Saturday, May 10, 2014
Friday, May 2, 2014
How Social Security Works
I loved this illustration.
Funny how Social Security was never taught this way when I went to school. Social Security was always a good and never characterized as theft. Taxes were characterized the same way. "But without taxes, who would build the roads?" liberals love to cry.
Funny how Social Security was never taught this way when I went to school. Social Security was always a good and never characterized as theft. Taxes were characterized the same way. "But without taxes, who would build the roads?" liberals love to cry.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
US Produced More Oil Than Saudi Arabia from 2013 to 2014
Observations from Bob Wenzel on America's oil industry:
"Gains in U.S. energy productivity are a major reason the price inflation stats have been coming in so low. Gasoline prices over the last 12 months, according to the BLS, are down by 4.5% at the producer level, while meats are up 9.4% and dairy products are up 13.1%, for the same period."
Thanks to Bob Wenzel for this. Note the date on this graph. It's dated 2010, which means that the US has been flush with oil since at least 2010. And does this at all bring into question the whole oil question associated with US invasions into Iraq and Afghanistan? Some might say that oil has nothing to do with Afghanistan, but certainly mineral reserves do as does the petro dollar. The US wants to maintain dollar hegemony in as many regions around the world.
"Gains in U.S. energy productivity are a major reason the price inflation stats have been coming in so low. Gasoline prices over the last 12 months, according to the BLS, are down by 4.5% at the producer level, while meats are up 9.4% and dairy products are up 13.1%, for the same period."
Thanks to Bob Wenzel for this. Note the date on this graph. It's dated 2010, which means that the US has been flush with oil since at least 2010. And does this at all bring into question the whole oil question associated with US invasions into Iraq and Afghanistan? Some might say that oil has nothing to do with Afghanistan, but certainly mineral reserves do as does the petro dollar. The US wants to maintain dollar hegemony in as many regions around the world.
Monday, March 17, 2014
A FEW GOOD FINANCE BOOKS
The Widow's Handbook by Charlotte Foehner
Failsafe Investing by Harry Browne
The Permanent Portfolio by Craig Rowland and J.S. Lawon
Thursday, March 13, 2014
SIMON BLACK ON FIAT PRICE CONTROLS
Belize City, Belize
Nearly four thousand years ago, King Hammurabi of Babylon laid out his eponymous “Hammurabi’s Code”, a series of laws that is still famous to this day.
Most people know Hammurabi’s Code as “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. Yet what few realize is that the code was actually one of the original attempts at government wage and price controls.
Hammurabi’s Code decreed, for example, that the daily rate of pay for a tailor would be five grains of silver, and a farm laborer would be six grains of silver. The cost of hiring a small animal for field work would be four bushels of corn. Etc.
Of course, Hammurabi’s attempts to control prices didn’t work one bit. In his book The Old Babylonian Merchant: His Business and Social Position (published 1950), historian W.F. Leemans writes:
“Prominent and wealthy tamkaru [merchant traders] were no longer found in Hammurabi’s reign. Moreover, only a few tamkaru are known from Hammurabi’s time and afterwards . . .”
Despite the economic failures of Hammurabi’s experiment, though, wage and price controls have been tried again and again throughout history.
2,000 years later, Emperor Diocletian of the failing Roman Empire issued his Edict on Wages and Prices. The ancient Athenians tried (and failed) to set grain prices, and even had a small army of regulators to oversee the price controls. So did the the Zhou dynasty in ancient China.
Today you can see various forms of wage and price controls all over the world– from the blatant (Argentina) to the subtle.
Major farm subsidies in the United States, for example, are a form of price controls. Monetary policy (especially keeping interest rates at effectively zero) are a form of price controls.
Yet today President Obama is set to launch another far more obvious form.
The central planner-in-chief is going to sign an Executive Order to require employers to expand overtime pay in the Land of the Free. This, on top of his recent proposal to increase the minimum wage 39% to $10.10 per hour (not that there’s any inflation).
Obviously this ‘decree by executive order’ strategy shows the political system for what it is: there is no republic, there are no checks and balances, there is no adherence to the Constitution.
They do whatever they want, however they want, with total immunity.
The troubling part about this executive order (aside from being yet another soon-to-fail wage control) is that it essentially abrogates millions of work contracts across the country.
Employers and their workers have long since agreed to terms of employment that may or may not include overtime pay.
Today President is unilaterally voiding any specific provisions about overtime pay in existing employment contracts, all in his sole discretion, and all without Congressional oversight.
The rule of law means nothing.
And even though any high school economics student can tell you that wage and price controls don’t work, the government is pressing ahead with vigor, damn the consequences.
Given their continued destruction of the middle class, perhaps it’s time we bring back ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’
Belize City, Belize
Nearly four thousand years ago, King Hammurabi of Babylon laid out his eponymous “Hammurabi’s Code”, a series of laws that is still famous to this day.
Most people know Hammurabi’s Code as “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. Yet what few realize is that the code was actually one of the original attempts at government wage and price controls.
Hammurabi’s Code decreed, for example, that the daily rate of pay for a tailor would be five grains of silver, and a farm laborer would be six grains of silver. The cost of hiring a small animal for field work would be four bushels of corn. Etc.
Of course, Hammurabi’s attempts to control prices didn’t work one bit. In his book The Old Babylonian Merchant: His Business and Social Position (published 1950), historian W.F. Leemans writes:
“Prominent and wealthy tamkaru [merchant traders] were no longer found in Hammurabi’s reign. Moreover, only a few tamkaru are known from Hammurabi’s time and afterwards . . .”
Despite the economic failures of Hammurabi’s experiment, though, wage and price controls have been tried again and again throughout history.
2,000 years later, Emperor Diocletian of the failing Roman Empire issued his Edict on Wages and Prices. The ancient Athenians tried (and failed) to set grain prices, and even had a small army of regulators to oversee the price controls. So did the the Zhou dynasty in ancient China.
Today you can see various forms of wage and price controls all over the world– from the blatant (Argentina) to the subtle.
Major farm subsidies in the United States, for example, are a form of price controls. Monetary policy (especially keeping interest rates at effectively zero) are a form of price controls.
Yet today President Obama is set to launch another far more obvious form.
The central planner-in-chief is going to sign an Executive Order to require employers to expand overtime pay in the Land of the Free. This, on top of his recent proposal to increase the minimum wage 39% to $10.10 per hour (not that there’s any inflation).
Obviously this ‘decree by executive order’ strategy shows the political system for what it is: there is no republic, there are no checks and balances, there is no adherence to the Constitution.
They do whatever they want, however they want, with total immunity.
The troubling part about this executive order (aside from being yet another soon-to-fail wage control) is that it essentially abrogates millions of work contracts across the country.
Employers and their workers have long since agreed to terms of employment that may or may not include overtime pay.
Today President is unilaterally voiding any specific provisions about overtime pay in existing employment contracts, all in his sole discretion, and all without Congressional oversight.
The rule of law means nothing.
And even though any high school economics student can tell you that wage and price controls don’t work, the government is pressing ahead with vigor, damn the consequences.
Given their continued destruction of the middle class, perhaps it’s time we bring back ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’
Thursday, February 6, 2014
BLS Employment Chart
Considering a move to another state or across the country? Be sure to count the cost of that move by checking the employment numbers that can tell you the economic health of the city. Open up this Bureau of Labor Statistics link and check out the interactive charts that can give you an overview of the city that you're planning on christening as your new home.
Also, if you're concerned about the financial health of a particular city across the country and whether it is solvent or not, this chart gives you a guide.
Also, if you're concerned about the financial health of a particular city across the country and whether it is solvent or not, this chart gives you a guide.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
G. Edward Griffin on J.P. Morgan's Corner on Gold Derivatives
It’s official: JP Morgan has cornered the gold-derivatives market in the US.
To corner a market means to control a sufficient percentage of the total to be the biggest player in the field and, thereby, be able to determine prices and policies. JPM owns 60% of US gold derivatives valued at $65.4 billion.
However, those contracts are backed by only $1 billion in physical gold. That means the bank would be wiped out if gold speculators decide they want real gold instead of paper contracts for gold. If or when that happens, the physical-gold market will skyrocket, and governments likely will come to the aid of the banks by halting trading “to protect the world economy” of course. What would happen then is anyone’s guess. These are interesting times.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-01/market-cornered-jpmorgan-owns-over-60-notional-all-gold-derivatives
To corner a market means to control a sufficient percentage of the total to be the biggest player in the field and, thereby, be able to determine prices and policies. JPM owns 60% of US gold derivatives valued at $65.4 billion.
However, those contracts are backed by only $1 billion in physical gold. That means the bank would be wiped out if gold speculators decide they want real gold instead of paper contracts for gold. If or when that happens, the physical-gold market will skyrocket, and governments likely will come to the aid of the banks by halting trading “to protect the world economy” of course. What would happen then is anyone’s guess. These are interesting times.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-01/market-cornered-jpmorgan-owns-over-60-notional-all-gold-derivatives
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