearful screams of a spoiled child. Congress has given Herr Bush nearly everything he’s ever wanted, and failed to take away even his most dangerous toys. Even through their alleged anger, name calling, and suggestions of blatant wrongdoing, Congress has not lifted a finger in defense of the Constitution or to ensure any ceiling on executive powers–and the Democrats have had a majority since 2006.
The doom and gloom what-if? prophesies of ignorant government and their economic cronies does not change the fact that bankrupt motor companies will continue to exist; that someone will purchase them, reorganize them and improve them. The repeated nonsense that “we can’t let them fail” sound like the musings of a madman. They have already failed. Taxpayer-funded bailouts will not change that sad fact, nor will such “salvation” last very long under the weight of union contracts ensuring workers at the Big 3 make twice what other autoworkers do.
The sudden interest in the survival of the economy is beyond laughable coming from a President who salivates at the thought of engaging in the unaffordable, like gift to African despots, endless wars fought for increasingly vague objectives, and the largest non-military spending increases in human history. Now we are to believe that further damaging the dollar by creating wealth with which to plug the massive holes in a sinking ship is a good idea. Next he is going to repeat him commitment to the free market while the MSM regurgitates its definition of the nationalizing fascist as a “conservative” and “constructionist.”
Whether to make a real point, or hope to embarrass them into considering the truth, Operation Legislative Education is a real step toward informing Congress that there are plenty of us who aren’t going to stand for government by whim.
December 13th, 2008
Goathe