This is what socialism brings.

Poverty has forced at least 225,000 children in Haiti’s cities into slavery as unpaid household servants, far more than previously thought, a report said Tuesday.

The Pan American Development Foundation’s report also said some of those children — mostly young girls — suffer sexual, psychological and physical abuse while toiling in extreme hardship.

The report recommends Haiti’s government and international donors focus efforts on educating the poor and expanding social services such as shelters for girls, who make up an estimated two-thirds of the child servant population.

Young servants are known as “restavek” — Haitian Creole for “stays with” — and their plight is both widely known and a source of great shame in the Caribbean nation that was founded by a slave revolt more than 200 years ago.

via Report says 225,000 Haiti children work as slaves | Top AP Latin America Stories | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.

Just a couple thoughts on this. This is what happens when you have a socialist/welfare mentality as a society. Haiti has long been looked at as a nation that needs handouts. All handouts do is destroy the incentive to work. We should allow nations like Haiti to fail, and when they do, real leaders will step up to eventually move the country forward. The problem is countries, like the United States, always rush in to save them from failure, and what you get is a worsening condition that would have long ago ended if rock bottom was allowed to be hit.

Also, child slavery is somewhat of a red herring. Is a child having to work to help support their family slavery? Were children slaves when we were more agricultural, and they worked on the farm? It’s silly to automatically say they are slaves. If there is sexual abuse that is much different. That is something that should be severly punished, because it is an act of violence on an individual (even worse that it’s a child). Work is not violence, and it is not slavery. If the child is prevented from working by do gooder liberals, there is a much larger chance that the child will die of starvation, be pushed into criminal enterprises, or become an orphan.

I love how our media and liberal elites love to sit back and judge other countries. “They can’t have child labor. Look at us. We are outlawed that long ago.” Do they really think that Haitian parents care or love their children any less than they do? Talk about arrogance. We once had child labor too. Not because we loved our children less back then, but because it was a necessity of life.

The solution again is to let the country stand on its own. If Haiti’s citizens embrace a more capitalistic economy and are allowed to prosper, child slavery(labor) will eventually disappear. It disappears as productivity and prosperity increase, and child labor is no longer needed to sustain the livelihood of Haitian families. Why is it no longer needed? Because prosperity is increased by productivity increases. The more productive a society is, the more prosperous it is. Productivity and prosperity feed on each other moving society continually upward. Productivity increases prosperity by giving more goods and services with less inputs, and prosperity when reinvested (not confiscated by gov’t) increases productivity by being able to afford technologies that can produce without more labor (example: machinery). The more productive the society, the less people that need to work for a given standard of living. Needing less people to work means eventually children will not need to work. Haitian parents, if given the opportunity, will choose to not have their children work, just like American parents. That opportunity won’t present itself though until liberals let them fail, and they embrace capitalism.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, there is an op-ed by David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey about giving the states the ability to propose constitutional amendments.

For nearly a hundred years, federal power has expanded at the expense of the states—to a point where the even the wages and hours of state employees are subject to federal control. Basic health and safety regulations that were long exercised by states under their “police power” are now dominated by Washington.

The courts have similarly distorted the Constitution by inventing new constitutional rights and failing to limit governmental power as provided for in the document. The aggrandizement of judicial power has been a particularly vexing challenge, since it is inherently incapable of correction through the normal political channels.

There is a way to deter further constitutional mischief from Congress and the federal courts, and restore some semblance of the proper federal-state balance. That is to give to states—and through them the people—a greater role in the constitutional amendment process.

The idea is simple, and is already being mooted in conservative legal circles. Today, only Congress can propose constitutional amendments—and Congress of course has little interest in proposing limits on its own power. Since the mid-19th century, no amendment has actually limited federal authority.

But what if a number of states, acting together, also could propose amendments? That has the potential to reinvigorate the states as a check on federal power. It could also return states to a more central policy-making role.

via David Rivkin and Lee Casey: The States Can Check Washington’s Power – WSJ.com.

While the authors have a good idea and a great point, they completely leave out what happened “nearly a hundred years” ago that allowed federal power to expand. Several things happened, but one thing in particular happened that if it had not happened would given the authors what they are asking for and would have prevented the massive expansion of the federal government. In 1913, the 17th amendment was ratified. That amendment changed Senators from being elected by state legislatures to being elected by the people via the popular vote.

The original point of the Senate was to represent state interests and to keep the Federal government from infringing on states rights. Once that barrier was removed, there was no longer a check on the federal powers. You get what we have now.

Prior to the 17th amendment, states could do exactly what the article is proposing. States could propose amendments via their state’s senators, who were accountable to the state legislators. Now, senators aren’t accountable to state legislators, so all they care about is the popular vote of the people, which is easily manipulated.

Come to think about it, do you think Senators could be as corrupt as they are if they were accountable to state legislators? Could corporations buy off US Senators at the expense of their citizens if they new that the state legislators could kick them out of office? While I’m sure there would still be corruption, I don’t think you would have it on the scale that we do now. I also don’t think you would necessarily have these career politicians and the rotating door between government and lobbying.

As time goes on, the great intellect of our founders avails itself more an more. They put controls in place knowing what would happen without those controls. Unfortunately, we allowed Woodrow Wilson, who was a “progressive” to undermine so much of what the founders put in place. Under Wilson, we got the 17th amendment, ending state rights. We got the federal reserve act, which allows the federal government to spend by printing money, robs the middle class and poor through inflation, and creates boom bust cycles. We got the progressive income tax, which punishes productivity and instigates class warfare. The list of Wilson’s destructive acts could go on with drug laws, antiwar suppression, etc.

If we ever want to take the country back towards more liberty, states without a doubt need to start reasserting themselves. It does seem to be happening underneath the surface. There is a growing 10th amendment movement. There are even discussions on some websites and TVs shows about secession. While I don’t see secession ever happening with everyone being programmed that the south was evil for seceded, I can see states voiding federal laws if the people get loud enough. Ultimately, it comes down to people rising up against these federal laws. The first chance at this will be this enslaving health care bill. The people need to get extremely loud about it and tell their state legislators to ignore the federal law. If states ignored the law, as some have ignored the drug laws, they can in effect void the laws.

Maybe it will happen. More likely it won’t. One can only hope that states reassert themselves. If they do, we have a fighting chance at re-establishing our country. If not, Rome will continue to burn until it is no longer.

Wow, stumbled across this blog post this morning on Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis. It’s obvious we are becoming a society dominated by the state. You cannot have government employees making twice as much as the private sector. The incentive becomes working for the government, and not building our economy from the private sector, the sector that actually produces something. Also, with that comes the incentive to grow the state and to defend that state at all costs. When the state comes calling for the highly paid government workers to put down any civil unrest with the general population, the government employees will no doubt try to earn their pay. Anyway, here is a letter to Mish about the absurdity of his salary.

Hello Mish.

I read your article about the salaries of government workers compared with the private sector. I am a police officer. I won’t say where, let’s just say it’s one of the most expensive cities.

I am 29 years old and I make about $130k a year with overtime. Most of the officers make this and some even make $185k a year. A few supervisors in Internal Affairs have made of $200k along with detective sergeants.

To be honest, I think our salaries are totally out of touch with not only the private sector, but with America. It’s absolutely ridiculous. When I became a police officer we were all making way below what private sector employees made. I took the job knowing I will never be rich but knowing I will have a stable job with benefits.

Little did I know my union would secure very good contracts at the expense of pillaging the public. This cannot go on. I have studied and read Robert Prechter’s Conquer The Crash book and how he (and you also) say we will have a deflationary collapse. I agree totally.

I’m just paying off debt while the going is good and have put most of my money in gold (at $800 an ounce). I’ll probably sell that gold soon because it’s getting popular in the media and on the radio. So yes, I just wanted to let you know that these govt/federal/state jobs are ridiculous. I know because I have one. 90% of the workers sit around and work for about 2 hours throughout the day and get paid 6 figure salaries. They have full benefits and pensions, 6 week vacation plans, and sick days galore.

It’s gotten to the point where the private sector cannot compete because these senators keep bringing home the pork for these bloated corporations with unions. The small business man can never compete. This is socialism at its worst that has crept into America over the past quarter century.

via Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis: Police Officer Responds To “Six-Figure Federal Salary Gravy Train” Post.

There are only a few ways that all this absurdity is going to end. All of them are bad. Time to prepare for TEOTWAWKI.

Last night I’m watching John Stossel’s new show on Fox Business. His topic was health care. As usual, Stossel was right on blaming health insurance (third party payer) for the rising prices. Of course, the socialists in the audience and in some of the on the street interviews were having none of it. What was to blame? PROFITS! These idiots think that profits drive up the costs. I even debated a socialist on Facebook who said under socialism goods and services would be the cheapest they can be, because there would be no profit. By definition, he thinks removing profit lowers price. His exact words were, “Profit wouldn’t even be considered in a socialist state, so drugs would automatically be at their lowest possible price.”

It’s silly to think that removing profit makes things cheaper. Price is a function of supply and demand, not profit. Socialism always generates more demand while dwindling supply, so there is no reason to think that not having profits would lower price. That is a simple economic fact. The other hazard of removing profit though is lack of innovation. This is where removing profit is deadly.

The biggest profits are generated with the introduction of a new innovation. The innovator has first dibs on the market. They can charge the most to recoup their investment costs. After investment costs are recouped, they generate tons of profit. I know that sounds horrible in the eyes of many socialists, but what happens next is competitors see the huge profits. They then rush in to capture some of the profits for themselves. By jumping on the profit bandwagon, they bring the goods and services to more people. How do they differentiate themselves in order to get a piece of the profits? They either innovate, making the product or service even better, they seek efficiencies, which lowers costs, or they undercut their competitors, seeking less profits in hopes of taking some of the market. This whole process drives down the cost through innovation, efficiencies, and out right price wars.

This competition always drives profit margins down. Anyone who gets in on the early stage of a new technology can tell you “enjoy it while it lasts.” Once the profit margins are driven down so far, you end up with the companies who can deliver the products or services with the best quality and efficiency.

Meanwhile, the innovators are back at it seeking the massive profits that come from new products and services. This is what leads to our ever improving livelihood.

So what does this mean for health care? If we remove the boot of the government, we can have this same process in health care. It does happen inspite of the government now, but there is no doubt that it is hampered and slowed. For instance, moving a drug through the FDA is estimated to cost close to $1 billion dollars and takes 15 years. How many drugs are there that are needed, but can’t produce the profits necessary to overcome the costs imposed by the FDA? How many people die without those drugs?

If you remove profits, you remove innovation. If you remove innovation, people die. New drugs, treatments and cures are not developed.  If you remove profit, you remove competition. It’s competition that brings products and services at ever cheaper prices to the masses. If people can’t get the products and services, people die. While all these socialists scream, “No profits in health care!”, they should be screaming “Let people die, let people die!”

Watch Stossel’s Health Care show here:

http://www.therightscoop.com/watch-%e2%80%98stossel%e2%80%99-from-fox-business-%e2%80%93-december-17-2009/

The WSJ’s token liberal comments on how to save the news papers.

This is a terrible time for newspapers, but the solutions suggested over the last year by the deep thinkers of the floundering industry give one little hope.

Back in September, the ombudsman of the Washington Post, Andrew Alexander, lamented his paper's failure to keep up with conservative outlets after they described footage showing Acorn employees apparently advising people how to evade the law. The Post's slowness on the story, Mr. Alexander wrote, raised the possibility that the paper didn't “pay sufficient attention to conservative media or viewpoints.”

Continuing the next day on the newspaper's Web site, he decided that the blame for this unhappy situation lay with the newspaper industry's workforce, which is apparently made up of the wrong kind of people. According to “surveys,” Mr. Alexander wrote, “newsrooms . . . are more liberal than the population.” Newspapers might mean well, but they are handicapped by their monocultural politics. The obvious answer is to hire for political diversity.

via Thomas Frank: Newsrooms Don’t Need More Conservatives – WSJ.com.

Sorry, for making you read that piece of the article. It’s completely a completely useless article. He basically said the problem isn’t lack of conservatives, and that having more conservatives wouldn’t have changed anything in regards to the media malpractice with the Iraq war lead up and the mortgage meltdown. He is probably right about that, but what difference does it make.  Newspapers don’t need saved. Here was my comment on the piece.

Who says we need to save the newspapers? If no one wants to buy the newspapers, it’s because the value they offer doesn’t justify their price. Should we talk about how to save heiroglyphics? No, times change, and the way people get their news is changing. The mainstream media has been exposed for it’s corruption, and society is now bypassing them. Why should I read about the economy from someone who majored in journalism, when I can read an economist’s blog? Why should I read about war from someone who majored in journalism or polysci, when I can read the blog of someone who spent years in intelligence and the military? The list goes on and on; health care, finance, sports, etc. Blogs and the internet in general provide better news via direct sources. There is no reason to have your information filtered through journalists, and thus no reason to save the newspapers.

In the Wall Street Journal today, Alan Blinder, talks up the economy and show’s his optimism (naivete) of things to come.

By ALAN S. BLINDER

The U.S. economy is digging itself out of a deep hole. You have probably heard a lot of doom and gloom lately, including talk of a jobless recovery, an L-shaped recovery (which means no recovery at all), or even a W—the feared double-dip recession. The Scrooges have a point: There are serious dangers to the nascent recovery. But you’ve heard all that many times. Let me offer instead, in deliberately one-sided fashion, the case for optimism. It is, after all, the holiday season.

The case begins with the “slingshot effect” I wrote about on this page last summer (“The Economy Has Hit Bottom,” July 24, 2009). When the growth rate of any component of GDP rises, it gives overall GDP growth a boost. And going from sharply negative growth to zero is a notable rise. In July, the slingshot scenario was hypothetical—though likely. In today’s economy, it’s a real phenomenon.

During the first half of this year, the investment component of GDP declined at a stunning 38% annual rate. Since the investment share of GDP was then about 14%, this implosion accounted for minus 5.4 percentage points of GDP growth. But since overall GDP declined “only” 3.6% in those two quarters, the rest of GDP (the 86%) actually rose. It was a small but real reason for optimism in a stormy sea.

Then came the third quarter. Like a woozy prizefighter lifting himself off the canvas, the battered investment component of GDP managed to rise (at an 11% annual rate), which added 1.3 points to GDP growth rather than subtracting 5.4 points. That 6.7 point swing was the start of the slingshot effect, which is not yet over.

Investment has three components: business investment, inventory stocking, and homebuilding. Inventory stocks were still declining at near-record rates in the third quarter; they simply must level off within a few quarters because sales are rising and firms will not want to deplete their stocks indefinitely. Business investment remains 20% below its 2008 peak; its likely course is up, not down, because plants and equipment wear out. And housing? Well, you know. Homebuilding is still in the doldrums—limping along at less than half the level of 1960. The only way to go is up.

This is where Keynesians think they have things right by using their assumptions to prove their assumptions. Blinder says while investment decreased, the other GPD components picked up the slack, so GPD didn’t decline as much as it would have otherwise. The problem is the slack was government spending. This is how they reinforce their own assumptions. They believe the government can boost the economy with stimulus, printing money, etc. Then they create a GDP calculation that includes government spending as one of it’s components. Then to increase GDP, they use that component to minupulate the calculation. The problem is that component does nothing to create wealth for our economy. It does not create real economic value. Gross Domestic Product is about production, but the government produces nothing. If this was the way to economic growth, why don’t we just focus on that component of GDP? Why not just quadruple the government spending? GDP would skyrocket!

Of course, the investment slingshot won’t last forever. Sometime in 2010, consumer spending must take over. And this is where the pessimists go into full throttle. Burdened by huge losses of both wealth and jobs, American households will start saving like mad, we are told. Sounds plausible, but it hasn’t really happened. True, the average personal saving rate has risen to 4.5% of disposable income so far this year from 2.7% in 2008. That’s higher, but a long way from the 8%-10% saving rates the doomsayers have foreseen. A saving rate near 5% is consistent with 3%-4% GDP growth in 2010.

Let’s hope consumers don’t listen to Blinder. Our country is badly in the need for savings. Savings are used for investment, which is what creates real economic growth. Yes, ultimately consumers need to spend, because we need to buy much of what we produce. If we don’t, it won’t be produced. The problem is when that consumption is heavily leveraged as it has been. I’m sure the Fed will eventually trick the public into going more in debt as things start to get back to normal.

The second major source of optimism is the amazing performance of productivity during the recession. To be sure, that performance had a downside: While real GDP was falling 3.7%, payroll employment dropped 5%, devastating many American families. But by definition, that discrepancy means that productivity—output per hour of work—rose substantially during the recession, which is pretty unusual.

The last two quarters were even more extreme: Productivity in the nonfarm business sector grew at a shocking 8.1% annual rate. There are two possible explanations. One: The last two quarters were among the most technologically innovative and entrepreneurial in the history of the United States. Two: Fearful businesses pared payrolls to the bone. If the second is closer to the truth, payrolls are extraordinarily lean right now. Which means that firms will need to hire more workers as their sales and production grow. Which means that employment may start growing sooner than the pessimists think.

I have been pointing this out for months, but until the last employment report, it was a hypothesis supported by no evidence. Not anymore. While payrolls continued to decline in November, it was by only a scant 11,000 jobs; and the job counts for September and October were revised upward. The data now show a clear trend that suggests that net job creation may be only a month or two away. We’ll see.

Here again, the problem is Blinder is counting the government as if all jobs are created equal. Jobs do the economy no good if they aren’t producing value to the economy, and government jobs do not produce value. The latest jobs report showed increases in government jobs and temporary employment. All other jobs, the ones we want, were down. More government jobs, used to distort the jobs report, is not a good thing.

There is more to the case for optimism. For one thing, less than 30% of February’s $787 billion fiscal stimulus has been spent to date; over 70% is still in the pipeline. Pessimists dote on the fact that the rate of increase of stimulus spending has probably peaked and will be lower in 2010. True. But the level of GDP will continue to get support from fiscal policy, and a second job-creation package (“Please don’t call it a stimulus!”) looks to be in the works.

Back to increasing the government component of GDP. See why government spending should be taken out of GDP?

Then there is the Federal Reserve’s stupendously expansionary monetary policy. It is well known that interest rates work on the economy with long lags. But the Fed’s last rate cut came a year ago. So isn’t the monetary policy pipeline empty? The answer is no, for at least three reasons. First, history suggests that the time lag is closer to two years than to one. So even the normal policy lags are not over.

But second, and more important, the lags are likely to be abnormally long this time around. As long as the economy’s credit-granting arteries were blocked, they could not carry the Fed’s lower-interest-rate medicine into the economy’s bloodstream. Sadly, some of these arteries remain blocked today—such as for small business lending. But the Fed, Treasury, FDIC and others have created a bewildering variety of stents and bypasses to get credit flowing again. The credit markets are now healing, though slower than we would like. Hence there is still monetary stimulus in the pipeline.

And third, the Fed continues to inject more medicine. Not by cutting interest rates, of course. Zero is as low as you can go, and the Fed arrived there a year ago. But “quantitative easing” is still in play. One example is the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) purchase program, which is adding MBS to the Fed’s balance sheet and providing vital support to the mortgage market. Yes, the Fed has begun to think about its exit strategy. But that is for the future, not for now.

The Fed’s “stupendously expansionary monetary policy” is what we should fear the most. The author may be right on the lag, and that would be the most devasting blow to the economy. Many are predicting massive inflation as the Fed’s stimulus finally leaves the reserves and enters the economy. I wouldn’t call that a case for optimism. As I highlighted in a previous blog, even the best case inflation scenario is not too comforting. If not severely contracted, we’ll have massive inflation. If severely contracted, we could be looking at a serious contraction in the economy. Pick your poison.

I warned at the outset that I would present a deliberately biased case. So let me admit, once again, that serious downside risks remain. The investment slingshot and the fiscal stimulus will both peter out in 2010. Consumer finances and confidence are shaky. Banks are still failing and commercial real estate is a mess. We cannot count on exports to pull us out of this slump. All true. And all reasons not to expect the kind of exuberant boom that typically follows a deep recession—such as the 7.7% growth spurt in the six quarters following the 1981-82 slump. No one expects that.

So my optimism is guarded. The 3%-4% growth rate that I anticipate for the rest of this year and for 2010 is a lot worse than 7.7%, to be sure. But compared to what we’ve been through, it will feel a whole lot better.

Mr. Blinder, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and vice chairman of the Promontory Interfinancial Network, is a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

via Alan S. Blinder: The Case for Optimism on the Economy – WSJ.com.

Blinder doesn’t even consider the effects of the health care takeover, national debt, etc. Then again why would he? Keynesians think government spending is as valuable as business investment. Why? Because GDP says so.

I keep hearing politicians and pundits saying the US has to be at the forefront of the green revolution. This is the new internet revolution they say, and it will create tons of jobs in the future. That got me thinking about whether this is the case.

To start, what is economic growth, and why does it benefit society? Real economic growth is increased production of society as a whole (unfortunately our GDP focuses on spending). Increased production means that there are more goods and services for the society to consume and to trade with other nations. That is increased wealth.

Now, the internet revolution and the technology revolution drove up productivity, which means you can produce more with less. That is a pretty simple idea, and it’s easy to see how it increased wealth for us as a nation. Also, being the leader in these revolutions helped us get a head start. With these revolutions, even if  you weren’t the leader, you still benefited immensely from them.

So, the question is how is the Green Revolution like the technology/internet revolution? Does it increase productivity? It is hard to see how. Having energy produced by the sun instead of coal doesn’t increase productivity. If it was cheaper, maybe you could say the savings would be reinvested, and that would eventually lead to increased productivity. Unfortunately, it isn’t cheaper, which is why it hasn’t taken place freely, and it requires government force and subsidies.

Think about it like this. Let’s say as a nation, you have $100 in wealth. You need electricity for luxury and commerce.  Now, say it costs $10/kwh when power is produced by coal (I know nothing about electricity, so please don’t laugh). You would be able to get 10kwhs for you $100. Now, let’s say with green energy it costs $20/kwh. I don’t know the ratio, but I know it’s more expensive. With green energy, you can only get 5kwhs for society’s $100. Now, how does that make your society richer? Why are we all racing to be the leaders of the revolution that makes you less wealthy?

If green technology makes you less wealthy, how do you benefit as a society from the “Green Revolution”? The only way I can think of is you are the leader, and you steal the wealth of other nations in a zero sum game. Other countries buy the technology from your country, which would give you that income from that export. Meanwhile, that nation pays out the money for the technology, and then pays out for the increased cost of the power. This sounds like a huge wealth transfer.

As you can see, there is nothing revolutionary with the “Green Revolution”. It is no where close to the internet revolution and the technology revolutions. Those revolutions didn’t need government force to come into existence. They came to be because they drove up productivity, drove down costs, and increased our standard of living. They actually increased our wealth. The green revolution is the exact opposite. It requires government force, increases cost, and decreases our standard of living. Keep this in mind the next time you hear our politicians talking about the US needing to be at the forefront of this revolution. No worth while revolution requires government forcing it upon you.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to blog much over the past few days. I spent a lot of time this weekend just browsing around the web looking at survival skills that you would need in the absolute worse case scenario of an economic collapse. This is referred to as TEOTWAWKI, the end of the world as we know it.

While I’ve been looking into guns for a while now, I’ve finally settled on the Ruger SR9, and I plan on picking one up as soon as Christmas is over. Protection is at the top of the list for survival skills. Hurricane Katrina highlighted how quickly society can deteriorate.

In addition, I did some research on solar panels and wind turbines. It would be good to know how to get off the grid if you needed an energy source. It was actually pretty fascinating reading how you can buy materials off ebay or Amazon and build your own solar panels. Power is a must in a TEOTWAWKI scenario.

While I  was reading up on this stuff, I came across a very cool blog, Survivalblog.com, a site dedicated to survival skills. There is a ton of good information about all kinds of survival skills; including guns, power creation, and even home based business. I then saw the guy who started the site wrote a book, Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse. I hopped on over to Amazon to check it out, and it had 505 reviews. Wow, I figured this must be a great read, so I headed out to the local bookstore and picked it up.

So far, I’ve only read the first two chapters, but it does not take long at all to pull you in (probably about 2 pages tops). The first chapter is about how the collapse starts, and let’s just say, it’s an ominous chapter in regards to our current economy. The government spends way too much money, the Fed prints too much money, foreign governments begin dumping our treasuries, and the house of cards begins to come down. Bank runs take place, which results in the Fed printing money for the FDIC to dish out to the depositors. All this does is make inflation worse. As you can imagine, unemployment sky rockets in no time at all, and chaos erupts in the larger cities.

The main characters are a group of people who met in college and had a plan for such an event. They formed a group that would come together in such an event, and each member developed specific survival skills, such as handling gun shot wounds. They bought  a 40 acre retreat in Idaho, and they are all making their way there to setup their “retreat”.

That’s about as far as I got. It’s an awesome read, and really makes you think about how unprepared we are as a society. We have no where near the survival skills that our grandparents had during the Great Depression. Needless to say, my wife thinks I’m a lunatic for even thinking something like that could happen, which gets back to how most of society is. We are like sheep in this cage that our government has built. A huge part of the population can’t even take care of themselves with all this abundance, so how would they take care of themselves in a real economic collapse.

Any way, it really got my noodle cooking and thinking that while it’s fun to comment on the idiocy of our government and how they are going to destroy the country, ultimately, you need to be prepared for it. It doesn’t do you or your family any good to stand around as Rome burns saying, “See, I predicted that on my blog.” It’s time to start thinking about TEOTWAWKI and learning some of the survival skills that would be necessary to survive. It’s always the crazy SOB that people go to when excrement hits the fan. I might as well get a little crazy.

Bob Murphy has a article on The American Conservative basically outlining how he sees our currency being destroyed and possibly ushering in the Amero. While the entire article is pretty scary, the part about the current bank reserves really popped out at me.

Monetary Catastrophe

Since the start of the present financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has implemented extraordinary programs to rescue large institutions from the horrible investments they made during the bubble years. Because of these programs, the Fed’s balance sheet more than doubled from September 2008 to the end of the year, as Bernanke acquired more than a trillion dollars in new holdings in just a few months.

If Bernanke has been so aggressive in creating new money, why haven’t prices skyrocketed at the grocery store? The answer is that banks have chosen to let their reserves with the Fed grow well above the legal minimum. In other words, banks have the legal ability to make new loans to customers, but for various reasons they are choosing not to do so. This chart from the Federal Reserve shows these “excess reserves” in their historical context.

U.S. depository institutions have typically lent out their excess reserves in order to earn interest from their customers. Yet currently the banks are sitting on some $850 billion in excess reserves, because (a) the Fed began paying interest on reserves in October 2008, and (b) the economic outlook is so uncertain that financial institutions wish to remain extremely liquid.

The chart explains why Faber and others are warning about massive price inflation. If and when the banks begin lending out their excess reserves, they will have the legal ability to create up to $8.5 trillion in new money. To understand how significant that number is, consider that right now the monetary aggregate M1—which includes physical currency, traveler’s checks, checking accounts, and other very liquid assets—is a mere $1.7 trillion.

What does all this mean? Quite simply, it means that if Bernanke sits back and does nothing more, he has already injected enough reserves into the financial system to quintuple the money supply held by the public. Even if Bernanke does the politically difficult thing, jacking up interest rates and sucking out half of the excess reserves, there would still be enough slack in the system to triple the money supply.

via The American Conservative » Killing the Currency.

If the currency doubled over night and the goods and services of the country did not grow, prices would quickly double as well.  While this is a drastic example, it will not work much different if it happened over a longer period of time. It just wouldn’t be as obvious. The problem here as Bob points out is even if Bernanke manages to pull out half the reserves, you’d have the money supply possibly tripling in a short period of time. Obviously, our goods and services would not triple in a short period of time, so you would have inflation that no living American has ever experienced.

What happens in situations like that? Well, look at the Argentina.

It never ceases to amaze me the arrogance we have been programmed to believe. America is a great country, but it cannot defy history just because it’s America. I’ve heard countless pundits just over the past couple weeks pooh, pooh all the “crazy talk” about the economy by saying “We’re Americans. We’ll figure our way out of this.” Why do we believe being American has anything to do with our odds? If we do the same things that were done historically, we will get the same results. It’s as simple as that. This very arrogance is even manifest in the history of decline civilizations. Do you think Rome didn’t believe they were special and could keep going as they were? How about the Soviet Union? We spent all the money in the 80s to bankrupt the Soviet Union, because Reagan knew that was the best and easiest way to destroy it. Here we are 20 years later following the same path of destruction that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Are we that stupid and arrogant to think because we are Americans, it will be different?

When will this nightmare called the Obama administration end? They never question that fact that they got it wrong. They always believe they just didn’t do enough yet. We have close to a 1$1.5 trillion deficit this year, and these idiots can’t stop thinking of ways to spend more money.

In a speech at the Brookings Institution, Mr. Obama avoided calling his jobs push a new stimulus plan. But White House officials acknowledged that the president was taking stimulus components that he believed worked best and extending or amplifying them.

Has anyone seen any part of the stimulus that worked and continues to work? Cash for Clunkers might have give a blip on the GDP chart, but it’s obvious it was not sustainable. Government stimulus in the form of spending never is.

These include putting an additional $50 billion toward infrastructure spending, ramping up Treasury Department lending to small businesses through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, extending tax credits for business investment and offering state and local governments a fresh lifeline.

Other ideas that weren’t in the February stimulus legislation include a tax credit that rewards companies for hiring workers and tax rebates for individuals who make their homes more energy efficient.

Additional wealth must be created in our country for hiring to take place. Infrastructure does not create wealth. Are you wealthier when you trade in an older car for a newer one? No, you still have a car, just like you did before.

Increased lending to small business isn’t going to help either if the economy remains in shambles. Who will want to borrow money when the future is so uncertain?

Tax credits don’t work in the long term. Only long term tax cuts work for ongoing growth. Are you going to change your long term habits for a one time handout? Neither is business. They will change habits if it’s a lasting change such as reduced taxes, just as you would change your habits with a pay increase.

Don’t even get me started on more state bailouts. It’s stealing money from responsible states and giving it to irresponsible states such as California. The responsible states have to pay for the over-the-top government benefits in other states. Would Texas please secede already.

Mr. Obama’s push comes as a partisan debate over the stimulus plan’s effectiveness heats up and Democrats grow increasingly worried about the political price of a stagnant job market. With a midterm election looming in 2010, Friday’s relatively hopeful employment reports didn’t much relieve the pressure, senior Democrats said.

And we wonder why our country is going bankrupt. Politicians try buying their re-elections. It’s all politics, and has nothing to do with what is best for the country.

Democratic aides expect two bills. The first would top $100 billion and would extend unemployment insurance, temporary food-stamp payment increases and subsidies for health-care purchases by the unemployed. That would likely be attached to a spending bill in coming weeks. The second, a jobs bill estimated at about $70 billion, would contain many of Mr. Obama’s initiatives and likely wouldn’t reach his desk until early next year.

Get ready for all the job creating from incentivizing unemployment. It seems like we extend unemployment almost every week now. What’s it up to, half your life?

The hiring tax credit may generate the most controversy. Mr. Obama campaigned on the idea last year, but Democrats abandoned it amid the stimulus debate. Employers, they worried, could fire workers and rehire them to claim the credit, or divide a full-time job into two part-time jobs, cut the wages and hours of one worker, then hire a new, part-time worker to claim the credit.

Ralph Braun, chief executive of Braun Corp. in Winamac, Ind., said a tax credit is meaningless for a producer like him. “If you’re just going out to hire someone just for a tax credit, what kind of job will you put them in that has any longevity to it?” said Mr. Braun, whose 730-employee company produces wheelchair lifts and other equipment. “You have to have a customer for that employee to serve — so I’m confused how a tax credit would stimulate anything.”

Still, there are executives who see merit to the idea. Ronald DeFeo, chief executive of Terex Corp. in Westport, Conn., would like to see such a credit targeted at recent college graduates. “If we had a tax incentive that paid for a third of [a recent college graduate's] wage for two years, then 10% for the next two years, it would be a way to encourage companies like mine to hire,” he said.

via Obama Pushes New Job Stimulus – WSJ.com.

I bet Ralph Braun’s company is much better ran than Ronald Defeo’s. Ralph is completely right. If there is no customer to serve, then there is no need for a new position. Ronald on the other hand thinks it makes good sense for the public to pay 1/3rd of two years wages and 10% for the third and forth year for new hires. Is he smoking crack? This is what he thinks is good for our country? I know he gets to save money for himself, but meanwhile that money has to come from somewhere. If that position doesn’t warrant paying the employee, then the position should not be created. It’s a sham, and only results in a lower standard of living for everyone else, well except for Ronald Defeo.