January 18th, 2012 by Dissolving Dollars
This is an interesting chart and article showing how well a hypothetical fund that shorts gold during the day (US) and goes long overnight would have performed over the last decade.
December 23rd, 2011 by Dissolving Dollars
Do you know how to win any political argument? It’s very easy. All you have to do is ask the person who disagrees with you one simple question:
Do you support the use of violence against me for simply disagreeing with you?
Obviously, any sane person would say no. There would be no point in even having a conversation with a person that supports the use of violence against you for simply disagreeing. That’s insane.
Yet, if you examine the political beliefs of most people, perhaps including yourself, those beliefs actually do support the use of violence against other people for simply disagreeing.
For instance, say that you think the government should educate kids with a public education system. And say that I disagree (which I actually do). I think private education systems would do a better job, be much more innovative, make the kids smarter, happier, and do it much cheaper. I want a completely voluntary education system. But you say no bla bla bla government needs to do it and I need to pay my taxes like a good American to sustain the system. If I try to disagree by not paying my taxes to support public schools then government goons will start harassing me for my money until they finally throw me in jail. I must agree by paying up, or violence is the result. It’s not like I ever signed a contract to support public education. All it is is social bullying. It’s a completely insane and immoral system. It supports the use of violence against people for simply disagreeing.
You’ll notice then that to win any political argument your position has to be one of uncompromising personal liberty. Personal liberty starts with the right to private property, namely your own physical body. Without an understanding of the primacy of private property, violence in this world is inevitable because then human interaction is no longer voluntary; people are permitted to use force against others. If the concept of government is justifiable at all, it is to protect private property…personal liberty. But such government would be microscopic, because social order that starts with an uncompromising commitment to personal liberty already protects private property. And government is always problematic no matter how small it starts out because it creates a Russian nesting doll issue whereby you need a government to keep the government in check and another government to keep that government in check and so on.
Any position you try to take to make this method of winning a political argument moot, must inevitably entail supporting some kind of violation of the right to private property, a violation of personal liberty, and thus the support of violence against non-aggressors.
The reason this method actually works is because it is the only logical and moral political stance. It basically points out the immorality of the whole concept of government. It’s simple stuff. And if you don’t agree with me about all this, that’s fine, but I hope you know then that you are insane.
December 21st, 2011 by Dissolving Dollars
This is a cool free audiobook (and standard book) available at Mises.org.
December 3rd, 2011 by Dissolving Dollars
I love Peter Schiff…in case you never noticed. I’ve been a Schiff fan since 03. And this video is really cool in case you haven’t seen it. He went down and talked to people at Occupy Wall Street and recorded it. I always find it amazing how for one, people just assume Schiff is just some rich, republican, moron, propagandist because he supports free-markets over government…as if republicans really do that. And I also find it amazing how people assume they actually know more about the nature of the perils of the current government/economic system than a guy who actually has a business, actually pays tons of taxes, has to deal with government regulation, has made very public very accurate predictions about where our economy is going, has successfully invested other people’s money based on that predictive knowledge, has written good, anti-status-quo books on economics, and so on. What does a guy have to do to get some cred?
Nonetheless, as much as I appreciate Schiff, one thing I wish Schiff would be more critical of is the fictional entity made possible by government coercion called the corporation. Schiff often says corporations are just people, but they aren’t. That’s a fact Ron Paul called Romney out on recently. Corporation is a perk given to business by government to keep business from saying, we don’t need government. Incorporation shields liability away from individuals. Consequently, individuals in corporations naturally do riskier things in the name of their immediate self interest. And a certain percentage of the time, those risks blow up in their faces. The individuals get the gains while the fictional entity called the corporation gets the losses. That’s not free-market. That’s government facilitated fantasy. I don’t know about you, but I wish I could make up an imaginary Alex that I could make responsible for anything problematic I do. You see, corporation hinders self-regulation. So, you can’t argue that free-markets don’t need outside regulation if free-markets are presumed to include corporations. A person can’t make a perfectly sound argument if the person is protecting something that doesn’t fit the argument. If free-markets good and government bad, then corporation bad too.
Also, a meme I’d like to hear Schiff use to combat against statists is: Businesses don’t have the guns, Governments have the guns. Naturally, business is going to try to get in on the side of the guys with the guns. Point out who has the guns and point out the problems that coercive power causes and it becomes clear that the solution to government corrupting business or business corrupting government is not to give the government more guns…more power. The solution is to get rid of the guys with the guns.
But anyway, that’s all I’ll say about that…it’s a cool (yet frustrating) video.
November 30th, 2011 by Dissolving Dollars
Ron Paul:
The Fed’s latest actions in cooperating with foreign central banks to undertake liquidity swaps of dollars for foreign currencies is another reason why Congress needs enhanced power to oversee and audit the Fed. Under current law Congress cannot examine these types of agreements. Those who would argue that auditing the Fed or these agreements with central banks harms the Fed’s independence should reevaluate the Fed’s supposed independence when the Fed bails out Europe so soon after President Obama promised US assistance in resolving the Euro crisis.
Rather than calming markets, these arrangements should indicate just how frightened governments around the world are about the European financial crisis. Central banks are grasping at straws, hoping that flooding the world with money created out of thin air will somehow resolve a crisis caused by uncontrolled government spending and irresponsible debt issuance. Congress should not permit this type of open-ended commitment on the part of the Fed, a commitment which could easily run into the trillions of dollars. These dollar swaps are purely inflationary and will harm American consumers as much as any form of quantitative easing.
The Fed is behaving much as it did during the 2008 financial crisis, only this time instead of bailing out politically well-connected too-big-to-fail firms it is bailing out profligate government spending. Citizens the world over deserve better than this. They deserve sound money that cannot be manipulated and created out of thin air by central planners who promise printed prosperity. Fiat money caused this European crisis and the financial crisis before it. More fiat money is not the cure. The global fiat currency system has proven itself a failure, we need real monetary reform. We need sound money.
And here’s Schiff’s take:
November 16th, 2011 by Dissolving Dollars
If you think a guy like Lindsey Williams is some sort of nut when he says paper fortunes will be lost in the coming economic reckoning, well, just consider this: it just happened with the collapse of MF Global. Gerald Celente had money with MF Global, and now it is in limbo. Celente was using futures to take physical metal delivery, which is usually a smart, cost effective way to buy physical bullion. But this time it was a problem. Overall, it just goes to show that while paper assets may be easier to own and trade than physical, it also shows how easy it is for paper to evaporate into thin air overnight.
