Capital controls are characteristic of third world dictatorships teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. And now America has capital controls.
Category: economics
How much ruin in a nation?
On the one hand, there is a lot of ruin in a nation. On the other hand, that which cannot continue, will stop. The present level of government spending is unsustainable. At what point then, do we get general collapse?
No moderate Islam, and not many moderate Muslims
How many Muslims are moderate? In the recent Iraq election, moderates gained, just barely, a plurality. Not a majority, a plurality. To govern, they will need the support of some violently immoderate people. They have a plurality because the various different kinds of extremist hate each other, splitting the extremist vote.
The Obamized future
America was the place where the future was created. All the world depended on America for progress. It ceased to be that place under Clinton, and things got worse under Bush. We cannot rebuild the two towers, we no longer have a human presence in space, and the next big thing on the internet, networked money that bypasses our legacy banking system, is coming from China, and, God-help-us, Africa. Remember that in the 1950s, we were about to settle Antarctica, …
Natural law and natural rights
Doc Zero attributes the modern idea of natural law to Hobbes. This is backwards. Hobbes originated the modern idea of facism. It was John Locke that originated the modern idea of natural rights deriving from natural law.
Physics calls out climate science
The institute of physics is arguably the most prestigious scientific institution. It has told us that climate science is not scientific, that the climategate emails are big deal. … unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context. The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and …
socialist medicine
Hot air reviews an interesting report from Britain. Patients were left unwashed in their own filth for up to a month as nurses ignored their requests to use the toilet or change their sheets; … Wards were left filthy with blood, discarded needles and used dressings … … … Food and drink were left out of reach, forcing patients to drink water from flower vases. … The problem is that those would provide socialist medicine for the indigent, want to …
The bubble in government paper
The US budget proposes that by 2020, debt service on federal debt will be ten percent of GDP. This is politically impossible. The interest will be paid by borrowing more money.
Where the money went
The government has been shuffling the money around to obfuscate who stole it. It lends money, and then announces that there is no problem, the money has been paid back. But after much fiddling, the money has mostly come to rest, in that the government is now the proud owner of about one trillion dollars of mortgage backed securities guaranteed by Fannie, Freddie, and the FHA, plus some Fannie, Freddy, and FHA debt. The first graph in the above link …
Affirmative action and the mortgage crisis
Four hundred firemen died attempting to rescue people on 9/11. Not one “firefighter†died, for women do not fight fires. It is not in their physique, nor their psychological nature to do so. Obama and his wife are typical affirmative action blacks. Michelle’s Princeton thesis is a whine about racial prejudice and is full of spelling and grammatical errors.  Obama got a degree from Columbia without even showing up. Obama can read from a teleprompter very nicely – except when …