Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Before the quake Japan had the highest debt to GDP ration of any developed country. Because of government spending and irresponsible monetary policy, its economy had been flatlined for two decades. In the absence of a dramatic reduction in the size and scope of government, this earthquake and tsunami combination may wipe out the Japanese economy. Pat Buchanan points to demographics as the reason Japan will not recover from this disaster.


These charts should scare the crap out of anybody. The good news is that after the collapse, when government can no longer loot much of our money or force us around at the point of its gun, things will get better.

Can Celine Dion stimulate Las Vegas out of its recession?

Economic growth - an increase in production - leads to lower prices, not price inflation. Price inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply.

Low interest loans are back, and the usual suspects are taking advantage of them. Another financial bubble is what passes for economic recovery these days.

REGULATION:

Obama renominates powerful enemy of free markets to chair the FTC. What else would anybody expect?

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Food prices shot up 3.9 percent last month. Bernanke blames everybody and everything but his printing of money.

Because of Japan's economic problems, it's unlikely anybody will buy any bonds it issues but its central bank, eventually producing massive price inflation or the destruction of the currency.

CNN has an article on the ten worst Fed flubs. It's good to see such mainstream criticism of the Fed. Paul Volcker is at least honest:

"Testifying before the Senate, he later defended the move, saying bailouts are "the most basic function of the Federal Reserve. It was why it was founded.""

That's exactly right. The Fed was created to steal money from the people through inflation and give it to banks in order to save them from the punishment in the marketplace when they screwed up.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Japan likely to compensate for shutting down ten nuclear power plants by increasing use of fossil fuels. The bankruptcy of the ecoloons is on display. Before the quake, Japan got 29 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.

How environmentalists kill Africans by blocking the construction of power plants and use of DDT.

Ancient sediments show that natural global warming happens far more frequently than originally thought. I'm not surprised by this at all, but apparently the global warming frauds are.

WAR ON DRUGS:

The FDA is considering banning menthol cigarettes, and if this article is to be believed, it's because blacks smoke them.

"Drafts of a few chapters posted online recently provide a preview of the panel's report: While there is insufficient evidence to conclude that menthol smokers are more likely to be diagnosed with tobacco-caused diseases than non-menthol smokers, "the evidence is sufficient to conclude that it is biological(ly) plausible that menthol makes cigarette smoking more addictive.""

That's some kind of high standard there. I think they're targeting blacks. Again. Menthols must be the crack of cigarettes.

""Banning flavored cigarettes, which mask the harshness of tobacco—something that can deter some first-time smokers, especially children—is a positive move," they wrote. "But, by failing to ban menthol, the bill caves to the financial interests of tobacco companies and discriminates against African Americans.""

Right. Allowing blacks to choose to smoke menthols discriminates against them. You can't make this stuff up. Orwell is cracking up in his grave.

FOREIGN POLICY:

While the rest of the world watches Japan drown, Qaddafi is retaking Libya.

MEDIA:

The stupid media has scared Americans so badly they're buying iodine to fight radiation poisoning.

MISC:

Copyright law can't stop media piracy. The solution is to lower the price. Duh. Get rid of the copyright law and the price will drop, but naturally governments wants to strengthen the law, further driving up prices. "If a pirated game is a lost sale, should bad reviews be illegal?"

Japanese workers return to stricken power plant. The spent fuel rods may end up being a real problem because they're not in a containment structure.

"High-pressure water cannon will be used to try and spray water into the reactors and the US military will fly a drone equipped with infra-red sensors over the plant.Pictures taken by the Global Hawk high-altitude reconnaissance plane could provide a useful clue to what is occurring inside the reactor buildings."

I wonder why this took so long to make happen. You would think somebody at the US base could contact his counterpart in the Japanese military and get this OKed pretty easily. It's not like Tokyo is out of touch. About 8,700 Americans died from melanoma in 2010. Now we get a report that five nuclear plant workers have died and two are missing.

The Fourth Turning. This is an aspect of the theory that modern civilizations cycles through growth and collapse every four generations.

Scientists just discovered that animals can express emotion. Scientists must be the stupidest people in the world. Humans have known that for 100,000 years.

Evidence for precognition.

"Rather than present a stimulus and measure a subject's response, Bem measured the subject's response before the stimulus was presented. In some earlier experiments by other psi researchers, participants were hooked up to physiological measuring equipment similar to a lie detector that measured emotional arousal. They sat before a computer and watched randomly selected images; some were erotic or very negative ("like the bloody photos you see on CSI") images."Your physiology jumps when you see one of those pictures after watching a series of landscapes or neutral pictures," Bem said. "But the remarkable finding is that your physiology jumps before the provocative picture actually appears on the screen -- even before the computer decides which picture to show you. What it shows is that your physiology can anticipate an upcoming event even though your conscious self might not.""

That's weird.

"Bem's nine experiments demonstrated similar unconscious influences from future events. For example, in one experiment, participants saw a list of words and were then given a test in which they tried to retype as many of the words as they could remember. Next, a computer randomly selected some of the words from the list and gave the participants practice exercises on them. When their earlier memory test results were checked, it was found that they had remembered more of the words they were to practice later than words they were not going to practice. In other words, the practice exercises had reached back in time to help them on the earlier test."

That's really weird.

Sharing comes naturally to children. Of course it does. Civilization is based on voluntary exchange. Free markets evolved along with us.