Friday, November 23, 2012

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW'S RYAN CHITTUM BECOMES HACK ADVOCATE FOR UNPAYABLE KEYNESIAN DEBT



Ryan Chittum , a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is deputy editor of The Audit, CJR's business section. If you see notable business journalism, give him a heads-up at rc2538@columbia.edu.

Mr. Chittum is quite upset that CNBC is suddenly engaged in “advocacy journalism” because of its scaremongering about the “fiscal cliff” and because it is not giving equal time to the notion that there is nothing wrong with the unpayable debt or that we could even use more unpayable debt.  Somehow the REALLY BIG SCANDAL, the total “journalistic” suppression of the Austrian School for 40 or 50 years, is not news.  I tried posting the following comment, but it failed to clear “moderation”. Perhaps because it wasn’t “moderate” enough?

We see not a word from our business press watchdog about the Austrian School, of course. Austrian economists predicted the housing bubble and bust, and still not a word about it.  Ron Paul convinces Congress to audit the Fed and still not a word about it.  It would only take a 24 hour cable channel fifteen seconds once a week to say something like:

"Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for his work on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory which holds that not only do monetary ‘stimulus’ and fiscal ‘stimulus’ not cure depressions and recessions, those policies are the cause of depressions and recessions". 

To which they could easily add: 

“And, of course, no anti-Austrian in the past 60 years has ever bothered to familiarize themselves with even basic Austrian School concepts”. 

Krugman is clueless on the subject. Austrian School economist Robert P. Murphy of NYU has raised over $80,000 to entice Krugman to debate, but the cowardly Krugman refuses.

I can recall only two serious mentions of Hayek on mainstream television in the last 40 years.  Hayek was on “Meet the Press” in1975 of which I made an audiotape:

In 1977, Hayekwas on “Firing Line” wherein he explained how Keynesianism became so popular:

Hayek:  "You see, another political element was that, of course, politicians just lapped the argument and Keynes taught them if you outspend your income and run a deficit, you are doing good to the people in general.   The politicians didn’t want to hear anything more than that -- to be told that irresponsible spending was a beneficial thing and that’s how the thing became so influential."


Even the Keynesians know that the public does not understand or support Keynesian policy:


Would someone explain why it is that the CJR is unconcerned with the total suppression of even a brief description of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory,  a theory which easily and thoroughly explains why Keynesianism (and its cousin, monetarism) is a ruse and how it is the cause of our present misery.  Especially after Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize?


UPDATE!!!!!  UPDATE!!!!!!

Anonymous wrote in the comments:

ABCT is complete garbage. If Hayek understood economics than he would not have said this:

“When the government of the United States borrows a large part of the savings of the world, the consequence is that capital must become more scarce and expensive in the whole world. That’s a problem.” -Hayek

I finally get it!  Just because scarce resources are employed by the government to blow money out its ass and pay off its supporters, the very same scarce resources can be used at the very same time for capital investments! I never knew that!







Wednesday, November 14, 2012

O'Reilly warns about how vicious the left is

I watch O'Reilly so you don't have to.  Last night at the start of his show, he again warned us about how vicious the left is .


Then he had John Stossel on for the weekly 5 minute Stossel segment. Stossel again spoke out against the stupid anti-gouging laws plaguing the Hurricane Sandy victims.  O'Reilly objected and called Stossel a fascist thereby proving O'Reilly's point that leftists are truly vicious. 


Monday, November 12, 2012

Encirclement - Award winning documentary in which French commies blame Hayek for the World Bank

L'ENCERCLEMENT
La démocratie dans les rets du néolibéralisme 

This is an absolutely amazing display of the total ignorance of the left.  This is allegedly a "documentary on the real history of libertarian free-market fundamentalism".  A bunch of weenie French and other leftists literally blame Hayek, Mises and the Austrian School for the present day Keynesian welfare/warfare crony capitalist state.  



The entire thing is 150 minutes of talking.  The clip above is only about 9 minutes long.

UPDATE!  I was excited when I saw that Susan George was going to be one of the film’s commentators. 
  


Sorry. Wrong Susan George. 

Here is the website for this preposterous documentary which seems to have won a barrelfull of  awards from commie movie reviewers.  It continues a perfect batting average for the critics of the Austrian School since there has never been a single one that understood even the most basic Austrian School concepts or libertarian concepts.  They are congenitally unable to distinguish a fiat money regime from a competitive market in money for example. They cannot and will not differentiate between laissez faire and crony capitalism applying the dishonest yet silly term "neoliberalism" to both.   Again, they are simply amazing. 

"A critical and intelligent thesis, as dense as hail, on the origins
and strategies of neo-liberalism and its global neo-colonialist effects."


- Martin Walder, Neue Zürcher Zeitung


"These thesis criticizing globalization are well known,
but we have never seen them exposed so radically in a film."


- Eberhard von Elterlein, Berliner Morgenpost 
 

"Listening to these specialists unravel with stunning clarity the roots of neo-liberalism, the mechanisms of its expansion and the ideas it conveys is a fascinating experience."

- Malik Berkati, Le Courrier (Genève)


"The most conspicuous focus of the 39th International Forum were a number of documentaries on burning contemporary issues. [...] The radicality of Brouillette's summation is reflected in the rigorous design of the black-and-white film in ten chapters.


- Martin Girod, Neue Zürcher Zeitung


 

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Hopeless MMTers try to explain things to Erskine Bowles


The MMTers are dumber than a crate of anvils (which actually explains how they can believe that an unlimited supply of "dollars" has solved the problem of scarcity).  Their mighty leader, Mike Norman has boldly announced that the anti-gouging price control regime in New Joisy is the free market,  Do they think this is going to hurt our feelings?

Now, they try to explain their bizarro views to Erskine Bowles.  

 "Fiat" means an order from a SWAT team.  Of course, if "there’s no static asset metric that a unit of account is convertible to upon demand", the government, via its SWAT teams, is unconstrained in robbing everybody everyday all the time and transferring the loot to itself and its friends.  And the MMT guys wonder why we're heading towards a surveillance state.

Simple network dynamics dictate that to make liquidity co-scale with expanding options, a growing population and economy must steadily increase fiat incomes and savings, NOT maintain buying power of the unit of account

There is no basis in fact, logic or theory as to why a growing population and/or economy must steadily increase "fiat incomes". Everyone should always be concerned with maintaining buying power of the "unit of account" or else it isn't much of a unit of account. Everyone should be concerned with increasing their real incomes.  And everyone must always be concerned about saving enough to use for investments for the future.

Obviously, the government can always steal what it wants to steal by spending money into existence but even the thieves, murderers and cutthroats who run the government are smart enough to maintain some resemblance in the current system the existed in the old system so that taxation approximates what the government wants to spend and the rest is or appears to be borrowed.  They are smart enough to know that the MMT proposition is insane. In fact, when average people learn that the government can spend money into existence, they will be properly appalled.  The do not know this because Keynesianism, being a scam for the government to loot the masses, is intentionally confusing and obscure. We can thank the MMTers for making it less obscure.

Finally, the fact that the government cannot run out of "dollars" does not solve the problem of scarcity or create the $200 trillion in goods and services promised to all by the government. The only thing that spending money into existence can accomplish is to steal purchasing power from a victim and transfer it to the government's buyer or recipient. This will cause fewer people will invest when one's savings and property are never safe from the kleptocratic pillaging Keynesian state.

MMT is for people who cannot tell the difference between a free market and an anti-free market regime of price controls and for people who think the government is omniscient, efficient and benevolent. In other words, hopeless dolts of the amoral variety.