Parental rights are sacrosanct, except when they are not. This proves Doug Casey’s opinion that politicians want not to help you but to control you.
https://rumble.com/v29jr3e-system-update-show-41.html
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Posts Tagged ‘greed’
Ohio Train Disaster: How Corruption and Greed Created Catastrophe, w/ David Sirota. Plus, Hawley’s New Social Media Law | SYSTEM UPDATE #41
Posted by M. C. on February 15, 2023
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Corruption, greed, Ohio, Train Disaster | Leave a Comment »
No, It’s Not “Greed” or “Price Gouging” That’s Driving up Gas Prices
Posted by M. C. on June 18, 2022
This has certainly succeeded in driving crude prices above what they would have otherwise been. Fortunately, the plan has also partly failed. China and India have been buying up large amounts of Russian crude, ensuring that supply remains in the global market. This means global supplies are not strained as much as would have occurred had the Biden administration’s attempt at isolating Russia succeeded.
But while access to crude has not evaporated as the US regime intended, refinery capacity continues to lag. This has driven up gasoline prices to higher peaks than crude.
https://mises.org/wire/no-its-not-greed-or-price-gouging-thats-driving-gas-prices
Both consumer and producer prices rose near multidecade highs last month. Price inflation rose to 8.6 percent while wholesale producer prices rose by more than 10 percent.
In both cases, a significant factor behind rising prices—but certainly not the only factor—was high energy prices. This has been reflected in prices related to transportation and shipping. Prices for air travel, for example, have seen some of the biggest price increases in recent months, while gasoline (naturally) has fueled sticker stock for households across the nation.
Perhaps most notable to the average consumer has been the increase in gas prices. In June, gasoline prices have risen on average to a new nominal high of over $5 per gallon.
Short of recession (or depression), relief will likely have to come in the form of increasing supply. The easy-money policies of the central bank have fueled spikes in demand for nearly all products, but this leads to a problem: rising demand has not come with rising production. In other words, the regime can easily increase the supply of money, by simply creating money out of thin air. But the regime can’t do the same with oil or gasoline. Unlike fiat money, oil and gasoline must actually be extracted and processed.
So, we end up with increasing supplies of dollars chasing oil and gas supplies that are increasing at a much slower pace. The result is rising price inflation.
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be much relief on the horizon. US bans on Russian oil have disrupted global oil markets and cut off the US consumer from ready imports. This certainly hasn’t helped bring crude oil prices down. But when it comes to gasoline prices, another sizable factor is the fact refineries are running below past capacity. Even when US markets have access to crude oil, gasoline production lags.
Much of this is being blamed on logistical problems stemming from covid lockdowns and the 2020 collapse in demand. As governments across the US forcibly closed businesses and issued stay-at-home orders, many refineries became unprofitable and closed. Shortly thereafter, an avalanche of newly created money whipsawed demand in the opposite direction, and refineries could not keep up. Prices spiked.
Ultimately, the situation only illustrated what more astute observers had pointed out: claims that policy makers can “pause” the economy, and that we need only wait for the “V-shaped recovery” for everything to bounce back to normal were very wrong.
Oil Prices and Gasoline Prices
During the worst days of the covid lockdowns, gasoline prices fell to around a dollar per gallon in many areas. The national average fell to near $2 per gallon in 2022 dollars.
But by late 2021, fueled by trillions in newly printed money, gasoline prices surged to ten-year highs. As of June 2022, gasoline prices have hit new highs of over $5 per gallon. Even in inflation-adjusted terms, gasoline will soon hit some of the highest prices seen in many decades.
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No, Sen. Warren, Greed Is Not Causing Inflation | Mises Wire
Posted by M. C. on December 21, 2021
If evil corporations are to blame for rising prices in 2021, as Elizabeth Warren says, I imagine that they were magnanimous and generous corporations when there was low or no inflation, right?
https://mises.org/wire/no-sen-warren-greed-not-causing-inflation
Senator Elizabeth Warren recently stated that rising prices were due to corporations increasing their profits. “This isn’t about inflation, this is about price gouging for these guys.” It is simply incorrect.
No, corporations have not doubled their profits, and rising prices are not due to the evildoings of businesses. If evil corporations are to blame for rising prices in 2021, as Elizabeth Warren says, I imagine that they were magnanimous and generous corporations when there was low or no inflation, right?
Inflation is the tax of the poor. It destroys the purchasing power of wages and engulfs the little savings that workers accumulate. The rich can protect themselves by investing in real assets, real estate and financial, the poor cannot.
Inflation is not a coincidence, it is a policy.
The middle class and the salaried workers not only do not see the advantages of inflation, but they also lose in real wages and also in their future prospects. Robert J. Barro’s study in more than one hundred countries shows that an average 10 percent increase in inflation during one year reduces growth by 0.2–0.3 percent and investment from 0.4 percent to 0.6 percent in the next year. The problem is that the damage is entrenched. Even if the impact on gross domestic product is apparently small, the negative effect on both growth and investment remains for several years.
Despite the message from central banks, which repeat that inflation has temporary components and is fundamentally transitory, we cannot forget:
Inflation will not go down in 2022, according to central banks. Inflation will go up less in 2022 than in 2021. It is not the same.
When some agents speak of “transitory” inflation, they mean that it will rise less in 2022 than in 2021, not that prices will fall.
“Transitory inflation” is 6 percent in 2021, 3 percent in 2022, and 2.5 percent in 2023. That is, more than a 12 percent increase in three years. How many of you are going to see your wages and earnings rise 12 percent in three years?
The great beneficiary of inflation is the government, and Ms. Warren knows it. That is why she defends inflationary monetary and fiscal policies. On the one hand, receipts from the monetary taxes of captive economic agents increases (value-added tax, personal income tax, corporate taxes, indirect taxes), and on the other hand, the government’s accumulated debt is partially “devalued.” But public accounts do not improve because gross domestic product slows down; the structural deficit remains high and, therefore, absolute debt does not fall.
How many of you are going to raise your salary 12 percent in three years?
Deficit-spending governments see real expenditures go up and the structural deficit does not fall.
Wages and pensions do not rise with inflation. Almost no one will see a 12 percent rise in three years in their work compensation. Real median wages in the United States have plummeted due to inflation, according to St. Louis Fed data.
Inflation is not the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Inflation is the loss of purchasing power of the currency that leads to a persistent rise in most prices regardless of their sector, demand, supply, or nature, and is a direct consequence of the wrongly termed expansionary monetary policy. Inflation is a direct cause of currency debasement.
CPI is a basic basket calculated with estimated weights between goods and services. In it there are prices of nonreplicable basic products that rise much more than the average and that we consume every day (food, energy) and the basket is moderated with services and goods that we do not consume every day (technology, leisure).
Prices do not rise in tandem by 2–5 percent because of a coordinated decision from all businesses in all sectors. It is a monetary phenomenon.
The good thing for the most interventionist politician is that the government is the most benefited by the rise in prices but it can blame others and, on top of that, present itself as a solution by making payments in increasingly useless paper currency.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Elizabeth Warren, greed, inflation, transitory inflation | Leave a Comment »
Thomas Sowell
Posted by M. C. on October 5, 2021
I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but it is not greed to want to take someone else’s money.
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The Smart Money Has Already Sold – LewRockwell
Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2021
Generations of punters have learned the hard way that their unwary greed is the tool the Smart Money uses to separate them from their cash and capital. The tricks outlined in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator may have changed over time, but the game of selling at the top while stretching out the top to enable massive selling without moving markets is very much alive and well.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug21/smart-money-sold8-21.html
Charles Hugh Smith
Generations of punters have learned the hard way that their unwary greed is the tool the ‘Smart Money’ uses to separate them from their cash and capital.
The game is as old as the stock market: the Smart Money recognizes the top is in, and in order to sell all their shares, they need to recruit bagholders to buy their shares and hold them all the way down. Once the catastrophic losses have been taken by the bagholders, then the Smart Money slowly builds up positions amidst the wreckage.
It’s easy to become a bagholder; all you need is greed. Been there, done that, for the siren songs luring bagholders to their ruin are compelling and numerous. The Smart Money doesn’t have to mislead anyone; all they do is let the strident super-Bulls talk up the riches to be had by all those who buy today and hold indefinitely, and human greed does the rest.
Siren songs to lure the unwary greedy include these classics:
1. The Fed has our back, i.e. the Fed will never let stocks go down, so there’s no risk in buying more shares today.
2. Innovation stocks can only go higher as they create new industries that are the future of the economy.
3. Institutional buyers are coming in, and that means prices can only go higher.
4. This is a new era, old measures of valuation no longer matter.
5. Over time, stocks only go higher, so buy and hold is the winning strategy.
The greatest ally of the Smart Money is buy the dip, as the bagholders trained to buy the dip will continue buying every dip on the way down until their capital is expended. Bagholders see every rally off a dip as proof buy the dip works, when every rally off a dip has been engineered to suck in bagholders.
Every rally is another opportunity to sell for the Smart Money.
The greatest hindrance to the Smart Money selling is low volume. The main point of selling is to dribble out shares in such modest doses that the price doesn’t move. If a big block of shares is dumped all at once, then the price collapses in low-volume markets. So the Smart Money sells slowly and methodically, transferring 100 million shares over time to a million bagholders who each buy 100 shares.
When questioned, the Smart Money prevaricates with generalities rather than show their hands. The market is “constructive” and “supportive of equities,” etc., meaningless terms intended to mask their steady selling and lull the bagholders into a false confidence in the Fed, innovation leaders, buy the dip, this time it’s different, etc.
The Smart Money can count on one thing: greed is sticky. Once a bagholder has decided that Innovation-XYZ is their one-way ticket to unearned wealth–just look at all the newly minted millionaires who did nothing but trade call options in Innovation-XYZ–then the Smart Money knows the bagholder will never let go of that belief until there’s no more money to throw into call options.
Generations of punters have learned the hard way that their unwary greed is the tool the Smart Money uses to separate them from their cash and capital. The tricks outlined in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator may have changed over time, but the game of selling at the top while stretching out the top to enable massive selling without moving markets is very much alive and well.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: bagholders, dip, Fed, greed, Smart Money | 1 Comment »
A Dangerous Opinion – LewRockwell
Posted by M. C. on December 15, 2020
It is a dangerous opinion to say that the U.S. government should take resources from Americans who have them and give them to foreign countries that “need” them. It is a dangerous opinion because if the government can legitimately take resources from Americans and give them to foreigners, then the government can certainly also legitimately take resources from Americans and give them to other Americans. A defense of foreign aid is a defense of the welfare state.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/12/laurence-m-vance/a-dangerous-opinion/
Some opinions are unprovable, but innocent; others are clearly false, but harmless; and some are downright dangerous.
Some people think that brown eggs taste better than white eggs. Others think that the earth is flat. But some people think that the government should take resources from those who have them and give them to those who “need” them.
Like the woman who wrote me back in September.
On September 9, I wrote an article about foreign aid titled “Foreign Aid Folly.” But it wasn’t until just the other day that I noticed an e-mail in my in-box dated September 9 (Yes, I am drowning in e-mails.) Here is the complete e-mail I received in response to my article that was critical of foreign aid:
Stop it. We have more than enough to aid foreign countries. The problem is greed here in this country.
First of all, who are the “we” who have more than enough to aid foreign countries?
It can’t be the U.S. government. Uncle Sam has nothing of his own. Every dime in his bank account has been confiscated from American taxpayers.
It can’t be all Americans. Ask the people that work at fast food restaurants, convenience stores, and day care centers if they have more than enough to aid foreign countries. Ask the single mothers trying to raise their children if they have more than enough to aid foreign countries. Ask the families trying to make ends meet if they have more than enough to aid foreign countries. Ask those living paycheck to paycheck if they have more than enough to aid foreign countries. Ask those with college degrees who are waiting tables and struggling to pay their student loans if they have more than enough to aid foreign countries. Ask those on the verge of bankruptcy if they have more than enough to aid foreign countries. Ask those who have lost their job or business due to the government’s draconian and ridiculous response to Covid-19 if they have more than enough to aid foreign countries.
And while you’re at it, go to rich neighborhoods and knock on the doors and ask the people who do have more than enough to aid foreign countries if they would like to write a check to the countries of Egypt, India, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Columbia, Ukraine, Thailand, Indonesia, Mongolia, Poland, Croatia, Romania, Peru, or Zimbabwe? You wouldn’t collect enough money to buy a ham sandwich. Go to evangelical churches and ask Christians who do have more than enough to aid foreign countries, but think the U.S. government should give billions in foreign aid to Israel, how much they are willing to give to Israel out of their own pocket. You wouldn’t collect enough money to buy a bowl of matzah ball soup.
Second, is it greed to want to keep your own money?
Is it greed to not want to give money to countries that vote against the United States in the UN? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries with authoritarian governments? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries where U.S. jobs have been outsourced? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries that will waste it? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries so they can buy weapons? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries that never gets to the people in the countries that actually need it the most? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries with socialist governments? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries that violate human rights? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries that are nothing more than bribes? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries because it crowds out private charity? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries that has been confiscated from U.S. taxpayers? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries with corrupt regimes? Is it greed to not want to give money to countries that benefits their privileged contractors?
It is a dangerous opinion to say that the U.S. government should take resources from Americans who have them and give them to foreign countries that “need” them. It is a dangerous opinion because if the government can legitimately take resources from Americans and give them to foreigners, then the government can certainly also legitimately take resources from Americans and give them to other Americans. A defense of foreign aid is a defense of the welfare state.
Sorry lady, I will not “stop it.” I will continue to point out the folly of foreign aid. I will continue to point out that no American should be forced to “contribute” to the aid of foreigners, their governments, or NGOs working in other countries. I will continue to point out that the decision to aid foreigners should be a decision left up to each individual American. I will continue to point out that all charity should be private and voluntary. And I will continue to point out that charity that is not voluntary is theft.
The Best of Laurence M. Vance Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from central Florida. He is the author of The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom; War, Christianity, and the State: Essays on the Follies of Christian Militarism; War, Empire, and the Military: Essays on the Follies of War and U.S. Foreign Policy; King James, His Bible, and Its Translators, and many other books. His newest books are Free Trade or Protectionism? and The Free Society.
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oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The Outlines of a Better World
Posted by M. C. on May 11, 2020
Once the government’s ability to sustain its enforcement with money created
out of thin air vanishes, the entire order vanishes along with it. The
destruction of the value of central bank-created “money” is already
ordained, for there is no limit on human greed and the desire to
maintain control, and so governments will create their “money” in
ever-increasing amounts until the value has been completely leached from
the phantom digital entries.
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-outlines-of-better-world-are.html
The era of waste, greed, fraud and living on borrowed money is dying, and those who’ve known no other way of living are mourning its passing. Its passing was inevitable, for any society that squanders its resources is unsustainable. Any society that makes private greed the primary motivator and priority is unsustainable. Any society that rewards fraud above all else is unsustainable. Any society which lives on money borrowed from the future and other forms of phantom capital is unsustainable.
We know this in our bones, but we fear the future because we know no other arrangement other than the unsustainable present. And so we hear the faint echo of the cries of alarm filling the streets of ancient Rome when the Bread and Circuses stopped: what do we do now?
When the free bread and entertainments disappeared, people found new arrangements. They left Rome.
The greatest private fortunes in history vanished as Rome unraveled. All the land, the palaces, the gold and all the other treasures were no protection against the collapse of the system that institutionalized corruption as the ultimate protector of concentrated wealth.
The most zealously guarded power of government is the creation of money, for without money the government cannot pay the soldiers, police, courts and administrators needed to enforce its rule. Western Rome created money by controlling silver mines; in the current era, governments create money (currency) out of thin air.
Once the government’s money loses purchasing power, the system collapses. And so in the final stages of Rome’s decline, Imperial orders still flowed to distant legions, but the legions no longer existed; they were only phantom entries on Imperial ledgers.
Our “money” is also nothing but phantom entries on digital ledgers, and so its complete loss of purchasing power is inevitable.
Without “money,” the government can no longer enforce the will of its self-serving elites: orders will still flow in a furious flood to every corner of the land, but the legions to enforce the institutional corruption will be nothing but phantom entries on Imperial ledgers.
Once the government’s ability to sustain its enforcement with money created out of thin air vanishes, the entire order vanishes along with it. The destruction of the value of central bank-created “money” is already ordained, for there is no limit on human greed and the desire to maintain control, and so governments will create their “money” in ever-increasing amounts until the value has been completely leached from the phantom digital entries.
The outlines of a better world are emerging, an arrangement that prioritizes something more than maximizing private gain and institutionalizing the corruption needed to protect those gains. We will relearn to live within our means, and relearn how to institutionalize opportunity rather than corruption designed to protect elites.
We will come to a new understanding of the teleology of centralized power, that centralized power only knows how to extend its power and so the only possible outcome is collapse. (I explain these dynamics in my book Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change.)
We will come to understand technology need not serve only monopolies, cartels and the state, that it could serve a sustainable, decentralized economy that does more with less, i.e. a DeGrowth economy.
The Federal Reserve will fail, just as the Roman gods failed to sustain the corrupt and bankrupt Roman elites. A host of decentralized, transparently priced non-state currencies will compete on the open market, just like goods, services and commodities. The Fed’s essential role– serving the few at the expense of the many, under the cover of creating currency out of thin air–will be repudiated by the implosion of the economy as all the Fed’s phantom “wealth” evaporates.
The outlines of a better world are emerging. Do you discern them through the smoke as the last frantic phantoms of an unsustainable system issue orders to reverse the tides of history as they dissipate into thin air?
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Better World, fraud, greed, waste | Leave a Comment »
Selected Gems By Thomas Sowell
Posted by M. C. on May 4, 2020
https://www.azquotes.com/author/13901-Thomas_Sowell
In the long run, the greatest weapon of mass destruction is stupidity.
Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: equal rights, greed, racism, Social Justice, Stupidity, Thomas Sowell, welfare system | Leave a Comment »
Of Two Minds – Could America Survive a Truth Commission?
Posted by M. C. on December 3, 2019
Charles Hugh Smith
A nation that’s no longer capable of naming names and reporting what actually happened richly deserves an economic and political collapse to match its moral collapse.
You’ve probably heard of the Truth Commissions held in disastrously corrupt and oppressive regimes after the sociopath/kleptocrat Oligarchs are deposed. The goal is not revenge, as well-deserved as that might be; the goal is national reconciliation via the only possible path to healing: name names and tell the plain, unadorned truth , stripped of self-serving artifice, spin, propaganda and PR.
Is such a stripped-of-spin truthful account of names and events even possible in the U.S.? Sadly, there is precious little evidence that a Truth Commission in the U.S. would be anything more than a travesty of a mockery of a sham, a parade of half-truths, misdirections, falsehoods and fabrications, all aimed at one goal: protecting the powerful from the consequences of their decisions and actions.
Sadly, we’ve lost the capacity to simply tell the truth : everything, and I mean everything, is crafted to protect the guilty, polish the putrid decay of legalized looting, defraud the unwary, ease the most venal, power-mad sociopaths into positions of unparalleled power, sell low-quality goods and services nobody needs or would even want if the marketing weren’t so Orwellian, persuade debt-serfs to borrow more and bamboozle voters into further enriching the few at the expense of the many.
The truth is no match for greed is good and don’t be evil, unless it’s incredibly profitable, in which case, go for it but cover your tracks (here’s looking at you, Big Tech)…
This is the pathetic state of America:…
The so-called gatekeepers are all corrupt and self-serving ,…
Who has earned our trust by refusing to toe the line of an approved narrative?…
We’ve been so jaded by all the lies, all the legal looting, all the rigged statistics, and yes, all the convenient “accidents” that we no longer trust anyone to simply report the names and events…
A nation that’s no longer capable of naming names and reporting what actually happened richly deserves an economic and political collapse to match its moral collapse. A nation whose only reliable purpose and goal is to protect the powerful from consequences, no matter what the consequences of that corruption might be, is nothing but a hollow shell begging for one good kick to send it tumbling into the abyss.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: evil, gatekeepers, greed, moral collapse, Truth Commission | Leave a Comment »
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