Its a simple principal. Look at the movie Castaway. A single island inhabitant has the ultimate in trade barriers, yet the lack of people with which to trade creates a very austere lifestyle. You can only consume what you can produce, and since you have to do everything yourself, there just isn't time to make lots of different things. Life gets so austere, even though you own all the wealth, that you are ready to risk your life to go find other humans with which to trade. Such examples are the foundations of what economies are - the sum total of human action in pursuit of an ever higher standard of living as a barrier against death.
I like the "Man from La Mancha" version. "See life as it should be, rather than it is." Which was a reason to justify fantasy in the face of stark realities. However, if we allow it, the reality of what we can do by taking advantage of how nature works (production only comes from learning not coercion), can make our reality even better than our dreams.
Europe's Pain Is America's Gain, Not Bane [View article]
"just disallow imports from countries that don't meet our announced requirements." "prices rise"
That's exactly what a tariff is. There is no getting around it. It is what it is. The outcome will still be no jobs, but now everything costs more. Car factories and textile mills won't come roaring back to life. The problem isn't that other countries don't make themselves less attractive for investment, the problem is that we do it to ourselves.
We have an income tax that rewards consumption (gotta get that aggregate demand going don't you know), we have a CB that wants to create a wealth effect so people will consume (again aggregate demand), and we do fiscal stimulus to get consumers going. Then we wonder why after all this encouragement that they are buying cheap gadgets?
I'm telling you that whenever you trade, over time you will get more and have to work less. In theory you could have a completely unemployed domestic populace that has a very high standard of living. They live off capital (stored labor), that is constantly growing and providing enough to live off of. This would occur because there would be plenty of economic opportunity, and contrary to what the luddites think, robots would be welcome and so would immigrants.
Comparative advantage, ever expanding choice, and ever growing technology would provide limitless opportunities that would constantly be improving our standard of living. Just because we have allowed gov to create bad domestic economic policies, doesn't mean we should double down on that with bad foreign trade policies as well. I've read that some of our highest tariffs are on some of the worlds poorest countries.
Gov employees can't regulate with regards to voluntary transactions. That would require them to have superior market knowledge. The only way they could have that is if the public granted them thant knowldge. If the public already had that knowledge, then why would they need to give it to gov?
Think about the value special market knowledge would have. If gov employees knew how to make sure all investments made a great return, why in the world would they accept a few million from gov when they have knowledge that is worth billions or trillions.
If FDIC regulators know how to build the bank that every consumer wants, but that no banker will provide, then they could leave the FDIC, start the perfect bank, and get every bank customer in the country to patronize it. Of course they don't do this, so the only conclusion is that they don't have special market knowledge.
Free markets, markets free from force and fraud, eventually purge bad investments. Gov imposed force and fraud on markets bails out bad business. Eventually, there is so much bad business that the gov notes issued for the bailouts lose more and more of their value, which reduces their purchasing power. An expropriation tax reduces purchasing power, thus gov policies that don't raise expropriation taxes but that issue notes for bailouts is also a tax.
Dodd Frank has the same effect of raising interest rates, at the same time the Fed is trying to lower interest rates. If you don't want corrupt business practices to be rewarded, don't give the gov the power to regulate voluntary transactions. When you do, all you do is create the economics for business to buy politicians and eventually the rules will be written that crush new and smaller competition.
Again, are you seeing a growth in the number of banks, or are the larger banks getting bigger and bigger?
If you advocate for gov reg of vol transfer, then you create the economics for pol to be bought. Then they will be bought by the highest bidder. Then the will write the rules to eliminate the smaller competitor. Again are the number of banks increasing?
Right, and all of that could have been stopped if politicians (who would normally have to earn an honest living) couldn't be bought to make sure the rules are written to crush smaller competitors and enshrine the larger interests.
Are we seeing an increase in the number of banks, or a decrease? If you follow the money you will find two fraudsters in bed with each other, planning on what taxpayer funded breakfast to have. Chicken or eggs? Oh heck, the sucker taxpayer that believes in the fantasy of a gov regulated economy will pay for both.
Well the banks were making the loans for the A&D. If the FDIC had rules from the beginning to limit that sort of exposure, then much of that concentration development would have never happened. Then the house and condo building would have been extremely limited. But, how do you think congress would have reacted when an existing 1200sqft house was selling for 700k? They would be outraged at the lack of "affordable" housing, and would have demanded action in the name of the consumer. At some point the FDIC would have been rolled by the politicians, and the bubble would still have formed.
And what does the "G" in GSE stand for?
The problem the banks had, is that they failed to see the asset bubble, just like the regulators. Its like blaming the Jews for not leaving Poland when Hitler came to power. Sure looking back, it would have been worth your while to leave your job, take your family, and move to the US even though it meant spending your entire savings, because it would have meant avoiding a gas chamber. You can't blame people for falling for gov fraud when they aren't the advocates of the policies causing the damage.
Bottom line here, 100% of this can be laid at the feet of those in our population that fall for the fraud that the gov can regulate voluntary transactions to ensure that none of them ever go bad. This is just a pie in the sky, fantasy land promise that is used to get people to give up their liberty and their money to the people making these promises. The fraudsters in the gov get rich, and everyone else goes through austerity when the bubble pops. The very gov that is supposed to be used to deter fraud, becomes the entity perpetrating the fraud.
I'm blame the regulators (not so much the banks, they get their orders from the regulators) from the perspective that the assumption that a regulatory environment will create a situation where people never make mistakes. The assumption here is that the regulators are infallable because they are given orders by infallable politicians.
Its all a fraud. Its all vote buying by politicians that use our capital to promise things no human could ever deliver, and then they attack someone for pointing out this reality by saying that we are simply opposed to the wonderful outcomes of their good intentions.
The only thing gov can regulate are issues with regards to force and fraud. The reason for this, is the populace can grant the gov a monopoly of force. Of course, once that grant is given, then the gov must be regulated, because if that grant of force is not controlled, then the gov will become the source of the force and fruad (like regulators whose job it is to make sure nothing ever goes wrong). If a populace could give a gov a grant of a monopoloy of market knowledge, then they could regulate markets with regards to nothing ever going wrong. However, if a populace could really legislate that good intentions should come true, then somewhere in history some group of people would already have done that.
In order for the US gov to control the economy, the bill of rights will need to be eliminated. In fact the constitution could be boiled down to the following:
"Whoever manages to gain power, can do whatever they want to everyone else."
Ripping The Bandage - Greece And The Eurozone [View article]
What they don't want to admit is that they have a failed economic model. They have fallen for the fraud that the elite can manage the economy via guns in such a way so as everyone gets a "fair shot". Well that sounds nice, everyone has a different perception of what that means, thus you have to use force to stamp out any perceptions that differ from the people with the guns. The end result from this is the inability of advances in productive capacity to keep up with advances in consumption. Expenses are always ahead of income, and the result is capital erosion that leads to a receding balance sheet, or a recession. But since the elites consider themselves elite, and thus infallable, they will never admit their mistake, so they will continue to tax their people into austerity until violence finally breaks the cycle.
"Sell your house ... yesterday," Gary Shilling tells Bloomberg. It will take 4 years, he says, to work off still-high inventories, during which time prices could fall another 20%. Turning to Facebook: "(It's) the end of the social media boom ... reminds me of Pets.com." [View news story]
I wonder if people appreciate the myriad of rules and regulations that supply all sorts of subsidies for buyers of US treasuries (capital rules for banks give them a 0 risk weight-like Europe where that has worked well). If you have your money on deposit at a bank somewhere, you probably own treasuries without even realizing it. These rules create a sort of quasi second tier primary dealer network. The individual that buys treasuries outright should think about that. Buyer beware.
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
Europe's Pain Is America's Gain, Not Bane [View article]
http://bit.ly/Ky7Edx
Its a simple principal. Look at the movie Castaway. A single island inhabitant has the ultimate in trade barriers, yet the lack of people with which to trade creates a very austere lifestyle. You can only consume what you can produce, and since you have to do everything yourself, there just isn't time to make lots of different things. Life gets so austere, even though you own all the wealth, that you are ready to risk your life to go find other humans with which to trade. Such examples are the foundations of what economies are - the sum total of human action in pursuit of an ever higher standard of living as a barrier against death.
I like the "Man from La Mancha" version. "See life as it should be, rather than it is." Which was a reason to justify fantasy in the face of stark realities. However, if we allow it, the reality of what we can do by taking advantage of how nature works (production only comes from learning not coercion), can make our reality even better than our dreams.
Europe's Pain Is America's Gain, Not Bane [View article]
That's exactly what a tariff is. There is no getting around it. It is what it is. The outcome will still be no jobs, but now everything costs more. Car factories and textile mills won't come roaring back to life. The problem isn't that other countries don't make themselves less attractive for investment, the problem is that we do it to ourselves.
We have an income tax that rewards consumption (gotta get that aggregate demand going don't you know), we have a CB that wants to create a wealth effect so people will consume (again aggregate demand), and we do fiscal stimulus to get consumers going. Then we wonder why after all this encouragement that they are buying cheap gadgets?
I'm telling you that whenever you trade, over time you will get more and have to work less. In theory you could have a completely unemployed domestic populace that has a very high standard of living. They live off capital (stored labor), that is constantly growing and providing enough to live off of. This would occur because there would be plenty of economic opportunity, and contrary to what the luddites think, robots would be welcome and so would immigrants.
Comparative advantage, ever expanding choice, and ever growing technology would provide limitless opportunities that would constantly be improving our standard of living. Just because we have allowed gov to create bad domestic economic policies, doesn't mean we should double down on that with bad foreign trade policies as well. I've read that some of our highest tariffs are on some of the worlds poorest countries.
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
Think about the value special market knowledge would have. If gov employees knew how to make sure all investments made a great return, why in the world would they accept a few million from gov when they have knowledge that is worth billions or trillions.
If FDIC regulators know how to build the bank that every consumer wants, but that no banker will provide, then they could leave the FDIC, start the perfect bank, and get every bank customer in the country to patronize it. Of course they don't do this, so the only conclusion is that they don't have special market knowledge.
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
Dodd Frank has the same effect of raising interest rates, at the same time the Fed is trying to lower interest rates. If you don't want corrupt business practices to be rewarded, don't give the gov the power to regulate voluntary transactions. When you do, all you do is create the economics for business to buy politicians and eventually the rules will be written that crush new and smaller competition.
Again, are you seeing a growth in the number of banks, or are the larger banks getting bigger and bigger?
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
Are we seeing an increase in the number of banks, or a decrease? If you follow the money you will find two fraudsters in bed with each other, planning on what taxpayer funded breakfast to have. Chicken or eggs? Oh heck, the sucker taxpayer that believes in the fantasy of a gov regulated economy will pay for both.
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
And what does the "G" in GSE stand for?
The problem the banks had, is that they failed to see the asset bubble, just like the regulators. Its like blaming the Jews for not leaving Poland when Hitler came to power. Sure looking back, it would have been worth your while to leave your job, take your family, and move to the US even though it meant spending your entire savings, because it would have meant avoiding a gas chamber. You can't blame people for falling for gov fraud when they aren't the advocates of the policies causing the damage.
Bottom line here, 100% of this can be laid at the feet of those in our population that fall for the fraud that the gov can regulate voluntary transactions to ensure that none of them ever go bad. This is just a pie in the sky, fantasy land promise that is used to get people to give up their liberty and their money to the people making these promises. The fraudsters in the gov get rich, and everyone else goes through austerity when the bubble pops. The very gov that is supposed to be used to deter fraud, becomes the entity perpetrating the fraud.
The Housing Recovery: An Update [View article]
Its all a fraud. Its all vote buying by politicians that use our capital to promise things no human could ever deliver, and then they attack someone for pointing out this reality by saying that we are simply opposed to the wonderful outcomes of their good intentions.
The only thing gov can regulate are issues with regards to force and fraud. The reason for this, is the populace can grant the gov a monopoly of force. Of course, once that grant is given, then the gov must be regulated, because if that grant of force is not controlled, then the gov will become the source of the force and fruad (like regulators whose job it is to make sure nothing ever goes wrong). If a populace could give a gov a grant of a monopoloy of market knowledge, then they could regulate markets with regards to nothing ever going wrong. However, if a populace could really legislate that good intentions should come true, then somewhere in history some group of people would already have done that.
In order for the US gov to control the economy, the bill of rights will need to be eliminated. In fact the constitution could be boiled down to the following:
"Whoever manages to gain power, can do whatever they want to everyone else."
Ripping The Bandage - Greece And The Eurozone [View article]
"Sell your house ... yesterday," Gary Shilling tells Bloomberg. It will take 4 years, he says, to work off still-high inventories, during which time prices could fall another 20%. Turning to Facebook: "(It's) the end of the social media boom ... reminds me of Pets.com." [View news story]