Free kibbles

The US economic decline continues, but once again the news tries to put a positive spin on it by pointing out the decline slowed. At this rate, we'll collapse slightly later than we would have collapsed at last quarters rate. That makes me feel better. At least Bloomberg isn't sugarcoating the news. It reports that the US economy has shrunk over twice as much as earlier estimates predicted. Of course, even earlier estimates predicted no recession at all, so I'm not surprised these so-called experts are wrong again. Now Bernanke is reinflating the numbers with destructive inflation.

Imagine if you woke up tomorrow, and everybody in the world had two dollars for every dollar they have today. People would be buying and investing like crazy. Stock prices would double. Commodity prices would double. Home values would double. GDP would double. All overnight. The numbers would look fantastic. The government would be telling us it's a miracle recovery. But it's meaningless because nothing would have changed except the dollar would be worth half as much. Prices would quickly double. That's what Bernanke is doing right now. That's why some numbers are improving, but jobs are not. A jobless recovery is an illusion created by inflating the money supply.

But it's worse than meaningless. It's destructive. The inflated money doesn't reach everybody at the same time. The government and banks get it before prices rise. The way the government calculates inflation is intentionally designed to hide the inflation the banks and government profit from. They get the advantage. You and I have to pay higher prices before the new money reaches us. We get burned. It's as if Bernanke was lighting the money in our pockets and savings accounts on fire on the one hand and handing out new money to the politicians and the banks with the other.

Apparently I'm not the only person pointing out that the cash for clunkers program is an example of the broken window fallacy and ridiculing aristocrats for being surprised when people take seemingly free money. Of course, Mises pointed it out the broken window fallacy aspect first the other day.

Bronson Arroyo injects some much needed context into the baseball steroids discussion.

Mises scholar analyzes the Pope's treatise.

Murray Rothbard on Jefferson and his struggle with Hamilton, a struggle that Hamilton is winning handily in the modern world.

75 percent of Americans favor auditing the Fed and making the results public. Wow. If I can't trust monetary policy to Congress, and I can't, why in the world would I trust it to some unaccountable bureaucrat? In what world does it make sense to give power to unaccountable individuals that you can't trust to Congress? Too bad nobody asked Bernanke why we should trust monetary policy to him.

Sex doll for dogs. Somebody's going to make a lot of money off of this.

Is this justification for taking this baby from its parents?

House health care bill has numerous "limitations on [judicial] review". That silly court system always messes up Congress's wonderful work anyway. I'm surprised Congress hasn't tried to abolish it.

Cato agrees with me that compromise and bipartisan are four letter words in this health care analysis:

"The "compromise" health-care reform being negotiated by six members of the Senate Finance Committee is shaping up as a classic warning of the dangers of bipartisanship without principles: It looks like they'll keep the worst features of other ObamaCare bills — but simply change the names."

That's how the two parties team up to harm us all.

"The proposed bill is forthright on still containing many of the worst aspects of ObamaCare. It would mandate that all Americans buy insurance — and not just any insurance, but a specific government-designed set of benefits, even if that package was more expensive or contained benefits that you didn't want."

Mandate is the diametrical opposite of freedom, and that's why the two parties love mandates.

"It would impose costly new regulations on insurance that could drive up premiums, especially for younger and healthier Americans. It would set the stage for government interference in how doctors practice medicine. It would extend subsidies for health care well into the middle-class, making millions more Americans dependent on government. And it would pay for all this with huge tax increases on American workers and businesses."

Obama must be salivating at the opportunity to make quality of care worse for every American than it already is for veterans and Medicare and Medicaid recipients, make the costs of health care skyrocket, put a huge number of Americans out of work, turn millions of Americans into criminals and control all our lives. Cato goes on to explain that the so-called health care co-op isn't a co-op at all. It's just the public option by another name.

"[A]s Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid put it, "We're going to have some type of public option, call it 'co-op,' call it what you want.""

The compromise bill also disguises the employee mandate but doesn't get rid of it. Thanks Democrats and Republicans. Cato's done a heck of a job analyzing this health care oppression debate.

Despite government interference, market forces are working slowly to correct the housing market.

Cato slaps down Greenspan, exposes the myth of the global savings glut and declares that the Fed was responsible for the mortgage meltdown all in one essay. Nice.

The Adam Smith Institute acknowledges the Austrian economists for correctly predicting this recession.

Now that Obama's poll numbers are tanking, Obama's cheerleaders at NBC tell us that poll numbers can be misleading. These guys crack me up.

What in the world are three US tourists doing hiking the Iraqi border with the lawless northwest of Iran? I suppose tourists really could be that stupid, but I doubt these are tourists.

I'm skeptical of Beck's conclusion about this warning on the cash for clunkers site that claims if you access it, your computer and all its file are considered government property. This sounds like the work of an overzealous staffer to me. I expect this will be pulled down and somebody will apologize soon. But the thing is, if the people aren't on alert for stuff like this, precedent makes it real. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama directs his administration push this insidious stuff everywhere in an attempt to desensitize us so that in the future this stuff will become law.

The US bullies Switzerland to turn over information on Americans who bank there. I hope the Swiss stand their ground. If the US is really concerned about tax evasion, it should change its tax and spend policies so people don't try to hide their money from the IRS.

"[T]he Swiss have this crazy notion that their own laws – not ours – should apply in their own country."

Great quote.

I think it's pretty obvious that Ben Bernanke is a collectivist - an enemy of freedom.