The End of the World

To take a spiral dynamics perspective on what seems to be happening right now, we may be on the cusp of moving into an integrationist society, like toward the beginning of the 20th century, we moved into an egalitarianist society in many places (ranging from soviet-style communism to welfare statism), and into the classical liberal society after the Renaissance (moving from the authoritative period prior). But those were all little jumps -- this one, if it is coming, is going to be a major jump. The end of the world? In a real sense, yes. The Mayans and many others have predicted the end of the world in 2012. I'm beginning to think more and more that they are correct. The end of the world, though, simply means a major transformation of the world into something truly new. A social jump from first to second tier would certainly qualify. The art of such a level, I would suggest, would be integrationist, like the dominant (in social power, not numbers) psychology and new society. If I am right, I do hope that I am both part of the cause of the end of the world, and part of the new world as well.

1999 Article on Fannie Mae Predicts Current Crisis

Here is an article from 1999 talking about Fannie Mae pressuring banks to offer subprime mortgages under pressure themselves from Bill Clinton. The CEO at the time was Raines.

"In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''"

How interesting -- a free market economist predicted this would happen. Well, it's not so much interesting to me as expected. Seeing that a free market economist predicted this, it doesn't sound much like a market failure as a government failure. Again.

What I Would Do

To solve this economic problem over the long-term, I would pass an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the federal government from being involved in the economy (leaving the state governments to provide whatever economies they wished), eliminate 95% of all non-military spending (I figure at least that much is un-Constitutional), and tell companies that they are all on their own, to profit or sink as their decisions may cause. I would certainly never go into debt to bail out billionaires and their companies, which will result in the government either printing money, resulting in high inflation, being in debt to foreign countries like China, who we do NOT want to default on (talk about a good reason to go to war with us), or raising taxes in the U.S., which will only hurt the poorest in this country through higher prices for goods (the rich and companies don't pay taxes -- they just pass the costs on in higher prices) and harm the economy.

Chavez and Obama Agree on US Economy

Nice to see that Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama agree that this financial crisis is a result of "market failure." Aside from the provable fact that this is not the case at all -- that this is in fact an example of government failure -- the very fact that Chavez believes it is almost definitive proof that it's not true. Of course, if any Marxist came along and pronounced that the sky was blue, I'd look out the window to make sure it hadn't changed, they and their ideologies are so disconnected from reality.

Homer

Jonathan Gottschall has written an interesting piece on Homer and the history behind his poems. He also has written a new book on thte topic titled "The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World of Homer." which I haven't read, but look forward to reading.

Nukes for Chavez?

As if it's not bad enough that North Korea and Iran are on the fast-track to developing nuclear weapons, but it seems Venezuela now wants to join in. I believe they only want to produce nuclear power about as much as I believe that to be true of the Iranians. Hugo Chavez wants to rule South America with a nuclear fist -- and it looks like Russia is willing to help. Are we going to be brave enough to do another blockade like we did with Cuba? Of course not. Nobody thinks Chavez is that big of a threat. But there's no bigger threat than a big fool, let alone a power-hungry fool who already has too much power. Are we ready to fight a world war on this scale?

Great Depression II and World War III?

Will israel attack Iran soon? Maybe, maybe not. At least, probably not with U.S. support. However, there have been rumors suggesting that Israel is afraid of an Obama Presidency, and might attack Iran to affect U.S. politics. I can understand why they would be afraid. If you think the Bush presidency has been a miserable failure at getting Iran to comply with anything, wait until you see an Obama Presidency that doesn't think that such a small country matters to the U.S. (Yes, I know he "corrected" that statement, but he did that under political pressure, while the first statement was in fact an expression of what he really thinks -- which is a good rule to follow in understanding any politician.)

I'm afraid that Bush has set up a situation where an Obama Presidency -- or even the threat of one -- could put the U.S. in a serious war. The current situation is looking eerily like the lead-in to the Great Depression and WWII, including the likelihood of a Democratic President who will fumble us all into the very situations that will cause a depression and a world war.

Substance and Refinement

"When substance overbalances refinement, crudeness results. When refinement overbalances substance, there is superficiality. When refinement and substance are balanced one has Great Man." -- Confucius.

No one has ever accused me of superficiality. Crudeness, yes. That is perhaps why I have tried so hard to become a good poet, a true poet, so that my speech and writing may become refined.

Plato too believed what Confucius said. That is why he sought to create a philosophical rhetoric -- as the former element was substantive, and the latter element refinement. True wisdom repeats itself across cultures.

Waste In Public Schools

There is a program in the Richardson ISD here in Texas to buy kitchen sets for Kindergarten classrooms. The sets are about $500 each. However, Kindergarten students are not allowed to play during school time. If they use the kitchen set, that is considered playing. The teachers, however, cannot get rid off the kitchen sets because they were bought through the aforementioned program.

It is illegal to get rid of the kitchen set, but it is also illegal to let the students use the kitchen set. So it sits in the room, unused. Worse, it teases the children by its presence, since they can never use it -- though of course the teacher isn't likely to tell them they can never use it.

There are over 40 elementary schools in RISD. My wife's school has 4 Kindergarten classes. That's about 160 Kindergarten classes. That's at least $80,000 for something it is illegal for students to use being in the classroom, whether teachers or principals want it or not. So don't tell me that the problem with the public schools is that they need more money.

Capitalism vs. the Free Market

I regular reader has asked a very important question: what is the difference between free markets and capitalism. Most people do equate the two, and in lazier moments even I mistakenly use the term "capitalism" rather than "free markets," as I support the latter, but do not necessarily support the former.

The first thing to note is that the term "capitalism" was coined by Karl Marx. It describes not an economic system alone, but a politico-economic-social system. In this system, the government -- which is either run by or at least influenced by the bourgeois -- has laws on the books specifically designed to protect the economic interests of that class. The term "free market" describes a kind of economic system only -- an economic system that can exist under various forms of government.

In one of the papers I'm reading for the conference I'm going to on spontaneous orders, the author observed that the invisible hand of the free market worked exactly the same way in 1777, after the publication of Wealth of Nations, as it did in 1775 -- but that politics was never the same after Marx. Indeed, capitalism is a political idea; free markets are a kind of economic spontaneous order that arose naturally through the interaction of people through exchange.

Assets and the Government Bailout

Here's what I don't get: why does the government have to buy the mortgages? All the companies the government is looking to bail out have assets. If the boards and CEOs running the companies want to stay afloat at all, couldn't they just sell off their assets? I would guess that a lot of small- and medium-sized mortgage companies would be willing to buy them. A few people might even be willing to start up a mortgage company to buy up what would undoubtedly be some great deals. Instead, the government is buying the assets at a much higher price than they would be worth in the market. Which seems odd, except that the government is also picking and choosing who they are bailing out, and those they are bailing out all have very strong, very deep connections to certain politicians. Sounds like it's payback time for various forms of donations to certain politicians to me. I'm guessing there is a huge scandal here the media is going out of its way to ignore. And this seems to be a scandal that laziness cannot excuse, as it seems that it's taking them more effort to ignore it than to see the scandal sitting right there in front of them. So why are they ignoring it?

Reason on the Financial Crisis

Reason Magazine interviews some free market (or, as I prefer, economic realismists) economists on the financial crisis.

Bush's Decisive Action Could Ruin Us All

Bush is urging "decisive action" to avoid recession. Decisive action should work wonders at weakening the economy much more than it already is. But only if we believe all of world history. If we want to ignore all of world history when it comes to economics, then why not throw $700 billion or more down a hole and torch it? This is the problem with mythology ruling over facts in history. The myth is that FDR's decisive action got us out of the Great Depression, and that if there had been decisive action by Hoover, there wouldn't have been a Depression. The reality is that Hoover was taking decisive action -- so much decisive action that FDR was accusing him of pushing us toward communism -- and that it was precisely that decisive action which made what would have been a slight downturn into a massive depression. FDR then turning around and continuing those policies only made things worse. Fortunately, the Supreme Court declared the New Deal unconstitutional (it was), and unemployment dropped form a high of about 25% to about 8% in the year FDR had finally replaced enough SCOTUS judges to get the New Deal passed. The result? Unemployment jumped back up to 15%. The Depression ended only after we entered WWII and employed people as soldiers or arms builders. If the truth of decisive action in regards to the Great Depression were common knowledge rather than the myth perpetuated by the lying Left, Bush wouldn't be idiotically pushing for decisive action now. Of course, if SCOTUS had been able to hold off FDR's programs until WWII, we would be in the current financial mess we are in, since this mess we are in can be traced back to those regulations and the creation of a central bank. Just like with the USSR's entire command economy, the sector of the US economy that had been turned into a command economy collapsed 80 years after having been implemented. Is that a rule of nature, that a command economy collapses in 80 years?

Subsidizing Fools

In the end, this bailout Paulson is pushing through is going to keep the same fools in place and power on Wall Street. What kind of sense does that make? In a free market, they would all be in the poorhouse, where they belong, for such shenanigans.

Good for Joe Biden

With friends like Joe Biden, Obama almost doesn't need people like me. Of course, Biden was right about the "McCain can't use a computer or e-mail" ad, because the ad is actually making fun of McCain for being physically disabled enough not to be able to use them -- which is the truth, since he does in fact use them quite a bit through proxies who can do the physical stuff. So good for Biden for standing up against making fun of the handicapped -- even if he did pull back a bit on the criticism later.

$99,200,000,000,000

Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said that the government's unfunded liability for Social Security and Medicare alone comes to a staggering $99.2 trillion, or $330,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. And that's just those two programs. Read the entire article. The government is and has been cooking the books -- lying to us -- in regards to the deficit and debt owed. There is a much bigger collapse coming, and it's not going to be merely economic. And yet the Left wants these same people in charge of health care, etc.

On the Wealthy

We learned to hate the wealthy when
The wealthy were all thieves
And rulers with the strength to take
Whatever they should please.

The wealthy, when they gained their wealth
From voluntary trade,
Were thought to get their wealth the way
The ruler thieves were paid.

So then we turn back to the thieves
WHo promise that they'll take
THe wealth from those who earned that wealth
Then lie: "It's for your sake."

We've come to trust the ones who made
Us never trust the rich
And, rather than take a hand up,
Lie beaten in a ditch.

Exchange is new and power's old
So it feels natural --
But if we keep believing that,
We'll live still in the Fall.

Kelly Jolley

Kelly Jolley a philosophy professor at Auburn, espouses the very teaching philosophy I espouse. Good for him for 1) getting a job at all with that teaching philosophy, and 2) sticking ti it when everyone was telling him to tone it down.

Beware of the Feds Owning Your Mortgage

Part of the mortgage bailout plan involves the federal government buying up mortgages with a high probability of defaulting. Let me ask you people out there who have these kinds of mortgages (I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that many if not most are among the poor): do you want the same people who run the IRS to own your mortgage? I mean, if you default on a company, that's one thing; if you default on the federal government, I'm guessing federal prison time might be involved. I think it's a terrible idea to owe money to people who use force rather than exchange to get things done. Further, if the feds own your mortgage, they own your property. What is it called when the government owns the property but lets you live on it? Socialism? Fascism? I do NOT like where this is going.

The Racism of the Left II

A third of Democrats define African-Americans as "lazy" and "violent." This is not surprising to me, since I have said for years that the Left is full of racists. Just take a look at the programs and reforms they propose and see the effect on minority groups. Walter Williams once observed that the Klan could not have done a better job of designing a program that would decimate African-American families and communities as our own welfare system has done. Further, a smaller percentage of Democrats than Republicans votes for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and it was Democratic governments in the South that fought for segregation. The postmodern Left pushes for more and more group-identity politics, insisting that different groups have nothing in common, whether those groups are based on race, gender, etc. The purpose of that is clear and simple: divide and conquer. Get everyone fighting with each other, then promise each group that they will get what they want if they only elect the Democrats, and you get a Democrat majority. In the meantime, the Left not only support a divisive world view, but also support a form of economics that is designed to create a permanent underclass. Throw in support from such organizations like Planned Parenthood, which has a history of specifically targeting minority communities to encourage abortions (and a founder who saw the mission of the organization as eliminating minorities), in addition to programs that tell minorities that the Great White Man must rescue them from themselves because they just aren't good enough to make it on their own, and the racism of the Left becomes clearer and clearer.