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Hail the Speculators! They Take the Necessary Economic Risks in Our Economy | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 28, 2023

Because strawberries are about to become much scarcer, it is important to conserve them now while we have them so that strawberries don’t entirely disappear when the disease fully hits. Fewer strawberries are consumed now, but more of them will be available later. In essence, that information about future strawberry crops is now being factored into present prices. Who is responsible for this change in price? The speculator.

https://mises.org/wire/hail-speculators-they-take-necessary-economic-risks-our-economy

J.W. Rich

There are few individuals as reviled and vilified in our modern age as speculators. Economic turmoil of all shapes and sizes are placed squarely on their shoulders. Why do we have recessions from time to time? Because of the irrational speculators, of course. Why do economic bubbles exist? Because of wild overspeculation, undoubtably. Why are prices rising so quickly? The ceaseless activity of the speculators, no doubt. Yet it is seldom—if ever—asked in the public consciousness whether the speculator serves any valuable purpose. Most believe him to be a pointless and unwanted parasite in society, but is this really the case?

First, what is a speculator? A speculator is someone who leverages money on the outcome of future events. One can speculate over almost anything imaginable: that a company will succeed, that a company will fail, that the economy will boom, that the economy will bust, and on and on. If a speculator is relatively more correct in his view of the future, then he will make money. If he is relatively less correct, then he will lose money. In essence, the speculator appraises what future market conditions will be and invests according to that judgement.

With this description of the role of the speculator, the charges leveled against him are understandable. The speculator doesn’t produce or create anything at all! Why do we need speculators? If what everyone says about them is true, they seem to be much more trouble than they are worth. We can clearly see the economic purpose of farmers, bakers, manufacturers, and so on, but what economic purpose does the speculator serve?

First, it must be noted that the speculator with his forward-looking outlook isn’t unique from an economic point of view. All action, including action on markets, is always forward-looking. Action itself is the desire to utilize means for the attainment of ends. This means-ends interaction is one of cause and effect. Causes and effects never occur simultaneously, meaning that some passage of time is unavoidably involved. This unavoidable passage of time applies to all action. Because action deals in these cause-and-effect relationships, action itself cannot avoid the passage of time. Action always looks to the future, even if only the very near future. This applies to actions in markets as well; buying and selling, whether for production or consumption, are always future oriented.

Even so, we are not all speculators. We might engage in speculation through our actions, but this is qualitatively different than doing so as a profession. Given that speculation is a part of our daily lives, what social value is there in speculation done in pursuit of money? What does the speculator do for any of us?

The speculator, in his estimations and appraisements, alters market prices so that they factor in not only information about the present but information about the future as well. For instance, suppose that scientists announce that a deadly disease has started to spread among the strawberry crop, and that in several years, strawberries will be increasingly hard to find. At this point, the speculator leaps into action. He will start to purchase many of the strawberries being sold now in the hopes of selling them later at a higher price. This increase in present demand, along with the supply now decreased, will increase the price of strawberries. This higher price, however, acts as a signal.

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Cox, The War You’re Not Reading About

Posted by M. C. on July 28, 2023

The paucity of attention paid to civilian victims of the conflict in Sudan compared to Ukrainian civilians brings to mind the contrast between “worthy” and “unworthy” victims drawn by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent. They contrasted the extensive mass-media coverage of the 1984 murder of a Polish priest, Jerzy Popieluszko, during the Cold War with the lack of the same when it came to more than two dozen priests and other religious people slaughtered by governments and death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala in those years.

That Other War

By Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox

It’s been devastating, even if no one’s paying attention.

Three months of fighting in Sudan between the army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Force (RSF) has left at least 3,000 people dead and wounded at least 6,000 more. Over two million people have been displaced within the country, while another 700,000 have fled to neighboring nations. According to the World Health Organization, two-thirds of the health facilities in Khartoum, the capital, and other combat zones are now out of service, so the numbers of dead and injured are believed to be far higher than recorded, and bodies have been rotting for days in the streets of the capital, as well as in the towns and villages of the Darfur region.

Almost all foreign nationals, including diplomats and embassy staff, are long gone and so, according to Al Jazeera, hundreds or thousands of Sudanese who had visa applications pending have instead found themselves marooned in the crossfire with their passports locked away inside now-abandoned embassies. In the Darfur region, according to non-Arab tribal leaders, the RSF and local Arab militias have been carrying out mass killings, raping women and girls, and looting and burning homes and hospitals. Earlier this month, United Nations humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told the Associated Press, “If I were Sudanese, I’d find it hard to imagine that this isn’t a civil war… of the most brutal kind.”

According to the United Nations, half the country’s population, a record 25 million people, is now in need of humanitarian aid. And worse yet, half of those are children, many of whom were in dire need even before this war broke out. Tragically, global warming will only compound their misery. Among 185 nations ranked by the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative, Sudan is considered the sixth most susceptible to harm from climate change.

Heat waves, drought, and flooding are projected to become ever more frequent and intense as the atmosphere above Sudan warms further. This summer war and weather have been converging in strikingly deadly ways. With cloudless skies, water and electricity services largely knocked out, and daily temperature highs in the capital recently ranging from 109° to 111° Fahrenheit, the misery is only intensifying. Meanwhile, in the Darfur region and across the border in eastern Chad, the season of torrential rains is about to begin. The country director for Concern Worldwide in Chad says that many of the quarter-million Sudanese refugees there “are living in makeshift tents made from sticks and any material they can find, which means they are not protected from the heavy rains. The situation is catastrophic.”

This Conflict Will Not Be Televised

Among the refugees from this war are some of our own relatives and in-laws, part of an extended Indian-Sudanese family who have lived in Khartoum all their lives. In May, they fled the escalating violence, some via a perilous, hair-raising 500-mile road trip across the Nubian Desert to Port Sudan. There, they caught a ship across the Red Sea to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Their goal, as they informed us in June through voice messages, was Egypt — so far, the most common destination for Sudanese refugees over the past three months. And mind you, desperate as they may be, our relatives are in a far less perilous situation than people fleeing the Darfur region for Chad. Still, they are leaving behind a life built up over decades, without knowing if they will ever be able to return to Khartoum.

And here — for us — is a disturbing reality. We’ve had to do a lot of searching to find significant information in the U.S. major media about the struggle in Sudan, no less the plight of its refugees — though recently there were finally substantive reports at NPR and in the Washington Post. Still, the contrast with 16 months of breathless, daily, top-of-the-hour reporting on the Ukraine war and the millions of people it’s displaced has been striking indeed.

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Smoking Gun: New Evidence Proves Biden White House Coerced Facebook’s Rampant Censorship. Plus: Lee Fang on DHS, New Epstein Connections, & Anheuser-Busch Lobbyists | SYSTEM UPDATE #119

Posted by M. C. on July 28, 2023

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Doug Casey on Governments Targeting Retirement Funds… and What You Can Do About It

Posted by M. C. on July 27, 2023

And that is that the prime directive of any living entity—an amoeba, an individual, a corporation, a government, anything—is to survive. And it will attempt to do so at any cost.

International Man: Young adults saving into IRAs, 401(k)s, and other retirement accounts won’t be able to cash out for several decades.

What are the chances the government will change the rules before they retire?

Doug Casey: The chances are 100%.

Doug Casey on Governments Targeting Retirement Funds… and What You Can Do About It

by Doug Casey

Retirement Funds

International Man: Most Western governments, especially the US, have debt loads and spending commitments that guarantee they will eventually—likely someday soon—try to grab as much wealth as possible.

Retirement savings are a juicy target. But, unfortunately, they’re among the lowest-hanging fruit for any desperate government.

What’s your take on the situation?

Doug Casey: Let me remind you of something that I’ve said a number of times in the past. But it bears repeating because it’s so critical but overlooked, even while it’s so obvious.

And that is that the prime directive of any living entity—an amoeba, an individual, a corporation, a government, anything—is to survive. The government is an entity as distinct as General Motors or Apple Corporation, with its own peculiar interests. It isn’t “We the People”; that’s just a promotional catchphrase—propaganda. Its prime directive is to survive. And it will attempt to do so at any cost.

However, the US Government is already manifestly bankrupt. It has vastly more recognized liabilities than assets—forget about its huge contingent and hidden liabilities. But that’s just its balance sheet. Its income statement is equally out of control, running trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. To finance itself, it can only tax, borrow, and inflate the currency. Of course, it will do more of all three, but that will no longer be enough. It’s finally at the end game.

It’s inevitable that the government will now move towards confiscating, directly or indirectly, the huge pool of retirement savings some Americans—the prudent, productive ones—have put together. They’ll justify it with patriotic lies.

It’ll probably happen when the stock market melts down in earnest, we’re in the midst of a financial crisis, and the public is panicking. They’ll say, “people have lost so much money in the stock, bond, and real estate markets that we must safeguard what’s left. It’s best that we put all pension funds, IRAs, HR-10s, and what-not into a well-guarded communal pot, funded with sound government securities. We’ll put it in a lockbox and watch over it”.

Safety will be one way they’ll sell it to the scared and ignorant public. They’ll say we’re all in this together. They’ll say it’s time for solidarity. They’ll say that we have to keep “our” government solvent for reasons of patriotism. So let’s all hitch our wagons together and pull as one. They’ll conflate the interests of the government with the interests of society—which can sometimes overlap, of course, but are essentially different or even antithetical.

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Whether You Live in a Small Town or a Big City, the Government Is Still Out to Get You

Posted by M. C. on July 27, 2023

While we may claim to value freedom, privacy, individuality, equality, diversity, accountability, and government transparency, our actions and those of our government rulers contradict these much-vaunted principles at every turn.

Even though the government continues to betray our trust, invade our privacy, and abuse our rights, we just keep going back for more.

For instance, we claim to disdain the jaded mindset of the Washington elite, and yet we continue to re-elect politicians who lie, cheat and steal.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/whether_you_live_in_a_small_town_or_a_big_city_the_government_is_still_out_to_get_you

By John & Nisha Whitehead

“I can’t remember what all Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against three spiders, red ants against black ants. They won’t fight unless you keep shaking the jar. And that’s what Frank was doing, shaking, shaking the jar.”— Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

There’s a meme that circulated on social media a while back that perfectly sums up the polarized, manipulated mayhem, madness and tyranny that is life in the American police state today:

“If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti Mask. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar … and why?”

Whether red ants will really fight black ants to the death is a question for the biologists, but it’s an apt analogy of what’s playing out before us on the political scene and a chilling lesson in social engineering that keeps us fixated on circus politics and conveniently timed spectacles, distracted from focusing too closely on the government’s power grabs, and incapable of focusing on who’s really shaking the jar.

This controversy over Jason Aldean’s country music video, “Try That In a Small Town,” which is little more than authoritarian propaganda pretending to be respect for law and order, is just more of the same.

The music video, riddled with images of militarized police facing off against rioters, implies that there are only two types of people in this country: those who stand with the government and those who oppose it.

Yet the song gets it wrong.

You see, it makes no difference whether you live in a small town or a big city, or whether you stand with the government or mobilize against it: either way, the government is still out to get you.

Indeed, the government’s prosecution of the Jan. 6 protesters (part of a demographic that might relate to the frontier justice sentiments in Aldean’s song) is a powerful reminder that the police state doesn’t discriminate when it comes to hammering away at those who challenge its authority.

It also serves to underscore the government’s tone-deaf hypocrisy in the face of its own double-crossing, double-dealing, double standards.

Imagine: the very same government that violates the rights of its citizenry at almost every turn is considering charging President Trump with conspiring against the rights of the American people.

It’s so ludicrous as to be Kafkaesque.

If President Trump is indicted over the events that culminated in the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021, the government could hinge part of their case on Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which makes it a crime for two or more people to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate” anyone “with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege” the person enjoys under the U.S. Constitution.

That the government, which now constitutes the greatest threat to our freedoms, would appoint itself the so-called defender of our freedoms shows exactly how farcical, topsy-turvy, and downright perverse life in the American police state has become.

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Hannity Visibly Frustrated As RFK Jr. Dismantles Ukraine Talking Points

Posted by M. C. on July 27, 2023

Daniel McAdams

“Hannity is so blatantly stupid it is astonishing. Nothing in his brain beyond memorized bumper stickers. How embarrassing that this is the best the MSM has to offer…“Hannity is so blatantly stupid it is astonishing. Nothing in his brain beyond memorized bumper stickers. How embarrassing that this is the best the MSM has to offer…“

He doesn’t have to be smart when the CIA is pulling his $tring$.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hannity-visibly-frustrated-rfk-jr-dismantles-ukraine-talking-points

Tyler Durden's Photo

by Tyler Durden

With Tucker Carlson out at Fox, what remains are the usual neocon “talk radio personalities” drawing large viewership at the network, namely Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and some other lesser names. While long advancing conservative domestic policies and fighting the “culture wars”, their foreign policy messaging really hasn’t changed in decades—having more in common with George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Tom Cotton, or even Barack Obama.

So when someone with the ‘outsider’ views of the fiercely independent Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr squares up against someone like Hannity (who for years has donned a CIA pin while on air) in a one-on-one interview, fireworks ensue. That’s exactly what happened when the issue of Ukraine became a focal point during a town hall event Tuesday. It also didn’t take long for RFK Jr. to win over the crowd. Hannity wasn’t happy that RFK was “blaming America’s role in this” for the Ukraine crisis…

Kennedy Jr. focused his comments on exposing NATO’s role in pushing Moscow into a corner, given its historic expansion east and turning Ukraine into a proxy, but Hannity sought to interrupt him multiple times

“Because of our pushing the Ukraine into the war—” RFK had begun, before the Fox host interrupted with, “We pushed them into it or did Putin invade?”

According to the response:

“Well, let me answer your question,” replied Kennedy Jr., who then accused the U.S. of sabotaging the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015, which aimed to end the Donbas war yet largely failed to stop the fighting between Russian separatists and Ukraine’s armed forces.

“Putin, in good faith, began withdrawing troops from the Ukraine. What happened? We sent Boris Johnson over there to torpedo it because we don’t want peace. We want the war with Russia,” he argued, drawing applause from the audience.

Kennedy then harped on the clearly documented history of NATO expansion east,

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Progressives Have Corrupted Not Only Money, but Its History as Well | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 27, 2023

So not only was silver already an internationally recognized money, but the earliest recorded states were already corrupting domestic money markets. Just as more modern governments would do thousands of years later with gold and silver, these Sumerian authorities mandated a fixed exchange rate between the two commodities, leading people to use the artificially overvalued one—in this case, barley—while the government hoarded the other.

https://mises.org/wire/progressives-have-corrupted-not-only-money-its-history-well

Connor O’Keeffe

As modern monetary theory (MMT) gains prominence in the political sphere, it has revitalized interest in some older theories about the origin of money—namely, the state and credit theories of money.

The credit theory of money says that money is simply a unit for measuring debt. And the state theory of money, or chartalism, as it is often known, says that this measurement was created by the state. These days, the two theories are often combined and championed by proponents of MMT who argue that most of the economic constraints put on government are imaginary because the government can simply create money.

The MMT debate is about the nature of money itself, and these theories about the origin of money are central to understanding this alternative way of thinking that’s gaining popularity on the progressive left. However, when one looks, it’s clear that both the theory and history presented as evidence for the state and credit theories of money don’t hold up, especially when compared to the Austrian alternative.

Readers of this website are likely familiar with the Austrian theory of the origin of money, developed by Carl Menger and synthesized by Ludwig von Mises. But to review it quickly, money developed as a way to make trade easier. At some point in the past, humans began using their property to produce goods beyond what the natural environment had provided.

Certain goods became valued, not just for direct consumption but also because of their salability. In other words, people started wanting certain goods because they knew others would trade for them. A good used in this way is called a medium of exchange. Thanks to the network effect, one or a small number of media of exchange would become nearly universally accepted among a society. That’s when it becomes a money.

Historically, precious metals became monies. Currencies were simply a unit of weight in a precious metal. Once a money had been established, people could specialize their labor, and the number of prices—that is, records of past exchange ratios—to keep track of was greatly reduced. That makes entrepreneurship, production, and therefore civilization as we know it possible.

The important insight here is that money gets its value as a money from what it’s able to buy and that it, therefore, must have originated out of a good or commodity produced for some other purpose that was then found to be particularly saleable.

The state and credit theorists reject this entirely as bad theory disproven by the historical record. They instead frame money as a unit of debt.

Debt, credit theorists say, is something that has been around far longer than money. It’s the obligations people have to one another. If a person gives a neighbor some livestock, that neighbor is then obligated to repay the benefactor in kind at some point in the future. They are in debt. Similarly, if one assaults someone else or destroys their property, they are obligated to pay restitution to the victim—or the victim’s family—and are therefore in debt.

Credit theorists argue that money is simply a unit that governments invented to quantify debt. Some say it arose as early states attempted to quantify restitution payments for violent crimes. This unit of debt is then imposed on everyone by the government through taxes. Only then are these state-created IOUs used as a medium of exchange.

In contrast to the Austrians, these theorists see money not as a social institution developed through cooperation but as a state institution imposed on people through violence. It’s not only a disturbing and rather sad view of people and society, it’s also bad theory.

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Joe Biden Triggers Paralysis in the Production of Strategic Semiconductor Chips. Worldwide Collapse of the Automobile Industry?

Posted by M. C. on July 26, 2023

Joe Biden’s decision to transfer TSMC to Arizona has essentially led to the paralysis of the Arizona plant which is now slated to start production in 2025, while also destabilizing TSMC’s revenues and productive capabilities in Taiwan.

The political standoff between Biden and TSMC, affects supply lines of semiconductors in the US and Worldwide. It potentially destabilizes large sectors of the global economy. 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/worldwide-collapse-of-the-automobile-industry-joe-biden-orders-the-paralysis-of-the-production-of-strategic-semi-conductors-chips/5826665

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research

Semiconductors constitute a strategic commodity, used in a variety of sectors including electronics, medical devices, electronic and communications networks etc. 

There is evidence of manipulation, which has led to artificial shortages of semiconductors affecting a number of key sectors of the global economy.

There are geopolitical implications: US Confrontation with China engineered by the White House. 

The Automobile Industry

From one day to the next starting in 2020, Japan’s automobile industry enters a period of prolonged crisis.

The automobile industry experienced a decline in production of 15% in 2020 largely due to an engineered shortage of semi-conductors. A much larger decline was experienced in 2021, affecting production in Japan, South Korea, China Western Europe and North America. 

“Automakers, which rely on dozens of chips to build a single vehicle, have been particularly hard hit, forced to halt production lines globally as they await chip supplies. The debacle is likely to cost the auto industry $450 billion in global sales … In September 2021 Toyota was forced to slash production at 14 factories in Japan over a lack of semiconductors. Some of the cuts will continue into October due to a lack of components from Southeast Asia, Toyota has said.” (Washington Post, September 2021)

A recent report confirms that all automobile companies have been affected:

Across the entire industry, an estimated 7.7 million fewer vehicles were produced in the same year-on-year period. This corresponds to a monetary value of about 210 million USD. Due to the complexity of the production chains described above, it will take time even after production capacities have recovered until output in the automotive industry is at pre-crisis level once again.

Semiconductor Chips

The World’s largest semiconductor producer –which over the years has been routinely trading and collaborating with China–  is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

Joe Biden’s intent is to paralyze Taiwan’s trade and investment relations with the PRC. In what amounts to a strategic decision, the White House ordered Taipei to implement the Relocation of the TSMC plant to Arizona. 

According to the NYT:

As the biggest maker of chips that power everything from phones to cars to missiles, the company is strategically important with highly coveted technical know-how. But caught in a deepening battle between the United States and China over technological leadership

In fact there is also an unspoken battle between the Biden Administration and the Taiwan owners of TSMC which started  manufacturing in mainland China in 2004.

“Two out of 18 TSMC plants are located in China — the vast majority of the factories are still in Taiwan.”

TSMC is not intent upon reducing its activities in Mainland China. 

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UN Warns Brain Chips Like Elon Musk’s Neuralink Could be Used as ‘Personality-altering’ Weapons — as FDA Approves Tech for Human Trials

Posted by M. C. on July 26, 2023

Maybe the UN/Soros are upset at Musk beating them at their own game. Good thing Musk has his own security.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/un-warns-brain-chips-like-elon-musk-neuralink-could-used-personality-altering-weapons-fda-approves-tech-human-trials/5826361

By Matthew Phelan

Global Research, July 20, 2023

Daily Mail Online

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

A United Nations panel has warned that brain chip technology being pioneered by Elon Musk could be abused for ‘neurosurveillance’ violating ‘mental privacy,’ or ‘even to implement forms of forced re-education,’ threatening human rights worldwide. 

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Could be Trialed in Humans in 2023. Here’s What You Need to Know

The UN’s agency for science and culture (UNESCO) said neurotechnology like Musk’s Neuralink, if left unregulated, will lead to ‘new possibilities of monitoring and manipulating the human mind through neuroimaging’ and ‘personality-altering’ tech.

UNESCO is now strategizing on a worldwide ‘ethical framework’ to protect humanity from the potential abuses of the technology  — which they fear will be accelerated by advances in AI.

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A Constantly Shifting Array of Official Enemies

Posted by M. C. on July 26, 2023

After terrorists retaliated for the U.S. government’s interventionist antics in the Middle East, the “terrorists” (or the Muslims) became the new official enemy. The “war on terrorism” became as lucrative as the 45-year “war on the Reds.”

A Constantly Shifting Array of Official Enemies

by Jacob G. Hornberger

I entered Virginia Military Institute as a freshman in 1968. By that time, the Vietnam War was in full swing. During the four years that I was at the school, VMI graduates were among the tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers who were being killed or injured for nothing.

Everyone at VMI was required to be in the corps. Naturally, as a military school, we would periodically have field training exercises, which usually were supervised and run by military officers in the military-science department.

Since I was going into army infantry, my field training exercises were based on hypothetical situations entirely involving Vietcong or North Vietnamese forces. 

For example, we would be told that a North Vietnamese unit was known to use a particular path through the jungle. Our mission, as platoon leaders, was to prepare an ambush of the unit employing our three squads. (We were trained to align all three squads on the same side so that they wouldn’t be firing at each other.)

This went on for four years. All of the field training exercises — without exception — were based on hypothetical situations involving Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces.

During the year I graduated — 1972 — President Nixon began withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam. I was offered the option of trading a two-year active-duty commitment for an 8-year commitment in the Reserves, which included 3 months of active duty attending infantry school at Ft. Benning, Georgia. I readily accepted the offer.

In 1974, I temporarily dropped out of law school to fulfill my 3-month commitment. By this time, it was clear that the U.S. government was completely leaving the Vietnam War behind. 

Of course, I was wondering what they were going to do with those field-training exercises. They didn’t skip a beat. From Day 1 of infantry school, they had a brand new official enemy that became the subject of infantry training. That new official enemy was the Russians.

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