Free kibbles

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Choice quotes from entertaining translation of Bernanke's speech:

"

This list of concerns makes clear that a return to strong and stable economic growth will require appropriate and effective responses from economic policymakers across a wide spectrum, as well as from leaders in the private sector.

Translation: There is going to be central planning like we have not seen since the end of World War II. Corporate leaders are going to fall in line, or else they will face some really daunting problems."

Grab hold of your wallets...

"

At best, though, fiscal impetus and the inventory cycle can drive recovery only temporarily. For a sustained expansion to take hold, growth in private final demand – notably, consumer spending and business fixed investment – must ultimately take the lead. On the whole, in the United States, that critical handoff appears to be under way. However, although private final demand, output, and employment have indeed been growing for more than a year, the pace of that growth recently appears somewhat less vigorous than we expected.

Translation: "Somewhat less vigorous" means "the Democrats will surely lose the House in November."

Importantly, the painfully slow recovery in the labor market has restrained growth in labor income, raised uncertainty about job security and prospects, and damped confidence.

Translation: The Democrats may even lose the Senate."

That'll be an improvement, but not much.

"

Federal fiscal stimulus seems set to continue to fade but likely not so quickly as to derail growth in coming quarters.

Translation: With the Republicans in control of Congress, they will play spoilers. Obama will get no more big spending bills into law."

That's why we'll see some improvement, but Republicans will continue to loot us on behalf of their cronies, just at a lower pace.

"

Although output growth should be stronger next year, resource slack and unemployment seem likely to decline only slowly. The prospect of high unemployment for a long period of time remains a central concern of policy.

Translation: The job market will be a disaster for years. "A central concern for policy" means nobody knows what to do about it; nothing has worked."

Keynesianism doesn't work. It can't work.

Another analysis of Bernanke's speech concludes he's a mad scientist.

GLOBAL WARMING:

El Ninos changing character and getting stronger.

Nature magazine blames man-made CO2 (by using the new term "climate change"), which we all know is a greenhouse gas which leads to heating, for South American cold.

POLICE STATE:

Government deploys portable nude scanners in vans.

"American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss."

These pictures are scary.

"AS&E’s Reiss counters privacy critics by pointing out that the ZBV scans don’t capture nearly as much detail of human bodies as their airport counterparts. The company’s marketing materials say that its “primary purpose is to image vehicles and their contents,” and that “the system cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race, sex or age of the person.”"

I guess that makes warrantless searches OK.

"Reiss adds that the vans do have the capability of storing images. “Sometimes customers need to save images for evidentiary reasons,” he says. “We do what our customers need.”"

Just like the airport model.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Ron Paul laments the Republican take-over of the tea party movement and its schizophrenic devotion to big, interventionist foreign policy while claiming to support small government.

MISC:

Huge coronal hole in the sun last week.

Beer is low in calories and carbs. But grains are still toxic.

High fructose corn syrup, that poison created by government corn subsidies, is cancer's favorite food.

Robert Murphy shoots down the myth that in our debt-based monetary system there isn't enough money to pay off all the loans and the interest.

This is what private property rights should mean:

"Carried through consistently, the right of property would entitle the proprietor to claim all the advantages that the good's employment may generate on the one hand and would burden him with all the disadvantages resulting from its employment on the other hand."

That would solve most of the world's social ills.